Review of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) by Adam K — 25 Jul 2014

Unlike a lot of sequels, T2 feels more like a mulligan for the first film than a foray into its universe. The plot is essentially identical: two heroes are sent back in time to duel for the fate of John Connor. This time, Cameron makes good on the potential of his premise. Every character is given a complex psychology and plenty of time to explore it. The Terminator's arc is mostly played for cutesy robot moments, and John Connor doesn't swear quite enough to overcome his whiny quippy shit kid status, but Sarah Connor emerges from the mental ward cocoon as a beautiful militaristic conspiracy nutjob butterfly.

I love how the film handles her character. Cameron creates a classic wrongly accused victim narrative; we root for her since we know all her "delusions" are real, that she isn't really crazy. But as the true narrative imposes its reality on the world of the asylum, Sarah retains elements of her "insane" persona that don't actually jive with that narrative. She is obsessed with military solutions, applying hammers to scenarios best approached with finesse. In this she is not too far from the Terminator itself, and it is up to John to show them both back to the middle way, the reasonable human value set they're all working to defend (Miles Dyson offers a mirror inverse of the effect technology has had on the Connor family). John Connor rolling his eyes at her militant feminist rant is the best bit in the movie.

With more interesting characters and a few ideas and value sets moving around, it's a bit easier to get drawn into the action scenes. These are, in my opinion, generally more creative and intimate than anything in the first film. The long sequence from Sarah's breakout to the elevator stabbing nightmare to the car-T-1000 footrace is brilliant. Even the hammy minigun and mortar barrage of the police barricade has some character relevance. The final action sequence is a bit too long and hammy for me, and I'm still not sold on the blue/red lighting scheme, but it's a definite improvement on the sequence it mimics from the first film.

It's not perfect or amazing by any means, but it redeems the mistakes of the first movie and lives up to the potential of its premise. There are enough characters and thematic materials woven through the action to humanize and tense up those scenes. I enjoyed it.