Terminator 2: Judgment Day
- Director's Cut
(1991)
(SPOILERS) Is it really an “inviolable rule” that T2 is superior to the original? I well
remember its feting when it was first released, as I was one of those blown
away by it. And there’s no doubt that individual elements remain first rate.
But aside from being bigger and more polished, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is inferior in almost every respect.
Arnie
has been turned into a good guy, which struck me then and still does as a
cop-out. Worse, he effectively becomes John Connor’s pet dog (not so much the
father figure). Revisiting the movie, though, what is most disappointing, in
amongst the lumpy plotting (the Dyson storyline is never as compelling as it
should be), is how slackly the picture frequently plays. Even the action
sequences, as well composed as they are, lack the edge-of-the-seat charge of
the first movie. With $100m to spend, Cameron was placed to indulge spectacle
and effects at the ultimate expense of what made the first picture a classic: a
portentous atmosphere and unrelenting tension.
It might have been wise to ditch The Terminator’s unwieldy predestination paradox, but doing so
creates problems all of its own (do you then argue for parallel timelines to explain why resistance John Connor doesn’t
remember growing up with a best buddy T-800 for a spell, or – come Rise of the Machines – how judgement day
was delayed? If not, you have the old Back
to the Future issue and it’s a fudge). And with the whole Dyson subplot,
Cameron is flirting with the same predestination paradox as previously
(unsurprisingly, as it is ported over from a ditched scene from the first
film).
T2’s mantra is “There’s no fate but what we make for
ourselves”, the future’s not set, and Cameron proceeds to use a
sledgehammer to crack a nut in getting his point across; the Director’s Cut
even more so. Yet the spectacular apocalypse of Sarah Connor’s nightmares is
curiously antiseptic, and her overly didactic and leaden narration grows
tiresome quite quickly. Even the upside of this – her essential unreliability
as a guide, since she’s a complete psycho - isn’t sufficient to dispel the
sense that we are being led by the nose for two and a half hours. Cameron at
his preachiest is nothing if not irksomely patronising (see also Avatar). It’s nice to see Michael Biehn
in the extended version dream, but Reese’s presence very much labours the way
Cameron continually makes this an extended shout out to the original in ways
both cute and clumsily earnest (“On your
feet soldier!”)
The picture keeps with the fragile linearity of protagonists
pursuing antagonists through time as Arnie is thrown into the past (just?)
after the T-1000 is sent. It’s a conceit that is the backbone of the series,
and there’s no real way to avoid it. How a T-1000 without any fleshy bits can
go back in time is wisely unaddressed (a shame Dr Silverman didn’t have the
opportunity to interrogate that point), while elsewhere the chronology is left
similarly unscrutinised (it’s 1995 and John is 10, but there’s no mistaking
Edward Furlong for being several years older than that).
In principal, re-characterising Sarah Connor as a crazed
extremist is quite bold. Having John estranged, and her locked up, is very much
a punch in the head to the melancholy, foreboding but hopeful, conclusion to
the first film. But Cameron does what he does with all his female characters
(see also Joss Whedon) and turns her into a kick-ass warrior. There’s always
been something slightly embarrassing about his macho feminism. Even as Sarah
rails against Dyson (Joe Morton) for not knowing what it is like to be really
creative (give birth), Dyson’s wife sits beside her husband trembling.
The counterbalance is that John is constantly aware his mum
has gone over the edge, but the push-pull is that Cameron the gun fetishist
military commander is a little too on board with her fractured perception (when
Sarah fetes the T-800/Uncle Bob as the perfect father, she’s both fruit loop
and has a point, but Cameron is so averse to subtlety or subtext – he wont beat
him etc., at least until the next movie – by the end of the picture Arnie
really has assumed the position of martyred parent).
Likewise, the guards at the hospital aren’t just mean;
they’re physically and sexually abusive. All the better to really give Sarah
justification for beating the shit out of them. On the other hand, the first
part of the scene where she attacks Dyson, up until she stops herself from
pulling the trigger, is powerful stuff, more so because it’s her own dormant
conscience that wins out.
John Connor has been played by how many actors now? Edward Furlong
gets a fair bit of stick for his performance these days, but I think he’s
probably about as good as someone of his tender years could have been. It isn’t
his fault Cameron foists John with material perversely designed to get the
audience’s backs up (at least any who have seen Terminator and resent the cyborg being turned into a performing
seal).
Like Sarah turning psycho, Cameron’s onto something with the saviour of
the world being a juvenile delinquent. Unfortunately he can’t help himself from
going too far. John’s special tech skillz don’t just mean he can rob ATMs; he
can also bypass security at Cyberdyne. He sports a Public Enemy t-shirt for the
same lazy teenage rebellion reason GNR is on the soundtrack (although the
latter is mainly there as a tie-in hit).
