TAKE ONE Presents... - Pod With Us If You Want To Live 2: TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

We continue our Terminator series with one of the most successful films ever made, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. Simon and Jim discuss what this film does to develop as a sequel, the film's production through some very James Cameron stories, the many various readings of this film in the research literature including some dubious political and racialised readings, modernism and postmodernism as embodied in the two Terminators, the shifting of genre and tone between this film and the first film, how masculinity and femininity are presented and subverted through the characters of Sarah Connor and the T-800, how the film represents and undermines authority figures, and what it means to make a violent film about peace and the value of human life.Content warnings: casual homophobia; carceral psychiatry and mental health issues; US police and institutional racism; murder and violent death; misogyny, patriarchy, and sexual assault; racism and Orientalism; nuclear war and apocalyptic destruction; body horror and removal of skin. Our theme song is Terminator Theme Song (32Stitches Remix) by 32Stitches available on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/32stitches/terminator-32stitches-remixFull references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/QJSNUUXT/collection

Welcome back to Take One Presents, Pod with us if you want to live. A podcast where we're watching all the Terminator franchise films in order, contextualizing them and critiquing them. I'm Sam Bowie and I'm joined by my co-host Jim Ross. Hello, Jim. Hello. We have a big one today. Terminator 2, Judgment Day.

Second film in the franchise, most expensive film of all time at the time of production. one of the highest grossing films ever made, widely regarded as one of the best sequels ever made. What's your history of Terminator 2 Judgment Day? So I'm not actually 100% sure. I'm pretty sure I saw it on TV. I'm not sure when I saw it on TV,

on re-watching it and the previous film so close together. I think I've come to the conclusion that I think what happened was the one that scared the bejesies out of me when I was way too young, was Terminator and I think I must have seen it on terrestrial television around about the time Terminator 2 was coming out because back in the day before stream this is something that would happen right

if there was a gap between sequels right you'd probably get the terrestrial TV channels showing it the original or the one before before the other one came out to kind of like catch the wave of that So I think that must have been, I think that must be wise. I think I then did subsequently see it either on TV or it might have been something that, you know, was rented by me and my, my mum and the, you know, the peak of our blockbuster rental days. Yeah. I definitely saw it as a kid.

I've seen it many times since, but I did see it as a kid when I would have been too young for it, but I think like, not enough. Not enough scared the crap out of the way that the original Terminator did. Yeah, I mean, we'll get into it, but that's partly because this film is almost a different genre entirely. Yeah. It's a far more blockbustery in action than slashery, which the first one was. So in the last episode, I mentioned this Terminator box set that I bought at HMV in Oldham in the Spindles. That had Terminator 2 in. I remember DVD in some kind of silvery box, and I watched Terminator 2 on DVD.

I think probably the director's cut because I watch the theatrical release for this and there's some scenes that I remember that are not in the theatrical release so like Kyle Reese has a brief appearance in the director's cut in a dream sequence that Sarah has and that's not in here but yeah I think I said in the last episode

I remember liking this a lot more than the Terminator than the original and you know not to play my cards too soon but that still holds. This is a banger. It's a great film. And I think I managed to see it pretty well. Just ahead of viewing for this,

I managed to find a used 4K disc secondhand earlier in the week, which I was kind of pleased about. So that was good. I think what's interesting about this is I think I probably historically have the same view that in my head, I like them both. This is probably the one I enjoyed more and like better. I think after watching this I might have turned around on that actually. So, you know, as in, I think the Terminator is the better film. Right. I do think it's the better film. Well, you know, and like, we're talking about two extremely good films here, right? So this is all relative and certainly as much as we did with the Zenopod when we get into talking with the later films, that will become. More than the patent. But I think

it's interesting. There are bits of this switch I don't want to say they don't work for me but pull me out of it occasionally a little bit, if I'm being honest, in a way that the first one didn't. We'll deal with them as they come up, but it's interesting.

I feel like I've maybe turned around the other way since these rewatchers. We can deal with the mad they come up, but just to sort of set the tone for how this movie changes turn you've made a note in our shared doc about the bad to the bone needle drop yeah

essentially saying you can speak for yourself but essentially saying you have mixed feelings for it yeah whereas that's the point in my notes where I said this is great this movie is so much more fun than the first one

and I mean a much better time I think that I kind of speak like I've also said in that it feels like a you know it feels like a little miniature example of what this film does differently, most of which works for me, to be honest, but not all of it, right?

And I think the fact that you've done a completely different reaction to it is indicative of that, right? Yeah, yeah, and there are other moments will come to them. I think, you know, but I don't want to, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm negative and so, because I'm not. It's an excellent film, you know. It's more just kind of the, it's another one of these things,

and we probably had a similar discussion, not in terms of of our difference of opinion, because I think our opinions were more aligned that time, but in terms of the way this film approaches things differently, we probably had a similar sort of discussion in the transition from alien

to aliens, right? So it's no coincidence that we're also talking about James Cameron here. It does go for a different approach. I mean, we shared the anecdote a while ago about, you know, how he wrote Alien on a black or whiteboard or whatever

and then put a dollar sign after it frankly I feel I feel like you could probably retell that as he wrote the word Terminator and then put a dollar sign after it and that would it would feel just as appropriate for this fit you know like it does have that that feeling to it is going for something

it is going for something different and I think it does it extremely well I do think it loses some things and I think how what your opinion is on that and ultimately how you rank these two initial films probably depends on how much you lament the loss of those things. Yes.

Yeah, and there is a lot of aliens in this film. There is a lot of the transition from alien to aliens in the transition from the Terminator to Terminator 2. I'll get into, but I will give some background on how this film came to be and how it was made. So James Cameron didn't want to make a sequel. He thought he told a complete story in The Terminator. And it was Schwarzenegger that actually pushed for the sequel.

So he pushed, he was working with Carol Co Pictures on Total Recall, and he pushed Carol Co Pictures to buy the rights to the Terminator franchise, which was about $15 million, $17 million with some additional costs. And then they had to persuade Cameron to get on board. So they essentially went to him and say, we're going to make this with or without you. here's $6 million, do you want to do it or not? To which Cameron said, yes please.

So Cameron had the idea in the first, when he was writing the first film, the original idea was that it would feature The Terminator and Kyle Reese going back. And at some point he would destroy the Terminator, Carl Rees would, and the second half of the film would be Skynet sending back this super terminator, this more advanced terminator, which would be made of liquid mess. and blah, blah, blah.

And he couldn't achieve that with the effects at the time. So he decided to focus the script on that now. He wrote the script in like six to seven weeks with Bill Wisher. And they kind of sequestered themselves and made the decision to flip the Terminator, flip the Schwarzenegger Terminator to be the good guy. So a lot of this is from The Futurist by Rebecca Keegan, which I read from last time. When the wreckers got Schwarzenegger on the phone and pitched him the idea, he was dubious at first. At the end of the day, as Wisher recalled, Swartzenegger gave into their enthusiasm saying,

just don't make me gay. We're remembering that Schwarzenegger was the Republican governor of California. Like, he seems like a nice guy, but I think he has some conservative views. But yeah, for that, Cameron being James Cameron, set himself an arbitrary deadline of finishing the script in time for a flight to Khan Film Festival where Carol Coe was going to announce Terminator 2 and so there was this big jet that was taking a load of people to Khan

including Cameron Schwarzenegger Oliver Stone, Paul Verhoeven and Cameron barely finished it in time he was printing it like as the limo was waiting to take him to the airport and holding up the flight when he got on the plane he was booed by the rest of these

film luminaries for delaying the flight and he gave copies of the script out to Schwarzenegger and whatever, and then he just passed out in his seat for the rest of the journey to Cann. An important thing was getting Linda Hamilton back on board. He persuaded her to get back on board. I mean, we'll talk about her character and how it changes. But he essentially persuaded her by appealing to Hamilton as a person. So Hamilton had become a single mother since the last film, and she had also struggled with mood disorders and depression for her life.

She was diagnosed after Terminator 2 with bipolar disorder and so Cameron said you can channel that into the character Sarah Connor is now emotionally burdened by her knowledge of the apocalypse and she's a lot more damaged I guess than in the first film so lean into that

they also wanted to cast someone particularly live for the T-1000 the new liquid metal terminator If the 800 series, Cameron says, is a kind of human panzer tank, then the 1000 series had to be a Porsche. And they found Robert Patrick, who was living in his car at the time, and he just had this intensity and this kind of speed that was really good for the character. So in the film, the character runs like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, kind of flat out. never showing any exertion with his arms going for it, and Robert Patrick was able to do that.

