Terminator 2: Judgment Day

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Movie Details

• Genre: Action/Adventure, SciFi/Fantasy, Suspense/Thriller
• Release Date: 1991-07-03 Nationwide
• Running Time: 135 min.
• Director: James Cameron
• Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong, Earl Boen
• Producer: James Cameron
• Writer: James Cameron, William Wisher
• Distributor: TriStar Pictures
• Official Site: Terminator 2: Judgment Day Official Site

James Cameron's $100-million sequel to his B-movie original fulfills its goal of being darker, more viscerally intense, and more flat-out compelling than the majority of lesser genre films whose monumental successes throughout the previous decade enabled a movie of such vulgar size to become a sound economic investment. With the kind of paradoxical, science-fiction logic that's best left unquestioned, "T2" (as it was known in the summer of 1991) asserts that post-apocalyptic machines have sent a cyborg "terminator" (Robert Patrick) back to the 1990s to eliminate John Connor (Edward Furlong), a suburban teen-rebel fated to lead the human resistance as an adult. In turn, the John of the future has sent a less-advanced-model terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) back to protect him and his warrior mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton), who periodically narrates the film with redundant information and somber social commentary. "We were entering uncharted territory," Sarah flatly intones just before the first of several nerve-shattering confrontations, "making up history as we went along." That's Cameron's mission, too, at least in the sense that "T2" is a blockbuster that bothers to examine the morality of macho violence onscreen and off. Obviously, this "pacifist" maelstrom has its cake and eats it, too: Indeed, in the protracted final battle, the movie itself turns into a machine. But, intentionally or not, Cameron has one final paradox working for him. While "T2" maintains its basic faith in the power of "the human spirit" to triumph over its creations, the sheer magnitude and popularity of this exhilarating, frightening prophecy of the (cinematic) future suggests that it might already be too late. (Rob Nelson)