Over a decade has past in movie time since Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) avoided assassination from the cybernetic T-1000, a Terminator sent from the future programmed to kill her, and in doing so, prevent her from giving birth to the saviour of mankind; John Connor. Since then, John (Edward Furlong in his film debut) has grown up in separation from his mother, who has been locked away after being deemed insane for his beliefs about the coming robopocalyse. Turns out John and the rest are in for one huge "I told you so lesson" when not just one, but two Terminators show up to throw their lives back into panic mode. ; one with the mission to protect John and the other ordered to kill him.
Reading this synopsis you might be assuming that this is just rehashing the same plot thread as the predecessor, but this is where James Cameron widens the scale of the story and much more is invested. It's the equivalent of what the movie Aliens (another Cameron sequel) did for Ridley Scott's Alien in terms of developing a larger movie. Here, bigger things are at stake, more lives are put in jeopardy and the tension is nothing short of edge-of-your-seat variety.
Character development especially goes into interesting turns for this film. Somehow they're able to give the T-1000 a character arc, even though he's specifically written to be anything but human underneath. Arnold's not just playing a literal killing machine anymore.
Sarah Connor has also seasoned over the years (quite bitterly in this case) and replaced her frightened scream queen persona from the last movie with the stone-cold pro-active soldier attitude her late beau Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) had in the previous film.
And John, since of course the events of the story essentially revolve around him (though Arnold enthusiasts would say otherwise) finally has a character since the last time we saw him, he was nothing more than a baby bump. He's a snarky, fun-loving hacker that Furlong simply nails in his performance for such a young age. To this day, I still don't know why his career hasn't taken off in a better direction.
This is a movie that best represents the themes of man vs machine and the overall message of "fighting against the future and the future fighting back." Though the marketing already kind of spoils the twist before it happens, I won't be the one to say who the villain truly is in this picture. Just know that not everything is what it seems in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
Once again, the production quality of the movie is phenomenal under the vision of Cameron, with tightly-knit editing and strong cinematography that is something worth the Hollywood history books. Terminator 2: Judgement Day remains the most viewed installment of the franchise and personally my favourite chapter in the series. I highly recommend the Extreme Edition DVD for home viewing, as it contains a lot of new footage and documentation of Cameron's direction over the movie.
So it can only go downhill from here...
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