Terminator 2: Judgment Day

An action blast with revolutionary visual effects never seen before. Five stars for the T-1000 and its metamorphosis, five stars for the vision of nuclear war, three stars for the script, as well as for some scenes that were too militant for my taste (Arnie vs. a column of police cars). But to overlook the fact that this film meant so much to the development of filmmaking technology and visual effects would be a great sin. Therefore, the only and correct rating is for five, it’s just awesome! (05/11/2003)

This is total overkill in several filmmaking disciplines that hasn't been knocked into the dust by time or silicon by better-refined followers. It's all been said about it already, but the unwritten Cameronian dictum that action scenes must serve the story and not the other way around ages like a fine wine with every unnecessary megabyte of data generated, and it's a wonder that there haven't been many action blockbusters that work on a similar principle in the twenty-six years since. Personally, I'll always prefer the uneven trench warfare of planetoid LV-426, but I still very much understand why this fully holds up in the genre battle even after blowing away all the nostalgic overlay in this millennium. This will survive judgment day because it's... (see the beginning of my comment). (10/01/2017)

James Cameron was not, is not, and never will be a directorial wimp, as the vast majority of entries in his filmography are icons of their genre, and Terminator 2 is certainly no exception. I'm not a big fan of action movies, and in fact I don't even seek them out, but this classic changed my opinion of this type of film from a certain angle. All the action sequences and chases are absolutely perfect and authentic, which is not that common for that time. And when it comes to the special effects, I just stared in disbelief, thinking "Is this really from 1991?!" In the first one, every visual effect was accompanied by a lot of choppy movements, but here everything goes like clockwork. Schwarzenegger was just born as a Terminator and this role suits him best of all his other characters. In short, a timeless sci-fi film that won't get old with time and I will definitely find time to watch it again in the future. (07/19/2011)

The best action movie ever made. It’s got exactly the right amount of everything. Action and emotions are marvelously worked into a fantastic story which paints a chilling picture of the future. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who this time is on the other side of the barricades than in part one, gives the best performance of his acting career. The special effects are perfect (decent even for today’s standards) and maybe that’s why the runny Robert Patrick is even more terrifying than his predecessor. Terminator 2 is one of the movies that changed the history of cinema. It’s embedded deep in everybody’s memory and will remain there for many years to come. My personal Top 20. (11/20/2006)

The second installment of The Terminator was the pinnacle of Cameron's career at the time, mainly because he managed to completely refine the script into the perfect crowd-pleaser. In his previous three films (Piranha II doesn't count), you can feel that he had to force a lot of things and therefore they felt more auteur, idiosyncratic, and innovative. In Judgement Day he already knew exactly what to add, what to trim, what to emphasize, what to cut. It's technically competent, but what can we say, it lacks heart. Suddenly we've got comic figures, a badass villain, would-be on-the-spot musings about humanity, and an jacked-up Linda Hamilton whose character is pretty much written as a militant feminist for no other reason than Cameron had been getting big props thus far for how he'd been working with female protagonists and their abilities to make it in a man's world. After all, he himself said in the 80s that he himself doesn't understand how the film industry can ignore the 50% of moviegoers who are still 80% deciding which film to see. (11/28/2017)