Modern classic remembered: Terminator 2 – Judgment Day

At the end of this summer’s film season, when final box office earnings are totted up, Transformers 3 – Dark Side of the Moon will no doubt feature prominently.

At the time of writing, film earnings tracking website Box Office Mojo reports that the film has earned $884 million worldwide. Not bad for a film that earned pretty much scathing reviews across the board – with hindsight, even my two-star review seems generous.

A friend of mine recently defended the film, citing its exceptional visual effects and waxing lyrical about the intricacy with which the various vehicles transformed into the protagonist giant robots, all presented in breathtaking 3D. Never mind the total lack of character development or coherent plot and the cacophony that accompanied the film, I thought.

Be that as it may, I suspect a large majority of the $884 million worth of cinemagoers agreed with him. Yet I cling to the belief that special effects alone do not a good film make.

Granted, an effects-laden film is bound to bring in more moolah, and studios are constantly outdoing each other, pushing the technological envelope further and further, film by film. And no-one pushes that envelope further than James Cameron, arguably the father of modern special effects.

The recent successful 3D fad can be attributed to him and the gargantuan success of Avatar (2009). He revolutionised special effects with his equally titanic Titanic (1997).

But Cameron’s calling card was most certainly Terminator 2 – Judgment Day released in July 1991, a landmark film not only because of Cameron’s use of breakthrough computer-generated imagery, but also because the film boasts a rare quality: it combines a good story and relatable human – and robot – characters with the non-stop breathtaking action.

Terminator 2 – Judgment Day – or T2 for short – was the sequel to Cameron’s The Terminator, released in 1984. This was made on a relatively paltry budget of $6.4 million but took in $78 million.

Cameron always thought a sequel was inevitable, and that he, of course, would write and direct it, but legal wrangles involving Carolco (the original’s producing company) and Orion (the distributors) meant quite a few years lapsed before he could get cracking.

When finally he got the go-ahead Cameron was given just 13 months to write and make the film. That wasn’t the only problem; after all, he had seven years to think about the sequel’s storyline... it’s just that the technology to realise his ideas had not yet been invented.

Not one to be put off, Cameron engaged a number of Oscar-winning special effects companies to work on the project. In a year, they came up with the plethora of effects that make up the backbone of the film – the futuristic war scenes, the amazing car stunts, the harrowing nuclear holocaust... and, of course, the astonishing computer-generated effects that created the liquid metal, shape-changing, seemingly indestructible T-1,000, the advanced version of the Terminator (played in human form by Robert Patrick).

Yet despite the technology – for which the film is very deservedly celebrated – it’s the heart and soul of the film that many remember. T2 picks up 10 years after the events of The Terminator.

Sarah Connor (an intense Linda Hamilton) is in a mental institution. Her 10-year-old son John (Edward Furlong) is in foster care, unsure of whether his mother is a nutcase or not.

Having failed the first time, the robots send back another Terminator, the T-1,000 – but the rebels, led by the adult John, send another Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to protect them. In his interactions with Sarah and John, the ‘good’ Terminator, learns a few lessons about love, respect and humanity.

It may sound a bit schmaltzy, but Cameron keeps the emotions real and relatable, and in his three main protagonists, he has created some iconic characters.

Hamilton’s Sarah is a bundle of nervous energy, motivated not only by her fierce maternal instinct to protect her son, but to do her utmost to change the future and prevent the destruction of mankind.

Furlong, in an excellent debut performance (before his career, like many child actors, went seriously off the rails) is a precocious and intelligent child projecting the attributes that would eventually make him a leader, while Schwarzenegger gives one of his best performances, ironically as a machine that, as described by Sarah in the film’s coda, “learns the value of human life”.

The film opened to near universal acclaim and raked in $520 million at the box office. It spawned a further two sequels and a TV series, all of which were well-received but none reached the heights of the second instalment, which continues to feature as one of the best sci-fi films of all time.