James Cameron directs a sequel to its successful 1984 predecessor. Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) has become a mother but ends up in a mental institute while her son ends up with foster parents. Skynet sends another terminator to finish the job, only this time it is T-1000 (Robert Patrick), a liquid metal cyborg capable of shape-shifting and forming solid metal weapons. The original terminator, T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger), has been reprogrammed to serve and protect John Connor (Edward Furlong), who is now a teenager.
If you ever love to see a way between the machines, this movie recaps the apocalypse illustrated in the first movie but adds enhanced visual effects to heighten the dark mood. All that was good is now toast; machines have overrun the world and T-800's are evermore present in the battlefields. Lasers are shot around and the electric sound effects accompany the flashing lights pulsating in the battle zones.
Robert Patrick plays a killer on the loose. Just like his predecessor from the previous film, he stalks and strikes without mercy--typical of a machine. He never speaks much and shape-shifts into characters played by other actors. So his role is just as easy as it was for Arnold. However, Arnold Schwarzenegger does more talking than before and this has to be difficult for an actor posing as a machine full of technological vocabulary. The deal with this is how robotic he has to execute his role, but just as before robotic is the nature of a cyborg.
Edward Furlong plays the role of a preteen with loose morals and a bad boy attitude. He feels neglected and wanting. Why not? His mother's a psycho and his father is non-existent. Sarah could have told him, but she acknowledged that this could alter history after what happened previously. I can vouch that a boy without a father is destined to fall short of his reason for existence. T-800 becomes John's protector, and more of a paternal figure. A kid has so much for him that despite the initial misunderstanding with a machine, he just feels compelled to bond with a man who is not really human, but fills in the void of an absent father. It is sad for a boy to grow up without a role model.
The biggest merit of this movie is the breakthrough in C.G.I. The T-1000 alternate form is given the treatment that marks the superior quality of the effect even in the year and decade when computers were still basic. This movie was released in the year 1991, yet the computer effects were so tremendous that nobody could ever mistake it as rudimentary. The shape-shifting effects are visually aesthetic and attention-grabbing to keep the audience awake and alert.
So if have this right, John Connor is 10 years old; Sarah is 29; the movie takes place in 1995, which is more than ten years after the events (in 1984). Yet John is still allowed to ride a motorcycle without attracting the police. And on that subject, the foster parents don't even do the job of taking hold of his vehicle until legal age. Wow. The laws must have been either lax or just non-existent, even though he is still too young to drive! I have always imagined him to be 13 years old, so there is obviously some kind of typo in this screen. If that's the case, then this movie is set in 1997, not 1995.
What a twist. Sarah has been too near Kyle Reece and now has turned ballistic like him. Reece went mad over the Terminator; this time Sarah goes mad over the supposedly emerging "Judgment Day". At least her own tirade is not as painful as Kyle's.
There are tons of Pepsi product placement in this film: neon lights, cans and vending machines alone. James Cameron must be a fan of the Pepsi merchandise.
You remember the last film where a suspenseful build-up was accompanied by slow motion and a change in the ominous music? They do it again for the scene where two machines are after the same target, giving the audience the impression that (if not for Sarah's prologue) both machines were after the same person, only for it to be clearly revealed who is the enemy and who is an ally.
Many viewers would question the concept of time travel. In the last movie, both Reece and T-800 were transported back in time without clothes or weapons because the field generated requires living human tissue but cannot sustain non-living or dead material. Since the terminator is surrounded in protoplasmic tissue which mimics human tissue, it can get through. However in this installment, T-800 is still surrounded in living tissue but the T-1000 is notably not. Yet somehow he can still generate the field to travel back in time like the T-800. It can be said that Skynet enhanced its technology to sustain both living and non-living matter, so why they are both unclothed is still elusive to the human comprehension.
The biggest headache is the time paradox: Kyle Reece is from the future; he impregnates Sarah who later delivers John Connor. If John sent Kyle to protect Sarah, how is it that Kyle hasn't already rewritten history? It is difficult to explain this without inducing mental stress, considering that the war had erupted prior to this time travel. I mean, John's dad was around before Reese, so it is questionable as to how the fabrics of time and space hasn't already been tampered with.
More car chases, explosions and police intervention accompany the trio of fighters. The T-1000 kills his leverages in order to accomplish its goal. The fight between machines in the present rages on for the fate of the future, and the intention of change the future suffices. A boy and his mother struggle to fight their worst fears: Sarah's is the fear of killing someone in order to alter history; John's is the fear of living without a paternal figure. And the saddest part is the ending when John's fear inevitably unfolds. It is a tragic ending that remains one of the most memorable scene to Cameron's masterpiece.
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