Terminator 2

I'll Be Back: Terminator 2

The original Terminator movie ended with The Terminator from the future destroyed, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), the soldier sent from the future to save her dead, and Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), pregnant with her son John, on her way to hiding in Mexico. Because if one terminator could find her, what's to stop the evil machines of SkyNet from sending back more? So Sarah goes underground.

The second movie, also called T2, or Terminator 2: Judgment Day, actually deals with an issue that other similar stories gloss over. To wit, what happens when you've been through a life-altering experience facing terrible exterminating machines from the future? That's right - everyone thinks you're crazy.

The Plot

T2 begins with Sarah locked up in a high-security mental institution for the criminally insane, and her ten-year-old son John (Edward Furlong) living in foster care. Prior to her incarceration, Sarah had changed from slightly soft girlie-type to tough-as-nails survivor. She (and John) were part of the undersociety of roving loonies - the black helicopter militants, survivalists and assorted millenialists who stockpile weapons and prepare for Armageddon. Only Sarah had a reason for her paranoia, and she's about to be proved correct.

Into our time are injected two terminators, one sent once again to attempt to destroy John Connor, and one sent back by John Connor himself to protect his earlier self. It was no secret by the time the movie opened in 1991 that the 'good Terminator' was this time played by Bad Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Big Budget, Lavish Effects

The first movie cost around 6 million to make, and grossed around 35-40 million dollars. The second movie cost over a hundred million to make, and it shows. At the time, T2 was the most expensive movie ever made, a record director James Cameron would himself break six years later with the 200 million dollar budget on Titanic.

The most impressive (at the time) effects in T2 are the morphing effects. Schwarzenegger plays a 'primitive' model, who only can assume one appearance. He is pitted against SkyNet's newest model, the T1000, played by Robert Patrick. The T1000 can change form; he can look like linoleum, or your best friend. Makes it difficult to defend against, for sure.

Echoes of T1

There are numerous reflections of T1 in this movie. Time travel is only possible for 'meat' beings, so clothing and gear is left behind. In T1, the Terminator helps himself to a hardass biker's leathers. In T2, he stalks naked into a biker bar, terrorizes the pool players, and emerges once again leather-clad, with the soundtrack playing George Thurgood's 'B-b-b-bad to the bone'. Oh yeah.

In the first movie, the terminator stalks Sarah at a techno-club, where she is rescued by Kyle Reese, who tells her 'Come with me if you want to live'.

In T2, young John discovers that the old-model terminator who saves his life is programmed to follow orders from John Connor; he uses this handy fact to force the terminator to spring his mom from the insane asylum. Of course he breaks in with the maximum of breakage and destruction. Sarah, seeing a duplicate of the being that tried to kill her ten years ago bearing down on her, is naturally terrified - he's going to get her this time. But the creature, closely followed by her young son, stops in front of her and extends a hand, saying 'Come with me if you want to live'. Of course, this time he says it in an Austrian accent, but the benign intent is clear.

Paradox, Schmaradox

As with all time travel stories, you are simply going to have to ignore all the inherent paradoxes if you're going to enjoy the movie. Take the plot devices on faith and just take in the chases, the bonding, the terrifyingly realistic depiction of nuclear holocaust (in a dream, fortunately) and the surprisingly poignant ending.