Terminator 2: Why the Sequel Works

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the rare sequel that surpasses the original. In a readers’ poll conducted by Rolling Stone magazine, T2 was named the No. 2 sequel of all time, second only to The Godfather Part II. In this video we deconstruct why Terminator 2 is so effective and enjoyable. Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D released on August 25, 2017.

Transcript provided by Youtube:

00:00
[“Hasta la vista, Baby”]
00:04
It’s rare that a sequel not only matches
00:07
the quality of the original film, but also improves on it.
00:10
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of those few sequels that manages to surpass its predecessor
00:15
In a Rolling Stone’s reader poll, T2 was named the #2 greatest sequel of all time,
00:20
second only to The Godfather Part II.
00:22
The 3D re-release 26 years after its debut provides the perfect opportunity to analyze
00:28
why T2 was so successful both commercially and artistically.
00:32
The sequel expands on the original’s powerful message about defying inevitability- that
00:37
the future is not set.
00:38
[“There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves”]
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The movie speaks to our deep desire to see humanity in our machines and other coldly
00:46
inhuman characters.
00:47
And it’s a movie about a killing machine that asks us to show mercy, and consider the
00:52
good in the world in spite of a tomorrow that looks bleak.
00:55
Fittingly, it wasn’t merely the higher budget but the extra dimension and depth,
00:59
on a story, character, and production level, that make T2 a winning and enduring sequel.
01:04
[“Why do you cry?”
01:07
“You mean people?” “Yeah.”
01:09
“I don’t know. We just cry.”
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You know, when it hurts.”]
01:16
01:19
James Cameron once said “Writing a sequel, you’ve got to continue the story, continue
01:24
the characters, but you’ve got to swerve in a crazy direction and it has to make complete
01:28
sense when you’re watching it.”
01:30
This is exactly what Cameron himself does in T2, which gives us a stunning transformation of all
01:35
of the major characters.
01:36
Sarah Connor in the first film was an ordinary waitress who doubted the legitimacy of visitors
01:41
from the future.
01:42
In the second, she becomes a full-on, tough-as-nails warrior, tragically placed into a mental hospital
01:47
for believing what she now knows to be the truth about the threat that machines pose
01:51
to humanity.
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And although society has labelled her as insane, and some individuals prove downright abusive,
01:58
she’ll nonetheless stop at nothing to defend these same people from destruction- a far
02:02
cry from the frightened woman we met in the original.
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[“Come on, do I look like the mother of the future?
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I mean, am I tough? Organized? I can’t even balance my checkbook!”]
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Her son John Connor was built up in the first film to be the future savior of humankind
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right when it’s on the brink of complete destruction by the machines, but when we first
02:23
meet him in the sequel, he’s nothing more than a bratty, troublemaking kid.
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Even newcomer Miles Dyson, whom we discover can be blamed for the rise of the evil Skynet,
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surprises us when he quickly becomes apologetic upon understanding the future consequences
02:36
of his actions, and heroically sacrifices his life to destroy his work.
02:41
But the most dramatic change of character is- of course- in the Terminator himself.
02:45
Schwarzenegger’s Terminator is the only character in film history to land a spot on
02:49
both AFI’s Top 50 Heroes and Top 50 Villains lists.
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Cameron managed to remold one of the most famously terrifying characters to ever grace
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the silver screen into a lovable father figure and hero for audiences to root for.
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When we are first reintroduced to Schwarzenegger in T2, he seems to exhibit the same chillingly
03:07
sociopathic qualities as his T-800 from the original, but with subtle differences.
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This opening scene in which the time-traveling Terminator demands clothes from bystanders
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recalls that of the first film, but it plays with a more comedic tone, and the character
03:21
doesn’t actually kill anyone, a rule that the young John Connor will later make official.
03:25
[“Just put up your hand and say I swear I won’t kill anyone.”
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“I swear I will not kill anyone.”]
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Fear builds in the 1991 audience as they expect the T-800 to violently pursue John just as
03:39
he pursued Sarah in the original, only for Cameron to pull the rug out from under them
03:43
at the last possible moment [“Get down.”]
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To cement Arnold’s new role, Cameron juxtaposes
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him with an even more powerful and terrifying villain, Robert Patrick’s the T-1000, retrofitting
03:56
Arnold’s terminator into a sort-of unlikely underdog.