Yet Furlong’s interaction with Hamilton is generally pretty
sharp; Cameron’s asking a lot of his actor, and John’s attempts to mollify his
mad mum are generally well modulated. It’s the interaction with Uncle Bob that
really kills sympathy with the character, as it neuters the series’ prime
asset.
This isn’t too bad at first; getting the T-800 to stand on
one leg and not kill people means he merely maims them, which is still pretty
violent. I mean, this comes after Cameron has announced his formerly
unstoppable horror icon picking up his duds with the parodic use of Bad to the Bone on the soundtrack. If
you’re going this route (and I maintain it was a bad idea for a number of
reasons), if you really have to, then
at least it delivers a few genuine yuks. One of my favourites comes when a
guard wallops Arnie and his shades are dislodged; he gives her a look through
his askew sunglasses.
Once John announces Arnie as his only friend, though, things
start to become entirely unpalatable. Cameron is wretched at the touchy-feely
stuff, inducing queasiness as a result. It takes actors with the chops of Ed Harris
and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio to rise above such limitations, and Arnie and
Edward don’t have those chops.
So Arnie’s T-800 is able to learn, he learns to smile, he
learns to make jokes (“I need a vacation”),
and deliver catchphrases (“Hasta la
vista, baby”). He learns to express concern (“John, you gotta go now”). He even questions John on what is this
human thing of crying (“What is wrong
with your eyes?”).
Most appalling of all is his death scene, where the
Austrian Oak sounds like he’s telling a five-year-old that grandma has just
died (“I’m sorry. I have to go away”).
And see, he understands people now too; “I
know now why you cry”. It’s gag-worthy stuff, but Cameron clearly thinks this
is a beautiful moving moment (the thumbs up!) It’s the same downward spiral of
inept melodrama that would eventually drag us to Titanic.
Arnie looks very cool, of course; this is perhaps his most
iconic. It’s certainly his peak in terms of star power and as a box office
draw. The cynic says this is why he was made a hero, but Cameron has it that he
conceived a good T-800 as twist on expectations.
The real problem with the change is one of threat. T2 is a juggernaut, but it’s not an
unstoppable juggernaut. The real genius of the first movie is that nowhere is
safe. This murderous machine is relentless, just around any corner, and even a
crowded place, even a police station, isn’t safe. Here, the human prey are
constantly insulated by their former aggressor. It becomes a battle of giants,
and the human fragility is lost. There’s never any real danger when Sarah has
become an Amazonian warrior and John is protected by Uncle Bob.
Adding to this is that Cameron has wholly succumbed to bloat
at this point. T2’s extended cut is
two and a half hours, and it feels it. Most of the additions are reasonable
ones, but where Aliens’ new scenes are
frontloaded, so once the picture starts going crazy it still goes crazy, or where The
Abyss’ ends the film with a whole other layer that adds nourishment to its
themes, T2’s stop-start structure
very nearly sinks it. The T-1000 is off-screen for a significant chunk of the
second half, neatly getting out of the way so Cameron can get on with the Dyson
plot. Sure, Arnie disappeared for a spell in the first film, but there was a
constant tension there that he might show up at any moment. Here, we all but
forget about the T-1000.
But not quite. He was, and is, T2’s greatest asset. Yes, some of the liquid effects are less than
stellar. Some, on the other hand, remain definitive; most notably the patterned
face appearing from a checked floor, and the (added) moments in the factory as
he begins to fuse with materials due to heat stroke. The climactic moment,
where Arnie shoots him in the chest, remains the miraculous CGI equivalent of
Rob Bottin’s weird and unholy prosthetic effects in The Thing (although how the T-1000 has the wherewithal to reform
once it has toppled into the furnace is beyond me).
A huge amount of the liquid metal monster’s effectiveness is
down to Robert Patrick. Lean and personable, with more than a touch of James
Dean about him, Patrick has the physique of the rebels rather than the robotic
muscle machines. An intentional off-footing (likewise, he’s chatty and polite
when he speaks to humans, the antithesis of Arnie in the first movie). Patrick
might be the original purveyor of Derek Zoolaner’s “Blue Steel”, in fact, as
his machine exudes cool in a way Arnie doesn’t. A way that results from Patrick
being a natural actor, and really knowing how to move (and not having a huge
bulk to get in the way).
From his first acknowledgement of Arnie (“I wouldn’t worry about him”), you’re willing
the T-1000 to show up and do more damage. That he doesn’t enough is not so much
a case of expertly using the villain the way Spielberg uses his shark, as a
sign of the longueurs Cameron sinks into. My favourite Patrick moment comes at
the climax, as Sarah runs out ammo; the reproving T-1000 raises a wagging
finger to indicate she’s out of time and luck (alas, then comes Arnie on a
slo-mo conveyor belt, a spectacularly misjudged piece of cheesy hero-making).
