Terminator 2: Judgment Day

In part one, Arnie promised that he’d be back. And he kept his word like a real gentleman. But the stumbling block here is the sticky epilog which I have never come to terms with (and have no plans of doing so in the future) and this also applies to the special effects which are unusually frequent for Cameron. P.S.: This is one of the few movies that HD is detrimental to. The picture is so crystal clear that in most stunt scenes you can easily recognize Arnold’s stand-in, who really doesn’t look much like him. (01/08/2010)

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)

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)

What can I say other than praise. Right from the first viewing, I encountered an extended version, and those 154 minutes are absolutely unique at first sight. I've never liked Arnold as much as here, and Cameron's explosive ego I accept without question. Exciting action, amazing tricks, one of the best villains I've ever seen, and the Terminator reloading a shotgun with one hand. (05/24/2006)