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Just as the Terminator has the ability to mimic voices, he takes on another more human
04:05
persona entirely, very much informed by the guidance of Connor.
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Yet even though this time he’s been reprogrammed to protect humankind, he still has an awareness
04:13
of what the old him would do [“The T-1000 will definitely try to reacquire you there”
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“You sure?”
04:20
“I would.”] and he still shows an ignorance of morality
04:23
and social constructs, but now in a malleable, almost childlike way
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[“You just can’t go around killing people” “Why?”]
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“What do you mean, why? Cause you can”t.”
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“Why?” “Because you just can’t. Ok? Trust me on this.”
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He’s willing to learn and adapt his ways in accordance with the command of John.
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The original Terminator was more than just a cold-blooded killer; as Kyle Reese explains,
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it’s programmed to be completely relentless.
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[“It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with.
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“It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead.”]
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The iconic casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger embodied the character of the emotionless
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machine in his machine-like exaggeration of the masculine form — the almost too-perfect
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image of a bodybuilder who’s literally larger than life.
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Interestingly, Reese, Sarah’s protector from the future in the first film, is very
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much a precursor for the role that the Terminator takes on in the sequel.
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Hardened by war, he too is a fish out of water, who doesn’t feel much in the way
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of emotion [“Pain can be controlled, just disconnected”
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“So you feel nothing?”]
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T2’s re-molding of the Terminator builds on the groundwork laid by Reese in the original
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to make us invest in a similarly unfeeling albeit trustworthy protector.
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The Terminator even repeats Reese’s famous line “Come with me if you want to live,”
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convincing the viewer of their comforting similarity.
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Even once the Terminator is seemingly revealed to be good, the audience remains skeptical,
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actively remembering his intimidating presence in the original.
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The fear of the audience is channeled in the trauma on Sarah’s face when she first
06:06
re-encounters the machine that murdered the love of her life and nearly her as well.
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The new Terminator has to earn the trust, respect, and sympathy of Sarah and us.
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And ironically enough, it’s Sarah, standing in for us, who later shows mercy to the Terminator
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and Miles Dyson.
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Ultimately, she realizes the utter relentlessness of the original Terminator has become reversed,
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as the reprogrammed model is now endlessly dependable, to the point that he becomes an
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unconventional father figure to John.
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[“Terminator would never stop. It would never leave him.
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And it would never hurt him. Never shout at him or get drunk and hit him. Or say it was…
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“too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die to protect him.”]
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This can be seen in how the iconic violent warning of “I’ll be back” from the original
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film is said again but in a reassuring tone, transformed from a threat into a promise .
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[“Stay here. I’ll be back.”]
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Atara Stein’s The Byronic Hero in Film, Fiction, and Television discusses how we’re
07:09
drawn to unlikely humanistic characters like the Terminator and Star Trek’s Mr. Spock,
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since it “is these creatures’ alien coldness that leads their audience to desire so intensely
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proof of their hidden or nascent humanity and warmth.”
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Perhaps what is so captivating about this reincarnation of the Terminator is that
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while its humanity seems to grow over the course of the film, it can never fully cross
07:30
the line.
07:31
[“I know now why you cry, but it is something
07:36
I can never do.”] The Terminator’s status as a hero has arguably
07:41
become even more iconic than the antagonist he was initially- the Terminator attraction
07:46
at Universal Studios uses the T2 iteration of the character, and the two feature films
07:50
since T2 that Schwarzenegger reprised his role in, again use him as a protector, cementing
07:56
the character’s newfound legacy as one of the good guys.
08:00
1984’s original Terminator was James Cameron’s directorial debut.
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Produced on a modest budget of $6.4 million, the film was an unprecedented success,
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taking in $78.3 million worldwide, and launching the career of a filmmaker whose two most recent
08:15
releases are still the highest-grossing movies of all time.
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And while he does plan to direct multiple follow-ups to Avatar, Terminator currently remains Cameron’s
08:24
only original project that he decided to direct a sequel to himself.
08:28
This is because the story of T2 was actually part of Cameron’s original idea, but due
08:33
to budget restraints, Cameron had to create a more streamlined and linear
08:37
version of the original robot apocalypse film.
