Review "TERMINATOR: JUDGMENT DAY" is Still Landmark and Bloated

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 41 of 2024 (No. 1985) by Leroy Douresseaux

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Running time:  137 minutes (2 hours, 17 minutes)

MPAA – R

DIRECTOR:  James Cameron

WRITERS:  James Cameron and William Wisher

PRODUCER:  James Cameron

CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Adam Greenberg (D.o.P.)

EDITORS:  Mark Goldblatt, Conrad Buff, and Richard A. Harris

COMPOSER:  Brad Fiedel

Academy Award winner

SCI-FI/FANTASY/ACTION/THRILLER

Starring:  Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick, Earl Boen, Joe Morton, S. Epatha Merkerson, Castulo Guerra, Danny Cooksey, Jenette Goldstein, Xander Berkeley, De Vaughn Nixon, and Michael Edwards

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a 1991 American science fiction film and action-drama from director James Cameron.  Also known as “T2” and “T2: Judgment Day,”, it is a direct sequel to the film, The Terminator (1984), and is also the second entry in the Terminator film franchise.  Judgment Day focuses on a cyborg that travels from the twenty-first century to protect a boy from a more advanced and powerful cyborg.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day opens in the year 2029.  Earth has been ravaged by the war between the artificial intelligence, Skynet, and the human resistance.  This war started on August 29, 1997, also known as “Judgment Day,” when Skynet launched the United States' entire nuclear arsenal, which started a global war.  Afterwards, humanity emerged to find a devastated world, one filled with the machines – called “Terminators” – that were programmed to kill humans.  Resistance leader, John Connor (Michael Edwards), has lead humanity to the brink of defeating Skynet and its human-killing machines.

Using time machine technology, Skynet sends an advanced prototype Terminator – a T-1000 – back in time to the year 1997 in order to kill 12-year-old John Connor (Edward Furlong).  The T-1000 (Robert Patrick) is made of a “mimetic poly-alloy,” a liquid metal that allows the Terminator to shape-shift.  To protect his younger self, the 2029 John Connor reprograms a model 101 Terminator and sends it back to 1997 to protect young John.  The 101 looks just like the T-800 that traveled from the future to kill John's mother, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), back in the year 1984.

Can Sarah, John, and the model 101 Terminator come together to stop the T-1000, especially after they become fugitives from the law?  Or is this new Terminator simply to advanced and wily to be stopped?

As I write this review, it is Tuesday, September 3, 2024.  In Terminator mythopoeia (not “mythology” and not “lore”), August 29th is “Judgment Day”  and fans of the franchise make note of it.  This year, “Judgment Day” carries a little more relevance because of the arrival of the new Netflix animated series, “Terminator Zero.”  I am planning on watching Episode 1 soon, but I felt that I needed to watch T2 again.  It is the only Terminator film that I have not previously reviewed, and I had not watched it in its entirety in about thirty years, if my memory serves me well.

The Terminator, T2, and the 2003 film, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, form a trilogy of sorts.  In many ways, each film seems like its own thing, with the second and third films officially being sequels.  However, these sequels feel like a hybrid of sequel, remake, and re-imagining.  They contradict the original in some ways and both try to grapple with or correct the franchise's time-traveling shenanigans.

T2 is now acknowledged as being among the greatest science fiction, action, and sequel films in movie history.  It is certainly a landmark film in terms of special visual effects and in the use of CGI (computer-generated imagery).  The transformation and metamorphosis of actor Robert Patrick into the liquid metal, shape-shifting Terminator still wows, impresses, scares, and stuns me over thirty-three years after originally seeing the film.  Some of T2's action scenes and sequences, especially the 18-wheeler tractor unit plunge off the overpass and the motorcycle crash into the helicopter still stop my breath.  The film's director, James Cameron, made one of the most awesome (if not the most awesome) action films of the 1980s in The Terminator with what amounts to a micro-budget for an action and science fiction movie.  With a one-hundred million dollars at his disposal of T2, Cameron and his crew and creative cohorts unleashed the most spectacular action scenes that had been seen in American film to that point.

On the other hand, back when I first saw T2 in 1991, I found it to be bloated.  It is easily twenty minutes too long.  As a character drama trio, Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, and Edward Furlong as John Connor seem more melodramatic than genuinely dramatic.  Much of the family unit feels contrived.  Schwarzenegger and Furlong have moments that seem poignant, but there are other moments that are made weaker but Furlong's acting inexperience.  That Hamilton had reshaped the soft body she had in the original film into a sinewy, muscular, warrior woman for T2 was and still is impressive.  Her performance in this film, however, is loud, even when it should be quieter and more subtle.

I once said that T2 was a two-and-half out of four stars film.  I don't know if it is nostalgia, but I like the film more now.  Some of it is still landmark and superb, and much of it is very well executed.  Still, I think Terminator 2: Judgment Day needed to be tamed, both in terms of it runtime and in the scope of the story.  In 1991, it was a hugely discussed and anticipated film.  Terminator 2: Judgment Day holds a special place in the filmography of its director, James Cameron.  If it were a better film, it would be at the top, where Avatar is now.

6 of 10

B

★★★ out of 4 stars

Thursday, September 5, 2024

NOTES:

1992 Academy Awards, USA:  4 wins: “Best Sound” (Tom Johnson,Gary Rydstrom, Gary Summers, and Lee Orloff), “Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing” (Gary Rydstrom and Gloria S. Borders), “Best Effects, Visual Effects” (Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Gene Warren Jr., and Robert Skotak), and “Best Makeup” (Stan Winston and Jeff Dawn); 2 nominations: “Best Cinematography” (Adam Greenberg) and “Best Film Editing” (Conrad Buff IV, Mark Goldblatt, and Richard A. Harris)

1992 BAFTA Awards;  2 wins: “Best Sound” (Lee Orloff, Tom Johnson. Gary Rydstrom, and Gary Summers) and “Best Special Visual Effects” (Stan Winston, Dennis Muren, Gene Warren Jr., and Robert Skotak); 1 nomination: “Best Production Design” (Joseph C. Nemec III)

2023 National Film Preservation Board, USA:  “National Film Registry”

The text is copyright © 2024 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site or blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

----------------------

----------------------