Review: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Rating

Director

James Cameron

Screenplay

James Cameron, William Wisher

Length

2h 17m

Starring

Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Rober Patrick, Earl Boen, Joe Morton, S. Epatha Merkerson, Castulo Guerra, Danny Cooksey, Jenette Goldstein, Xander Berkeley

MPAA Rating

Review

Seven years and three movies later, James Cameron returned to the franchise that established him as a major name in the action and science fiction genres. Terminator 2: Judgment Day balloons in budget and length becoming a frequently exciting, but equally lumbering feature of excess.

Young John Connor (Edward Furlong) has been placed in foster care after his mother’s (Linda Hamilton) incarceration in a mental institution after claiming that someone visited her from the future. As in the first film, two denizens of the future return to the past, this time both are cyborgs. Arnold Schwarzenegger is back, this time delivering lines that would enter the pantheon of most recognizable phrases. Rather than the enemy, he’s now been re-programmed by future John to obey and protect his younger self. Meanwhile, a more advanced model, T-1000 (Robert Patrick), has also arrived intent on killing John before he can reach maturity.

The economical, concise director of The Terminator and Aliens began the trajectory that would lead him to the bountiful visual effects extravaganzas that would make him wealthy beyond imagining and commanding of grudging respect from those who feel his screenwriting capabilities, which he frequently employs, leave a lot to be desired. This film, more than The Abyss two years earlier, cemented his role as a foremost director in the effects milieu, commanding huge budgets and delivering spectacular effects. Terminator 2 certainly delivers the visual splendor, though the fish-out-of-water narrative is cumbersome, and Furlong is more annoying than clever.

Sarah Connors ended the prior film a little stronger because of her altercation with The Terminator, having started off as little more than a bored single woman afraid for her life. Here, she’s modified and trained until she’s a hard-edged, no-nonsense force willing to do anything to protect her son and the people of earth from the nuclear holocaust that is impending. Cameron has always excelled in breaking boundaries for female characters. He attempts to maintain their femininity while standing them on equal footing as the men that surround them. Were Schwarzenegger not playing a cyborg, she might give him a run for his money.

Were the film reliant solely on the effects to sell it’s premise, it would still have worked, which is why the weaker screenplay, similar in some ways to the prior film, is a disappointment. For what the film presents, however, it’s a solid follow up to its predecessor even if it doesn’t quite measure up in terms of the simple and evocative special effects used previously.