James Cameron’s follow-up to his 1984 classic pulls off the unlikely feat of matching that film. It’s a much higher budget, but the spirit of it is very similar.
John Connor (Edward Furlong), who the original Terminator failed to prevent being born, is now a 10-year-old child. His mother, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), is confined to a mental institution because no one believed her tales of tech-monsters from the future and impending global meltdown. In the present day of the film, two further Terminators are sent to kill John Connor. In a neat twist, there is a “bad” Terminator (T-1000) played by Robert Patrick and a good one played by Arnold Schwarzenegger (the villain of the first film). In another twist, the T-1000 is way more advanced. He has shape-shifting abilities – a liquid-metal chameleon able to take the form of anyone he wants to impersonate. As if all this wasn’t enough, Sarah and John have to prevent the technological advances that will lead to the future nuclear conflict that Skynet will use to dominate the planet.
It sounds complicated, but the storytelling is lucid and easy to follow. Tonally, it’s all over the place – there’s extreme gun violence but there are also attempts at humour, such as a young boy (who wears a Public Enemy T-shirt throughout) trying to teach a machine to smile. I rather liked that oddness.
Still not sure whether Linda Hamilton can act, but she gets the job done. Arnie is more impressive as a cold machine than he is when he goes for warmth or comedy.
Further films would follow. The third, fourth and fifth episodes were rendered invalid by the sixth, which claimed to be a direct sequel to Terminator 2 and which essentially erased the timelines of the interim sequels. But given the subject matter, you can just about accept all of them as alternative timelines set in motion by different yet related events.
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