Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

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.

The Terminator (1984)

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a cyborg sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who will give birth to a resistance leader of the future. Sarah is helped by Kyle Reese, another soldier from the future (Michael Biehn), in an attempt to stop the seemingly unstoppable.

James Cameron’s film is both trashy and, given the expert storytelling, strangely sophisticated. The special effects look basic by modern standards, but they are still highly effective.

Schwarzenegger is entirely convincing as the android with astonishing strength. The film is unashamedly violent and seems to fetishise guns.

It’s fascinating to see what we didn’t know about the future in 1984. When the Terminator arrives in 1984, he looks up Sarah Connor in the phone directory. So in 2029, there seems to be no equivalent of the internet or GPS tracking software. Surely they could have sent back something more advanced than a tough-guy robot dependent on a printed phone book?

That small point aside, it’s a highly entertaining romp.

“I’ll be back,” says Arnie, famously, at one point – and he was, in numerous Terminator sequels.

Dante’s Peak (1997)

Another film viewed on TV while on holiday. Pierce Brosnan plays a volcanologist who recently lost his girlfriend in a volcanic eruption in Colombia. He now has to convince the town of Dante’s Peak to evacuate before everything kicks off. Then everything kicks off.

It’s a compelling disaster film with a genuinely dramatic visualisation of a town being destroyed by an eruption, with its ensuing rivers of lava, toxic ash clouds and devastating pyroclastic flows. Brosnan is just right for the role – it’s partly a James Bond action scenario, partly a step forwards into a more “human” part. The “love interest” is the town mayor, played by Linda Hamilton.

My only criticism is that there seemed to be a scene missing near the end at the very climax of the film. While it’s not emotionally gruelling or upsetting like The Impossible (with which it shares a family-in-peril theme), it’s an entirely believable thriller.