08:39
[“The whole liquid metal guy was actually part of the original story.
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“The whole first film was really the first act and a half of my original conception of the story.
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“And the second film, although, you know, greatly elaborated was the second half of the original story.
08:57
“But frankly, starting out on a shoe-string budget and with the state of the arts of effects a the time…
09:02
“I couldn’t figure out how to do it.”]
09:04
As Terminator’s popularity continued to grow over the years, it was star Arnold Schwarzenegger
09:09
who encouraged Cameron to return to the director’s chair.
09:12
“You and I, we got together periodically and started working on a plan” “Right” “mapping out times…
09:17
“to keep certain time period blocked out so we can go and venture down the line….”
09:23
“Actually you’d call me up about once every six months and say ..
09:25
..So how’s it going – no, you’d talk about other things for about five minutes and then..
09:28
So how’s Terminator 2 going?” “That’s right. That’s right, yeah.”]
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Once Cameron contacted Linda Hamilton to make sure that she’d reprise her role as Sarah
09:36
Connor, he finally gave into the studio’s demands for a sequel.
09:39
With a $102 million budget, it was the most expensive movie ever made at the time, but
09:44
it has since become clear that Cameron’s direction put the money to good use.
09:48
Bigger does not necessarily mean better, as was proved by the three more expensive
09:52
yet negatively received Terminator sequels that followed without Cameron’s involvement.
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T2 didn’t just raise the budget dramatically; it also raised the stakes of the storyline.
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Whereas the first film focused squarely on protecting Sarah Connor, T2’s heroes
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aim to protect the entire world from the future wrath of the artificial intelligence system,
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Skynet, that will become self-aware and engage in nuclear attack to exterminate our species.
10:15
This plot expressed timely social fears of surveillance, drone warfare, and- of course-
10:20
artificial intelligence — anxieties that have grown all the more relevant and pervasive
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in the years since the film’s release.
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The effects in Terminator 2 pioneered CGI out of necessity to serve the story.
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With 1989’s The Abyss, Cameron and crew managed to create a malleable and humanlike
10:37
character entirely through CGI.
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However, this effect only appeared in one scene, whereas the T-1000 had to be the antagonist
10:44
throughout the entire film.
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Industrial Light and Magic set out to create a mercury look for the liquid metal killing
10:50
machine, considering that mercury already doesn’t look very real in real life, given
10:54
its reflective, digital-like nature.
10:57
While this is a film about technology reaching its apex, ironically, CGI was very new at
11:02
the time.
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And, despite the rather revolutionary CGI the T2 filmmakers brought to the table, they
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used CGI quite sparingly in the film.
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Like the first Terminator, many of the effects were actually practical.
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For example, the shot immediately after the famous catchphrase
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[“Hasta la vista, baby”] in which the T-1000, frozen in liquid nitrogen,
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shatters into pieces, was completed with a Stan Winston model.
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In fact, much of the degradation of the T-1000 in the film’s climax was accomplished
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by sculpting T-1000 actor Robert Patrick in clay, pulling the model apart, and creating
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a foam rubber puppet, molded to give the appearance of damage.
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There are only about 47 CGI shots in the final cut, compared with about 1,200 in 2015’s
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Terminator Genisys.
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Yet the T-1000 left such a lasting impression on viewers, it feels like much more than that.
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This is a testament to the careful and truly meticulous planning of the effects that earned
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the filmmakers Oscar wins for both Best Makeup and Best Visual Effects.
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[“Every single frame of that computer animation was so costly…
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“That we really had to be stingy about how we use it. Which meant that we had…
12:03
“to be clever in the way that we leveraged it so that we get the most impact.”]
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While within the plot the more outdated machine defeats the newer model, Terminator
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2: Judgment Day transcends its original.
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In Terminator, the goal is to escape the perils of the future, but the sequel actively confronts
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those perils, and aims to ultimately change the course of human history for the better.
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Though it seemed inevitable that the original icon would be the one to go down in film history,
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Cameron’s audacious vision to transform the Terminator into a hero perfectly epitomizes
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the adage that defined his series- that there is no fate but what we make for ourselves.
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[“Because of a machine, a Terminator can learn the value of human life…
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“Maybe we can too.”]