Retronauts - 719: Terminator 2

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Who's back? Diamond Feit, James Eldred, and Drew Mackie are back for a podcast about the 90s blockbuster and cultural touchstone Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

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This week in Retronauts, no way, Jose. No way, Jose. No way, Jose. Hello, yes way. It's time for Retronauts. Thank you for joining us today. I'm your host. I'm in Fight. Ask me about the 207th through the 215th bones in the human body. I know all about them. And this week we are talking about the Terminator, but that's inaccurate because we're talking about two Terminators, because it's Terminator 2. We already did a podcast last year, celebrating 40 years of the original Terminator film.

Now it's time for the sequel, but unlike James Cameron, we're not waiting eight, nine years to give you a sequel. We're doing the sequel now because, frankly, I feel like this movie is more relevant than ever, given that we're talking about AI gone mad. and people losing their minds and losing their humanity, slowly one bit at a time. And also, L.A. It's a big L.A. movie. I would say, I would say this is a movie is even more in L.A. movie than the last movie, even though they're both shot in L.A. But this is like L.A. during the daytime, and you can see lots of L.A. like landmarks and stuff. So I'm talking too much. Let's introduce my guests. First of all, in Tokyo, returning from our last podcast. This is, it is James Eldred. And since Terminator 2 repeats jokes from Terminator 1, I'll repeat my joke. from the first episode, and I'll say, again,

this is not my Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation. This is just how I talk. Thank you very much for joining us, James. And what I can describe as an oversight on my part. He wasn't here last time, but now he is here, joining us from California, from Los Angeles, California. Other guest, Dromecki. Yes.

Thank you, other guests. Other guests. I was the other person filling in for Jeremy Parrish. I'm other. Is this what it's like to be othered? Is that what that means? Yeah, like Diamond literally others me in the Google Doc with guest James Eldred and other guests.

And it's like, oh, I guess it's me. Other guests talk about your projects. I'm like, great. Can't wait to do it. Talk about that. Again, listeners, I told Drew this, but I'll tell you this. I wrote that document before I knew Drew was joining us. So that was a placeholder title.

But in any case, Drew, you're here now, please. James and I have already done this because we did the last time. Tell us, when did the table? Terminator into your life, because you are presumably too young to have seen Terminator 1 in theaters. Yeah, so whenever T2 came out on video, I believe it was December of the year it came out in theaters, my friend Antonio, whose parents let them watch whatever they wanted to watch, and also their friends watch, whatever they wanted to watch, got a hold of the VHS and I think bought it, and had already seen it twice, and I'm like, I want to see it.

So I think I watched it during a sleepover, and I had been cajoled into caring about Terminator 2, even though I didn't know what Terminator 1 was. Because as you guys obviously remember, it was just everywhere. The marketing was very intense. It was very much marketed to kids because it was the movie, four kids, because it started a kid.

And most kids, most boys in my class did see it. I did not. By the time I actually saw it, I already knew what happens because people had talked to me about the plot. And I'd had a very specific imagination for what it was going to look like.

So when I saw the actual James Cameron version, I was like, oh, my one's better in my head. This did not match what was in my head. So I was just like, all right, this is just a popular thing. I'm finally getting around to watching it. It's whatever. I didn't think it was bad, but I was just like, all right, I'm not going to think about it again. And this was actually kind of an interesting lesson in me being sort of a pop culture contrarian who doesn't always like the things that everyone else is talking about. And then as a teenager, I saw Terminator 1. And this was after a scream had come out and I was very into

slasher movies. And I loved Terminator 1. It was such. a different vibe. I love the vibe of 80s, Los Angeles. And it does play like a slasher movie in many ways. And I was blown away that the beginning of the story that I was very mad about could have been so much more my thing. And I get why Terminator 2 is a much better like business proposition and was a much bigger hit, much bigger pop culture phenomenon. And I'm fine with that. But yeah, I'm one of those people. I really like the first one more. And if having to choose between any other, I'm always going to pick the first one. And, and, and I live in Los Angeles now, and I've lived in Los Angeles since 2010. And it is weird to watch from here to, like, today,

when I watched it, and be like, oh, this is when my first experience is like, oh, that's what L.A. looks like. And now I live in that town, and I do recognize some of the locations. And that is extremely weird. And it's never not weird. And also, when I first moved here, I lived far on the west side of L.A., which is near the ocean. And it's for, like, rich straight people. So, It wasn't a whole lot for me to do there, and I wasn't happy. But the week I moved there, I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger driving down the street in a Jeep without doors, like the doors had been removed. And I was just like, that is Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, the Terminator, and my neighbor, driving down the street in a doorless Jeep. I'm like, sure.

And that is kind of an interesting way to, like, be like a debutante to L.A. be like I'm now I'm a Los Angeles person because I've I've seen this very strange sight. That's cool than the most famous person I saw when I was in L.A. Who is that? I saw Martin Landau. That's pretty good. At a party and he consensually felt up a friend of mine who was woman. She was down with it.

I'm not canceling him. It was a totally good. She still talks about it. I would talk about it too. As a positive experience. So anyway, I'll go on. Was this after he won the Oscar, James? Yes, I think it was right after.

He was right in the way. So Oscar, Oscar winner. I was like 17, illegally at this party. Oh, hey. Well, for those of you who missed it last time, I encourage you strongly to go back and listen to episode 647, where we talked about the Terminator at length. So I apologize in advance if we repeat ourselves,

but also, as James said, Terminator 2, kind of nakedly repeats a lot of beats from Terminator 1, so I feel like in that spirit, it's okay if we repeat ourselves because, you know, repetition. It's what's cool. It's what's cool these days. Recursion, repetition. Everyone's into this. That's why we get sequels to movies and they just bring all this actors back and doesn't matter if they were alive or dead. It's like, oh, here's another sequel and everyone's alive again. Congratulations. We're not repeating ourselves. It's a callback. Yes. Thank you. But following the success of Terminator in 1984, we have our director, James Cameron, and I would say James Cameron only increases his profile as the years go by.

Immediately after Terminator, you get First Blood, Rambo Part 2, or sorry, Rambo First Blood Part 2, excuse me. And that's co-written by James Cameron, big hit, very much an 80s movie. You can talk about how it sort of changes Rambo forever, but also it's a huge movie and it's pretty fun to watch. So, you know, worth noting that. The next year, aliens, sci-fi classic, action classic, all-around classic. We had a whole episode about that, episode 389 about Retronauts because aliens is also hugely influential on movies and video games. So we talked about that at length as well. And he followed that with the Abyss, which is definitely a unexpected move.

It's clearly letting us know what he's into, which is deep sea, deep sea action and underwater stuff and isn't the ocean, cool. Why are you guys all about space? I'm all about the ocean. That's what I feel like James Cameron. James Cameron likes it wet. Yes. Yes, he does. And that was a movie that I definitely saw. I definitely saw that one before I saw any Terminators because I was like, I was too young to see Terminator. But I was old, when the abyss came out, I was only to see the abyss. And that to me was, you know, like, whoa, this is a really cool movie, but also it's kind of dark at times, but pretty intense. And also, I think, worth noting, very effects heavy. for its time. There's certainly an extended sequence, which I think it forms this movie, where a tentacle comes out of the water and it's made of water, or at least it looks like water,

and it explores its undersea vessel and people look at it and they touch it. And, you know, definitely for a late 80s movie, this was extraordinary, like, whoa, how did they do that? The effects of this are so advanced that one of them, they couldn't even put in a movie

and they had to put it in the extended cut that came out later. Because when they were filming the movie, they couldn't do it. Just didn't have time? It just didn't work, the giant wave sequence. Oh, right, right, right. They had to cut it for time, and it just didn't look good.

And then so they literally finished that after the film came out theatrically. Wow. I would like to point out that it was special effects heavy, but James Cameron was still torturing his cast in person. Because that's the kind of director he is. Yeah, definitely a lot of actors getting soaked, which, let's be honest, given his later films, we know that he's into that because he would do it again and win like 27 Oscars. So, yeah. Meanwhile, he's leading man, Arnold Schwarzenegger, also only grows larger in reputation after The Terminator. Suddenly, he is a bank of movie star, and people are willing to cast him in almost any role, including sort of all-American, just general white guy roles. We don't, you know, don't worry about the accent. Don't worry about where he's from. He is American. He's John Matrix. He's Ben Richards. You know, he's Quaid. He's Kouser, Commando.

I listened to your first, the Detraignment 1 episode this morning. Thank you. I had to. I didn't want to be ill-informed about all this. But, like, is his character name really John Matrix? In the Commando, yes. His name is John Matrix. And that's just a name.

People are like, that's a normal name. Sure. That's... All-American John Matrix of Elissa Milano E. Feeding Deer. Yeah. It would be one thing if he was, like, a tech guy. But, like, yeah, he's like a dad. And that's, like, the cornerstone of his character.

Elissa Milano's name is like Alyssa Matrix. This is such a weird name. Yeah, actually, I forgot the character name, but yeah, whatever her first name is in that movie, then she is, yeah, she's Polly Matrix or Susie Matrix or whatever. Polymatrix sounds like a new, like, AI thing. Then we have language learning models on the Polly Matrix to work on Web 3. But yeah, all Squared Strickricks movies throughout the end of the 80s and going into 1990 are pretty big deals. Even the movies that people know when talks for today, like Raw Deal and Red Heat, like they're successful.

successful, you know, they made money. They, you know, I'm sure they did good business and video stores. I wouldn't want to watch either one of them, you know, again, but whatever. All of these films you were mentioning I was between the age of six and ten, and I saw all of them when they came out repeatedly over and over and over again. And I'm sure that has had no negative effect on my psyche. I'm sure. all those dismemberings, mutilations, torture, it's fine. Thanks, Dad. James, it's important for children to learn that they should never drink and bake.

That's an important wrestling to learn early. It's important to learn that first, what is it, was sub-zero, now just zero. That's a very important phrase to learn in life. Yes. Running Man. Running Man. It's a good movie. But also, in the midst of these, you know, rated R action movies that are very much appealing to a certain crowd, he also branches out and does some comedies like twins and kindergarten cop and these movies are even bigger hits because they're targeting a wider audience so they make you know even more money uh kindergarten cop also informs silent hill of all things so it's kind of a fun a fun loop there and i think for me the ultimate 80s Arnold action movie is in fact 1990s total recall because it's got you know you got director paul verhoven who's clearly like you know they're They gave him a lot of leeway. It's like, we want you to make this movie.

We want you to make this movie, Paul. And Paul's like, okay, however much fake blood you have, I need you to order more because we're doing this. Well, it's like, it's like the peak 80s hair medal is like 9091. So it's right before Nirvana. So peak 80s action is the same. It's like they took the entire decade. They had the whole thing. And now it's ready in 1990 for nonstop blood, axon, carnage, and misogyny.

And triple boobs. Oh, yeah. I saw David Coyote in film with six boobs. Oh, four? I forgot. That's too many. Yeah. They crossed the line.

It crossed a lot. The boobicon. But Toto can. a week all in theaters. I'm pretty sure I saw it twice opening weekend because I saw it and loved it, went right back. I was like the perfect age by which I mean I was not 17, but I was old enough to see that movie and say, whoa, this is extremely my movie. And that means I got a double dose of a special teaser for a movie that would come out the following year. And this is a very rare case because this is a teaser made for a movie that, of course, hadn't even been shot yet. Probably the script had been written yet, but they knew what they wanted to do. So the teaser, you might have see it before. If not, please look this up. It's a wonderful thing online. You see Terminators being assembled on a, like, on a factory line, and you get some text, and you know what it is, and the music is pumping, it's crazy, and then they slam it together in like the Play-Doh mold, and the screen says, you know, activating Fleshlayer or whatever, and the thing opens up, and there it is,

it's Arnold, he's buff, his eyes are glowing, he's flexing, and the thing slammed shut, and it says Terminator 2, T2, coming next year, I'll be back. Yeah, and in the most compressed mono audio ever, he says, like, cut from the first film, not redone, sounds horrible, him saying, I'll be back, yes. But yeah, to me, as an audience member, a total recall, I was like, whoa. And at that point, I had not seen The Terminator, but I was like, I don't know what that is, but I want to see what that is, whatever that is, immediately. I was fucking stoked.

Yeah. It's very effective. I watched it for the first time in your notes. I've seen Terminator, too. And I can only imagine what kind of effects would have on me if I had seen it in the theater back in the day. And it is wild that this movie made so much money. And this did not become more of a standard practice. I'm surprised, like creating custom footage for a trailer or even a teaser isn't more of a standard thing.

There's not that many movies that do that. I think the biggest one I can think of a Spider-Man, because I had that whole little mini-movie with the bank robbery. And I think David Hyde Pierce is a bank robber. Oh, wow. And then he's caught in a... They're getting a helicopter and escape, and then they're caught in a web, and it pans out, and the web is between the world of traits and the buildings. That part sounds for me, I don't remember David Hypeirce being part of it. I'm 99% so there's David Hypeer's.

One of the actors, I'd least trust to rob a bank, but sure. Yeah, okay. Yeah. It'd be very fisticist, like, very, like, yeah, all the plans. Anyway. But what's funny to me about this is that, you know, obviously the Terminator was big hit and James Cameron and our Schwarzenegger, all these people were very popular. but it really was never assumed that there would be another Terminator movie because of the way Terminator as a movie works. It's a time travel movie.