The action in T2
is curious. I mean, Cameron is a master of this stuff. It’s as big and
controlled in its mayhem as only a huge $94m/$102m budget can bring (getting on
for $200m in today’s terms, which is kind of par for the course for a
blockbuster now, but was stratospheric then), but it’s curiously unengaging. I
think this goes back to the point above about threat. In the original and Aliens there’s real human danger at
every turn. Here, the landscape is broader and the menace is buffered against.
So the riverbed chase is technically phenomenal, but it’s a
fait accompli. And the final vehicular pursuit lacks the imminent urgency of
the similarly placed scene in the first film. The (stir and repeat) factory
showdown also lacks any of the tension seen there. Arnie’s onside. This
sequence also goes on for so long, one becomes distracted (like, why does the T-1000 need Sarah to call to
John when he’s an excellent mimic; just kill her already).
On the other hand, the close-quarter scenes have something
of the original’s mettle. Cameron never quite revisits the woozy nightmare of
the first film’s entrances – this is too glossy for that – but the corridor arrival
of Arnie with a box of roses and a shotgun, dealing blasts at the T1000 as John
gets out of the way, or Sarah’s first horrified sight of him in the hospital
and the resulting pursuit by Patrick’s lithe killer, are the reason this
picture retains the cachet it does.
One can get blasé about the stunts (the
truck going off the bypass never once looks like it survived the fall, whereas
the bike helicopter jump is so perfect it almost makes one think it must have
been done through trickery), but there’s a lot here that is great. So one
inevitably focuses on the obvious Arnie stunt doubles or the ropey back
projection during a driving scene.
The supporting cast are notable in some similar and some different
ways to when I last gave it a look. When the picture came out I was probably
reaching the end of my veneration of Cameron; in retrospect, this triggered that
decline, but as an Aliens junkie I
was pleased to see Jeanette Goldstein cameo as John’s foster mum (and that's Xander Berkley, since best known for 24, as his lactose-intolerant foster dad).
Likewise, as
a reverer of Joe Dante, Dan and Don Stanton’s cheap but effective appearances
as security guard and T-1000 still tickles (Hamilton’s sister also appears,
both as T-1000 and dream double). Dean Norris is the SWAT Team leader, looking much the same as in Breaking Bad 20 years later under all
that clobber.
T2 was
phenomenally successful. It needed to be at that price tag (Carolco wouldn’t go
under until a few years later, but such aversion to frugality as this would be
their downfall; notably, every financer of a Terminator movie has eventually
gone under or dissolved, take note Skydance). It was the biggest movie of 1991
(half a billion worldwide, which would be near enough a billion in today’s
money). The number of R rated pictures that do that kind of business is
negligible (although it’s of note that, if it wasn’t for the language, there’s little
here that would warrant more than a 12/PG-13). This is the kind of target
anyone making a huge sequel to a adored cult classic wants to hit (although the
multiplier wasn’t quite so good; it couldn’t possibly be).
Cameron originally had the idea of including an old Sarah
Connor in a non-Skynetted future world, but settled on something less definite.
One could debate whether that was a good idea; it would at least have drawn a
line under any further sequels, if there were no Cyberdyne to bring about
judgement day (although someone would inevitably have found a way). As to
whether the director’s exit from the series was a bad thing. It may sound like
sacrilege, but not really.
The real question is whether T2 itself was warranted, and I’d argue not really. It gave Hamilton
a juicy role to get her teeth into (and she’s very good, but more showy and not
as nuanced as in the original), it further emblazoned Arnie as a mega-star bar none, and it confirmed Cameron as a box office titan after the expensive crash
of The Abyss, but as a continuation
of the story it feels surfeit to requirements. The real win-win here is the
discovery of Robert Patrick and the innovative and Oscar winning special
effects.
Oh, and it should probably be recognised that the blue wash of Adam Greenberg’s cinematography now stands as the harbinger of colour-corrected nightmare endemic in modern Hollywood, be it greens or blues or browns. Brad Fiedel’s score is as patchily discordant as ever (his pulling a few tricks like using the oppressive Terminator theme for Sarah and the triumphant anthem for Arnie are bruisingly blunt frankly, and therefore very Cameron).
For a series based on the wayward ramifications of time travel, there was lots of potential if only one had the balls or will to go there. Few have done it well (Back to the Future screwed the pooch in the final round, after going all out conceptually in the second). For better or worse, it’s undeniable that Cameron captured what he wanted here, however. The real problem with Rise of the Machines and Salvation was not being clear enough about what each instalment intended to achieve (the last ten minutes of Rise don’t justify the rest; Salvation just comes out as a mangled mess of second-guessing), and then settling on also-ran craftsmen who at least needed to be in the same ballpark as Cameron technically.
Even when he’s guilty
of bloat and narrative crudeness, as he always
is today, Cameron knows how to put a movie together; unfortunately Terminator 2: Judgment Day was where he
lost sight of the merits of succinctness. Since then he’s been forever
indulged, which necessarily the best thing for a towering ego, a king of the
world.
