My reviews have lately been about where my developing, prepubescent mind was around the early to mid 90s. Music and movies were affecting me more than anything, and I was weirdly overcome by the Terminator theme. In terms of action themes, it's not typical, it's basically a dirge, since Terminator isn't really your typical action film.
I'm not that familiar with the original. I liked it. But I love Terminator 2. It's one of the ones I watched when I was young but held up. I fucking cried at the end, y'all did, so you can't blame me. Also, I had a three week crush on Edward Furlong, (who really does look like a little kid the more I watch this. He's supposed to be ten but I only believe it now, I didn't then) so that didn't help. Acting-wise, he could've been as bad as Anakin in Phantom Menace but he's not dreadful.
I was easily moved by good movies and good scores. I wasn't allowed to watch it when I was nine, I think 12 was the age my brother saw anything above PG, as I said, I had to follow whatever path he'd been allowed. I'm not even into action films, but you can't call this a typical action film. Shit blows up but it's purposeful for the most part, people get shot but it's not entirely senseless. It grappled with the notion of fate and morality. It delved into the idea of becoming the thing you hate. It had an amazing female lead and decent characterisation. 98% of the special effects hold up and it didn't rely solely on CGI even if what it used was groundbreaking, it wasn't abusing that and made space for practical effects, which were a little obvious on rewatch but are better than a lot of 90s action films. It's well shot, it looks amazing remastered. Dare I say it, it's a thinking man's action film. Because Bond films are not. That's purely male fantasy.
I fucking hate James Cameron, I'll never watch any of the new Avatars. He can go piss up a flagpole, he's a total jerk. But he made an almost flawless film which can't go unrecognised. You have mild comedic relief, good set up and pay off. Arnold's basically at peak Terminator, I don't think he's ever been able to give the part the same humanity.
It also had the perfect ending. There was another scene of an older Sarah watching her grandchild play which was cut out, and I agree with. The black road at night is like the absolutely perfect ending for this. I should've ended there. Fuck the sequels. All of them. Throw them in the bin, they serve nothing to humanity. Maybe Salvation might be okay but I never bothered. Genesis was apparently a wet fart, Dark Fate might have shit worth bothering with, but I won't. I did bother with the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Shirley Manson as a fucking terminator is cool but we don't need it and it again becomes redundant later. I don't feel like Cameron really wanted to do more with this. Everything after 3 felt like a shameless cash in whether it was or it wasn't. I hope they're not about to rewrite history after the last attempt, it'll just suffer from sequelitis and retcons.
Leave the Terminator franchise alone.
Addendum 2023: I saw the original available to watch and decided I wanted to do a double-header, only the shitheads working on my concrete walkways decided to pick a public holiday to do their noisy-ass nonsense again (I thought they were done) so I couldn't start T2 until they were gone. The Terminator has a 100% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and I don't agree. The acting's pretty awful, it really does depend on originality to carry it. Where I said the Sarah Connor Chronicles fails to be relevant comes from a line Kyle Reece says about nothing being able to go back, they're clever about not making him an expert about it, just a grunt, but the show suffered from the portal being more like an open door for rando characters to just show up. The other issue is, Arnold's too expressive as the Terminator. Really by the time Sarah's killing it, he's been replaced by the stop-motion chassis. I think since his English improved between movies, he understood what he was supposed to be going for and perfected it. The other men in the film are comic relief, I like the psychiatrist gets introduced then basically plays Sarah's real nemesis. It's a movie that didn't have to impress a lot of people, so when it did, we got a better sequel. According to RT, however, Arnold not being fun as a good guy and the plot being an unending chase sequence brought this down to 91%, but it still has a better audience score. Again, I get Furlong's acting isn't stellar but he is not the absolute worst as far as child actors go. (I can't tell you what made me crush on him at 12 but it rightfully didn't last long).
I don't know what the fuck y'all talking about Arnold's a million times more entertaining in this movie. STFU. He's like a big, dumb dog you don't want to see put down at the end of the movie.
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