Everything begins and everything ends in the course of the movie. You know, we have the creation of John Connor and we have the implied creation of the Terminators and the war is coming. At the end of that movie, we know the war is coming. So I don't think people who saw it maybe expected a sequel, but certainly Schwarzenegger is on record saying he thought we should continue the story. I don't know if it's him being just savvy or just because he loved it so much but he was always on record saying hey let's make it a Terminator movie

Yeah I found a news article in 1987 He's like he wants to make T2 And you know I think one of the reasons it got to lay There's illegal stuff about ownership But also like James Cameron was signed on To do aliens before Terminator was even in production But before Terminator started filming And they waited for him because they liked his vision so much

So immediately after T-Terminator 1 he had to do aliens. I don't know where Abyss comes into that. But yeah. But yes, you mentioned the troubles. Yes, there was some definite troubles with Hamdale Pictures, who are one of the many companies that helped finance the first film. James Cameron, on record of saying that producer John Daly was highly, highly

intrusive or tried to be in post-production. So at one point, James Cameron, producer Gail Enherd, Arles Schwarzenegger, and Special Effects Maven Stan Winston, and we're all suing Hemdale Pictures for unpaid profits. So obviously a real mess that's going on there for a couple of years. Eventually, Carol Co., which is the production company behind Total Recall,

which is why they had such a choice marketing attachment there, they buy the Terminator Rights from Hamdale. James, you said the number you found was $15 million? $15 million, yes, yes. Pretty impressive. Yeah, Kasser and that guy's last name is Vagina. It's not a joke. That's just his last name.

V-A-J-N-A is Vagina? How do you say it? I thought it was a soft J. I don't know. Vana? Vana? Vanya? I don't know.

Vanya. I first saw that name when I was 12, and that pronunciation stuck. Okay. Yeah, but they made big, big, big stupid movies, you know, and they produced Shogun, the original Shogun, but like all kinds. They did Angel Heart, the Rambo movies, they live, Deep Star 6, all. I think they got too big for their own bitches pretty quick And that's why they kind of went belly up eventually But yeah

This is peak, this is peak Kelko They're like on top of the world Yes Hemdale by the way takes that money Does nothing with it They go out of business the next year So Hemdale gone Forget about Hemdale

They were a bad company Presumably, yes But speaking of money We need to talk about this right away Because even before any of us saw A Terminator 2 on screen We were all hearing about Terminator 2 in the press because of the reported budget that cost, the record, the record said, $100 million.

So who knows what was actually $100 million, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. But that was the number that was in all the new stories. James Cameron is spending $100 million to make a movie. Now, keep in mind, at this time, if a movie made $100 million, that was like a measure of huge success. Like, oh, my God, this movie made $100 million. So he's making a movie and he's saying, okay, we are starting at $100 million. dollars, that's what we're doing. And also for context, if you think about, let's say, who frame Roger Rabbit, a very expensive, very complicated movie, total recall, a very expensive,

very complicated movie. Those movies cost 50 or 60 million dollars, very expensive, but obviously you see it all on screen. So with that context, you're spending almost twice as much for this big sequel, and that became a new story unto itself. Like, oh my God, what are they making, what are they spending this money on? When you combine Swartanagas pay, which was most, mostly in a form of a private jet, but I'm so that that was financed, you know, the money. And then Linda Hamilton got somewhere in seven figures, I think, and then James Cameron gets six million. That's already like what, over 25, probably close to 30 million, just in those people. So you have to imagine when you factor in all the other cast, you're looking

at 40 million just in cast and James Cameron. So it's quickly. tons of special effects tons of location shots again we talked about it last time but LA they shot most of the feature film the first film Terminator you know it was in LA but it was like mostly at night a lot of street shots as you shared an anecdote last time James they one of the biggest shots of the movie at the end of the movie was made without a permit they actually got caught by cops and they lied their way out of it so this time around they're doing it big they're doing it street legal and it's a lot more a lot of more daytime shots you know there's a lot of stuff you know the mall all the stuff at the mall

The huge chase scene that follows them all is all just, you know, open roads and Drew, I guess, is that what we call it the L.A. River, that sort of series of conduits, the concrete. Is that the L.A. River? That is the L.A. River. And this, between this in Greece, Greece also films the Carter, the, what are the drag racing in the L.A. River? These two movies are mostly responsible for people having an inaccurate view of what the L.A. River looks like. I live very close to the river. It looks like a river. Like, I will send you guys a photo when I walk my dog next. And, like, it's full of, like, birds and trees and stuff. You can't drive a semi-down it. It is only certain stretches of the L.A. River that are concrete over. But I live in City of Los Angeles, and it looks like a river.

The more, it's in drive also, I think. Drive. The nicer part of the river is in drive. Like, you see it's in a million movies. It's, I think Hollywood has gotten hip to the fact that, like, oh, there's parts of the L.A. River that actually do look sort of like serene and beautiful as opposed to what you've seen this movie. But again, you can't drive.

I send my truck down those parts. Don't stop me. I did find a funny. I found a piece in Entertainment Weekly from that era where they were interviewing people on the set. And they actually had the quote that said, you know, this movie, T2, could be the last big budget movie James Cameron ever directs, to which I say, loll. Lowell.

At some point, we're going to learn not to make that. prediction anymore because he keeps proving everybody wrong and it's just embarrassing for us. They keep doing it. That's the thing. They keep saying the same thing. That's what's funny about it. The journalist should stop doing that. She'd be like, he's probably going to make a lot of money. I used to watch when I was a kid, we just and Kathy Lee,

as most 10-year-olds do. And they would have like the news section and then now just remember we just talking about the box office. It's $100 million. It was like, you know. And then they had the same thing a few years later with Waterworld. $120 million. And then I think they gave up.

that's a very good regis impersonation by the way thank you don't tell my mom she fucking hates that guy he was the local broadcaster when she was a teenager and then when she left that town he went national and so like she never escaped him and it's deeply personal for her

it's deeply personal for her anyway go on go on go on Starting a business comes with all kinds of firsts. Starting a business comes with all kinds of firsts. First time you see your name and lights. First review that stains. First time you stop chasing the dream and start living it.

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hype around it and because it was being shot all over L.A., and the press was all over this, lots of fans showed up. They were trying to get a glimpse of Arnold and robots and what was happening. And one of those fans, while filming, you know, with his camcorder, happened to catch a traffic stop where a young man that nobody liked called Rodney King was taking. by the police and brutally beaten. And this man filmed it all. And that videotape got on the news and it basically triggered an entire sequence of events that I would say we are still living through today, although it's kind of infuriating because somehow we're still talking about

it like it's some sort of, oh, police brutality? We don't know. That's a few bad apples. But we keep catching them on video and, you know, we had a whole five years ago, We had all mass protests across our nation about police brutality, and the police showed up and did police brutality to the people protesting against police brutality that I still can't believe is real, but I saw it. I saw it on the internet. I saw it on TV. It was everywhere.

And that's another part of this movie. It actually is part of the text of the movie, honestly. Can I clarify that when you said a young man that nobody likes? That's a Simpsons reference. Sorry. Like, I just want to make clear that, like, you're not anti-Rodney King. You're making a sense joke. I didn't know that joke.

I was like, that was fucked up, I mean, Jesus. Sorry, no. Yeah. No offense. RIP. RIP, RIP, Rodney King, yeah. You know, the man did a criminal record, but whatever his crimes, he did not deserve to be beaten within his life, you know?

Yeah, he's still not human rights. Yes, he does. Did either of you know about this Rodney King, Terminator Few connection before doing the notes for this episode? No, I did not. No. I heard about it in the years after the fact. I don't know when I heard about it, but I definitely heard about the connection between guy filming, you know, I think. I think he was filming shots of the bar fight early on, and then, like, nearby there is where

he saw the police pull over Rodney King and beat him. This is completely new to me. I said it in my comment, I was like, this cannot be true because it seems like it would have been part of the narrative of a story that, like, people already heard, know a lot about. Like, it was, it was, it was like the dominant news story for most of that year. And I just never heard it before. And it's so surprising not only that it happened, but also. the quote that you pulled from James Cameron was prescient, honestly. Interesting.

Yeah, James Cameron in the LA Times in 1991. So again, by the time the movie comes out, I think the Rodney King story has already exploded. I don't think the city of Los Angeles has quite exploded yet into riots, but certainly the news about Rodney King is everywhere. Everyone knows it happen. So Cameron told the LA Times, that to me is the most amazing irony, considering that the LAPD are strongly represented in Terminator 2 as being a dehumanized force. What this one was about on the symbolic level is the dehumanization we do on a daily basis. And years later, in a book called The Futurist, which is written not by Cameron but about Cameron, we have a quote from him in the book that says,

"'Cops think of all non-cops as less than they are, stupid, weak, and evil. They dehumanize the people they are sworn to protect and desensitize themselves in order, do that job. And I feel like these quotes are, again, are only more relevant today as we live in America where there are people who aren't even cops who are out there in the streets snatching children from elementary schools and people waiting in doctor's offices and lawyer offices. And it's just, it's everywhere. And it's we keep doing this. It's terrifying. For a guy that makes movies that are focused on cops and military and things like that, he doesn't like them. No. Like you compare the Transformers films to aliens.

or The Abyss, my God. Like, you know, I think at best he'll portray them as well-meaning and incompetent. Like in Terminator 1, like, Lance Hendrickson and Paul Freese, like, they're not bad guys. They're not very good at their job, but they're not actively harmful. You get to the abyss and, like, the military and that are literally, like, the main one's literally insane. And then, of course, Avatar, you know, where all its faults, it is not pro-military. It's an interesting perspective for a straight white guy to have, honestly. It's actually one with the attitude he has.

Like, James Cameron makes really good movies. I wouldn't want to be stuck in an elevator with him because I think he's a lot. So it's sort of surprising that this guy who's very wealthy also as consistently critical about police brutality, just because a lot of his peers, that's not something they would really. talk about it in an interview, unless they happen to be not a straight white guy, then they'd be more likely to talk about it. Maybe it's the Canadian factor. Yeah, maybe it be. Could be, could be his Canadian roots. Yeah. That's Paul Winfield, by the way. Paul Winfield, I'm sorry. Yes, Paul Winfield, Lance Henderson, the possibly couple of cops in the Terminator 1. We're not sure. They have couple energy. Yes. Do you guys know that Paul Winfield was gay? Not at the time.

I've learned since then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people are not. aware of that. Also, quote from William Wisher, who worked on the first movie and is credited as a co-writer on Terminator 2. He just put it out flatly. Like, if he's a police officer, as in the Terminator, if he's a police officer, he can go places and do things and won't be questioned. So from a writing standpoint, it's a very powerful tool to just make one of your, you know, make your primary enemy wearing a cop officer. He just walks into places. No one asks the CID. He goes, oh, hello, what are you doing? And most he's like, what are you doing here? but not like go away just kind of like oh hello i do think it's funny that in the film the foster

parents kind of treat the cop and arnold as the same because like they mentioned when the cop comes to see them they're like this big guy in a bike was here asking about him and i guess they just treated him the same way as the cop it's like yeah we don't know where he is not not at all wondering like why is this giant man in the bike looking for their preteen son foster son i assume he like fucks up a lot and this is just what life with little john connor is like Whereas we don't really care what he did now, but yeah, good luck finding him. You're good luck. So before we get into the movie proper, I do want to go over some of the people behind the movie and on the screen of the movie.

I don't think we need to say much more about James Cameron or Arnold at this point. But let's talk about Linda Hamilton. Because Linda Hamilton, this is very much, I would say to a degree, this is very much her movie. She is, you know, her part in the first movie cannot be understated. but her part in this movie is absolutely amplified by the fact that she has, you know, as a character, she has lived her life knowing that the world is about to end. And as we understand it, Linda Hamilton herself said, well, hey, if my character's been going through this for years, knowing that her, you know, knowing that world's going to end,

knowing that her unborn son has to grow up and lead humanity to fight a war against the machines, she's going to lose her mind. And they went with that. So when this movie opens, she's in a, a mental institution, and to get ready for that, we have a report that she was basically working out three hours a day, six days a week, and she gets completely jacked in a way. You really didn't see, certainly not women, at that point,

you didn't see a lot of women looking like that in Hollywood movies at the time. No, she becomes an action star, which is a remarkable transformation from one movie to the next. Yes. And her introduction to the film of, like, doing pull-ups in her room, Like, it's a completely different character, and they mentioned early on that, like, he stabbed him in the knee, like, with a pen, you know, like, very, yeah, there are very few female accent stars, even today, you know, and I think at the time it was a pretty groundbreaking transformation that is, uh, you don't, I've seen both films so many times. I don't think about it anymore, but, like, at the time, it was like, wow. Yeah. Also, like, not for nothing, she's a mother. So not only is she a female action. star but she's female action star where like motherhood is one of the corner parts of her character and that's just something we don't really see that much in western cinema honestly it's funny though

you also see in aliens yeah yeah yeah yeah it's kind of subtext in the regular cut but in you know in the extended cut you she explicitly says that she had a daughter and the daughter grew up and died while she was trapped in space but even the regular cut you know there's the thing going on between Ripley and Newt that's very much, you know, mothering. Although in Sarah's case, she literally has a child, she can't see the child, and she wants to see child. So she's prepared to really kill anybody who stands between her and her child. And then that morphs into something else when she gets on the outside and she realizes that,

well, what if she killed this other man? Would she maybe save all the children? Perhaps. She's like Superman. Yeah. But unlike Arnold and James Cameron, I would say Linda Hamilton doesn't really have a lot going on in between the two Terminator movies. I mean, I would say her biggest thing is that she was on Beauty and the Beast,

which was a very popular TV show. But even that, she left in, I think, the second year or after the second year, like, she didn't stick in that show very long. She got pregnant. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, but we're they, I don't know who, I don't know if they replaced her with a female character, but they still called it Beauty and the Beast when Beauty had exited, which is very strange.