Yeah, and actually, I think Robert Patrick's appearance here, and the way he moves is a huge part of this film, right? And I'm going to highlight a couple of specific instances when we come to them, when we go through the film. But it's interesting, because I think the two major new pieces of casting here are, him is the T-1000, and then Edward Furdle, as the young John Connor. And I think they both work extremely well for this film, to be honest, and right.

And I think if they'd got that wrong, then this would have been less impactful. And I realize that I kind of sense that's not necessarily a majority opinion on Edward Furlong, but I honestly think some of the discourse around his role in this film and how effective he is, actually doesn't be put the disservice, to be honest, on a rewatch. So it's interesting. The new casting, I think, works extremely well for this film as well. Yeah, I mean, Edward Furlong has had his troubles since this, since this film, and that's, you know, a common fate for child actors. I mean, the little boy who played Anakin Skywalker in Phantom Menace as well.

The only other major piece of casting is Joe Morton as Miles Dyson. Yeah. Partly because Cameron wanted to represent blackness in science fiction, and so wanted a black character. But Morton avoided interacting with the cast. while they were filming, so that they would have a believably distant on-screen relationship. You know, he's not as integral to the film's kind of family unit as the other characters. But yeah, they had, I'll talk about the CG effects later and how that's influenced by the abyss, but this was one of the most expensive films of all time at the time,

partly because of the special effects, which cost an astonishing amount for the time. But the film was eventually released in 1991. And in the context of 1991, the highest grossing films of that year were, number one, Terminator 2 Judgment Day, grossing 521 million. Number two, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, followed by Beauty and the Beast, Hook, Silence the Lambs, JFCK, Naked Gun 2 and a Half, The Smell of Fear, the Adams family, Cape Fear and Hot Shots. Another interesting, very kind of late 80s, early 90s, box office. Because you've got free comedies, if you include the Adams family.

Free comedies, they would not trouble the box office these days. JFK, which is a three hour, maybe three and a half hour. Epic, courtroom epic. Very engaging film. It is the paranoid rantings of a madman. I like JFK a great deal I think it's a very entertaining film but if you take anything in it seriously

I've got a bridge to sell you yeah I think I think the fact that I'm pretty sure the whole magic bullet thing gets padied and Seinfeld shortly after kind of tells you well you need to know there really with Wayne Knight who played the character exactly it's very neat I like it

but yeah I mean Terminator 2 is a massive success. One of the visual effects guys on this film is on record as saying, if we hadn't had Terminator 2, we wouldn't have been able to do Jurassic Park. The CG effects in this are groundbreaking for the time and form the basis for what would be Jurassic Park in two years' time. Yeah, we'll talk about it more as they come up,

but I think something that's interesting about it is because they were presumably so expensive and we're really pushing the envelope of what you could do in 1991, right? Or I suppose given when the film came out, I suppose it's probably 1990, right? It's striking kind of like how spainingly they're used, right? And I do think that kind of gives them a bit of an extra,

a bit of an extra effect, right? They're not, it's interesting for a film that's so famous for its special effects, I think, these days. It doesn't really use them as a crutch, right? It is very much an extremely, impressive embellishment. There's nothing relying on them, right? Yeah. There is an oral

history of Terminator 2 in the Ringer by Alan Siegel. And it has James Cameron saying we had 14 CG shots in the abyss and we only had 42 two years later in T2. There were probably another of 50 or 60 shots that were practical prosthetic effects

than by Stan Winston, which today would have been done as CG. But that's a low number of CG shots. know, a Marvel film has hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of them, and having only 42, is very sparing. But yes, it doesn't rely on them, but it relies on them a lot more than the abyss. In the abyss, they could have just taken out the whole CG thing, the whole scene, and not had a problem. Like, the story would have continued, but here they were integral, so they sort of had to work. That's about it for the making of

I just have a couple of James Cameron's stories just because I always have a couple of James Cameron's stories because I don't like him as a person Yeah T2's compressed schedule Had no effect on Cameron

This is from the futurist T2's compressed schedule Had no effect on Cameron's usual Maddening Perfectionism His take-ending catchphrases That's exactly what I didn't want And perfect, let's do it again Chafed the T2 crew

Some of whom took to wearing t-shirts that said Terminator 3, not with me. He's such a dick. He's such a dick. Like, oh dear, it's just... He'd asked his... He asked one of the camera operators

to be part of... Be like on... on... A moving platform as a helicopter was going under a freeway. And the camera operator said, Jim, I don't want to do this. And Cameron just said,

okay, I'll do it. So he's... film those shots which are moving while a camera does a helicopter does very dangerous things. But yes, he pushes his workers perhaps too far. Yeah, let's start running through the film because it is a big one and I have done maybe too much research. There is a lot of writing on this film and I've done arguably too much research. So let's get into it and see how we go. So we open with a montage of Las Angeles life and that kind of cuts back. back into the bleak wasteland of 2029, three years from now.

A voiceover says that Judgment Day was 29th of August, 1997. We see Terminators and tanks crushing, again, endless human skulls. Just always human skulls. Yeah, your comment from the last episode was ringing my ears as the scene played out. It was like, why are there like 20 skulls sitting in a pile? It's always skulls. I just want to do that the handshake meme with

Terminator 2 and 28 years later the bone temple at this point Hamilton's voiceover Linda Hamilton gives a voiceover that catches us up on the events of the first film we see a grizzled John Connor played by Michael Eggwoods who's the leader of the human resistance and then we cut to a truck stop

where there's a flash of blue lightning and Arnie arrives having traveled back in time. It's more elaborate than the first film. There is a cool effect of kind of the sphere carving a hole out of the truck. We get Arne's perspective, you know, the robotic perspective, as he sizes up options for acquiring clothing in a biker bar

and then beats up some bikers. This is great. It's got some fun moments. Arnie throws a biker right onto a hot grill. And as he steps outside, we get the back. add to the bone needle drop, which kind of sets up the tone shift to the more campy and fun tone of this film. And this is where, like, it's interesting this one, right? This moment really lingered with me, because it feels like there's a real con, there's so much going on here with, like, Schwarzenegger's kind of film star persona at the time,

the contrast with the first film, and I can't quite decide whether, so, I mean, of course, the major twist, which comes fairly soon after this, right? And I think everybody in their pop cultural awareness knows this by this point is, obviously, he was the bad guy in the first film. He is the good guy in this film. Right. I really honestly can't decide in my head how much the text of the film is attempting to obscure this, right? Because if you go back to when the film was marketed, I'm pretty sure there was a teaser trailer, which kind of didn't give this away. And kind of implied that you'd be returning in the same role down to kind of like, you know, antagonistic.

But then the full trailer then kind of gives it away. And then the film here, if you look at how this is constructed, it's, I can't quite figure out in my head whether they're positioning initially. him as potential antagonists and Robert Patrick as potential supporting protagonist. Or they're both antagonists and all the rest of it. But the thing that's interesting is I feel like the bad to the bone needle drop kind of makes this playful of the way that kind of undercuts that. And that's why I kind of have a bit of a mixed feeling about that and the sunglasses moment. There's another one. We'll come back to that.

future films. I can see that. Yeah, so there's something about it doesn't sit quite right for me with that one, if I'm honest. The scene leading up to that, though, fantastic. Like, it's really... I mean, we'll get into it, but a major theme of the film is that Swatchanaga

does not kill anyone. And there were reasons for that, you know, reasons in the text later on. But he doesn't kill anyone in this scene either. Now, Schwarzenegger had asked Cameron, had said, like, can't I just kill someone before, before John tells me not to kill.

And Cameron said, no. Like, it's important to the character that you don't kill now. You know, it's a non-violent Terminator. Not a non-violent Terminator, because he shoots a lot of people in the knees. A non-terminating terminator, yeah. That's important to the kind of the film's ideas about human life and the value of human life and blah, blah, blah. But it is notable that he doesn't kill anyone in this scene. and you do wonder why.

He's holding a shotgun at someone who has just pointed a shotgun at him and doesn't kill him but just takes his sunglasses. We get another time travel storm where Robert Patrick appears, beats up a cop and takes his clothes, and immediately searches the cop's computer for John Connor. So this idea of having the cop, having the bad guy be a cop, Cameron says that was just me having fun with an authority figure, but there is a thematic point to that,

which is that we as human beings become terminators. We learn how to have zero compassion. Terminator ultimately isn't about machines. It's about our tendency to become machines. And some of that is emphasised with Sarah Connor's character later, but it kind of starts with the idea of a cop as an authority figure who blindly obeys orders, becomes a terminator, becomes a machine. Critical support.

for James Cameron saying Acab. Yeah, and we're going to return to this, right? Because even if he kind of like, he downplays it a little bit in that quote. I find this and there's going to be other points where I bring up up and then when we reflect on the whole film.

