T2: Judgement Day

Yesterday I went to see the new Terminator movie.  It was pretty good but in no way did it even come close to matching the sheer awesome-itude of the 1991 classic Terminator 2: Judgement Day.  That being said, I thought it would be appropriate to look back at one of the movies that warped my fragile little mind as a child.

t2

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cinematic work is one of life’s greatest guilty pleasures.  His movies are bloody, formulaic, and probably cause irreparable psychological damage with repeated viewing, but that’s why they’re fun.  One of the high points in Arnold’s oeuvre is a little gem called Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Let’s take a look at what makes this movie so freaking awesome.

Arnold freaking Schwarzenegger, the man was in his PRIME in 1991.   Commando, Predator, The Running Man, and Total Recall had cemented Arnold’s place on top of the action star pile.  Stallone?  Van Damme?  Segal?  Sure they were cool and all, but none of them could hold a candle to Arnold.  And this movie, this role?  Perfect for the man.  All he had to do was lumber around, looking intimidating and badass, shoot stuff and make things explode.  As much as I love his movies, I will be the first to admit that Arnold has a severely limited range as an actor.  Playing a gun toting robot is the best possible use of his unique acting “talent.”  It doesn’t matter what he’s doing, holding up a biker bar, shooting up the service areas of a shopping mall, chasing a semi tractor through the aqueducts of Los Angeles, getting crushed between gigantic gears in a steel mill, through all of it he has the same emotionless menacing scowl on his face.  Add to this the completely droll delivery of hackneyed one liners, continuously making his own doors, and a ridiculous thumbs up good-bye salute and you have pure magic.

You can’t talk about T2 without mentioning T-1000, the liquid metal mimetic poly alloy uber terminator (from the future).  Using CGI technology created for the water creature in The Abyss, James Cameron upped the ante by creating one of the most menacing film villains of all time.  You can shoot him, explode him, freeze him, IT DOESN’T MATTER!  It keeps on coming after you.  You get in his way? BAM! You turn around, see an evil reflection of yourself and before you have time to react you have a shiny liquid metal spike shoved through your eye.  Finally if you do manage to get the best of him and shove the bastard into a molten pit of liquid steel, you’re treated to a horrifically surreal psychedelic goo nightmare show as it goes through it’s death throws.  How many children have had nightmares starring that unstoppable shape changing bastard?  How much childhood trauma did he cause?  I can’t even begin to speculate.  None the less, T-1000?  Bad.  Freaking.  Ass.

Let’s also remember that Guns and Roses contributed to the sound track.  Not the new “Chinese Democracy” G’n'R, the good one with Izzy and Slash and Duff and Matt that put out “Use Your Illusion.”  ”You Could Be Mine” is a double epic cock-rock anthem so massive that McG felt the need to reprise it’s use in Terminator: Salvation.  The scene where young John Connor peels out of his foster parent’s garage with Slash and Axl blaring from the boom box strapped to the handle bars of his dirt bike is one of the most quintessentially perfect moments in cinematic history.

Other feats of awesomeness that I feel I should mention don’t feel like spending an entire paragraph on include the following:

So does this film have any real redeeming value?  Is it culturally significant in any way?  It doesn’t really matter and I don’t really care.  It’s a helluva ride and a crap ton of fun.

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