Yeah, and my mom was furious. I'm sure. As all moms in America were. Yeah. that was mom 101 TV. Mom and I would watch that in another room when my dad, my brother, watch football. So, Sarah has her, you know,

the first movie is about Sarah not having baby and wondering about what baby would look like. In this movie, she has baby. Baby is growing up a little bit. It is John Connor officially, by the way, we should stress the, officially this movie takes place in 1994. So that means John Connor is nine years old,

although they clearly do not cast a nine-year-old in this part. They cast a total unknown, a young man named Edward Furlong, who I think is maybe 13 or 14. According to the casting director, Mali Finn, she found him at a boys' club in Pasadena and just loved his look and had him read for it and everything clicked from there. And he spent the rest of the 90s working on different stuff. James used some stuff.

I guess he did some stuff in Japan, like Pop Star stuff. He has two albums in Japan. for comparison Alyssa Milano has three I try it's bad it's what you think it would be it is Japanese 90s idol crap but then another one

is him talking about the little prince like the yeah the book it's bizarre although on YouTube if you want to subject yourself to this

I would say don't thank you but he was a huge my boyfriend who is Japanese has told me that he was an absolutely huge deal here. He looks like someone who would be a Japanese idol. Like he looks like he has the look that makes sense. I was disarmed by the fact that he frequently looks like Kristen Stewart throughout this movie.

And I have to be like that is not Kristen Stewart. That is little Edward Furlong. And so Kristen Stewart, child actor in like panic room sort of look like, kind of a similar character. It's very disturbing. Yes. It's the hair. Yeah, hair like Zidane from Final Fantasy Nine.

Yeah. Yeah. Very floppy haircut. Absolutely. Yeah. Jealous, I can't get that. Indeed, in all the action bits, especially all the stuff like, you know, where little John Connor is like riding around on his moped, the stunt double was just a professional stunt woman, you know, who just have, you know, short enough for the, give her the right haircut, and that's John Connor for you. Yeah, and she accused Schwarzenegger of groping her, and that's a weird story because, like, she accused him of groping her when he was running for a governor.

Yes. His campaign released an email or a statement calling her a convicted criminal, but they got the wrong Rhonda Miller. But then she sued him for libel, which was kind, but he didn't do that. The campaign did. Right. So the lawsuit was dismissed. But then everything was settled that she didn't have to pay any of the legal fines for anything. so I don't know what maybe that was like an under the table like agreement there or whatever

but yet it's a it's a strains if you look up the history of it it's very strange yeah very convoluted those were a lot of accusations like that came out about Arnold when he was running for governor yeah yeah that was very much part of the national subdivision going back to Edward Furlong for a bit he did have a career for most of the 90s he was working in different movies but he also had some substance abuse problems so when it came time to make Terminator 3, and they wanted to have a role for a now adult John Connor, he wasn't healthy enough to get that job. They recast him. But according to news sources, he seems to have cleaned up in recent years, and he seems to be doing better. So, you know, I wish him decent health. You know,

we shouldn't have to suffer for what happened to him as a child. He was in, and his output immediately after Terminator 2 is like, you know, Pet Cemetery 2 brain scan, which if you want to see a real piece of sit, B-grade slasher with a Frank Langella. I recommend that one. And I think his last major role was probably American History X or Detroit Rock City. And then kind of after, and he played the crow in that really bad crow sequel. Yeah. You'll have to be more specific.

2005 really bad Crow sequel. Yeah. The one of Edward Furlong, not the one of Vincent Perez, not the one of whoever ever. the hell that the guy was. Yeah. Good point, through. So let's talk villains. So let's talk villains. Let's talk about Robert Patrick, who's playing the brand new character, the T-1000. And Robert Patrick, you know, not an unknown, but I would say he certainly hadn't done a lot of big pictures at that point. I might have recognized him for Die Hard 2.

He has a small but very conspicuous scene in Die Hard 2 where it's part of the SWAT shootout in the airport. He actually had, you know, he gets a line. You know, you see him on camera. He gets a line before he shoots the SWAT team. So maybe you saw him in that movie. James, you put some notes here about some Filipino filmmaker? Yeah, so he is in a lot of films by this dude, and I'm going to probably say his name wrong, Serio H. Santiago, who's kind of infamous for just garbage.

And if you want to have a good time, look at the posters for that. Like Warriors from Hell has a dude on a motorcycle with impossibly large machine gun while a woman is holding on tight. There's Equalizer 2,000, which has Richard Norton. in it, and that is like Filipino Mad Max rip-off. Santiago, vampire hookers, you know, that's his level of a Dune Warriors. And Dune's in really big print on the box and in a really tiny print Warriors. So he just made this churned out garbage.

It's usually highly entertaining, though. Yeah. I was surprised to see he was in so many. He was in one to, at least four, five of his, that guy's, movies in the course of like in the course of like three years at this point in his career robert patrick has a great face and i cannot underestimate how surprising it was to see him as you look then and be like oh god like you are a very handsome man and he looks like an old guy now because that's that's what happens with time but um i can see why he would have been someone

you wanted to put on screen uh he's got he's got he's got a great face yeah you i think he was better than the first name being tossed about, which was Billy Idol. I don't like Billy Idol, honestly. I don't even think of Billy Idol as an actor. Did he do a lot of acting? Have you seen the wedding singer? He plays himself. Thank you.

Yes. I mean, I forgot where I read that, but it was never official. I don't know if they're even contacted him. But then he had that terrible motorcycle accident where you couldn't even walk for a while. And that just kind of put the kibosh on that. So that was it for that. Yeah. But one reason I love Robert Patrick in this movie is that, first of all, again, they're casting

counter Arnold. So unlike Arnold, Robert Patrick is not a bodybuilder. He is certainly a very good-looking, you know, very handsome man, but he's very much a guy. He's a guy you would see, you know, he's not ripped. He's not particularly large or small. He's just a good-looking guy. But on screen, he is incredibly physical in everything he does. I always think about the way he runs in this movie

he's the way he swings his arms it does not look like a human being his stare, the way he stares at things the way his eyes sort of track things like a goddamn computer you see a lot of stuff where he's touching things I remember behind the scenes stuff where he talked about like he imagined that the way the robot works

like everything he's like he's scanning things to his fingertips so there's a lot of scenes of him like just touching walls or touching panels and like he's examining them sight unseen. There's a quote in 2012, an AV club interview who said, in my mind, I kept images of the way an eagle looks. I used

shark imagery too and cats, predators basically. So he's, the whole time, he's got very intense look on his face and his body and the way he moves, especially when they start strapping stuff onto him, like, you know, the knives and stabbing weapons when they put them on his arms, like,

his body language changes, and it's a really fantastic performance from a guy who, you know, before, you probably hadn't heard it before this movie, and he really shows up. It's like, hey, I'm here in this movie. This is partly my movie, too. Look at me.

He does the smart thing of, like, looking down, but keep your eyes up. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, it reminds me of Darth Mall. Ha. I watched this, having read all of your notes already, so I was aware of all this. And I guess I just never thought about the physicality of his performance. But for someone who's not, like, he's not a dancer. He's not really an action star.

I mean, he wasn't this, but, like, he's not like a Jet Li or a Jean-Claude. Van Dam. And it is just a very focused physical thing. It's sort of amazing to watch just from an acting standpoint. I was like, oh, like he's really, like he said, he's like thought through how this character is experiencing the world and how he knows through it. And this time, whenever I got to the CGI scenes, I'm like, go back to Robert Patrick. I want to see what he's doing because everything he's doing super interesting. I saw a scene of him doing, like, I think, I don't know, most encapsulated as tests with him just walking in and wearing nothing but tidy whiteys, if you want to look that up.

I do want to let that up. Thank you. No problem. Any time. So let's talk about brand new character Miles Dyson. Miles Dyson is played by Joe Morton. Joe Morton, I think, was mostly known for doing TV roles, although he also was the star in The Brother from Another Planet, which is a movie I have not seen. But it's a title I keep hearing again and again. So I feel like I should see that movie. It's a good.

Oh, that's a good. That's a good sign. Oh, and then later on, he's in Lone Star. Okay, so John Sales, John Sales knew him. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Joe Morton told a, apparently told a joke from Richard Pryor at his audition, which he thinks got him the gig, where he said, the reason of Hollywood either kills off the black actors and sci-fi or they're not in it at all is because Hollywood doesn't think we're going to be here in the future. So good sass on Joe Morton's part. I think he's certainly a great, you know, he doesn't have a big part, but his work here is certainly important in that he's humanizing a character who is, before we even see him, is kind of introduced somewhat nebulously because we find out that this man, Miles Dyson, ends up creating the technology, which create the Terminator and will eventually basically destroy humanity. So, you know, you hear about him and you're like, oh, geez, this guy is some kind of monster. But then you have Joe Morton, who is just very nice, quiet family man, who's just like, I'm just a guy.

Like, you know, he's understandably perplexed when he's faced off against a gun and told, you're going to destroy the earth. He's like, what do you mean? What am I doing? What did I do? What am I going to do? Yeah. I have a feeling that if this was filmed today, that character would be far less sympathetic. Possibly.

Yeah. Given the reality that we live in, yeah, that they will probably be criticized. for creating a character who is so sympathetic if they made that now, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, certainly if you look to Genesis, which I know you love so much, James, Terminator Genesis. I'm already in pain today, man.

Sorry. Terminator Genesis has a big role for Dyson's son in the future as some kind of like app tech San Francisco guy. And yeah, he's way less sympathetic. He's just like, you know. Yeah. I was going to ask if the sun comes back. That was one of the things I forgot to look up.

Thank you for telling me. Yeah. I like how the daughter just vanishes. Like, he has two kids. Right. In the theatrical cut, they say, how's the wife and kids? He says they're fine. But in the extended cut, you see both kids.

But then the daughter somehow doesn't appear again in the regular movie. So people forget, I think, that Dyson has, in fact, two children, boy and girl. Yeah, yeah. And as you point out in the notes, Drew, his wife is played by S. Epatha Mergerson, who was a longtime Law and Order. character and just general character in general, but she played a main character on Law & Order for, I want to say, at least

10, 12 years? Like, maybe even longer than that. It's just always odd to see her playing anything other than that character because most of us grew up watching Law & Order and she was just a big part of that. Is she good in Law & Order? Because I feel like her line delivery here is, it's

unfortunate. The way she says, oh, she's not a good movie screamer. Like, it's like, oh my God! Like, it sounds to me, like, when I watched it with my boyfriend, he laughed, like, at the way he screams. You're going to get the Esypatha hive coming after you because people that like her do not want to hear anyone criticize her acting ability.

I think she's wonderful, but that's just... Okay. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm canceled. It's okay.

I had a good run. Returning from the first film, which is not possible for a lot of people, because most people in the first film, which is not possible for a lot of people because most people in the first film are dead. You have Ed Bowen. Ed Bowen. Edwell comes back as Dr. Silberman. Silberman? Silberman, right? Silberman, right? It was a beat. Yeah, sorry, but spelled it wrong in my notes.

So he had a very small but memorable part in the first movie. Now he's a big shot. He's running the mental hospital that keeps Sarah Connor all locked up because he knows about Sarah Connor's entire thing and he's convinced that she's crazy. But as he'll find out in the movie, she's not crazy. Everything that she tells him is true. And it kind of breaks him. So when you see him again in Terminator 3, he is very.

he is very much a quieter, more sympathetic man who has seen some shit and can't really put into words what happened. Does he die in three? No. He survives three Terminator movies. That's remarkable. He does. He just runs away. Well, considering how Terminator 3 ends, maybe not.

That's true. You don't see him die, but he probably dies in Terminator 3 when the world ends. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Spoiler. Okay. I've never seen a Terminator beyond this one.

I just stopped and only know what people tell me about them. And I'm going to keep it that way, I think. Well, I'll defend one of them later, but you're probably, for the most part, you're correct. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it. Yeah, let up later, yeah. Also, Michael Bean. Michael Bean, very much dies in the first term in a movie, but they filmed an entire sequence where he has a, I don't know, it's a dream, it's a vision, whatever.

He is in Sarah's hospital room telling her, you have to protect our son. He's out there. He's alone. Now, this footage ends up in a lot of trailers. I'm surprised to see this in a lot of trailers, but it's not in the theater. cut of the movie. I believe Cameron went a record saying that, you know, he shot it and he liked it, but he felt like it was too dependent on seeing the first movie and he didn't want to have it in this movie that maybe people didn't see the first movie. But if you see the extended cut, you'll see it. It's there. It's fine. I think it is a very forced scene. Um, where he, he basically shows up to dry hump her for a minute and then, uh, deliver the no fate line. Uh, no fate is the one we make. And he's very, he's very, much like you have to protect our son he's all alone it it's nothing I don't think maybe going back to what I said about the actress Cameron Cameron's really not a director's an actor's director you know so I think sometimes when the performances are iffy you can blame him and like he cuts stuff out sometimes because of that and I think in that scene the dialogue is so explicit and heavy it's it came off as really silly a lot of the stuff cut from the regular version was cut for a reason, in my opinion.

Having watched the super-extended Skynet version last night, which is like way too long. So, yeah. Yeah, we'll talk about some cut scenes that I think are very impressive, but also they just, they go on for a long time in a movie that's already well over two hours long. So I understand why they got cut. Some of them are kind of like, aw shucks.