This film's relationship with authority figures, deference to authority, and the LAPD in particular, actually, given that kind of like Robert Patrick appears to be an LEPD officer for the majority of the runtime, It's kind of fascinating to me.

And there's a lot there. It's going to pop up a lot of times while we're going through this film. So we're introduced to a teenage John Connor in the suburbs, as he played by Edward Furlong. He always giving his foster parents shit. He speeds away on a dirt bike. And he goes to Crack an ATM at the Mall.

We also go to a state hospital where Dr. Silberman from the first film is introducing a group to Sarah Connor, who refers to her as paranoid and delusional. at one point he says oh a time travelling assassin she thinks a time travelling assassin came back to kill her

and one of the kind of attendees with Dr. Silberman says that's original which I think is a reference to the plagiarism controversy around the first film maybe but yeah Silberman is questioning her

about the lack of evidence for her story you know why can't anyone find this original Terminator that she killed and we cut to Miles Dyson at Cyberdine who has the scavenge CPU and arm of the original Terminator. Robert Patrick goes to the foster parents and he acquires a photo of John Connor.

He's not too sinister at this point, since I think, to speak to your point, the film is kind of holding its cards about the motives of the Terminator's. He's got a friendly demeanour, I think, then Arnie, certainly in the first film, and even Kyle Reese. You know, he's a little more natural, a little more human. It's also, and I think the contrast between the two of them that they set up here This is why I wonder kind of like where it's trying to play this because you've got this figure who we know as an antagonist in the previous film Is literally dressed up in the clothes of somebody from a dive biker bar

Right And has a very obviously Un-American voice against the guy who is obviously American is obviously American is a lot lot more clean cut looking in terms of kind of like, you know, just general appearance and is also dressed up like a police officer. Yes. Right. And I think the way that this starts to flip, right, as this first act plays out, is part of this whole kind of like the way the film treats authority and it is kind of fascinating. But that, that contrast at the start is really, really interesting. Yeah. I kind of want to hold that thought about

Patrick has represented American and the European accent of Arnie. I want to hold that for now, but we'll come back to it. Yeah. So both the Terminators find John at the mall. He's at the gallery mall, and Arnie manages to find John first,

and he pulls out a shotgun, but he's not after John. He shoots Robert Patrick. And there's a fun shot of Robert Patrick looking at a silver mannequin, echoing his kind of future form but ultimately John escapes on his dirt bike with Patrick Anani in pursuit. So like I say, Robert Patrick runs like Tom Cruise. He's very intense. He has his arms pumping away. There is a story in The Futurist about Robert Patrick demonstrating his run during the auditions

because they set up a dirt bike with a camera on it to speed away from Robert Patrick while he ran after it. and he just managed to catch up with it. Like the dirt bike couldn't go fast enough. He's caught up with it and I kind of tapped the camera operator on the shoulder. Yeah, and there's a moment like, honestly, Rod Patrick running in this film is one of the like images I have in my head when I think of this film. Oh yeah, he's great. Like he doesn't breathe at all.

There's something about the way, yeah, there's something about the way he moves, which seems like it's an assassin from the future. right? Like he just seems to, in particular there's one bit, I'll bring it up later when there's a different chase scene, but it's like there's something to do with kind of like changes in terrain or height or obstacles, he just seems to like glide

over them. Yeah. You know? Like it doesn't seem to have any effect on his speed or acceleration. I don't know, I think some of this is probably also based in the editing of the film and the shot choices, right? You know, I don't want to downplay the craft of it

because it all works together. But genuinely there is something really quite terrifying. about how nothing seems to impede his progress at all. But he has that sleepness. He feels like he's liquid flowing over these obstacles. Whereas Arnie in the first film was just bursting through things. A battery round. It was just a tank, you know, to go with Cameron's description of him as a panzer.

And Robert Patrick is a Porsche. But it's great. And it leads to a chase scene through the Los Angeles River system where Patrick's in a truck and Arnie's on a motorbike. Now, I made a note at this point in the film say that this is great, like the first film,

this is very pacey, you know, it just cracks on, it doesn't feel like it's wasting time. So I thought, yeah, you know, it gets to a chase scene

within 15 minutes, you're just cracking on, and then I actually press the button on my remote to see how long had passed, and I was shot to discover that 30 minutes had passed. Like, it does not feel like that at all.

It flies by. The plot is a little flabier than the first, a little less focused, especially in the second half, but I think it does all work for the main point. Yeah, and this this J-Seed is so good. It's great.

It is so good. Yeah, really good use of space, you know, establishing the space within the scene. It's just really good blockbuster filmmaking. And it seems like mostly practical effects. It seems like most of the CG, if not all of it, was used for the liquid metal terminator. I don't know that they used much enhancement

on these stunts. and stuff, but it looks amazing. Yeah. No, I mean, it's excellent. I mean, like, and I think, I have seen a few bits of which where I think the majority of this is practical, right? But I think the thing, and that's all great, I think the thing that makes this work, though, is the editing in particular, right?

And the shot choices that are made, maintains an understanding of space, and who is in peril. and who is acting in a certain way at a given moment, which just makes it flow superably, you know? Yeah. You know, in particular, there's one shot in particular I could think of where basically, you know, so for the start of it, Schwarzenegger's Terminator is riding along on the motorcycle

on kind of like a, you know, a side road above the river, and you can see the truck following John Connor down in the kind of the river. the dry river section below and it kind of just, it arcs around in a way where you have this just like clear line from, you know, motorbike to truck to dirt bike and it's just so well done, right? You get a sense of speed, you get a sense of where everybody is,

you get a sense of who is kind of in the ascendancy at any given point. And it's not repetitive either. It does have these, it has different beats in it that change that relationship of who is in the ascendant scene who's in peril at a given moment as well. It's really superb.

Yeah, that's done with the camera as well. That is using the camera as a tool. There's a story in The Futurist in this book by Rebecca Keegan. Schwarzenegger is a guy who knows his strengths and weaknesses as an actor and he knows what he will and will not do. So at one point Cameron said, we need a shot of you riding the bike really fast.

You need to go faster. And Schwarzenegger just says, like, I won't be on that bike if it's going faster. I won't do it. And Cameron kind of sighs because he can't he can't bully Donald Schwarzenegger the same way he bullies the rest of his crew. And he

just shoots it with a longer lens. He shoots it with a longer lens and a different kind of lens to get this, to get it. So it looks like he's going faster than he actually is. But yeah, Arnie eventually grabs John and they escape on the motorbike and we get a first glimpse of Patrick in his molten metal

form. So yeah, I mean Robert Patrick in this film is the T-1000. He's an advanced prototype Terminator made of liquid metal that can become any solid shape as long as it's the approximate size of a human, and doesn't have mechanical parts. I'm trying to decide when in this podcast I used to break out my Arnold Schwarzenegger impression, and I've decided that trying to say the words memetic polyalloy is not the point I'm going to do it at. I forget where I read this, maybe it was in the oral history, but there is one point where Schwarzenegger first read the script on that plane to Kahn, as I said,

and he tripped over the words poly ally, and he was like, what is this? There you go, that's mine. But yeah, I mean, clearly the kind of liquid metal Terminator is based on what they did in the abyss. So Cameron had made the abyss just before this, which was a box office failure. and that has a kind of liquid, CG liquid thing, entity, whatever. And there is some kind of

Cameron quotes Tom Sherrick in the old history. Tom Sherrick ran old distribution for Vox for years and he was a little bit annoyed that they had made a $60 million movie that turned out to be just a test run for Terminator 2. They were still singing a little bit from the fact that the abyss broke even,

but just barely. So James Cameron is very, very basing his work on this on the abyss and what he knows to be possible from that and kind of pushing ILM to work to do a little more with it. You know, get rid of the translucency in the abyss and make it a bit more metal and reflective. But yeah, Arnie explains all this to John Connor. tells him that he's a T-800 model 101.

He's living tissue over a metal endoskeleton, whereas Robert Patrick is liquid. But this time his mission is to protect him, and he was sent back in time by John Connor, to protect himself as a child. They go and call John's foster parents to see if they're okay. Arnie notices the dog barking and asks if Wolfie's okay, but the name of the dog isn't Wolfey,

and Arnie tells John that his foster parents are dead. The T-1000 kills Xander Berkeley with a big metal spike through the head. That is an image which I did, ahead of re-watching it. That's one that I remembered, in regards to what E.J. I was, so it was like, oh, God.

