and
TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton
Directed by James Cameron & co-written by James Cameron and William Wisher
*** (out of ****)
Also starring Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Paul Winfield, and Earl Boen
Co-written by Gale Anne Hurd, inspired by the works of Harlan Ellison
1984
107 min R
***1/2 (out of ****)
Also starring Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong, Joe Morton, Earl Boen, and S. Epatha Merkeson
1991
137 (theatrical) 153 min (director's cut) R
Cameron made “The Terminator” in 1984 on a B-movie budget and it was a sleeper hit. Using the same “business-only” paradigm as countless other first- and second-time directors, the result is a lean and brutally efficient thriller. In 1991, he brought us “Terminator 2: Judgement Day,” as much a remake of “The Terminator” as a sequel. The themes are the same but deeper, characters return, we visit the same kinds of locations, and the movies even share some of the same dialogue. Both movies feature monsters rising up from the flames when we thought they were defeated and dead. A better movie overall, the script for “T2” is also looser and fatter, with almost too much talking, and missing the relentlessness so often characteristic of cheaper productions. An hour into “The Terminator,” half the characters are already dead, but an hour into “T2,” we still feel like things are getting set up. And action adventures with A-movie budgets have been longish and talky ever since.
Anyway, this is the way of things for a lot of directors: an early cheapie gets them success and credibility, and then they get to explore those same themes later with greater resources. Only Hitchcock, it seems, has Cameron beat: he made “The Man Who Knew Too Much” twice.
Oh, right, the movies themselves. The set-up is one of those time-travelling nightmares borrowed liberally from the golden age of sci-fi. In the not-so-distant future, the machines have taken over and mankind is almost extinct. But we win—hooray!—and, in a last ditch effort, the machines send a robot assassin back in time, to the present day, present day being 1984. The robot, called a Terminator and played by Arnold, looks human. Its goal is to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), whose unborn son John will become the leader of the human resistance against the machines. One human soldier from the future, named Reese (Michael Biehn), is sent to protect her. The bulk of “The Terminator” is a game of cat-and-mouse among these three players, as Reese must convince Sarah, the Terminator kills everyone in its path, and the LAPD is not terribly useful.
In “Terminator 2: Judgement Day,” the machines send an even more advanced Terminator (Robert Patrick) to kill the boy John Connor (Edward Furlong). The future humans send a reprogrammed Terminator (Arnold again) to protect John. Again, more cat-and-mouse, but this time Sarah has become a half-crazed survivalist type, and the surrogate family of Terminator, Sarah, and John gives the machines a taste of their own medicine by tracking down the company that will one day build the machines. In both films, the predatory robot is relentless, nigh unstoppable, and without pity or remorse.
Both films have a strong emotional center in their human characters, otherwise Cameron’s man vs. machine parable wouldn’t really work. In “The Terminator,” we have the horror standby of the girl-in-danger, and Linda Hamilton is appropriately freaked out and desperate. The surrogate family of the second film is more interesting: John is a potty-mouthed kid in a Public Enemy t-shirt, screaming around on a dirt bike and robbing ATMs, but in the Terminator he finds a non-judgmental father figure in whom he can confide. A good deal of the movie—definitely too much in the 153 minute director’s cut—is the boy chatting to the monster. There’s a throwaway bit in which the two of them, as well as Sarah, flee from a burning building together in an elevator, and we’re surprised by how much we’ve come to care for them.
The time travel stuff is likely to give you a headache if you think about it too much. If you go into the past with the intent of killing someone and succeed, then won’t the “you” in the “present” NOT go back in time because you’ll know nothing about the person that needs killing? If the machines succeed in killing Sarah Connor, then won’t John Connor cease to exist, thereby eliminating the need for the machines to go back in time, and thereby preventing the death of Sarah Connor? These are the kinds of paradoxes that often destroy the entire universe in sci-fi. I think the important lesson is that both machines and humans are willing to risk destroying the entire cosmos to prevent extinction. Such is the powerful pull of life.
The machines may dominate the future, but in Cameron’s universe they practically control the present. In both films, the chase takes us through parking garages, factories, power plants, so many freeways, and industrial spaces so cold, gray, and impersonal that I’m not even sure what they were. Lamps in “The Terminator” are blown-out, mirroring the vast searchlights of the future machines hunting the future humans. Almost everyone Sarah and the Terminators meet drives a truck, is paid by the hour, or could otherwise wear a mullet. No painters, no poets, no schoolteachers, no clerks, no fancy restaurants; everyone is close to the blood vessels of an industrialized society. Sarah’s answering machine says “fooled you, this is just a machine, but machines have feelings too.” Everything in “Terminator 2” is cast in the same uncaring blue-gray of a Michael Mann film. “T2” is all clean lines, perfectly manicured technical centers, and buildings of monotonous plate glass. So many backgrounds are grids and 18-wheelers pop up everywhere. Much of the music is either made on a synthesizer or sounds like the groaning of machines. Needless to say, there’s hardly a setting in either movie that could be called “nature.”
Page two of "Terminator" and "Terminator 2." Back to home.