But you know what? Watch them online. Go ahead. They're all online by now. Go ahead. We'll talk about them later. Other cast members, we want to hit up just really quick stuff. I think Jeanette Goldstein,

you probably don't recognize her, but she was Vasquez and aliens. She comes back. She is John's foster mother. I would say these days you might recognize her because the exchange she has with Arnold is now a popular meme. Your foster parents are dead. That's her. That's Jeanette Goldstein. She would come back in Titanic. You know, she's the Irish mom, Titanic. People who don't realize how chameleonic this woman is are always sending to be like, that is the same woman as Vasquez. And it is remarkable that she plays lilting Irish mother whose children are about to drown and also Vasquez but like what what fucking range come on this is how i learned that she was not Hispanic just watching this film jeanette goldstein yeah yeah yeah good point yeah yeah and i wonder

if if like nowadays people look back on that not well i mean you wouldn't cast her in that role now no no no or at least they wouldn't cast her as they wouldn't call her vasca like they wouldn't make go Hispanic yeah right if she got ripped and she wanted to be a marine absolutely but don't call her No, no, no. But it's a cool character. Yeah, she's great. Last I heard, she's, like, making a name for herself, like, selling brassiers in Los Angeles? Yeah, she was actually on the local NPR station talking about her bra business not that long ago.

And I was like, good for you, madam. Like, you reinvented yourself again. Yes. Apparently, she knows about the struggles of having boobs that need support. Yeah. Good for her. You won't recognize them unless you look very closely, but indeed one of the SWAT guys at Cyberdine is Dean Norris. Dean Norris, before Breaking Bad, before his role as the weird commander in Starship Troopers. He's a SWAT guy. He's wearing gas mask. He's hard to see him, but he's there. Look at the credits. Dean Norris. That's him. And you forgot to mention John's friend. John's friend. Danny Cooksey?

Yeah. Yeah. Danny Cooksy. Shocking Redhead. I didn't feel because he's in salute your shorts also right that's him I think so yeah I know him for different strokes different strokes I didn't make the different strokes to Terminator 2 connection with him until I was like 30 also the voice of Montana Max on tiny tones which is extra because he would have been a kid himself when he was doing those lines it would have been around the time he was filming this and it's just weird for because like Montana Max doesn't sound like a kid so they hired a kid to

voice, a not kid voice, and that's a fun little career for him. Great, great mullet. Yes, very red, very big mullet, absolutely. My only Danny Cooke's memory following this film is that he was on a short-lived sketch comedy show with Alex Winter, and I think it was called like the Idiot Box. I don't remember the name of the title. Idiot Box, that what it was? I had a poster of that in my room because it had the butthole surfers on it, and my dad knew

I like the butthole surfers and we got a promotional poster at the video store and so I was this weird kid with the two posters on my wall were the idiot box and then a standee of Dolph London as the Punisher. Were they surprised when you ended up being gay? I, you know.

There we go. Yeah. We have to shout out Nikki Cox. Nicky Cass is Henry Gilbert's favorite actress in the world. Loves Nikki Cox and she's the one that sells out John Connor to the T1 He's like, he's at the Galleria.

She's also had a very odd career. She's in Mac and Me. She's one of the child dancers in the McDonald's birthday party sequence. She also had a sitcom on UPN. She's Maxim Cover Girl. She's a very specific career. She was like the Kelly role on that sort of mock married with children, whatever it was called, Unhappily Ever After?

She was. Yeah. That's a few years from now when she's older. She's very much child in this movie. I think her credit is just girl. Accurate. They got her gender, right? You can't complain about that.

They can't say, you know, girl who sells out John Connor. They're not going to put that, you know. I always worry, like, this is a weird thing I had. Like, what if you were in a movie in a supporting role and he had one line? And then, like, when you check their credits, it's like, ugly kid. Or, like, Barfey-looking kid, you're like, wait, what? I saw a movie. I saw a Charles Bronson movie.

I forgot which one, but there were two credits. There was horror. And then there was fat whore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's...

You see that a lot in 80s, 90s movies. Yeah. It happens. My aunt's roommate is in weird science and he's credited as fat girl. Oh. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

That would be rough. That would be a rough credit-seeing experience. Yeah. Okay. One last one, I swear to God, just because this is so weird to me, I just found out of this researching this thing. I did not know what happened. So a lot of people talk about T2, and they talk about that one guy,

who is in the mall, and he just happens to get between the two terminators, and he just gets the ever-litting shit shot out of him, you know, mostly from Art Patrick, I think, and just gets just blazed by the gun. Get shot more than 50 cents, yeah. Yeah. This guy, apparently, is a Japanese writer and radio personality named Takao Komine, who somehow made a friendship with Cameron, I guess maybe during press tours or whatever. So he went to LA, he's in T2, he's got a very small role in true lies, and many years later he published an entire book of interviews where he talks to Cameron about filmmaking and Hollywood and all the stuff. Look him up, he's still, I mean, obviously, he's a Japanese guy, so his work is written in Japanese, but Takal Kumine, you can look him up, he's a guy, so I'm assuming they're probably dubbed him over because there's a voice that's very much a non-Japanese voice who says like, hey, you can't be back here. It's just an awkwardly staged scene. He's like, he's like an innocent in Operation Wolf.

You're not supposed to shoot or a virtual cop. It's like, help, help, help. RIP, take home home today. No, he's still alone. He's still alone. Okay. ...to... ...their...

...withal... ...to... ...their... ...the... ...the... ...the... ...and... ...the...

All right, so we don't need to do a blow-by-blow of the movie because this movie, blow-by-blow-wise, is indeed very similar to the first film with only a few minor tweaks in that this time around the killer from the future and the protector from the future are focused on John Connor as opposed to John Conner's mother. But John Connor's mother, Sarah Connor, is very much a part of the story because as soon as John Conner realizes that he's being targeted by a robot from the future, he says, hey, we've got to go get my mom.

And the terminator is like, well, we shouldn't do that because the other robot will try to get you. And he's like, I don't care. I order you to help me. And as it turns out, adult John Connor set the robot back in time to protect young John Connor. So the robot has to listen to John Connor all the time, which is mostly played for laughs. But indeed, as the movie gets on, the two grow very close. and they outright say it, like Sarah Connor has some voiceover this movie, and she outright says it that, oh my God, this robot is becoming a father figure to my child

who had never had a father figure in his life, which is unfortunate because as the movie goes on and he grows emotionally, you kind of have this, she kind of takes a backseat to the Terminator John relationship, which is unfortunate because she's right there and she's his actual mom. But, you know, they patch things up too a little bit because, you know, as the movie opens, John Connor only knows that his mother got shot, trying to blow up a computer factory. So he thinks she's crazy, too, like the rest of the world, you know? I would have loved a montage of Schwarzenegger and Furlong doing things together while George Michael's father figure plays. Let's go fishing, you know, stuff like that.

I have a question that I'm not sure was addressed in this movie, and it might be a magic exhalophone question, but you guys can tell me if this is stupid or not. Okay, so in the first movie, they have the time machine, and the time machine sends both the Terminator and Kyle, what's his name, back in time. I always want to call him Kyle Richards. Kyle Reese. Kyle Reese, thank you. And the good guys win, and the movie ends. So why does the time machine only send people back to when John is like nine?

Why don't they send them back to before Sarah gives birth and just like shoot her again? Is there not an in-universe explanation for that? I mean, it's all a retcon. We talked about this last time a little bit, but the fact that the fact that the movie is a closed loop, and in the first movie, Kyle Reese says, after they sent me back in time, they blow up the time machines because we're not going back. Okay. But, yeah, every movie has somehow has another time machine somewhere else that's sending someone else back in time, but never to the same time. It's always somehow later, like, even though the movie takes place 10 years later, you,

You don't need to send them back 10 years later in time. You can send them back to 1984 again. It's a time machine. Yeah. But they never do that. Yeah. Like, just figure out where Linda Hamilton's going to be and then, like, shoot her in the parking lot and you're done. I think that part they explained in something and, like, the records are gone.

Like, because they were all nuked. So they don't know exactly where Sarah Connor is or exactly where John Connor is. So maybe they just cast a wide net in hopes of, you know, we'll send one back here, one back here, one back here, one back. You know, and maybe one of them will find one of them. They actually touched on that in another film. So, yeah, I think, you know, but like they have to set it 10 years later because it took that long to film. Yeah. Or whatever.

Yeah. Okay. All right. I do like how every Terminator movie does it at least include at least a little bit of the Terminator's doing their research because, yeah, when they arrive, they don't know it. They don't really know anything that's going on. So in this case, you see the T-1000 uses the police computer to look up John Connor and he has to go to the house and get a picture, John Connor, so he knows. John Connor looks like, and we don't see it happen, but we assume that Arnold got to look at the John Connor picture when he bit to the house. So that's why he recognizes John Connor in the street

later on, driving around. My favorite one personally is from Terminator 3 when the evil lady Terminator picks up a cell phone, makes modem noises into the cell phone, and calls the local high school and then downloads pictures of all the high school like students so she can get their pictures and know what they look like, and then she can kill them. I like that bit. It's good. It's funny. She must have had like a 56.6K.

Good for her. Like good high speed modem in that, yeah. But yeah, beat-wise, it's pretty much the same stuff in that you have the two. Probably the biggest change overall is the fact that when the movie comes out and you sit down and you're watching it, it doesn't make clear which of the two people are good and which one is bad. You know, Arnold comes out looking at Art Schwarzenegger, and you saw him in the first movie, he was a bad guy, and he definitely looks sinister, although you might, if you look closely, you'll notice he doesn't kill anybody in the bar. He just, he just knocks him around, he stabs the guy in the back, but he doesn't kill anybody, which is already a change from the first movie where he gut punches Brian Thompson and, like, pulls up Brian Thompson's guts with his fist. Like, he does that. This time around, he just sort of knocks him all away and just, you know, bra, you know. Is it implied that Robert Patrick kills that cop, though? You don't see what happens. All you see is you see him go for the gut.

You don't see any transformation. He comes in naked just like Arnold does. You get a pretty good look at Patrick's package, honestly, when he bends over. If you watch the 4K version, they cut that out. Hours. I tried looking at pictures online. It's hard to find a good picture of his junk. I did make an honest effort.

board. There is an excuse. Okay, so first Terminator rated R, correct? Yes. This Trinator PG-13, correct? No, R. No, it's R. It's R. It's R. Okay. I guess that makes more sense. No, then never mind. I had a theory. Oh, okay. Well, so I don't know. Maybe even if it's R, it was, this kid is front and center and they made it more of a conscious effort to like advertise this movie as something that kids would like. Oh, sure. Because of tie-ins. So, So if you have that in mind, you're just watching this movie. It's like, oh, like, they've, like, toned down the death count. That's why Arnold's not killing people in the bar in the opening scene when he gets his clothes.

And that could be, like, an out-of-universe explanation if you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, this is not as gritty as the first one. That is not the case once you meet the T-1000 and see what he can do. But if it's not necessarily a dead giveaway that he's not killing people, that he's a good robot early in the movie, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. And I heard they wanted to hide. that, but then it has put it in the trailers. Yeah. Yeah.

The trailer spoiled it. Yeah. It's a great surprise if you don't know, but I guess that there is only one person who didn't know in the notes. Yeah. Yeah. This shocked me. This shocked me.

Okay, because I made all the jokes in the notes about how, you know, the movie sets it up. Even today, I watched the movie the other day and, you know, today, 2025, you watched the movie on Netflix. The captions, when the T-1000 shows up, they just call him Officer X. So even the captions are not betraying the fact that this man is actually a Terminator. I love that. Because he's very personable.

you know, compared to Arnold, when he talks to John's foster parents, he's like, hello, like, oh, it's a good-looking boy. Like, he's very, he's very friendly in ways that Arnold, Arnold, and even Kyle Reese was not friendly, you know? Kyle Reese was not a friendly guy, but here's the robot, like, hey, can I keep this picture, you know? I'm glad that someone at Netflix was like, we're going to preserve this surprise just because there's probably some 12-year-old who's watching this movie for the first time, and maybe because they watched Terminator 1 and they didn't write in Terminator 2, and they're like, oh, Arnold's good in this one. they might not know and at least someone else someone much younger than us can experience that surprise there were two people in japan who didn't know one is what you're going to say in a second and now that is my boyfriend so he was surprised too he was surprised too as was Hadeo Kajima yes this was okay this is stunted me I was looking stuff about this because uh Wikipedia mentioned

that Hideo Kijima was inspired by T2 was like really no shit so up so kojima says T2 was so great because you never knew that Arnold Schwarzenger was the good cyborg when the movie started When he appears at the beginning, you assume he is bad, like the first movie. But then it turns out he is good. I'm being so surprised by the turn of events. When players reached a plant in the chapter of Metal Gear Solid 2, I wanted them to wonder what was going on. And then they meet this interesting character named Pliskin, who looks and sounds like Snake, but is he Snake? Is he? I haven't played this.

I haven't gotten the MGS too. I'm sorry. I mean, because Snake Pliskin is somebody else. Yes, yes, he is. Oh, fucking Kadima. Okay. He's a madman and I love him, but I don't like, I love watching his games. I never play them.

already. So let's talk about the T-1000 because what the T-1000 is and what it does is kind of a huge deal both for the movie and for media in general for the next like decade or so, maybe two decades, honestly. To now. Because, yeah, it's pretty big.

Yeah. Because unlike the other Terminator, which is a giant robot wearing a skin suit, this is basically what they call, they call it liquid metal. And what it is is, he's a guy who looks like a guy, but anything he touches, he can transform himself to look like and imitate that thing.