Yeah, that was... I remember being... You know, and I think we've already alluded to the fact that this film is far more, you know, action blockbuster in terms of its emo than, you know, horror compared to the first one. But

that image and any, a lot of the things that kind of, like, come out of like, you know, hands turning into knives and shit like that in this film, stuck with me and scared the crap out of me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot

in the kind of literature around the contrast between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert Patrick. Amanda Fernberg in an article in science fiction studies said that the liquid metal T-1000 embodies the postmodern threat to a traditional stable phallic masculinity.

And I'll have more to say about masculinity and stuff later in the film as Arnie's role developed. But yeah, the idea is that Arnold Schwarzenegger embodies a masculinity, desperately trying to fight off the threat posed by the postmodern gender bending, shape-changing T-1,000. So notably

in this scene, he is taking on the role of a woman, John's foster mother, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is kind of stuck in his traditionally masculine body. And again, I have more to say about Arnold's body and how he represents masculinity in that. But this article by Amanda Fernberg kind of positions the T-800 with hypermasculinity, patriarchy,

the recuperation and preservation of the family over and against all the threats posed by Donna Harroway's new people, this idea of these cyborgs, these postmodern cyborgs who can change gender and stuff. So that's a reading of the film as a conservative text, which isn't necessarily agreed with in a lot of the literature but we'll get to we'll get to that so some police detectives questioned sarah about the kidnapping of john and she steals a paperclip from them which she will use to escape we get a scene of john complaining about his mum raising him to be this great military leader

and establishes that arnie has to obey whatever orders john gives so john orders arnie to help him rescue his mom Ani's doing this great bit in this scene where he's just moving his head like an oscillating fan scanning the area and he looks really robotic and it works really well and kind of evokes his role in the first film because obviously he's softer in this one but in this one he looks really robotic in this scene this is the point at which I thought Edward Furlong is

kind of annoying but convincingly annoying so I mean the character is a teenager so he's supposed to be annoying and I think Edward Furlong gets that and portrays him in that way Yeah, he successfully conveys like particularly in this scene in particular And I get that people kind of like find

John Connor maybe slightly annoying in this film I think that's entirely the point I think he successfully conveys the role of a smug little prick You know basically Right Yeah like Dana What's his name? Dana somebody

who plays Bobby Briggs in Twin Peaks. Like, Bobby Briggs is a prick, but he's great at playing Dana Ashbrook. He's great at playing that role because he can convincingly play a prick. Yeah. And similar to John Connor, this is a young prick,

a troubled teenager, who eventually becomes an authority figure. John Connor becomes a military leader. Bobby Briggs becomes a police officer in the return. They're kind of similar performances, and I think it works for the character. It's annoying. But yeah, he's an annoying teenager.

So at the hospital with Sarah, the T-1000 arrives. Sarah is sexually assaulted by a creepy orderly and uses the paperclip to escape her restraints. There's a great bit where the T-1,000 disguises himself as the floor, and he takes the form of a security guard before killing him with a finger through the eye socket. That's the other part that stuck with me. Yeah, man. Well, wild way to get.

John and Arnie arrive at the hospital. John makes Arnie swear not to kill anyone, so instead he immediately shoots a guard in the knees and says he'll live. This is where, like, some of the things the film does differently, I have a mixed feelings about it, but this is one of the ones where I have a positive feeling about it, because it feels very naturally a part of what's going on, and it is just funny. Yeah. Yeah. They feel like a computer as well. in my day job, I'm a software developer.

And there are times when you write something that you want a script to do, and it will do it, like it will perform it to the letter, but what you have missed out, the kind of exceptions that you haven't thought about, it will, you know, trip up on, because you didn't specify exactly what you wanted. Yeah. Arnie's body kind of looks less unnatural in this one, you know? Over the years, he's become more of an actor and less of a bodybuilder.

So he's kind of softer, physically and emotionally. That works for the character. He's ultimately really good in this, but in a way that's so different from how good he was in the first one. You know, he's performing differently. He's performing softer, and it works. So Sarah has taken Silverman hostage. She attempts to escape the hospital,

but she totally freezes up when she sees Arnie. And Hamilton's really great here. She kind of communicates the trauma that the character suffered in the first film. she immediately kind of collapses as soon as she sees Arnie. Arnie beats up the orderlies and he says to her, come with me if you want to live, you know, just as Kyle Rees did in the first film.

Linda Hamilton's great in this. Like she has transformed emotionally and physically, the character as well as Linda Hamilton. She looks so different. It's kind of extraordinary. And again, it makes for a good sequel. She seems to have actually developed as a person between films you know she's not just the same person again

she has changed she has she has grown which I which I also find interesting from a just kind of like franchise filmmaking perspective because I feel like a lot of things get criticism nowadays for for not showing explicitly how things

happen yeah and like basically if you compare first act say it an entire film Sarah Connor in this film to particularly the first act of The Terminator, but arguably the whole film, they're different characters.

Yeah, 100%. Like, she is essentially unrecognizable. And I feel like if you were to do that now in kind of like a big franchise, it would probably get criticised. You know, like, our character's completely different. But, like... Yeah, I'm thinking of Luke Skywalker and The Last Jedi. Yeah, right? But the thing is, a lot of water

has flown under the bridge between these two films, both in terms. of time, but also psychologically. And I think something that's very good about, say, the Conner's performance here, to heart back to your information about kind of like how Cameron kind of like pitched the role to her and how that intersected

with her own kind of life experiences to that point. I think she does a very good job of displaying someone who doesn't have paranoid delusions in the way that kind of like, you know, the doctor around her is patronizingly dismissing.

like obviously like everything he thinks his nonsense is actually true that doesn't mean that she's you know completely unaffected otherwise like I mean the psychological weight of what we're talking about here is enormous right and she portrays somebody who's going through who is changed through experiencing that really pretty well I think yeah she is burdened with the knowledge that 6 billion people are going to die

She's burdened with this kind of predestination. You know, there's something almost Greek mythical about it. Like she knows the future for certain. And so she has this inherent pessimism, this pessimism that everyone around her is going to die, that nothing she does matters apart from protecting John. Yeah, I mean, Linda Hamilton was kind of softer in the director's cut because she had a scene with Kyle Reese that kind of harkened back to her characterisation

in the first film. And during the filming of this film, Cameron was dating Catherine Bigelow, the director, during this, and he started an affair with Linda Hamilton during the filming of this film. They eventually got married, and I think Linda Hamilton became his third or fourth wife.

But she jokes in The Futurist that she didn't, she wasn't told that the scene with Caius had been cut until the premiere. She didn't know. And she jokes that even sleeping with the director wasn't enough to get that information about what had been cut about the edit. But yeah, I mean, there is a lot in the literature

about Linda Hamilton's transformation, about her kind of transformation to a hard body and what that says about kind of femininity and masculinity. In a headline in Time magazine called Why Can't a Woman be a Man? Sarah Conner was dismissed as Rambo in drag and that's kind of returned to throughout the literature where she has referred to as a man in a woman in drag

because of her outfit because she's taken on this kind of she's adopted this kind of John Maclean you know tank top look that is I think a obviously a reaction to kind of traditional patriarchal stereotypes of manly men

and it's kind of a version of that, similar to Ripley in aliens. So this is from Jeffrey Brown's article in Cinema Journal about this. One of the most captivating images of the film was Sarah Connor's new hard body. Like Ripley before her, the visual image of Conner's in Terminator 2 explicitly identifies her with the archetypal Rambo persona. In this instance, the symbolic cross-dressing is taken beyond the level of undershirts and oversized guns into the realm of the body itself. He says that the Sarah, who was a stereotypically weak woman at the beginning of the first terminator, has in effect become a cold, deadly, impervious terminator herself. And he says that Susan Jeffords talks about how the exchange of roles that constructs Arnold Schwarzenegger as the caregiving female character,

while the muscular Sarah assumes the masculine machine-like role of killer. And both she and Ripley and aliens are described as operating within an image world in which questions of gender identity are played out through, in particular, the masculinization of the female body. Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like the way Sarah Connor is pitched here, to me it's reflected in the sources, you've put there, and the fact

it's the same director, it's very obviously to me in conversation with the portray of Ripley in aliens. I think what I find interesting is, in particular, that comment about kind of like, you know, she becomes Terminator like herself. In particular, there's one scene where that is extremely true, which will

come to shortly. But I think the thing that I find interesting is the motivating factor, kind of like, protective maternal instinct, you know, for Sarah over John and then for Ripley over Newt in aliens is similar, if not the same, but the way it is expressed in Terminator 2 and Sarah Connors' role is much more physically aggressive, much more. Yeah.

And even down to the way that she's introduced, like I'm pretty sure the first shot of her in the film... She's doing pull-ups. She's doing a pull-up drenched and sweat. Yes. You know, and that contrast between the two James Cameron films is kind of interesting. It's, he's kind of merged some aspects there, and it is quite interesting to see. It's also interesting how much this image persists, right? Because I think when people talk about female action heroes, I think the things they go to are Ripley and Sarah Connors.

