Ah, the summer of 1991. I remember it well. My family lived in Michigan then, where I spent much of that year exploring the nearby woods with my buddies. While we were running around like idiots, one of the most exciting pop culture events surfaced at the local movie theater — and we had no idea.
At that point, movies had yet to consume my life. I recall seeing The Rocketeer that summer, diving headfirst into Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves when it hit video the following spring, and going wild over Steven Spielberg’s Hook that Christmas. So, when my friends started talking about a shape-shifting robot duking it out with the guy from Kindergarten Cop in a little movie called Terminator 2: Judgment Day, my genuine, no-B.S. reaction was, “Well, who wants to see that?”
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As it turns out, quite a lot of people wanted to see that, which is why T2 grossed a massive $520 million worldwide, becoming one of the biggest blockbusters of its day.
I recall seeing the bit when the T-1000 rises out of the floor to kill that poor security guard during the Academy Awards. Still, I don’t remember viewing the film until a friend lent me his copy around the summer of 1994, right around the time audiences were flocking to True Lies.
Naturally, T2 ignited my young mind. The action. The ambition. The FX. Everything works so well. Is it wrong to suggest that the opening sequence ranks among the best opening sequences in cinema history? I mean, imagine watching 1984’s The Terminator and then getting this nearly a decade later:
My brother and I often discuss which films we would love to have seen in theaters on opening night, and T2 ranks up there alongside Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Aliens, and Predator. Here is a summer blockbuster loaded with thought-provoking ideas that work perfectly in tandem with astonishing action and well-developed characters.
Speaking on that last point, while Terminator 2 is very clearly an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, the MVP of the pic remains Sarah Connor, who plays a pivotal role in the story, and enjoys the most significant character arc.
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Sarah’s journey takes her from a mousy waitress to a steely-eyed badass:
As the story progresses, we see that Sarah’s knowledge of the future has destroyed her personal life. She cares for her son, John, the future leader of humanity, but only because he’s the key to her mission. Sarah disconnected from reality long ago; her tenderness devolved into pure rage. She’s a terminator:
The red dot sight on Sarah’s gun looks like the eye of a T-800 in the scene where she tries to execute Miles Dyson (Joe Morton):
The emotional peak of Sarah’s journey arrives after she fails to kill Dyson during a touching moment with John. (The bit occurs right around the 2:40 mark in the clip below.)
Sarah’s big breakthrough ushers her character back into the light. Cameron marks this change by dressing Sarah in a trench coat that mirrors Kyle Reese’s outfit in the original Terminator — a fantastic visual flourish that subtly reinforces the character’s evolution.
These elements work in conjunction to bring real emotion to the film’s superb climax:
Perfection.
The only downside to T2 is that it led to four genuinely awful films. While Hamilton would eventually return in Terminator: Dark Fate, her character lacks the nuance she achieved in T2. Instead, she makes her long-anticipated appearance by leaping out of a truck and blasting a terminator with a rocket launcher. “I’ll be back,” she says.
Sarah morphed into an action hero in between films, which feels entirely out of place for her character. She was never an action hero in the traditional sense. Her kick-ass nature in T2 stemmed from her determination to stop Judgment Day. Her deltoids were terrific, but Sarah was a few notches below sane and came very close to leaping over the cliff into madness. I don’t know how you top that in later films, but giving her a rocket launcher and a few quippy lines suggests the filmmakers completely missed the point of her character in T2.
No matter. T2 remains one of the best blockbusters of the modern age, and we should thank Cameron and Hamilton for delivering one of the more complex and memorable action heroes of all time.