Now, it could be a person. It can be level geometry, like the floor. John and the Terminator have a quick conversation where John asks a bunch of, like, kid questions, so Arnold can explain to the audience what the T-1,000 can't do. Like, oh, it can't be a bomb. It can't be a gun. You know, knives and stabbing weapons. Has to be something relatively the same size, so it can't turn into a pack of cigarettes

or whatever. So throughout the movie, you have this, a lot of fun bits where it's like, oh, Is this character a regular person, or is it the T-1,000 in disguise? And it does this a lot, and it works pretty much every time because it's a great device. I like when he morphs into the security guard at the mental hospital because that act as a twin. Yes. So I like how, because James Cameron does that twice in this film where we could do a complex physical, a complex C.G or a composite effect. Oh, no, wait.

this person has a twin let's just do that that's smart it's a great scene yeah you get you get two twin brothers and then one of them stabs the other in the head and then it cuts but it merely cuts to a great puppet head of the other of the twin brother yeah it's a fantastic puppet head with a big spike in his face you know yeah that's right at r you can't yeah can't do that big of the scene that's like in the face do you think do you think they got to flip a coin for who is going to be the spiked your head and who's going to be the murdering twin it's a good question because If you look at their filmography, it's not quite the same. Like, most movies they appear in, they're both there, but one has more credits than the other.

So, who knows? Maybe one was a diva. They're not in Gremlins, too, right? Yes. Yeah, okay. They're scientists and Gremlins, too, which is probably where I recognize them. Because when I saw this movie, I absolutely said, hey, it's those guys. I can recognize them.

Yeah. But, like, the big effect was the morphing. Yes. And I did some research into the history of morphing, which I thought was in. So the first movie to use morphing is actually the golden child. Okay. The bad guy morphs either into a rat or out of a rat. It looks bad.

They weren't there yet. And then I haven't seen Star Trek 4 in forever. But there's these giant heads in the clouds. Yes. That's morphic. Yeah. When they travel in time, they kind of all lose their minds for a few minutes and they have like a dream sequence. And during the three sequences, you see pictures of the actor's head and you hear like,

dialogue being played in the background, and then actors morph into other actors. So, like, Kirk turns into Sulu or whatever, and, yeah, it just, you know, it goes through them. It's an effective, weird sequence, and it doesn't make sense, but it's like, it shouldn't make sense. Because I remember the morphing in six, but I don't remember it in that. And then... Right, because it's six, which comes out the same year, by the way.

That's 1991. They have an actual shapefitter, and she morphs into Kirk. Yes. Yes. And then I think the big one people always remember is Willow when the one, I think, I forget who she is, because I haven't seen Willow since 1998, where she morphs from a duck into other animals. And that was very effective, a very good effect.

And then the same year in Last Crusade, when that dude chooses poorly, that is a morph effect, a combination of physical, practical, and morphing. Right. They morph his face a little bit, and then they throw in the big skeleton puppet. And then they shake the puppet, and then they knock the public as a wall, and the puppet explodes. Yeah. And then morphing became hot shit immediately after this. And I do think it's interesting that people talk about the CG in this, but there's not a lot of it.

It's like 40-some shots of CG, still mostly practical effects, miniatures. The opening shots of this film use rear projections still. Yes. Like the big shit's coming in. And James Cameron did rear projection better than anybody because I think he realized if you make it so, if you make it so it's supposed to be slightly out of focus, like in the camera, like on purpose. it looks fantastic. The scene when they're driving away after they escape is rear projection. And it looks amazing.

You know, I really think a lot of the effects that hold up in this and in Jurassic Park, another film that is similar, the practical effects hold up the best. It's also what's the first film to do wire removal, which is a big deal later on. Yeah, I want to talk about that because that's an amazing scene. It's during the big chase scene after the mall. It's a big shot because you see the robot Terminator drive his bike off of, like, a ledge or something, and you just see him land. And it's all one shot. And you're like, wow, how do they do that?

And the answer is, first of all, that's not Arnold. That's his stunt double Peter Kent, wearing some, like, some prosthetics to make to look more like Arnold. Yes. And, yeah, they had a bunch of wires tied to the bike to sort of soften the blow. But after they shot it, they go in digitally and remove the wires. So it just looks like a guy drove a bike off of a huge ledge and how did it not kill himself? Because they took every percussion in the world and then clearly the wires with the CG. I was listening a bit to the commentary of that and they were like there were talks to make them bright orange wires to make them easier to see.

But then I was like, well, what if we can't do it? We should still try to make them as small as possible just in case we have to cut around it. So they weren't sure this is the first time they did. did wire removal, but they weren't sure they could actually pull it off when they were doing stuff. They knew they could do it, but they were still hesitant that it would end up looking good. You know, you know, you can do something, but when the final product comes out, how's it going to look for sure? You don't know 100%. Like, they had a pretty good idea, but they were like still nervous because it was a big deal. Yeah, that's wild to think about that technology being

that new at that point still. Yeah. Yeah. So when you watch the movie, I would say, take a close look the movie, really took a close look of the movie, and you'll notice that basically the only CG stuff that particularly stands out is when you actually see the T-1,000 change on camera. And there are lots of moments where the T-1-000 doesn't change on camera. There's lots of shots where the thing will just pan

away, or he'll, like, change his arm off-camera, and then pick up his arm, and his arms already transformed. My favorite bits are during the fight sequence in the steel mill, when Arnold and the T-1,000 are sort of fighting the rest, the kind of wrestling, And there's a great CD shot where Arnold sort of punches the T1,000, and the T1,000

turns into Goop, and then morphs into goop and changes his head into his hands, and that's how he gets a grip on Arnold's hand. But immediately following that shot, there's a couple, like, maybe two or three seconds of them wrestling with each other. And if you really look closely, you'll see the T1,000 is just a guy in a bright silver suit. He looks like he's wearing tinfoil. Really?

It's a guy in a suit. It's really, like, if you notice, if you know what's there, it's very normal. Because of your notes, I knew the scene where they blast the T1,000's head into two pieces is practical effects and not CGI at all. And I was watching it, and I was like, I still don't believe it. Just because it looks so good and so believable that, yeah, it's shocking that they would go for the practical version of it. Yeah, so much of the stuff of the T1,000 getting shot, because throughout the movie, he gets shot. And every time the T1,000 gets shot, you see these sort of silver bullet holes appear, because

That's like his liquid metal getting all fucked up. Excuse my language. And you might assume, oh, that's a computer effect. No, they built into his clothes, these special things that would, like, burst open. And in some shots, you can see the sort of, like, apparatus when he falls downs or something. But most of the time, it looks perfect. Like, this is all, again, Stan Winston, a genius, you know, you mentioned, James, you mentioned Dressus Park. Again, that's another Stan Winston movie where it's like, yeah, this movie has great.

digital special effects, but it's also full of incredible miniatures and models and animatronics, you know, you think back to the entire, the entire sequence where Sarah envisions the destruction of Los Angeles. Yeah, it's all miniatures. It's amazing. Yeah, like, I would assume the explosion itself is a CG explosion, but then the building's blowing apart, the traffic being blown apart, all the stuff in the playground. Again, you're talking about doubles.

You see Sarah Connor is looking in on a playground, and she's sees her younger self. The younger self is Linda Hamilton's twin sister in a wake. Because she didn't get jacked, so... No, she didn't get jacked. So she can play the other Sarah Connor while she's there shaking the fence. And then, of course, that amazing bit where, you know, she gets let on fire. That's a puppet.

And the puppet explodes into a skeleton, that's a skeleton puppet. Like, these are all puppets. It's amazing work. It is. So good. Puppets all the way down. Although my favorite, honestly, again, cut scene. You have to watch it's an extended sequence or look it up on YouTube. There's an entire sequence where they had a thing where after they take the Terminator and they escape from the hospital, they have a conversation and the Terminator's like, yeah, I can alert a computer, but my computer, it's set for, you know, read only when I get set on the field. And she's like, oh, can we change a switch? And they have an entire, like, surgery sequence where they cut open the Terminator's head, pull out the chip and, like, you know, toggle the switch from good to evil, basically.

And to do this, they have a puppet Arnold in the foreground, real Arnold in the background, Linda Hamilton on one side, Lynn Hamilton's sister on the other side, Edward Furlong in one side, Edward Furlong's double the other side, and they fake a mirror shot. You can see in one long sequence how they're cutting into a puppet clearly, but you can see in the mirror that Arnold Schwarzenegger is looking at himself and talking them through the procedure. It is an amazing sequence It goes on for too long So I'm glad they cut it But by all means If you if you look this up Watch it

It's so cool looking And so Waste of time Like you don't need to do that level Of effect They could have had a cut And it would have looked fine But James Cameron

It's like no We have the power of twins Let's use it to our full advantage He might be something of a showoff This James Cameron I think I think you're right. I think you're right.

It's a good, good call. Possibly, possibly. Mm-hmm. scenes or moments that you love from this movie or if you hate for them it's okay you can do some hate if you want to hate I know no no it's just sort of washes over me as one big thing and yeah to be fully honest I kept having to be like no you're watching this for a podcast keep watching you can't get up and make a sandwich just sit there and keep watching it but um when it comes to individual except for like the the um special effect shots that I've realized

you're not CGI and that was really impressive, I don't come away from the screening with a whole with a whole lot of things that I need to share, you know? I've seen this film dozens of times, probably. And watching it last night, like I said, there are two extended cuts and there's one that's like a secret extended cut. And I watched that one. It's even longer.

And two things I took away from that is one, it's hard to forget that. From the second they show up at Cyberdyne until the end, it's basically almost real time and one extended action sequence you know they there's the setting thing up blowing thing up the T1,000 shows up

there's the T-1,000 shows up there's the T-Sane they go to the Sparks Factory there's the final fight there and just the pacing of that's really good a lot of films you know have weak second to acts this one you know accent films especially they don't know how to do the middle

part this one keeps the pace going and the finale the one thing from the extended version that I think is better in the finale, after the T-1000 is frozen and explodes and reforms, he's broken. Yes. And so more often he's making mistakes. His feet blend in with the floor, stuff like that. And I think that was a really cool way to show how beatable he actually is.

And that stood out to me as something that they sort of kept in, in my opinion, they sort of kept in the film. but yeah this movie's like wallpaper in a good way it's like I don't think about individual parts of it you know I wish I had more of the Guns and Rosa song because as a kid

I was using the Guns and Roses and I remember reading about why that song's in there they were like we need a soundtrack single and then Arnold was like find the biggest band in the world I don't care who they are put him in a movie

I know Arnold shows up for the video too yeah to make it an event you know right yeah yeah it's a great song Also, I do love that the Terminator, in order to sneak his shotgun into the mole, he literally puts it inside a box of flowers, so he literally has a gun in a box of roses. I thought that was funny. Yeah.

Even as a kid, I got that. I didn't even think about that until right now. Wow. Okay. Wow. Okay. I guess I do want to talk about, because I mentioned earlier briefly, I want to up with a scene that, because as you mentioned, James, the second act, there's a,

there's a portion of the second act where they essentially, they get. away. Like, they've almost won. They escape, they go south, they meet up with Sarah's old, like, buddies, and they collect a shit ton of guns and ammunition. That's where Arnold picks up the mini gun that, like, belongs in a helicopter, like, he's just carrying it. So during that sequence is when she learns about Miles Dyson, and she learns that, okay, this one guy, based on his work, based on work from the first Terminator that got destroyed in the computer factory, which, as we mentioned last time was actually shot for the first movie but was cut. But this movie could

canonize it, that the remains of the first Terminator in the first movie were repurposed by a tech company and lead to the creation of Terminators. And that's led by a guy named Miles Dyson. So when Sarah learns for this project and she has her nightmare about the city, she decides, well, if I go kill Miles Dyson, I will essentially erase the nuclear war and I'll save of the earth. And to me, I argue that this is like Sarah is essentially becoming a Terminator herself. And if you notice also, for this scene, she dresses in all black, she puts on sunglasses, she carries the biggest gun she could possibly find, and she goes to Miles Dyson's house, she tries to shoot him, she misses out of sheer luck, like he just, he happens to move

at the last second, she unloads, but she unloads her like her assault rifle, she storms his house, she shoots him, she gets point blank, and she's like, I'm going to kill you. And, you know, Miles Dyson's like, please don't kill my family. And, like, she basically hesitates. And her son and the other Terminator arrived just in time. And that's where they have the whole scene where they talk it out, and they lay it out from Miles Dyson. Here's what's going to happen. He, you know, and she gives a speech about, like, motherhood. Like, you know, you don't understand what it's like to actually create something because she created a baby. And they kind of downplay it with John, like, sort of plays for laughs. Like, mom, we need to be more constructive here. But she's also, like,

she's not wrong. Like, she created a life and Miles Dyson is working on a computer that will only destroy them, you know? There is this interesting thing that happens in science fiction where men try to bring life into existence without going through the normal reproductive system. And it always turns out very badly for everyone. Like Frankenstein is like an interesting example of this thing like there's probably a queer reading of it but like these men are trying to bypass women

in creating life and that's the thing that women do and it's egotistical and honestly ungodly and that's why it brings about destruction but I didn't really I didn't really understand this scene in that sense until right now and also you are correct she does become a terminator but her humanity wins out

because she is not a robot bought sent to kill. She's still a person no matter what. And yeah, that's a good explanation. I really like that reading of that scene. Yeah. Thank you. It's mine. Good time. Well, if that's the book of our reading of the movie, I guess we can move on to the video game portion of the podcast because this is retronauts. We do like to talk about video games from time to time.