Those are the image you go to. But it's really interesting that in both cases, that is an image which is developed in the second film. It's not really there in the first one, or at least not in the way that I think people are recalling. You know, I think that's more the case with Sarah Connor than it is with Ripley. But particularly the contrast between her in Terminator 1 and Terminator 2 here, is interesting that it's this image, which is really a sense. established probably in this film, not the other one, is the one that is the enduring picture that people stick with. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think we come in kind of partway through the discourse here, because we've already discussed on the Impossible pod, the Mission Impossible series, how this develops with like the articles I read about, what's the name, Rebecca Ferguson's character. Yeah. who is a strong woman character in a feminine way. So we go from kind of hypermasculinity of the 80s to women embodying traditionally masculine roles in the 90s, and that being kind of the kind of vanguard of feminism at the time, the representation of women in that way, to kind of later, you know, 2010s, criticism of that position

where women don't have to be masculine. They don't have to be women in drag in order to be strong, in order to be action heroes. And eventually, you know, go back and listen to our Rogue Nation episode, but eventually we'll get to the point where characters like Ilsa Faust

are able to represent action heroines while also being traditionally female and embodying traditionally feminine ways of being, and that not being a bad thing. Like, you don't have to readjust to, to be an action hero, to be successful. I think that's where we'll go to.

But for now, we're in the 90s where this kind of masculinization is derricker for representing an action heroine. And Linda Hamilton's a great example of that in this. So the T-1000 finds our heroes, he morphs through the bars to get to them. And there is another chase scene where the T-1-000 uses metal arms to clasp onto the back of the car. But they ultimately get away and Sarah, to speak to what you said, he checks that John's okay, but not in a kind of maternal, emotional way. She's literally like checking him physically for scars and stuff because she's focused on his survival, on his physical survival, not his

emotional well-being, and that's not traditionally, you know, what mothers do. And he's upset at her coldness. They take shelter in an abandoned gas station where the T-800 fixes Sarah up she fixes him up In the morning they head south in a station wagon which is an all-American family vehicle This is symbolism for the kind of all-American family

that they are becoming And John... National Lampudence Doomsday Yeah John attempts to teach him to be more human By telling him to say various phrases Like Hastel of Easter baby Yeah I mean that by this point

They're very much forming a kind of Usat's postmodern family unit where Swartzoniger is leaning into this kind of father role and becoming kind of a surrogate father to John that he never had. And there's stuff around masculinity here. So there's an article by Sarah Martin Allegra in Atlantis where she's talking about Schwarzenegger's transition. And in the first film, John chooses his biological father

by sending Kyle Reese back in time. In this one, he chooses his foster. father in the shape of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator. There is also on the kind of all-American vehicle and the kind of his representation of America. I want to go briefly to an article by Mark Duckenfield called Terminator 2 are called to economic arms in studies in popular culture. Because his idea is that Terminator 2 Minter 2's allegory is about the United States in the closing years of the 20th century, specifically that it represents a struggle between declining

industries in the United States and the rising high technology ones of an economically vibrant Japan. Now, in this allegory, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the kind of beefy auto industry of America against the kind of sleek, liquid form of Japan, which is kind of, you know, smaller, but more maneuverable and sleeker. And somehow, the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger clearly has an Eastern European accent represents the kind of immigration to the United States that formed United States as an industrial power. Whereas Robert Patrick's kind of blankness.

Oh, and his ability to become a collective. So there's this kind of racist stereotype of Japanese people as a collective, as more of a hive mind than America. And so because he can break himself into constituent pieces and reassemble, he kind of represents Japan. Now, I think a lot of this is nonsense. I think this is a

example of reading into a text too much. Yeah. Yeah, I would go further than that. I would say, having read these points you made up, I'm not on board with this. I think it's a stretch, let's say. I also think it's also there is a bit of an element of it being a slightly

I wouldn't even say it's a reading because I don't really see how you get this from the text of the film. It's almost like you're projecting casual racism into a reading of a film. Well yeah I mean aside from that point on kind of the collectivity of Asian people he says when the T-1000 kills its arms turn into sharp blades reminiscent of samurai swords. Are they reminiscent of samurai swords? No, they don't look anything like

like a fucking samurai sword. I think it's a real reach to say he represents Japan. The writer invokes the national memory of Pearl Harbor because the T-1000 does sneak attacks on its victims. Jesus Christ. I highly recommend reading it if you can because it is... Yeah, there's...

I don't think this reading is accurate. If I heard it for the first time somebody's mouth, I'd just be looking at it kind of like, I go and going, uh-huh. Yeah. I don't see it. I just, I don't. I mean, as I say, it seems like

a particularly sort of racialized ethnic way to express what there's maybe a kernel of there in the idea of kind of like old tech versus new tech right and you can

certainly make an argument that around about that time the dynamics were kind of like you know Japan versus America in that sense like I can I can see that I can kind of like walk myself up the garden

path to maybe see where this came from but you've got to make several rather tanguous steps to get there. We're about to have a scene where they go to one of Sarah's old allies and demands money of him. And this is out in the desert and he's a Latin American. This in the article is representative of the American demands for cheap agricultural products, cheap textiles

and a certain amount of heavy industry from Latin America and the third world. Yeah, okay, we're off the deep end. We're off the deep end. I just really enjoyed it. Yeah, good. Yeah, going to our weapons cash in the desert is symbolic of agricultural demand. Yeah.

Okay. And now it is with academic. Sure, sure. If you don't read a lot of academic papers, a lot of them have the kind of affiliation of the author. And right at the end of the article, in big bull letters, more bold than you usually get, it says that the offer comes from Harvard University, Department of Government. Producing the best. Oh, God.

I'm pretty sure I know someone who studied there actually Yeah Anyway Yeah So they're moving into the desert John watches some kids fight with toy guns And this is kind of a microcosm Of the violent and destructive nature of humanity

Laid on a bit thick to be honest Where they're like, can we ever change Can we ever be non-destructive This whole city Right, so to go back to my point at the start about things in this film that work and don't work for me, this, from this point on, right, I think the point you're mentioning through to kind of like the end of this full scene doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for me.

It's very, it's very bludgeoning and it kind of, I'll go into it more as you kind of like, because there's one part. in particular that comes to mind. This is the part of it that doesn't work for me. Yeah, I mean... And it's a stark difference to the first film as well, which doesn't contain this sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of like this.

I like it as what the futurist James Cameron describes as an action film about the value of human life. And I like that. Apart from these moments when James Cameron turns to the camera and says, this is an action film about the value of human life. Yeah.

Because like, I get it. I get it. Yeah. But the T-800 tells Sarah about how Miles Dyson will create Skynet and the events that will lead to the nuclear apocalypse. They meet up with a friend of Sarah's out in the desert who gives them some cash weapons and a truck in a reference to the exploitation of the third world by the United States of America, obviously.

John connects with the T-800. they do some masculine mechanical stuff and they talk about John's father who we will meet in like 40 years. John explains why people cry. And yeah, I mean, Sarah Martin Allegra talks about this portrayal of fatherhood

and old Schwarzenegger representing fatherhood. She talks about how the hard body years of the Reagan administration have moved into the soft body years of the Carter years and kind of the hard body of the Reagan

years is being replaced by a new version in which power is renewed by incorporating emotions and family-oriented values. And Alan Schwarzenegger kind of represents this in his transition from the first film to the second. Yeah, and I think to bring full circle

on this, my point about this segment of the film not working for me, I think it's quite clear the film is moving in this direction, you know, by this point, it's quite clear the film's moving in this direction of, you know, the Erzatz family

unit as you've said and kind of like this farther role being taken on by the Schwarzenegger Terminator you know references have already been made to men that have passed through Sarah Connor's life before this but it's at this point we get a voice over

where what is subtextual is made thunderingly bludgeoningly textual. Yes, so at this point we get a voiceover from Sarah

emphasising this point about the T-800 being a perfect father. And it's a little too much. Yeah. Like, she, in the words of Allegra in this article in Atlantis, Sarah kind of bitterly says that none of the men she has met

has managed to be a good father for John, except his biological father before he was born. That is except the Terminator, which is nothing but a machine. And I think to me, this little segment here embodies to me all of James Cameron's worst instincts as a writer, right? And I do emphasise as a writer. And I think it's something that – I think what's interesting is after this film, right, particularly the latter part of his career, which is basically Titanic in 1997 and then after that is just Avatar films. Yeah.

right, this scene to me embodies a direction he goes in, certainly as a writer, where he is extremely emotionally transparent, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think he goes about it in an extremely inelegant way. And I can see how some people engage with it, and I think this is maybe why some people find the avatar films more effective than I have, because to me, and a lot of other people, I'm not alone in this feeling. It is very simplistic in modelling, right? It's not... Yeah. There's no... I don't

need my emotions to always be complex, right? But it's just... It really lacks any sort of interesting edges around it. Yeah, it's bludgeoning. Yeah. And so I do find myself in the camp where this scene

sticks out to me, right? It sticks out a little bit in this film, it especially sticks out in comparison to the other film, and I think it is emblematic of a direction that Cameron will go in certainly as a writer, and he will make no attempt to rein in as a director, which is, in my view, to the detriment of his films. Yeah, I agree. Certainly you can see that instinct in Titanic, which is very clear about its kind of emotional larks and stuff and bludgeoned you over the head with it.

