Clash of the Titans

Terminator 2: Judgment Day gets a lot of hyperbole thrown at it and, strangely, most of it is deserved and as a cinephile whose main love in the cinema is action pictures, it's a particularly important set of hyperbole to address. No, it's not the best sequel of all time. That one boggles my mind because I can immediately say "Godfather 2" and everyone in the room will shut up. No, I don't think it's the best action film of all time. That title goes to Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's probably the last great action film to come out of the boom of mostly awful, sometimes brilliant action films in the 80s. No, it's not even James Cameron's best film (I think it's pretty clear that I'm all gooey-eyed over The Terminator). It is, by far, the most important stepping stone between practically filmed movies and the CGI-heavy acid trips we've been getting at the theaters this last decade or so. While it's not the last, or even really close to the last blockbuster filmed mostly with practical effects, it's probably the last Great one and it signifies the point where CGI became a huge selling point, so now people can say "TRANSFORMS II: REVENGE OF HTE FALLEN - 10/10 AWESOME GRAPHICS" and their worth can be determined as more than "would fetch twenty American dollars on Russian skin trade".

Why, you ask? Because this is the first time CGI was used throughout a film in an entirely effective and useful way. After this came out, studios and filmmakers began to realize the possibilities CGI presented, specifically a guy named Steven Spielberg who used them to create some pretty astounding creatures for a mostly overlooked dinosaur project called The Jurassic Themepark. That, too, is a very important stepping stone for the technology, but I can see none of you have seen it and are getting cross-eyed with anger at talk of this confusing dinofilm where I should be talking about Terminator 2.

A decade or so after The Terminator, Kyle Reese remains quite steadfast in his decision to remain dead, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is in a mental institution and their son, living paradox John Connor (Edward Furlong), is a willful fuck-up of a kid. Somehow, though, this little punk is going to grow up to lead the fight against the machines. Those machines send a second Terminator (Robert Patrick) back in time to kill Connor, this one made of liquid metal and capable of blending seamlessly into its surroundings. The human resistance sends back the T-800 (or T-101 depending on what nerd you're listening to), a model identical to or very similar to (and again played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), the model seen as the antagonist in the first film to protect John.

There's a story I've heard that Cameron's original idea for the T-1000 was to have Michael Biehn play it to more effectively infiltrate the Connors. While you and I both know that in James Cameron's hands that would have turned out a bit trite and sappy, it doesn't change that it's a fucking incredible idea, even if the deliriously strange edges would have inevitably been shaved off. I can still fantasize about the possibilities and lament its loss as being confusing and uncommercial. It's all the more strange that this idea is so appealing to me because I love Robert Patrick as the T-1000 so very much. Essentially building off of Schwarzenegger's performance in the original, the T-1000 is equally emotionless, but not being a huge cyborg and instead being a malleable liquid metal, his movements are all exaggerated just a teensy bit. It's a marvelous little pantomime. He never fails to look menacing, but most of the time he reminds me of various animals. Sometimes his head darts around like a hawk, and in the early mall scenes he always reminds me of a cat, confidently slinking through crowds and observing his prey before launching at it with speed and strength he did not seem capable of just a moment ago.

Schwarzenegger, with his character expanded, is actually a lot less interesting. The whole "machine learns to love" angle is so played out these days it's easy to forget that Schwarzenegger sort of originated it. Still, conveying love and affection through a non-emotional filter just ends up being less interesting than his emotionless psycho bit. It was the mystery of the character that made him so exciting and compelling and with that role delegated to the T-1000, Schwarzenegger seems so bland in comparison.

Hamilton, on the other hand, is superb. Every time I watch these two movies together, it's the jaw-dropping physical transformation of Hamilton that really shocks me. If I had to guess, I'd say every meal for the seven intervening years was three packs of cigarettes and a cereal bowl filled with anabolic steroids. She's become a violent animal in the years since the events of the first film, her eyes sunken by the trauma and her will hardened by the years of preparation. She's almost nothing like her character in the first film, except for those moments where you recognize her for a moment and lament the loss of that nubile young waitress. After this viewing, I'm tempted to call her performance the equal to Sigourney Weaver in Aliens.

Edward Furlong is some kind of a train wreck half the time. His voice is so clearly looped a lot of the time that he's just fucking distracting. Not to mention he plays an unappealing little bastard who makes me never want to have children, and if there's any great crime that Terminator 2 commits, it's the launch of Edward Furlong's career, a career that ends up giving us yet another shitty aspect of that well-loved shitsack, American History X. A lot of the time, though, he's sort of inoffensive.

But the real star of this film is James Cameron. This is the sort of tremendous undertaking that I can imagine driving a director to the brink of sanity. Between his huge star, his enormous budget, the amount of practical effects and set-ups necessary every day and the grueling nine month shoot, I'm shocked that he didn't throw in the towel as soon as this film was finished. These days, most of these sorts of films are delegated to effects teams and are probably easier to shoot than anything else, seeing as they're mostly done in temperature-controlled studios and the only thing you have to worry about is the bright colors of the green screen hurting your eyes. I imagine that they hired fucking green berets to fetch the coffee on this set and most of them were killed by explosions or Robert Patrick trying to get into character.

And praise be to James Cameron for realizing that to retread the success of the first film would be a waste, and instead making it one of the most gigantic action pictures of all time, centered around the battle between the T-800 and the T-1000.

That's one of the major reasons that this film works so brilliantly. When a film this epic in scope and so busy with characters and sub-plots, boiling it down to a heroic hero versus a villainous villain is the most effective way to structure a film like this and to never lose the narrative. I could list a million examples, but the two that come to mind as the best recent examples are No Country for Old Men and, obviously, The Dark Knight. A sympathetic hero and a villain so incredibly evil are those films' greatest, most elemental assets.

I will say this against the film: compared to the first one, it's a much shallower, far more rote affair. But damn it, the first film is one of the best films of the 80s. I hate to compare the two; the sequel is just so different. It's such a great, great action movie that I'll forgive it a lot of things, like a middle section that drags a little bit (the first time anything like this has happened in a Cameron film) and the weird, jarring introduction of narration for a few scenes in the middle.

It's really an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, if the size of a production is taken into account even a little bit. Every few minutes brings yet another set piece, any one of which a large scale production would be jealous of. It really raised the bar in a lot of ways, especially for the size and pace of a film. Every second of Terminator 2 outdoes the climax of similar films, almost making it all climax all the time. But yet more praise deserves to be thrown Cameron's way for making the real climax stand out and keep us on the edge of our seats.

It's probably Cameron's best film, in terms of objective quality. You can't really dislike Terminator 2 for any real reason, it's just too much fun. While the first Terminator is geared more towards my tastes and feels a lot more like an artistic accomplishment, its sequel is really an auteur's piece as much as anything else, which is always exciting to see in a blockbuster. I feel reduced to a little kid when I watch it, and I'm happy to join the ranks of that geek culture who hold this as the preeminent geek film, outside of Star Wars.

10/10