And this movie had an immediate impact on the world of video games, both officially and unofficially. Let's do unofficial first because that thing is funny. And it's better games. Yeah. Honestly, yes. Yeah. Oh, God. Because especially.

the Terminator as a robot really took over Japanese media like anime and video games they looked at that robot like oh I love this robot I'm going to draw this robot on you know in 2D and 3D it's we're going to use it in our video games we love it but boy when they saw a character

that can essentially change shape and become any other character they realize that it's a cool effect and this will allow me to repurpose the art assets I already own so really I think from 1991 on every video game is like, oh my God, we need to have a shapeshifter.

And especially if we can do a shapeshifter as a boss, that's even better. And I feel like right away, right away, because 92, you've got Giggis in the World Heroes Series, who is literally made of, like, it looks like liquid metal, he transforms into their characters in the game. You have Shang Sung in Mortal Kombat, he's not made of metal, but when you fight him, he does the morph effect and turns into other characters in the game. Like, it's clearly taking inspiration from this morphing thing that's going on. And I'm guessing Drew, did you add a bunch of other names here?

Because there's a lot of other names here. I think, or are that you, James? James added Dural. I think I was the rest. Okay. But Dural is, Dural is after Terminator 2, right? Yes. Okay, yeah.

Yeah. I added Dural. That was the first one that came to mind. I'm not a big fighting game person, but I have played some VF. I don't know who Glacius is. Glacius is the Iceman in Killer Instinct, but the way his hands morph look a lot, like, the way the T-1,000's hands morph into blades specifically. And that one seems pretty dead on to me. And then the Street Fighter guys, 12, very much is a similar shape-shifting thing who can make

weapons out of his hands. Yes. Seth, I think, is a little bit less clear, but I think you could probably argue a cause and effect relationship there as well. I think it's pretty good direct because not only has Seth got a silver body, but also all of Seth's moves are based on other moves and the plot I think the plot of the game was like he is either a robot or a cyborg or some kind of organism designed a copy of the things which is very much what the team 1000 does so I think that's very much in line with Seth's creation and Drew what does this connection between Sarah Kana and Kami oh okay so someone who is not me composed a video that ended up he like mailed to me he's like I think you put this on your site and they did answering the question

of there's this weird thing in fighting games where cammy Sarah from Virtua Fighter, Nina Williams from Tekken, and one more who, I can't grow all off the top of my head, have very similar stories and that they're all brainwashed blonde European women who are in fighting games. And it's so similar that I assume there had to be a common antecedent that what everyone was drawing from. The interesting thing is that early in the process of making Super Street Fighter 2, Cammy's name was originally Sarah.

And the reason is that they changed her name to be different from Virtua Fighters, Sarah, which I think beat them to the release, the punch of getting released, but not by very long. And in this video that this person whose name, I'm not recalling off the top of my head, but we can put a link in the show notes that he came up with,

he theorizes that it's mostly La Femniquita, but there is some brainwashing stuff that comes from other places. And one of the Sarah Connor elements that gets wrapped up into them, I think is what you're talking about, Diamond, where she is a woman on a solitary mission.

There is nothing at stopping her. She is robot-like. She's not an assassin. She's not a brainwashed assassin, but she is this woman who is, like, going through life with, like, a single motive in mind. So that might be why, like, the thing Sarah keeps coming up in these, like,

brainwashed blonde female clones, and also why some of Nina's outfits in the Tekken series look like the outfit in this scene where she goes to kill Miles Dyson, specifically. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, it's like a lengthy, it's a lengthy, detailed video. He did a very good job with it.

Because when I think came, I just think Kylie Minogue. That is the other thing, yes. But I am gay, so there is that. I'm usually thinking about Kylie Monoak. Yeah, that's normal. Yeah. But the same year, the same year as Terminator 2, 1991, we get two big adaptations right away from our folks at Midway. The most important one I would argue is the arcade shooter, which is just called Terminator 2.

It later gets ported to home versions are called T2, the arcade game, and it's very much, you know, it's a light gun game, it's a rail shooter, it's a pretty safe cabinet, it's got lots of pictures of, you know, the Terminator and Arnold on the outside, it's got two little Uzi's mountain on there, and it kind of gives you an abridged version of the movie, by which I mean you spend half of the game fighting future war, and then you quickly go back to the time. to the present to run through the sort of action finale of the movie. And it's kind of an interesting game because obviously you're shooting everything because it's a gun game. But I do think it's interesting that this is, you know, this is 91, so it's post-Nark, but pre-Mortal combat, and they really go out of their way to photograph and digitize as many actors from the movie as they can. So they get a lot of voice clips too.

Arnold does a lot of voice clips, like almost all the, you know, game over or insert Like, all that stuff is Arnold, you know, my No Way Jose, if you push Start on the cabinet without putting in a coin, he says, No Way, Jose, and he'll do it as many times you push the button. You just keep pressing. He'll keep saying it. I'm Sir Arcade operators love that. No way, Jose. But Robert Patrick's in the game. Edward Furlong's in the game. Linda Hamilton, not in the game.

I don't know if she was busy or just what happened. I don't know. But she's not in the game. She's a girl. I mean. Sarah's in the game. Sarah Conner's in the game. Linda Hamilton's not in the game.

That's what I'm saying. By the way, there's entire sequences where you shoot Terminators with skin on them. And, you know, as a kid, I was like, oh, wow, I'm shooting Arnold Schwarzenegger. But that's Peter Kent again. So in all the stuff in game, if you're shooting a Terminator, that is not to Arnold. That's Peter Kent in makeup. Oh, okay. But it's Arnold's voice.

So Arnold's definitely, you know, cooperated with the project and gave them some time, but he wasn't there getting all dressed up. That wasn't his job. And I think it's safe to say that this kid. game's legacy is Revolution X, which... They're similar. They're similar in that, you know, I mean, Revolution X is three-player or not two, and they have a much different storyline. Is that the Aerosmith game? Yes, that is the Aerosmith game, yes. Yeah. And obviously, it uses a lot of digitized footage as well. Yeah. But yeah, this was a game that I absolutely, you know, I sought out. I

played it a lot. It's incredibly hard. It's incredibly hard as Like Gun Games go. because there are a couple sequences where if you don't do it right, you have to start over. You can't just credit-feed your way through them. I'm thinking of there's two separate sequences where you have to defend a vehicle from being attacked on screen. At the vehicle, it gets destroyed, you just have to start over. And during the finale, in the steel mill, the T-1000 is trying to get to John Connor, and if you don't shoot him fast enough, he kills John Connor. And if you continue, they say, well, John Connor's dead, try again, and you just start the whole thing over again,

which could be a long time because it's a long fight. You have to like freeze. You get, you have to do the liquid nitrogen thing and freeze him first. It's a lot. It's a lot.

It's a very hard game, I think. And it has the thing where you have to shoot as much cyberdine stuff as possible to get the good ending. Yes. Much like Revolution X, you have to rescue all the band members to get the good ending.

So the idea of putting in a super hard requirement to get a good ending in an arcade shooter is a, a dick move. But probably something arcade operators loved. Yes. I played a lot of these games. So they got me. Yeah. I put a lot of coins in these games, absolutely.

Yeah, the Cyberdain thing is interesting to me because, yeah, the whole point of that scene is that you're supposed to be shooting the stuff around the office, but you're still being attacked by cops. However, if you shoot the cops like Arnold in the movie, you're just, you're wounding them. So they fall down and they hold their knees, like somehow, somehow you're always hitting them in the knees. So you don't kill anyone, but you are still. shooting cops in the game. So it doesn't matter where you shoot the cops. You don't have to shoot the cops in the knees. You can shoot them anywhere and they don't die.

Yeah. Just like in the movie, I guess blood loss isn't a cause of death. Because look, if you shoot a man in both kneecaps and there's not immediate medical attention, they're going to bleed out. Yeah. But I would say, even though the game is hard to the point that almost being unfair, it didn't stop me as a kid from playing it so much. I never had the home versions, which I guess would have been more economical, but

they're impossible. I had, I played them. I can imagine. I can imagine the home versions are in an easier. Yeah. I can remember times when like my local pizza parlor arcade was full of fighting games and Terminator 2. Mm-hmm. Movie tie-ins make the money.

I'm told they're different boards. Like, I think as a kid, I just assumed that Revolution X was somehow like a conversion kit or something for T2. But the fact that Revolution X, A, has three guns instead of two and has, I think, different mechanics on the inside. I'm pretty sure they're different, like, they're different games. so they can't but they have a lot of similar aspects you're right did you ever put in two coins and then use both guns as one person oh wow no not did i didn't i think of that i never got i did that i did that before with multiple gun games did you feel like a model did it make you feel like a big man do you feel like an american yes yeah i had a friend always did that

in um house of the dead house he always did two guns at house the dead yes i don't ever tried that for the for the machine gun game though play john woo style it's the only way to go no um but also making great use of the actors audio specifically was the midway pinball table we didn't do a lot of pinball talking of retronauts but that was another one a very eye-catching game i don't know if it was the first but it was definitely one of the first pinball games that i can recall that had a proper like digital screen on it that would show pictures and have animations and And the ball launcher was not a plunger, but it was a gun. You pulled a trigger and you shoot.

You shoot the ball into the playfield. Had tons of audio from the actors saying stuff. You had to, like, hit targets in the game. It's an incredibly high scoring game, which is also a big change for me. Like, I played pinball in the late 80s. And to me, like, a million points was like, that meant something. But in Terminator 2, like, you get a million points for launching the ball. I guess nothing.

It doesn't matter. You wake up with a million points. It's nothing. Wow, and I just spelled my name. Thrill House. Absolutely. And that's the last good one. We can stop now.

We can't stop, James. We can't stop. This is video game country. So also in 1999, we have a computer game. Also, we should have to emphasize almost all these games that we mentioned are just called Terminator 2. So I'm striving to describe them as best I can. But to look them up, you have to, like, be creative with your Google because they're just called Terminator 2. They don't really have specific names or anything.

So, 1991, a computer game made by a studio called Dementia. And, you know, it's a computer game. So while it has similar elements across platforms, every platform has their own sort of feel to it. Some have more levels than others. Certainly, some games have Sarah Connor. Some games don't have Sarah Connor at all. You just play the Terminator the entire time. But I really would call this like a mini-game collection because you're just like, you just have these sort of scenes.

You're like, here I am. I'm the Terminator. I'm fighting the T-1000. Here I am. I'm the Terminator on a bike driving away from the T-1-1-000 in a truck. Here I am operating on myself in a sliding tile puzzle to fix my arm. The weirder one is like, here's a picture of my face. I'm going to do a sliding tile puzzle to fix my face. I don't know why they did that. I just think game developers love sliding tile puzzles. I really do. I think that. It looks weble. it looks very like just time filler you know yeah yeah like how much time can you spend in this game before you beat it like if you know what you're doing you watch on youtube people who know how to play the game can beat the game in like 15 20 minutes because like this is just not much here you know especially the fighting game which is like you just walk up and it's like it's almost like you know rock I'm talking robots like that's what it looks like honestly you're just boom boom boom there's no moves just just punch kick it's all in the mind

So also 1991, but on the Game Boy from Bits Studios is another action game. I think this one's a little more cohesive. Yeah. It has an incredible, look this up, folks. There's an incredible in-game portrait of Sarah Connor. Please look at the Sarah Connor on your Game Boy. It looks so funny. She looks great.

She looks, it's like speaks to a level of quality that was not in the previous one. Why do you think these were so uneven in quality? why would the studio make these deals with Midway for the pinball game and the shooting arcade game and then make deals with these like smaller unknown studios whose names I don't really recognize for games like this? Do you know? I think it comes down to publisher because almost all of these games were published by LGN and LJN was very famous. It's like, hey, we get this license, we hire a studio, we probably don't give them as much time or money as they need and we want this game out as quickly as possible as close to the movie as possible.

I guess that does make sense. Indeed, if you watch the movie in the credits, it just says, like, play the hit video game from a claim slash LJN. And that's just, like, who got the publishing rights, you know? Because they didn't know who was made in the games. They didn't know what would be in the games. Most of these games don't even come out in 91, as we'll get into.

But the movie knows there's going to be video games, so they put that out in the credits. Right. And I guess right above that, like, read the book, read the novelization that someone wrote. I don't know who wrote that. I guess they were just assuming that, like, us being dumb kids, we would spend money on anything regardless of quality, and just the Terminator license would be enough, which they probably were not wrong about. So, but, but I would suppose that people on this podcast would be have a little bit more of an eye for quality.

I mean, I was just old enough to love the movie and also know that a lot of license games were not good. Yeah. But if I had been a little bit younger, I might have dropped money on a home version. I don't know. Right. Certainly the arcade game was certainly my speed. But I didn't play any of these at the time Because I looked at them like

This doesn't look good, you know I remember Nintendo Power trying to convince me That the S&S version was worth paying attention to It was like, I don't believe you, Nintendo Power Your hold on me is not complete I can tell this game looks like Crapola This is from an era where my dad owned the video store And I've literally played almost every single video game

And this is also around the air where I was old enough to realize You, movie-based video games, I'm a tap out. Yeah. And I think I played the SNS one. It looked familiar. But, oh, they're rough. But yeah, it's funny how many of these games exclude Sarah Connor, but make sure to give you scenes where you play as John Connor

fighting the robots in the future. It's funny how they make that decision time and time again, even though Sarah Connor in the movie is very much a badass who carries an assault rifle and will shoot the hell out of you. if you get in her way. Yeah. But yeah. So the Game Boy game, a little more cohesive, but still, there's a whole sequence we have to

reprogram the Terminator in the future to send back in time. And it's just, you know, it's a puzzle game. It's timed. I cannot imagine being a child and enjoying this timed puzzle to reprogram a Terminator by clicking on little like light switches in a, you know, it's not quite lights out level puzzles, but like it's, it's not, nothing deep is happening here. You know, it's not Tetris. No, no.