And even as far back as aliens, I think you see this. I didn't like aliens as much as alien because of the way it is less subtle as a film and bludgeon's you and the kind of militaristic stuff. But he's just a less subtle filmmaker. And I don't know to what extent this has continued in his filmography because I'm not watching any more Avatar films. Like I watched the first one. I'm done.

But I think this is just representative of Cameron and like, you know, I don't want to lean too heavily on biography here, but it seems like that's just the way he is as a person. So this is a quote from Schwarzenegger. He, Cameron, transforms a day before shooting. We will go up for dinner, and the next day he's a totally different person.

He becomes literally like a machine. He has a very clear vision of what he wants. He's very demanding, and he will not go for anything that is almost there. It has to be there. That's it. Everyone is kind of scared on set. because Jim doesn't use much psychology, he just screams at everybody.

And for me, that's what this voiceover is doing. It's like, it's screaming at you. These are the themes of the film, and this is what you're supposed to be feeling about it. And like, I think that instinct is putting that voice over. I'm setting this up later so you can be sad when he dies. It is like the death of the father he never knew. Yeah. Yeah, it could be a lot more subtle.

And I think that voiceover, the voiceover only really comes in. There's a bit at the start of the film, but that's kind of a flashback so I can forgive it. But the voiceover from Sarah only begins around now, which is more than halfway through the film. And so it feels a little disjointed that this comes in at all and never works for me. Like these voiceovers are never good. I don't think they add anything. So Sarah has a dream about nuclear annihilation. She's in a park above Los Angeles watching children play before they're.

get turned to ash by a nuclear bomb. I love this scene. This is a horrifying scene, and this is really good. I think it's a more effective version of that very brief scene in Mission Impossible Final Reckoning, where Tom Cruise gets a brief look at nuclear annihilation, but this

is a lot more effective, partly because it's children for one thing, but it works really well. Yeah, no, and this is, you know, there's a few different points in the film that kind of like stick it, like if somebody says Terminator 2 to me, are scenes I think of

of this is one of them. Yeah, I think of the, Sarah's skeleton hanging onto the bars as she is pleading for the world not to die as she gets turned into nuclear ash is an incredible image. Yeah, and as we start to get to the Miles Dyson stuff,

I'm going to come back to this, but it also kind of, it indicates a little bit where there is some revisiting of themes from the first film, right? Because we spoke about the fact that, yeah, I mean, okay, yes, artificial intelligence,

killer robots, blah, blah, blah, but that film is much more based in kind of like nuclear anxiety around kind of like, you know, mutually sure destruction and all this sort of thing. And this film is obviously less concerned with that, right? There is a lot more kind of like, you know,

sci-fi mumbo-jumbo, for one of a better word about, kind of skynet becoming self-aware and this sort of thing. But this is a kind of key thing where it is still concerned with that, and it also feels like it's revisiting it in ways that it wouldn't have been able to do

with the scope and, you know, extra textually, the budget of the first film, right? Because it comes up here, and it'll come up again. Like, even as we get it more deep into kind of like sci-fi stuff with the Miles Dyson thing, it revisits it. So I find it interesting that that thread is still there, right? And it's still there so explicitly. It's there, but it is, and it is still very much there.

There is still Cold War anxiety being felt here. There's one point where I think the Terminator is saying how the nuclear apocalypse came about, and he says that Skynet launched its missiles at Russia, and Russia launched back at the US. And John says, oh, but aren't the Russia are our friends now, kind of feeding into that historic Cold War anxiety, while also updating it for the fall of the moment. Berlin Wall and the fall of the USSR.

But it's still embedded in that Cold War nuclear anxiety. Obviously, nuclear weapons are the threat here, as embodied in this scene. But it is also moving towards, like tech, big tech companies, Silicon Valley, as a vector for this threat. And kind of AI and SkyNet is becoming more prominent as the villain of the piece. This will be embodied when they sneak into CyberDenact. systems during this third act. So it's a little more tied to this tech and the Skynet in particular, kind of the idea of a judgment day when all tech turns against us is a second thing

it's self-rooted in that. You know, this isn't a prolonged nuclear war, this isn't a prolonged cold war, it will all happen on one day when the AI decides it happens. So Sarah speeds away to kill Miles Dyson. She decides that she can change the future. She decides that there's no fate but what we make, so she does to do that. John figures it out and pursues her. He believes that killing Dyson would be wrong, even if he has the potential to cause a devastating future. She is sort of becoming, allegorically, a terminator in this moment, especially when she goes into Miles Dyson's place, and it's singularly focused on murdering him in front of his own child.

Yeah, and she's fucking terrifying in this scene, right away. Like, genuinely. Yeah, she's great. And she is symbolically turning into a Terminator.

She is turning herself into a machine. That is just for killing. And this is, you know, explicitly what Cameron says the film is about. It's about our tendency

to become machines in pursuit of single-minded goals. But, I mean, this film is also more interested in time travel itself. It's more interested

in thinking about time travel than the first film and the consequences of it beyond being a plot device. So in the first film it's kind of just a plot device. But in this film we get some of the bootstrap paradox

which we got in the last film like around the CPU of the Terminator kind of self-forming because it goes back in time and no one actually makes it Miles just copies it. There's some discussion

around the idea of would you kill Hitler as a baby that is in effect killing Miles Dyson here because he hasn't done any of wrong yet, but he will do something wrong. And Sarah's pessimism about predestination, knowing

what will happen, this kind of idea that if you know what will happen, are you depressed because you cannot change it, or do you try and change the world anyway? But Arnie arrives, shows Miles Dyson what he is by immediately ripping the skin off his forearm, which seems like

a wild way to do this. But effective, Dyson is told that he's indirectly responsible for 3 billion deaths. Sarah compares him to the behind the H-bomb. And again, she kind of bludgeoned us with contrasting this with how women can create life. You're a man, you can only destroy, but we women, we create life and can be mothers. And that's more important than anything that you can do.

It's interesting, because that line, it's almost kind of, it fulfills two purposes, because it also links it back to that kind of like nuclear anxiety, right? The fact that that is the specific thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. which is put into the script to put it across and drawing a very clear parallel between you know what is going on here

which will lead to the annihilation of humanity with the creation of the hydrogen bomb and the atomic bomb right? Yeah. There's one thing I just want to kind of linger on here because it's it got me thinking about this and also kind of like when the film is released

and it's clearly trying to draw that line right between the terrifying march of technology, right, and the consequences of it, and the hubris, obliviousness, arrogance of primarily men who enable that. But there's an interesting contrast here, right, because you see this concern in cinema at the time, right? Because you see it in, we've already discussed it previously on these podcast series, because you see it in, way, slightly more faceless version of it

with Whalen Dutani in Alien and Aliens Right And you also see it in Jurassic Park Right in the Jurassic Park series Right initially through Hammond And then I think Henry Wu Becomes more of an avatar for that later on

But I think that there is an interesting contrast here Between those, to me anyway Between those entities and Dyson Right because in both of the ones that I've mentioned, they are looking to control nature or control others and hold power over things, right? And it's about, you know, like,

what are you unleashing in trying to gain that control? Yes. What's interesting about this, and maybe where it links into kind of like some of the stuff around, you know, father-s-s-son relationships is, is effectively coming from an abdication of responsibility, responsibility, right? You know, there's a lot of talk about how kind of like SkyNet becomes self-aware and, you know, human decision was taken out strategic.

What's interesting there is it's using that same sort of mechanism, the March of Technology, not to control others and hold power, but actually to abdicate responsibility in kind of like a way that is kind of reflected elsewhere in the film. I just find that an interesting contrast is where kind of like that, that role of technology and how it's test. terrifying and what it is being used for differs in quite an interesting way to be there. It kind of stands in contrast to some of the other things that we've looked at in these series. Yeah, yeah. So Dyson decides he needs to destroy his work so no one can create Skynet. They head to Cyberdine to do so, but an alarm is tripped and a full SWAT team descends. The T-800 goes to deal with the police where a minigone,

but he tells John he will abide by his promise not to kill. And so he carefully and forensically does not kill anyone. he's got a heads-up display which reads human casualties 0.0 and it amused me thinking about how you can have a fraction of a casualty. Yeah, I love the number of significant figures there. Yeah.

