Fellman's Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers 

T2: Judgement Day is the sequel to The Terminator and involves Arnold Schwarzenegger coming back as a reprogrammed Terminator to protect a teenage John Conner from a more advanced version of Terminator that’s been sent back to terminate John.  

What’s it about? We start out with a naked Arnold, showing up from the future, and he needs some clothes again. This time, he heads into a biker bar and roughs some people up and gets some clothes and a new motorcycle. Then the T-1000 shows up, naked as well, and an unfortunate cop meets him in his new calendar year. Dressed as a cop, the T-1000 uses the cop’s car to find out where John Conner lives and heads over to his house. Unfortunately, John’s already left with a friend of his. But the T-1000 gets a picture of John from his foster parents and now knows what John looks like, and goes out looking for John around town. The T-1000 hunts John down to the video arcade where he’s about to shoot at him when the T-800 comes out of nowhere to protect John and shoot the T-1000 down so they can escape. A long chase ensues and the pair escape the T-1000 so they can rest. The T-800 explains the situation and John commands him to help John rescue Sarah, who is being held in a mental institution. They break out Sarah and go to get her belongings from her old friend Enrique. Guns and clothes and a truck that they can use. She then goes to kill Miles Bennet Dyson, the creator of the CPU that eventually leads to the Terminators. At Dyson’s house, she refuses to execute him and John and the T-800 show up and show Dyson what he’s created and explain what happens in the future. He agrees to go to Cyberdyne with them and destroy the CPU that’s he’s worked so hard on in order to save humanity. Several things go wrong at Cyberdyne. The silent alarm is tripped, locking all the doors. The entire police force shows up, creating an urgent threat, and Dyson gets shot by the invading SWAT team. In a last show of revenge, Dyson holds the remote to the C4 canisters above a grenade that he’s activated, that will detonate the moment that he lets go of it. When he dies, his hand falls, detonating the grenade, and the entire floor. Meanwhile, Sarah, John, and T-800 are driving away from Cyberdyne in an armored truck and T-1000 is following them in a helicopter. After a while of shooting each other, they wind up at a steel mill with T-1000 in a truck full of liquid nitrogen. He crashes the truck on his way into the mill, and it ends up freezing him and T-800 shatters him. He ends up melting and reforming into his previous state but eventually gets thrown into a vat of melted steel and melted for good. 

What’s good? Visually, it’s a much better movie than the original. It’s a lot more action. A lot more explosions and chase scenes if that’s what you’re into. There’s less sci-fi and more action in this one than there was in the original.  

What’s bad? I think this one was trying to be kind of mainstream. They put the “I’ll be back” line in there because it was a catchphrase of Arnold’s after the first movie. And they tried to make it almost a buddy picture a little bit, which I wasn’t a fan of. They didn’t go full on with it. But you could tell they were trying to go in that direction.  

The actors? The acting is good. I think it actually must’ve been hard for both Arnold and Robert Patrick to keep their faces perfectly straight like they did during all of their scenes. Especially during the fight scenes. It must be hard NOT to emote as an actor. It’s a natural instinct. I can imagine playing a robot would be one of the hardest things to do.  

The effects? We’re getting into the 90s now. The effects are actually starting to get pretty good. The CGI for T-1000 is pretty good when he’s shape-shifting and turning into metal and whatnot. The green screens they did use, you could hardly tell. It’s getting to the point where it’s almost seamless by this time.  

Why they had clothes. They explained why they both had clothes right away and got that out of the way real quick. Got it out of the way as soon as they could and moved on with the movie. You could tell that was as minor of a plot point as it could be.  

Arnold takes a pool stick in the head. That guy cracked him upside the head and he barely moves and the guy just kind of looks at him and then turns around and runs. I’d have turned around and ran too. If you break a pool stick over a guy’s head and he turns around and looks at you, get the hell out of there… 

Wrong place at the wrong time. That cop was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was just out on patrol and he happened along a time traveling robot. That’s just unfortunate for him.  

John’s a criminal. John Conner may be a hero of the resistance in the future, but apparently when he was a teenager, he was just a two-bit criminal. He’s been arrested for shoplifting and vandalism. Just random stupid things that teenagers do.  

Why wouldn’t they believe her? The Terminator from the first movie killed like 100 people. The psychiatrist in this movie was even in the first movie. Why wouldn’t they believe her? He literally took out an entire police station. I mean, did they just shoot themselves? Isn’t that proof enough? 

Riding with no helmets. Both John Conner and his friend are riding on his motorcycle, down a highway, with no helmet. Wind, blowing through their hair. Cars passing them by. Weaving in and out of traffic. For being so important to the future, he seems awfully carefree about his safety. 

The cop is the perfect cover for T-1000. Dressing as a cop was a great idea for the T-1000. He could ask around for John Conner and nobody would think twice about why he was doing it. He could knock on people’s doors and they would let him in.  

You can’t drive an 18-wheeler off an overpass. I’m pretty sure you can’t drive an 18-wheeler off an overpass, have it land on its front bumper, and continue driving it forward. I mean, I’m all about suspension of disbelief and everything, but come on… What is it? Optimus Prime? 

The orderly licks Sarah. And what is his problem? That orderly licking Sarah as she’s all tied up in bed like that? That’s the kind of orderly that ends up raping psychotic patients. 

T-800 has to do whatever John says. John is like, 13 at this point. They didn’t see any problem with sending a nearly impervious killing machine back in time that had to do anything that a 13-year-old boy told it to do? 

John makes him promise not to kill anyone. John makes a Terminator, a cyborg whose sole function is to “terminate” people, promise not to kill anyone. Its most logical process is to think of the most efficient way to kill things. 

Sarah is thinking like a Terminator. She decides that the best course of action is to take out Miles Bennett Dyson. She’s thinking like a Terminator. The most efficient course of action would be to take out the creator of the CPU before it’s created. But she hesitates at his house and refuses to go through with it. 

They go to Cyberdyne armed to the teeth. They go to Cyberdyne expecting something to go wrong. They go armed to the teeth with weapons. They’re not there just to break some computers or burn some files. They’re expecting people to show up and alarms to be tripped.  

It’s completely John’s fault Dyson dies. If John hadn’t had made the T-800 promise not to kill anyone, he could’ve saved Dyson. But because he couldn’t kill anybody, all those people made it into the room and they shot Dyson. It was completely John’s fault that Dyson had to die.  

T-1000 makes that guy jump out of a helicopter. They were way up in the air when T-1000 told that guy to get out of the helicopter, and that guy jumped out anyway. That guy probably died. I mean, that was kind of a lose/lose situation for that guy, though. Fight the shape-shifting thing that just morphed its way through the window? Or jump out of the helicopter? There really is no better choice at that point… 

Does he just involuntarily change into stuff? Does the T-1000 just involuntarily change into things that he touches? Like, if he sits down on a bench, does he just turn into a bench? How does that work? 

One of the best death scenes, ever. Watching the T-1000 melt to death is one of the best death scenes ever. He turns into all of the different people that he had been throughout the movie, and then he just kind of dilutes into the steel. It’s a great scene. 

Lower him down. It’s a shame they had to stand there and lower him down slowly at the end. Like, at least you could get it over with quickly. But no, you have to stand there and watch him slowly melt while he makes robot-puppy dog eyes at you? That’s messed up.  

So, yeah. Go and see T2: Judgement Day. If you’ve seen the first one, you should’ve already seen this one. And if you haven’t seen the first one, what’s wrong with you? And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…