I'm a little more partial to the 1992 release, which is made by software creations for 8-bit systems. It was released on the NES in 92 and the 1983 for Sega Master System and Game Gear. And almost all my affection for this game, I think, is because they got Jeff Fallon to do the music. And I swear, if you watch an 8-bit game on YouTube or whatever, or you remember an 8-bit game from the computer or NES era, and you're like, boy, that game was not so great,

but the music was awesome. Yeah. Odds are, it was Tim Fallon or Jeff Fallon doing the music. In this case, it's Jeff Fallon. And I think the NES game has pretty good, pretty kick-ass music. It's got a furious beat. It's got real energy, even though on screen, you're just kind of like, it's like a beat-em-up platformer.

Like, you're running around and jumping and you're fighting guys in the bar parking lot. It's, you know, it's not great. Do they have a fallen cover of the actual Terminator 2 theme? Or is it all original stuff? I think it's all original. I think the only game. me, the only game that really tries to capture the music of the movie is the Midway game. Like, that to me, it sounds like you've got this sort of, there's like a pulsing, like,

beat behind it. It's like dumb, dumb, dumb, don't end, like this, the different electronics that go different places, but you get the beat behind it, so I feel like you get the urgency. And of course, you're shooting a gun, so the gun is his own like percussion that goes along with the music. Can I say, I cannot believe they released a Sega Master System version in 1990. three. Yeah, I mean,

the Massachusetts had a long life in some countries, you know, but even in North America, they were still there were still out there. So I'm sure to them that's like,

well, also, because of the game gear, I'm sure it was very low effort. Oh, okay. If we're making an 8-bit game that plays on Sega's mobile hardware, it will also play on their home hardware. So we just have to ship it.

Because in doing this podcast, believe me, I've learned a lot of games that came out in the early 90s that were on game gear and Master System. And to me, I was like, that doesn't make a sense.

But then you realize you do the math, like, oh, okay, well, it's 8 bit. Sure, why not? Mind blowing. But those Sega versions don't have the fallen soundtrack,

so to me it's like, why would you even do that? And again, I will cite Stuart Chip, Game Gear expert, who wrote, nobody is going to recommend this to anyone for any reason.

Why should I write about it? What has the game gun to deserve any kind of meaningful critical securitney? Thank you. Stewart. I used to feel like that when I would review post-grunge records. I have nothing to say about 7 Mary 3.

Why I said I don't listen to it? Why write about it? Yeah, same. But I do have to shout out the fact that much like Sarah's incredible portrait in the Game Boy game, John's in-game portrait with his floppy hair to me looks just like Narciss Prince from Super Punch Out. He's got the same floppy hair and the same aghast look on his face. It's like when Narciss's Prince gets punched in his face and doesn't like it,

That's John in this game. Just sort of, who-oh. I always wonder when you get that, is that, is this of the era when they couldn't get likeness rights? So it's like, let's make somebody who was legally distinct from the actor. Do children have license rights? I don't even know. That's a terrifying question. I don't know.

I just don't know. I have no idea. Can you sign the likeness rights to his stunt double? And then, like, that's good enough. I don't know. Yeah, Macaulay Culkin's face was used in the Home Alone game, so there must have been some sort of reality there. Yeah.

Yeah. He was too busy making records in Japan. He just didn't have time for this shit. Yeah. Or maybe he was saying yes to everything. We don't know. That's true. Only Edward Furlong knows for sure.

And let's be honest, at this point, he might not remember. You might not remember. You might not remember. The 90s. That was a long time ago, kid. It was a long time ago, yeah, yeah. Anyway, also 90s, video video game, we got a 16-bit video game, again by Bit Studio. This was all on Super Nintendo and Genesis.

fact that there's in a track mode that shows nude Arnold or right from the future, and he walks into the bar, and they, like, Austin Power Style put something in front of him as he walks into the bar to make sure you don't see his dick, but he still gets to do it. So he can get to the bar safely and then come out of the bar all dressed up, which the eight-bit game, even though you're in the bar parking lot, presumably fighting your way to get into the bar, you're already dressed in your leather outfit, which is like, where did you get the leather outfit? Why are you going to the bar if you already have the costume? too bad we didn't live in a society at the time that allowed the 8-bit and 16-bit dong

and I just I wish we would have had more representations of those of that at the time it's too bad just spineless spineless the lot of tantical society spineless and dickless both yes anyway to me the 16-bit version seems to be it seems like a downgrade to me because the music is just like droning there's like one track you hear so much especially in the first the early the early part of the game there's one track that just, it sounds like it plays on repeat, it's a really short loop, I hate it, and, you know, the further you get in the game, the more just nonsense shows up, like, while you're doing all this, like, 2D action, you have to, like, find future objects and recover them before you

leave. I guess, like, you're collecting Terminator parts or maybe, I don't know, there's just enemies everywhere. It's one of those games, like, no matter where you go, you're being attacked by everyone and everything. Like, the steel mill is full of dangers, like, there's guys everywhere. There's, I think there's other terminators everywhere. Like, why are there so many terminators in this game?

It should only be one. Or, like, or one enemy terminator at least. But no, there's tons of enemies everywhere. Even the T-1000, even the end of the game, the T-1-000 falls in the lava, or not lava. So the molten steel. It's lava. It's more. For a video game, it's lava, yeah, it's essentially lava.

Falls in the VAT, right? You still have to go over there and fight him from the VAT, and he's throwing fireballs at you from the vat. I was like, come on. He's dead. I never played. I skimmed all of these. I think I played a few when I went out as a kid. I saw that and if I would have seen that as a kid, I would have broken my TV. It's like I shot that motherfucker. It's part of my life. I shot him. He is in the lava. He is dead. I've watched the movie. Don't you do this to me? Oh, I, oh, that made me angry now. Anyway, by all means, if you enjoy these movies or enjoy the games based on movie. Tell us which one is your favorite. I personally, I'm really can't go, like, the arcade

games is it for me. That's, that's like the beginning, the end of conversation, maybe the pinball game. The rest of these games, I did not touch them then. I do not touch them now. Sorry. I'm not open out. The best one is chess wars, right? I mean. This one I almost didn't realize existed. I'll be honest, okay? I only found this about, like, in the last 24 hours, before we were ready to record this podcast, I discovered something about chess war. Like, what do you mean? Chess Wars. There's a 1993 DOS game called Terminator 2 Judgment Day chess wars, and it's what it's what it sounds like. It's a chess game except all the pieces are either human beings or Terminator-style robots, except for Arnold. Arnold is the good king of your side, but there's

a Terminator on the bad side. And whatever pieces take each other, you get to see as bespoke animation where the two characters fight one another. So if you want to see a mock, you know, Linda Hamilton get burned with a flamethrower, this is the game for you. It's part of, it's part of the chess experience. I don't know why this exists. I guess the license was very cheap for computers, I guess. I don't know. Or LGN. Someone made LGN an offer. Like, we'll make you a chess game LGN. And LGN said, I don't see money in my hand. I think that's all they said. I don't know. So the queen, the terminating Queen chest piece is basically just a pink and purple Terminator.

So that was them being like, what do we do? It was like, do we give it boobs? They're like, no, that would be weird. Let's just make it pink and purple. That way you know she's a girl. It would be 10 years. It would be 10 years before we would get the actual female Terminator in Terminator 3. So they didn't know what to do.

It looks horrible. Like, it looks like sub-Donkey Kong country renders. Yeah. John Connor on a motorcycle His pants are all one shade of blue So when he moves it looks really weird Also he's the bishop So there's two John Connors which is very confusing

Yeah well yeah there's that too yes And it's like battlechests but bad You know It's already iffy for me as a game honestly I remember playing battle chest at time like These animations are cute the first time you see them But after that like aren't you just going to skip them when you see it for the 20th time.

The anime, you can say what you can about Battle Tress. It looks good. It does. This looks horrible. Yeah. Graphics are completely unimpressive. Even by 993 standards on a PC, completely unimpressive. It looks like late 80s, like, slop, honestly.

Yeah. You know. Yeah. Who's this for? What, the saddest child? It's a sad dad game. Let's be real. It could be.

It could be. Oh, my dad, dad knows I watched. I love T2. This is what he got me. This is why dad didn't come around the house anymore. Mm-hmm. Sorry. I got a little dark there.

It's okay. I'm laughing because my parents got divorced around this time. No. One too. Hey. We should also mention, even though we can't possibly talk about it because it's not out yet, but by the time you hear this podcast, it might be out. I don't know when we're launching this, but there is a brand new Terminator 2 video game coming

this year in 2025. It's called No Fate. It's developed by the Bitmap Bureau, Bitmap Bureau, who made Xenocrisis. It's largely 2D with pixel art assets. It looks fantastic. I don't know if it plays well, but it looks like they really lean into

drawing everything as detailed as possible. Arnold is nude in the bar. You fight as nude Arnold in the bar. I don't think they render his penis, but you at least get to see a 98% nude Arnold fighting people in a bar. Yeah, it does look cool. I'm interested to see how,

how it plays out. A lot, you know, maybe they made Xenal Crisis? Yes, that was a previous gamer there, which is a, you know, a Contra-style shooter. Yeah, we call that one. This one definitely has a lot of shooting, but it's also fighting. There's some, I think there's some driving. There's definitely, the stages

that were John, again, you got to have John Conner fighting people in the future. To me, it looks just like Contra 3 in the presentation. Like, I saw fire in the foreground, you know. But it's weird just to think that, like, no one had the idea of, like, we should do a contra with this license back in the day, which would have been probably a lot more successful.

Yeah, yeah. I guess, I guess LGN didn't want to pay for Contra. They didn't want, they didn't want contra development. They wanted, you know, what do you got? The sliding tile puzzles? Okay, slide and tiles puzzles. We're good. Oh, my God.

If you, if the Bitmap Bureau is listening to this and you have a time machine, do not put a sliding tile puzzle in no fate. We will not, I will not forgive you. I will nope out of that immediately. Turn the game off. Well, we're coming up with two hours, and I'd like to get this podcast done before the, like, shorter length than the actual movie. So let's quickly talk about the legacy and wrap this up.

legacy, obviously, this movie is a huge goddamn hit. It absolutely dominates 1991. It was the top grossing movie of 1991. It's probably the top grossing movie in 1992. I think only, like, Jurassic Park comes to 93 and that, that tops it. But I'm guessing nothing in 92 did better than Terminator 1

or Terminator 2. It's too many numbers. I'm sorry. But even more than money, like people love this movie. I understand Drew, Drew, you have mixed feelings about it. But people to this day revere T2 as a classic. it is very high. It's number 28 on the internet movie list, the top 250 list.

It's right above Star Wars and Back to the Future, which, like, that almost seems high to me. Like, I love Back to the Future. And is this better than Back to the Future? I don't know. I don't know if it is. I don't think it is, but I think it just speaks to how many people saw this at a departure of a point in their lives. And it's become like the go-to action movie of action movies.

Yeah. And I think, you know, it's just so influential. and kind of sets the tone for what a modern action film had. Like, Dawes is the first blockbuster, really. And this kind of, this and Jurassic Park kind of set the stage for what the next stage of blockbusters would be. Yeah. Like, spend big, earn big. And if possible, tie to something that every, I think everyone knows.

Like, not that people really knew what Jurassic Park was so much in 1983, but they knew what dinosaurs were. Like, here's it. Come to the movies, kids. We're going to show you dinosaurs on an island. and we're going to make you believe. It's like, okay, I did. I do think, and I may have used this metaphor before I'm going to pronounce and I apologize, that Terminator 2, it's influence.

It's a great film. I like it. I like part one more. But it's influence. It's kind of like something like Van Halen or Pearl Jam in that everyone influenced by it took the wrong lessons. Yeah, there you go. Yes.

And so, like, Terminator 2 works because it's working within limitations. It's still using practical effects. It is combining them in a unique way. You get to something like, like, I like the Brendan Fraser Mummy movie. It's fun. But it looks terrible. It looks terrible. It has aged horribly because they relied too much on CG that wasn't there yet.

This film's strengths, people spent so much time on those 40-some shots of CG and didn't think about the rest of it. And they really should have, you know. And I think that's also part of its legacy, you know. It is not, I could name 27 films better than this right now, I won't do that. But it's just, it's not, nostalgia goes a long way there. But like the lessons learned from it were the long ones, in my opinion. Yeah. I would agree.

As far as people behind it, well, James Cameron continues to go higher and higher after this movie. True Lies, big hit, Arnold again. Then again, Titanic, we get the entire press routine of, oh my God, he's making a $200 million movie. It breaks box office records. it wins like 36 Emmy, Oscars, huge massive hit. And then it is, again, for Avatar, as of this recording, I think he's spending like $400 million on Avatar sequels. I have no idea how many of these movies will even come out at this point.

But I got to be honest, I saw Avatar in theaters and it blew me away. I saw Avatar 2 in theaters. I was like, this is really goddamn cool. I'm into this. You know, let's go. Let's go Space Whale. So whenever Avatar 3 or 4 comes out, I'm probably going to show up. I'm sorry.