It's, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, this is the theme of the film. So James Cameron has referred to this as a violent movie about peace. He's comfortable with those ambiguities. an action film about the value of human life. You know, it's about using violence to achieve peace but also holding back from killing and changing your position as a Terminator. You know,

you can always change, I think is the theme of the film. You can always change your future. You can always change from being a killing machine to being a creature of peace. John Dyson get the CPU in the arm of the first Terminator. Miles gets shot by the police. He uses his last act to ensure that his research will be blown up. Interesting to see that it is the black man who is immediately shot and killed by the police. In ways that are resonant in the 90s when this comes out, but I think have become more resonant since, with a real focus on kind of Black Lives Matter

and how the police force are institutionally racist in the States. The T-800 goes after the police to protect John and Sarah. He says, I'll be back, like he did in the first film. But he hijacks a police fan. Meanwhile, the T-1000 arrives. He uses a motorbike to jump onto a helicopter at hijack it, which looks great. That is badass. And he uses a helicopter to pursue the heroes in the police van.

It's another good chase scene that worked well. Yeah, again, much like the other one, the understanding of space and peace and during this is incredible. There's one shot in particular, I think, like, following it down the road, not the kind of bit where it goes over the bridge, but literally it's just trailing behind it, and it has this such incredible feeling of,

you know, speed and danger and urgency. Honestly, superb, absolutely superb. Yeah, really good. Just fantastic stunts. The stunts people on this must have did a really great job, because it looked great. The T1,000 steals a truck of liquid nitrogen. and he pursues our heroes into a steel foundry.

Now obviously the steel foundry stands in for American industry against the kind of invasion of Japan, in this case, the T1,000. But they crash in this steel foundry. Liquid nitrogen goes everywhere, conveniently freezing the T-1,000 in a way that makes him shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. Unfortunately, it's a steel foundry, so the pieces immediately melt and his little mercury bits start reforming. The two terminators fight, there's some cool liquid metal moves where he bashes into something

with his face and immediately shifts his face to the back of his head and yeah, it's good. The T-800 gets overpowered, he gets crushed in various ways and he appears to be killed. An injured Sarah approaches John at one point, but that is quickly shown to be the T-1000 in disguise. And interestingly, they didn't use effects for that. That was Linda Hamilton. twin sister who had one day on set just to do that one shot. And given that, I kind of wish they'd made more of it, because it really is just one shot that lasts for like a second, and then you realize it's not Sarah. And there's only one shot with them both in the same frame. I guess Linda Hamilton's sister isn't an actor, so they were limited in what they could do, but it seems like a waste of a perfectly good twin.

Yeah, the busted T-800 suddenly appears and blows the T-100 and depart with a grenade, pushes him into the molten steel, where he flails about and changes forms and dies. Terminated, says Arnie. Yeah, and again, there's other articles, there's one by Don Larsson that refers to this as the triumph over kind of postmodernity, the triumph over the kind of flexibility. It turns Arnold, John, and Sarah into a postmodern family, where we see this, this character not as a machine, but as a human being with a metal core, a different kind of human being,

that can triumph over these kinds of flexibilities of non-nature. You know, the T-1000 appears non-natural. And this article reads that as fascist. And there is a kind of rigidity, a kind of capitalist rigidity, beating the kind of left-wing flexibility and pluralism programmed for totalitarian rule. I don't know about that. But that is kind of the reading of it.

For Terminator 2 to create an aesthetic of violence with propaganda value, it must deny the latent fascism in such asceticization itself. It must endear us to the callous sentimentalism vindicating violence from the right, and so legitimate that violence as both moral and physical defense against the tearless violence from the left. So again, that's a conservative reading where the family unit represented by Arnie John and Sarah

stands against post-modernism. Yeah, it's interesting way. These... I can't quite decide... I mean, I think some of these readings are a bit of a reach, right? We've already discussed that. But I can't decide how much of that is informed by my own personal biases, right?

because I think the thing for me is it's just utterly wild to me that you can I don't really and you know and maybe like you know this is maybe this is more for like once we've wrapped up fully but I think the

the point I'll make here before we kind of like cap off kind of the plot summary is I don't really see how you can make these arguments about the T-1,000 and Robert Patrick embodying some sort of collectivist left-wing entity

when the film goes to such lengths, such lengths to make him peer as an LAPD officer for the vast majority of the runtime. I was just going to say the same thing. Yeah, it just, it seems utterly blind. It's a reading which is utterly blind to what the film is explicitly. doing. Now you can read into

as I have and I'm sure both of us will shortly, you can attach different readings to why the film is doing that and how much it's trying to save by doing that but I think it makes some of these readings even more of a

stretch because I think you really have to ignore that it's doing that at all. Yeah, I think just because he can morph into anything doesn't mean you can read him as anything like there's far too much flexibility in these readings of the T-1-000

because he can morph into anything he can become anything kind of representationally but no like he's a cop for most of the film he doesn't take his cop outfit off he's always a cop and I don't think you can separate the character from that that authority figure is important and James Cameron says as much in these interviews

like he says we position him as an authority figure, we position him as a cop. James Cameron says, these films are about us losing touch with our humanity and becoming machines. 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 to do that job. So if you want to do a political reading, you can do, but you have to reckon with the fact that that is a cop thing, and the cops are representative of kind of America and right-wing conservatism. and, you know, it seems like a stretch to make him left wing when he's a cop. Yeah, I mean, I mean, the other thing is, I mean, you know, I mean, I'm spitballing this off the top of my head here, right?

So, like, I'm not going to stand by this take. But, like, you know, two can play this game, right? If you want to disregard any readings that are derived from him appearing to be a cop, right? You can still play this game, right? You could argue that the shape-shifting nature of the T-1000 kind of reflects the ability of the established hegemonic powers to do whatever is necessary to maintain a status quo. It's just with the sci-fi trappings of this film,

the status quo in question is the status quo in the future in 2029. Right? But, like, you know, there you go. I can attach a reading there, which, you know, takes the actual physical nature of that antagonist and can attach a more kind of, you know, anti-conservative reading to it. I personally think what I've just said is more of a stretch, right? I do also think that's a stretch, because it doesn't relate to what the film is explicitly doing, right? I think anything that you're saying the film is implicitly doing really has to be derived from what it is

explicitly doing. And I think what it's explicitly doing is portraying him as a cop. And you also have that quote from Cameron, which is not part of the film, but it kind of backs up that assertion, that anything anything is doing needs to flow from that. And I think the

readings that we've discussed here, kind of like, you know, around Japan and kind of, like, it doesn't flow from that. It really, I, and if anything, I think James Cameron's a dickhead, so I'd really love to be able to describe some sort of like, you know, regressive, conservative viewpoint. to him and his writing

it would make kind of like any cognitive dissonance in my head quite a bit easier to be honest but I think maybe there's some guiltiness on the part of doing that because I don't feel like these readings flow from what the film explicitly does. Yeah, I think, you know, I don't want to take Cameron's word too heavily

because it's not in the text of the film and, you know, with the death of the author, anyone can read what they want into a film. It's what you bring to it. important. So I'm not, anyone can read what they want into it. But we discussed, James Cameron's not a subtle filmmaker and we're about to get beaten over the head with the themes of the film in a final voiceover. So yeah, there are very clear themes at play. You can read whatever you want into it, but ultimately the themes are pretty clear. Yeah, so I mean that they throw the CPU

in the arm into the molten steel, the T-800 says that he must also be destroyed. And a tearful John orders him not to go, but he must. So Sarah lowers the T-800 into the molten steel, and he gives the final sad thumbs up as he's consumed, like Gollum at the end of the Lord of the Rings. And then it kind of ends up a voiceover and a shot of a road, like a lost highway, where they're saying, you know,

the future is what we can make it, we can change our future. Schwarzenegger puts this in the oral history as, we are in charge, we don't have to take this shit that's coming our way, we can go and create a future, the one that we want, which is a good future without those machines. We just have to fight for it.

