Quick recap: The Terminator is back! But this time he is here to protect instead of, well, terminate. Along the way he learns what it means to be human and how to love. Awww.

          Beeee……..Goooood, E.T phone home.

Fun (?) fact: Linda Hamilton, who played Sarah Connor, has an identical twin sister who helped out in scenes where two Sarahs were needed. Identical twins seems kind of a cop out special effect when James Cameron could have just Parent Trapped it. That’s totally a thing now, by the way, Parent Trapping.

My thoughts: Reflecting on my previous Terminator post, I seem a bit underwhelmed by the whole thing. It felt like mindless entertainment, maybe a notch above other action movies, but nothing spectacular. Therefore, it pleased me greatly to see that Terminator 2 is a much better film than its original, a feat very hard to pull off. According to IMDb, Terminator 2 is the only sequel in history to win Academy awards when the previous film hadn’t even been nominated.

To start off with, the special effects, which impressed me last time, did so even more this time around. The constant explosions and walls of fire didn’t do much for me, but I loved the liquid metal structure of the T-1000. I kept expecting him to turn into Alex Mack at some point, but still very cool. The nuclear sequence was realistic enough to get a thumbs up from nuclear testing facilities, something we all strive to obtain some day. There weren’t very many ‘scary’ scenes, but that one stuck with me for awhile.

                            another creepy scene

Edward Furlong, who played John Connor annoyed me the entire time he was on screen, and not just because of his voice. He was like the real life version of Bart Simpson but without any funny lines. His relationship with the Terminator also weirded me out a little and reminded me of that kid in Shane, especially the ending when he pleads for him not to go. I’ll cut him some slack though because it is pretty awesome to have your own pet Terminator to love and care for, who follows you around, protects you and does whatever you want. Replace Arnold Schwarzenegger with a Golden Retriever and you’d have the top heartwarming family movie of the year. It was really hard to see how this brat turned into the leader of the revolution but that was sort of the point, I think. Sending the Terminator back to protect John Connor set in motion all of the experiences he needed to become the hero later on in life. Having not watched any other movie in this series I don’t know if the war still happened but I’m guess it did. That makes everything even more remarkable, all the things these characters went through and yet failed to stop the future.

Final review: 4/5. Definitely an improvement from the pervious film, but I wouldn’t call it a favorite.

Up next: Sullivan’s Travels

Quick recap: A cyborg, played by the former governor of California (what a country!), travels back to the 1980s to assassinate Sarah Connor, whose unborn son will one day secure a victory against the machines and save humanity.

The Terminator also murders Bill Paxton, so he can’t be all that bad.

Fun (?) fact: O.J. Simpson was considered for the title role, but producers felt that he was ‘too nice’.

I for one welcome our new cyborg overlords

My thoughts: I have never seen The Terminator before ,although it is one of those movies that is so iconic it felt like I’ve watched it dozens of times. I tend to reject movies that have been gendered into ‘guy movies’ and ‘ girl movies’ because I feel it alienates people that might otherwise enjoy something if it hadn’t been labeled as such.

On the other hand, The Terminator is totally a ‘guy movie’. Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course. I am not a guy and I still enjoyed it, although the action sequences were a little too violent for my taste. I was very interested in the dystopian future (FYI 14 years from now) and also trying to figure out the whole time travel thing. Kyle Reese is from the future to protect Sarah Connor so that she may one day give birth to John Connor, the humanity’s savior. But he also travels back in time because he is totally in love with her and subsequently, they conceive the baby. Everything becomes all wibbly wobbly timey wimey at this point and it hurt my brain to think about it too much.

I think what impressed me most about The Terminator were the special effects. If I hadn’t been watching this with my husband, who apparently knows this movie very well,I would’ve missed most of this stuff because, it being 2015, I sometimes forget that computers haven’t always been around. The scene where the terminator takes out his eye is both gross and awesome.

I lost focus towards the end because it became more of a ‘just die, already’ sort of thing, with the terminator having been reduced to nothing more than a metal skeleton. It sort of reminded me of the black night in Monty Python, which was probably not what the director was going for.

’tis but a scratch

Final review: 3/5. I get bored by constant gunfights, but I’m hoping the sequel will be better.

Up next: The House is Black