I'm probably going to show up. He's won me over He's won me over Yeah, he's good at his job You know, for the most part There are other things he's not good at That I want to touch on briefly But yeah

As for Arnold, this is almost I mean, it's his high point As far as like raw numbers Like he gets paid a lot of money His movie is incredibly successful He has a few more hits in the 90s I would argue that Eraser is technically His last traditional action movie

It's very much like He has the one liners He's fighting against the system he kills a shitload of guys with guns and a crocodile. Yeah. Your luggage, yeah. Yeah. Batman and Robin is a huge payday, but obviously not the huge hit they wanted.

And some people hate it. And then as the years go on, he gets in the politics thing. Obviously, he can't do movies when he's, you know, running a state. But basically these days, he shows up for like some weird projects. And if a Terminator sequel comes around, he almost always says yes, the Terminator sequels. because why you have movies today where the Terminator is an old man and they put in some, you know,

they put in some film logic to explain why the Terminator's old. But I'm, you know, I'm on record as saying I like most Terminator sequels. I think Terminator 3 is better than this reputation. I think Terminator Dark Fate,

which is directly follows up to this movie. It ignores all other Turbinar movies, but one and two. I think Dark Fate is legit good. I recommend it to people. Me too. Because now that is Arnold comes back. Linda Hamilton comes back.

back. And she's not like jacked, but she's, you know, she's playing her role. She's, you know, she's a woman who's outraged that society has still, still seems to embrace AI and, you know, turning on people and locking them up in cages, which again, incredibly relevant. Sorry, it's incredibly relevant. You know, even when they made that movie, they weren't thinking what they didn't know what was going to happen. But here we are. I think dark fate's going to get a reevaluation at some point. It suffers from Genesis being terrible. And that's one reason why nobody saw it.

It's a very, it's not fantastic, but it is a very good movie. It has a great ending, some really interesting ideas in it. I really recommend that movie, yes. Only cop out, it should have been gayer. It should have been gayer. Well, that's true for most films.

Yes. But in this case, they had two women on the screen who very much could have been a couple, and they pull back. They pull back. Especially the lady who plays the protector, I forgot her name, both the actor and the character, but that lady with her haircut is almost entirely lesbian-coded, and they just, they pull back, they pull back, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's unfortunate, yeah. But lesbians, watch that movie, you will enjoy seeing that lady kick ass, you know, it's good. Non-lesbians also watch the film.

Yes. Oscars, Terminator 2 won four Oscars, makeup, sound, sound effects editing, whatever, and visual effects. Yeah, no shit. It won the visual effects Oscar. It got a sequel of sorts as an amusement park ride, which, you know, to me as a kid was exciting. James Cameron and most of the, you know, the primary cast got together. They shot 12 minutes of footage for what essentially became a hybrid 3D movie live action experience at Universal Studios. I believe it opened first in Orlando in 1996, but eventually went to all the Universal Studios parks.

The last one that was running was here in Osaka. Unfortunately, they shut it down during COVID. really broke my heart because basically they closed it during COVID because of COVID and then like two years later they said yeah we're not opening again sorry it's gone I was like I didn't get to say goodbye to Terminator it's tragic just tragic tragic yes but that was a lot of fun I'm sure you can go online and watch the footage now but you know obviously you don't get the the live action components of seeing stunt people run around a stage or terminators come out of the the walls in the theater and like pretend to shoot you like that was a that was a big part of the movie but

You can still watch Arnold and Edward and some footage of Lynn Hamilton. Even Earl, I think Earl Bowen shows up for just a little bit of Superman, I think, a few minutes, but very fun. I'm sorry. It's also funny to me that basically every Terminator movie that after this refuses to look past the liquid metal, like they can't come up with a better idea than liquid metal. Everyone is like, even Dark Fate, you know, they try. At least they try something to go a little further, but it's still like it's a Terminator that can change. shape and imitate other Terminators and I don't know. Maybe it's nanobots, maybe it's not liquid metal adjacent. But still, it's, it's liquid metal adjacent. Let's be honest. Maybe if we'd

conquered liquid metal technology in real life, it would become mundane and they'd be forced to find something new. I don't think we have that technology. We don't. We don't, do we? Maybe it's part of the fact that we're all, we're all hypnotized by mercury to this day, even though it's very dangerous. It is. If you show me mercury in a tray, I will probably stare at it for too long, just because, whoa, it's metal, but it's liquid. Fun and educational. Can I briefly go over the home video thing? Do we have to?

Yeah, you can talk about that because I would say Jim's Cameron has a sort of mixed reputation when it comes to home versions these days. Yes, he does. So I own one, two, three, four different discs to this film. And I have a 35 millimeter print scan. Wow. I am thorough. Because the 4K looks like shit. and that is a common

James Cameron issue in the new ones like that true lies one is infamous because of all the AI smoothing they used. I don't know if this has AI smoothing because this is from 2017 the remaster. It's the remaster they did for the 3D version. But the 4K remaster, everyone looks like plastic.

There's no film grain and they change some effects. They add Arnold's face to scenes where you could tell it was a stuntman if you paused it. And they removed Robert Patrick's dick in that one shot that you can almost see. So if you want to, and I bet the streaming version is the 4K remaster. So if you really want this movie in the best way possible, try to find the 2009 SkyNet version. It's not, it looks good enough and it has all three versions of the film.

The 2015 version also looks very good. Very good pixel quality, much better contrast than the SkyNet version. Good. And they all have the same color grading. They all look pretty good. I compared it to the 35 millimeter It looks fine But that 4K An abomination And James Cameron's defended those He's wrong

Like he's a genius And a movie Whatever you want to call him But in this case I'm smarter than him He's objectively He's wrong He is wrong

He is just wrong What he did to aliens Should be a crime It's wrong So I would pay money To watch you yell at him If that's something that you could arrange

I would pay money To yell at him So, yeah, because it's such an easy thing to point out how wrong it is. But anyway, you can find you used ones easy. A little aside that I have a workaround where a lot of this doesn't really matter is that I am supposed to wear glasses, but I don't. So a lot of this is not really something I notice. And my movie going experience is a lot easier as a result. So just don't wear your glasses.

Everyone looks better. It's great. Good for you. Good for you. I'm jealous. If I don't wear my glasses, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Edward Furlong and on Schwarzenegger. I'm blind. So I don't have that choice.

All right. Well, to wrap this up, I would say I maintain my position as a Terminator-liker. I would say this movie, this movie, because of the media hype around this movie, it convinced me to watch the first movie. And I love the first movie. I really like this movie almost as much. To me, it's a neck and neck close. I still say, I think the first one's better just because it's got more grit to it.

And the fact that this movie, the sequel does repeat so many beats, even though there's some great bits of this movie that aren't completely original, like the fact that they go to another factory and have another showdown in the factory, it's like, okay, we just did this. You're basically doing the same thing except, okay, instead of a press, it's, you know, it's hot, it's hot steel. Okay, it's not really that different. But I maintain that most Terminator movies are good. I even like the ones that are stupid. I like the ones, some of the stupid ones I like because they're stupid. But I would encourage you, watch Dark Fate. Dark Fate is not stupid in the way that Genesis is stupid.

Dark Fate is just kind of a dumb action movie, but it's also very good, and it's fun to watch. And the actors are, they're working hard. In fact, Dark Fate even has a little bit of face work from Edward Furlong. I think they scanned his face to get to do some John Connor digital effects. Yeah, I will again say that, watch Dark Fate. It's a great film. Yeah, Dark Fate's good. I bought on Blu-ray, no regrets.

And before I talk about retronauts and wrap things up here, why don't we go with James? James, why don't you tell us about cinema oblivia and your YouTube channel because you're working very hard on YouTube channel lately? Yes. So, yeah, I still have Cinema Oblivia, my podcast about real-old movies.

You know, part of the inspiration for that is the, you know, the idea that there are enough people in the world that think Terminator 2 is the 28th greatest move of all time tells me that people need to expand their horizons to see different. types of films and that's what my podcast covers and not always super obscure like i talked about smoking the band at once but like stuff that people don't talk about anymore stuff that people need to rediscover or super obscure bizarre things i try to focus on actually good movies for the most part

and then my youtube channel which is lost turntable i am doing a few things about records again in japan as of this recording i'm finishing up a 80-minute video about tower records in subuja um that i hope people like and going over some other things in my collection and i'm also doing a very stupid thing where I am ranking every single movie I've ever seen. Wow. God bless you. I can't do that. Yes.

I can't. You know, sometimes I have to add stuff to a list if I forget them. But I'm trying to rank every single movie I've seen. I just pick a year and then I add it to the list. And I've been doing those semi regularly. Thank you to my dozens of viewers. You're very nice. There are dozens of you.

It's nice. But I really like doing that. So I'm going to keep doing it even if no one watches it. Yeah. James, as of this recording, what is your favorite movie of all time according to this ranking system? I believe it is Laura. Oh, Laura's great. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. If, one second, you put me on the spot here because I haven't done, I haven't, I recorded a lot back to back and I haven't done one lately. Yeah, this really quick. So the top 10, everyone knows. Number 10, Grey Gardens, number nine, airplane. Number eight, Bing John Malclavits. Number seven, bringing out the dead. Number six, jaws. Number five. Gaslight, number four, double indemnity, number three, Satter of a Doubt, number two, Casablanca, number one, Laura.

And it's very random, because I just pick random years. So that's why it's a very, and I haven't done many years yet. That's why it's really out there. There are a lot of David Lynch aficionados who have not seen Laura, and I was like, you really should see Laura. It's a great movie if you don't even like David Lynch,

but if you do, there's a lot to take away from that movie. If you like film noir, if you like mysterious films, if you like incredibly hot men, Vincent price is gorgeous Also incredibly hot Jean Tierney also She's like... Also that too

If you like attractive human beings You should watch Laura Dressed amazingly I'm done Go on All right James on internet Is it lost turntable.com

Everywhere's lost turntable Blue Sky My website YouTube Two T's right Lost Turntable Lost Turn the table Yes well Technically three T's

But yes Go on And Drew, how about your podcast and your video game blog, which are both relevant to this conversation? I have a podcast called Gayest Episode Ever, on which both James and Diamond have been guests in the past. Most recently, Diamond was a guest on a Mark and Mindy episode, and I really like that episode because I think we tried to make it relevant for people that didn't give a shit about Morgan Middy, which is most people. Just gayest episode ever for all of them. It's like 250 episodes. We've covered most things at this point.

And then my website is Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games. And I've realized recently it is about looking at video games in relation to other media and how movies and books and a lot of other media fed into video games in ways that aren't always apparent. And I'm trying to unpack those connections. So it's video game history, but from the perspective of someone who's a liberal arts major, I guess. And I really, really enjoy it. And that video that I did not make, which is very good, about the connections between Cammy Terminator, Van Nikita, and a lot of other things

was a perfect fit for my site, so I'm glad that person who reached out to me, but people should check that out if they want to learn more about those things. I really like your website. I read everything you put up, though. Thank you. Yes, I really enjoyed. We recently had a conversation here about Eagle, the street fighter character, who sort of became openly gay in the late 90s or the 2000s.

And we talked about it brief on the podcast, but we had so many of things talk about. but then you and your translator went through and, like, broke down everything the Eagle says in that game because he has a lot of dialogue in Japanese that just gets thrown out for English versions. And you really see what they were trying to do. Like, no, this is very clearly, they're very clearly stating this is a gay man. Just what kind of gay man is open to interpretation. Yeah. And I appreciate that you gave me the tip on that because that is not something I really thought to look into.

So, like, if people are like, hey, here's this weird thing you should look into. You should hit me up through the website or on social media because I like getting tips about stuff that, like, is worth looking into. But I don't know about it. I feel like people who listen to this podcast might have little video game mysteries that they would like unpacked. Drew G. Mackey on Blue Sky, by the way. Yes. Drew G. Mackey.

But it's Mac, spell it. Spell it. M-A-C-I-E. I spell it, not like the way Bob spells it. I spell it the Scottish way, not whatever Bob's doing. So that's why. Thank you. Thank you.

Got to make sure. No relation between Drew Mackey and Bob Mackey. No, no, but I'm more closely related to him than I am to either of you, but like not by much. Same time zone, that's for sure. Yeah, that's something now. As for us, this is Retronauts. If you're listening to Retronauts, thank you very much. If you're listening to Retronauts and you didn't pay any money, thank you very much.

But this podcast exists because some people choose to give us money. So here's my pitch. For $3 a month, Patreon.com slash Retronauts. You get every episode, one week early, higher quality audio. That's a good thing. If you pay $5, which is just $2 more than the numbers I said, you get the early access, you get bonus episodes two or even three episodes every month. You get weekly columns from me, and I read you the columns.

I have written a column about Terminator 2 and many of the things related to this podcast. If you get access to our Discord, which has been a lot of fun. I've been having lots of great chats with people in the Discord over the years. We have, some of we have little film events in there where we watch movies together, not like on the screen together but we watched movies and talk about them together and we did a tournament earlier this year about video game movies which was a lot of fun to rank those things

so a lot of activities in there higher tiers you can even tell us what kind of podcast you want us to make but that's for people who are living rich if you will I think five dollars a month perfectly adequate you give us a few dollars we give you tons of entertainment I hope you'll consider it as for me I'm your host Diamond Fight

you can find me on the internet by looking for Fight Club F-E-I-T, that is my last name. C-L-U-B, that is a weapon that the Terminator 1000 could form with his arms or head or anything, really. Club hands less scary than knife hands. True. My website, fightclub.me, is purposely low-tech because I don't want any Terminator's creeping up on me from there. But social media, look for Fight Club. It's basically Fight Club everywhere.

And on that note, we're getting close to running out time here, so I guess Austin. La Vista, baby? I won't be Bach. Yes, you will. the night. Starting a business comes with all kinds of firsts. First time you see your name and lights. First review that stings.

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