So yeah, it's about the value of human life and stuff. That was not the original ending. The original ending that they filmed and was edited into the film until a month before it was released. Was a film set in a park in the park where Sarah sees the nuclear apocalypse, where John Connor is now a US senator and he's playing with his daughter. And Sarah is there as a placid grandma. kind of looking down on them and smiling and it's all good

I watched the theatrical version of this but I have seen that scene and there's some oh have you I was about to say I don't know if I've have ever seen that yeah I I've seen it and there's some pretty ropey aging makeup on the Hamilton I do wonder whether that's how it got

how it got cut because like after you've had all these wonderful practical and digital effect, it does kind of stand apart a little bit. Maybe there were practical considerations. Cameron says that he decided not to tie it all up with a bow, but suggests that the struggle was ongoing,

and in fact might even be an unending one for us kind of come to terms with technology and the violent demons of humanity, which I do think works better for the themes of the film. There's also, like, practical and logical questions that come from that ending, like if they do prevent the apocalypse how does Kyle Reese send back

how does Kyle Reese go back in time to become John Connor's father if they have rewritten history there should be no more John Connor if we're going with this kind of view of time travel which is different from that expressed in the first film where time can be changed

where the future can be changed and it's not a kind of Nabokov predestination paradox but yeah Camman gets to keep his non-violent message and the futureist says packaged it in a way that was a lot less jarring to audiences which I think is fair even if I don't like the voiceover

so that's the end of the film it's a good one it's a good one I think it's a genuinely good sequel like it has a good sequel hook which is there's two terminators this time one is good and one is bad it's legitimately interesting

as a kind of development of the story it justifies its own existence by continuing the story and expanding the universe rather than just regurgitating and it feels more expansive than the first film but in a way that's true to the original and builds on it. So I think it's a good sequel.

It like changes genre similar to aliens it like turns into blockbuster action rather than slasher tech noir as they called the first film and I think that works as a sequel and I think it's a good one. Yeah and it is it is really interesting

how it does so many similar things with this franchise as Cameron did with aliens right? Yes. One thing that really strikes it sticks out to me because I think basically, so I'd watched this film quite a few times

but I'm pretty sure I could be wrong about this but I'm pretty sure I have not watched this film since before I saw Terminator salvation for the first time, right? Which was the fourth one. And it's remarkable to me how much, and this is a little bit similar to the alien situation. It's kind of amazing to me quite how many elements of this film is kind of like treated like the, you know, the stone tablets for the rest of the series.

Well, yeah, I mean, we'll grab all. to little bits and then build on it. And we'll come to that kind of like when we talk about the other films. But there's so many bits here. I thought there was one that's kind of like, um, he has a line. Um, the more contact I have with humans, the more I learn. Yeah. And like, I think that's revisited quite a lot in later films to the detriment of those films in a couple of cases. Um, but like, it's amazing how much of it stems from this one. Yes. I mean, this is kind of the jumping off point for the rest of the franchise. So I believe we'll go into films that are direct continuations of this.

Obviously with Terminator 3. But like I think one of the later films is a sequel to this but not the other films. And then there's a TV series, Sarah Connor Connacles, that is a sequel to this, but not the movies. This becomes a jumping up point. It becomes a kind of sacred text, like you say. that will inform how the franchise develops which is also what aliens did like aliens was kind of

changes the direction of the alien franchise in a way that I didn't appreciate in the Xenopod and introduces all these kind of militaristic elements that get picked up my later films whereas I like the kind of stripped down horror of the first one and this does the same

it pivots the franchise into action in a way that we'll see how that develops over the next four films. Yeah, but it's interesting to the things that later... Because later films really pick up on that and they go... I would argue that, you know, and I need to rewatch some of them for when we get to later the series, but they feel a lot more kind of like preoccupied with the sci-fi mechanics to an extent where it doesn't really say anything. When I think this film really is kind of like, I find

some of the trappings of it fascinating. One note I made at the end is, it's kind of remarkable to me how many bad things that happen in this film come from people blindly trusting authority figures. Mm-hmm. Right?

So, you know, and I think you can see that in kind of like the overarching thing that we've spoken about with the presentation of the T-1000. But, also kind of like specific instances, right? So, like, you know, John nearly ends up dead because his foster parents give a, just give a photo of him to a man who shows up in an LAPD uniform at their doorstep, right?

They just hand it over, right? And he ends up nearly getting killed as a result of it. You know, like, there's a whole bunch of chaos and death at the, you know, the hospital that Sarah Conner has interned at, because basically the T-1000, as an L-EPD officer, is just kind of like waved into the facility at the gate, right? You have, Miles Dyson ends up with Sarah Connor making an attempt on his life,

and it ultimately ends up dying, right, and potentially being responsible for the annihilation of half of humanity. Yep. Because he doesn't question the source of, you know, the chip and the technology that he is, he's building things off of, right? Again, it's this blind question, this trusting of authority. And then you have the flip

side of it, where actively rejecting that kind of leads to good consequences, right? So John kind of inverts the authority dynamics with the T-800, and sure, he's an annoying little shit bag in that scene, but ultimately as a result of that,

he saves his mother because he questions and inverts those dynamics. His pal with the ginger mullet, just barefaced lies to who he thinks is an LEPD officer and as a result he kind of buys John a bit of extra time to not end up getting killed and I just I find that interesting and then so to return to our earlier point some of these readings again they ignore these things right

those are all explicit things that the film is doing alongside an explicit representation of that character And I think anything that goes against that reading or anything which leads to something which seems counterintuitive based on that has to ignore them. And I think ultimately you cannot ignore the text of the film when you're making readings of it, right? You can't just bane things to fit in.

I think you need to ignore all of this to attach a different reading to it. You know, and that's, you know, and there's another aspect of it where I was curious, right, because this feels like a very quintessentially Los Angeles film, right? There's a lot of iconography here which feels

very L.A.ish. Oh yeah, like the chase scene through that. The chase scene through the river, which I never see kind of like, you know, anywhere else. And it's often used to kind of like, you know, formally established, right, you're in Los Angeles, right? I was curious about when this film came out in relation to the L.A.

riots and the Rodney King incident. And it basically is concurrent. You know, and I So the idea that I realized this also wouldn't have played necessarily into the script or the film because like, or at least not the specific incident I'm referring to where I'm basically thinking of you know, the beating of Rodney King and then the killing of Latasha Harlins, right?

Yeah. Because the riots then didn't happen to 1992 until the officers accused of it were, of the Rodney King incident were a course. quitted, but you can't ignore that context. Like, you know, particularly like the films, the reaction to the film and the readings of the film and the way that it would resonate with some people is taking place in that context. It would have happened months before this film came out, right?

So to disregard that, I feel is just, it's willful blindness to me. Yeah, especially when, as I said, you know, like, my. Dyson is a black character who is shot by the police as soon as they see him in the film. Within the film. Like that happens. He's the only main character who dies. And he is a black man. Yeah.

You know, so like, and as to say, because of the way the timings work out, right, I think it would also be a stretch to say that this is explicitly a response to, let's say, the Rodney King incident, right? because the timelines there wouldn't match up. But to go back to some of the stuff that we're trying to do with these podcast series, it does speak to the time and the place, particularly when this film goes to such lengths to place itself in Los Angeles, right? It does speak to the time and place that these are the dynamics that play out, right?

Yeah. So I think any other readings that ignore that do seem pretty poor to me. you know it's just there's also I also find there's this a really bizarre coincidence where the scene at the start setting the bar is basically right next to where

the Rodney King incident happened and somebody you filmed behind the scenes footage like caught some behind the scenes footage of Terminator 2 being filmed was the same person who caught the Rodney King incident on tape right it's just you know and it's like again that's a coincidence

in that particular case but it does it does really to me speak to the time and place this film was being made in Yeah that's pretty wild So you know And I think when you see all these things You know these coincidences

The actual readings The creative choices that the film makes Attaching readings to it Where the T-1000 Antagonistic figure does not represent American authority and American enforcement

of its kind of slightly conservative viewpoints I just don't see how you can ignore that you cannot ignore it both within the text of the film but also when you then start to look outside it the landscape it was released into and it was being made into

any other reading really does feel like a stretch to me Now, we can talk about kind of like other readings once you'd start to look at the franchise as a whole and that's something we'll do as this series develops but in particular for this specific film anything that ignores that really seems to be

lacking rigor to me. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we'll get into those other readings but I mean there will never be as many readings as there is for this film because this film is one of the biggest films ever made and there's been so much written about it increasingly little going about the other films.

But we will get into those films as we continue as we continue the series. So next month we will be discussing 2000 freeze Terminator Three rise of the machines. Over a full decade later, Schwarzenegger returns to the role and they do a third one directly following on from Terminator 2 Judgment Day. So we'll get into that when we return. Until then, please tell people about the podcast. We only spread about word of mouth, so ask people to subscribe to Take One Presents if they're interested in film history and kind of discussions of blockbuster cinema. You can follow us on social media. Take1Cinema.net is the website and until then we will see you next time. We'll be back.