Why TERMINATOR 2 is still better than today’s blockbusters
Nov 27
Terminator 2 is an Ideas film. I’m not just talking about ideas, but Ideas—the kind of imaginative scenarios you are ashamed you didn’t think of first. T2 is bristling with an inordinate amount of Ideas. I bet if you added up all the Ideas in T2 (if you wanted to get quantitative about it), they would greatly exceed the number of original Ideas in this year’s Transformers 2, Star Trek, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Terminator: Salvation combined. And all these ideas are packed into a film nearly 20 years old. You’d be forgiven for thinking the film sinks under the weight of all these Ideas, but you’d be wrong nevertheless.
How many times before or since T2 have you seen a single mother in such a physically and mentally dominating role? You’ve probably seen the archetypal “I’ve seen the future/truth but nobody will believe me!” storyline to the point of cliché, but it’s not often that you see a main character locked up in a mental institution and abused to the point of admitting defeat and rescinding her outrageous account of the future. But that’s exactly what happens to Sarah Connor in T2.
How many times before or since T2 have you seen a 10-year-old boy presented in a complex, layered manner? John Connor begins the film as a delinquent little punk: disrespectful of his foster parents; cool to the extreme in a charmingly 90s fashion; and aching for input from his real parents. The fact that his father is simultaneously dead and not yet born, and the fact that his mother is locked up in a mental institution, are a source of great shame for young John Connor, and he takes it out on the world by stealing money and blowing it on arcade games and other ‘rad’ stuff. But when the Terminators are sent back in time to meddle with his world, John is forced to accept his mother’s bogus predictions about doomsday and start shaping himself into the role of the war hero he is supposed one day to become.
How many times before or since T2 have you felt the weight of the future pressing palpably on the lead characters’ minds? Sarah’s main prerogative in life is to avert the 3-years-hence doomsday described to her by a traveller from the future, a traveller who offered no proof but the accuracy and confidence of his predictions. She will go to any lengths to avoid the nuclear holocaust partly to save the three billion lives foretold to be lost, but mainly to save her son from the life of war, terror and desolation the traveller guaranteed.
How many times before or since T2 have you seen Arnie act in an approaching-believable manner? Okay, okay, the first Terminator wasn’t bad by Arnie standards, and True Lies was pretty good considering he wasn’t playing a heartless, soulless killing machine incapable of emotion or expression, but in T2 his cold delivery and rigid physicality work with the film and not against it. You totally believe that he is a machine designed for the slaughter of humans, but thanks in part to the way John projects his male role-model expectations onto the Terminator, you are okay with it, especially after the scene where John commands it not to kill any humans.
How many times before or since T2 have you watched a principle character hunt down an innocent man and come disturbingly close to murdering him in cold blood? Sure, the guy’s responsible for developing the technology that leads to the near extinction of the human race, but is the future that rock-solid that by nipping the Skynet threat in the bud you can guarantee the safety of billions of people? This is the kind of question we are forced to confront as Sarah goes after and nearly takes the life of Mason Dyson, and it leaves the viewer forced to make a choice: is Sarah right, should Dyson be killed, or is there another way to postpone or entirely subvert the impending apocalypse?
The way this scene—in which Sarah assaults Dyson’s house from a distance before moving in for the kill—is structured leaves doubt in the viewer’s mind as to the outcome of the scene. Sarah is utterly convinced that this is the only way, and from her behaviour and portrayal we absolutely believe that she is capable of pulling the trigger. So the majority of the scene plays out in the viewer’s head as he or she thinks through the options, chooses which way he or she wants the scene to play out, and then watches in tense anticipation of the climax of the scene.
James Cameron managed a nigh-impossible feat in wrangling the script into a comprehensible film. The logic is as consistent as the characters’ behaviour and motivations, and only breaks down to accommodate the requirements of drama (Arnie’s T-101 anti-self-terminating programming apparently doesn’t extend to stepping onto a chain suspended above molten metal and then staying stock-still as said molten metal rises around him). We never lose track of what’s at stake, who believes what, and why characters are doing what they are doing.
Another neat aspect of the film is the way John’s childlike sense of morality is never questioned (apart from Arnie’s iconic “Why?” scene). John’s generic ‘all life is sacred’ morality is a welcome relief and a narrative requirement in an otherwise bleak film where we grumble or attempt to reconcile Sarah’s behaviour, and a strong contrast with the enemy T-1000’s complete disregard for human (and canine) life.
These are just some of the Ideas that Terminator 2 blasts through on its way from point A to point C via point B-from-the-future. How do children behave without strong parent role models? What makes a good female role model? What makes a good male role model? Is destiny set in stone or are we constantly affecting the future flow of time? Is it morally acceptable to punish someone for a crime they almost certainly will commit, but haven’t yet? And this is just the beginning; we haven’t even touched on the ethical repercussions of the creation of artificial intelligence, nor the moral implications of time travel.
I think that Ideas are important in film in particular, and art in general. They can elevate an otherwise average experience into an intellectually stimulating, emotionally satisfying exploration of the human condition. Transformers 2 not only glosses over but wantonly ignores the nature of artificial intelligence, and indeed extraterrestrial intelligence, in favour of bigger explosions and a louder soundtrack. But as T2 amply demonstrates, you can fuse Ideas with thrilling action scenes and not only retain entertainment value, but actually add to it. The stakes for failure in T2 is the loss of the human race and a life of horrors for young John Connor, but the stakes for failure in Transformers 2 is—what—no more Transformers films? Huh.
Terminator 2’s critical, financial and cultural success only confirms for me that the audience doesn’t ever have to be treated like they are stupid. Give us something to reach for, something to think about, and we’ll connect and repay you a thousand times over. But please stop bashing the same horrible clichés and empty characters and noisome explosions into our skulls.
89/100
OPINIONS COUNT