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Terminator 2: Judgment Day (also promoted as T2) is the 1991 sequel to The Terminator. The film was directed by James Cameron.
Synopsis[]
In 2029, the war between humans and the machines of the malevolent rogue AI Skynet has reduced the Earth to a scorched wasteland. In an attempt to prevent the rise of John Connor, Skynet sends a T-1000 Terminator (Robert Patrick) back to the year 1995, 11 years after Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and Kyle Reese destroyed the original Terminator that was programmed to kill Sarah, this time set to strike at John himself. The Resistance too manage to send a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) as a protector for John back to 1995. The two terminators arrive in Los Angeles from the year 2029. The T-800 acquire clothing and its primary weapons (a pistol and a shotgun) from a diner by a truck stop, while the T-1000 attacks a cop and dresses himself as his victim. John Connor (Edward Furlong) is now living as a delinquent with foster parents. He has grown up being told by his mother that he would someday lead the remnants of the human race to victory against the machines. Sarah's experiences have significantly changed who she is, making her tougher and more vigilant, but also more desperate to warn humanity about the threat of the war of the machines. While previously attempting to destroy the headquarters of a computer company, Sarah was arrested and imprisoned at Pescadero State Hospital - a maximum security facility for the criminally insane.
The Terminator and the T-1000 eventually locate John Connor in a shopping mall, and after a chase, the T-800 successfully intercepts John and escapes from the T-1000 who has been incapacitated in an explosion. The T-800 reveals to John that he is a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101, reprogrammed by the future John Connor to act as his protector in this time. The other Terminator is a T-1000, an advanced prototype, which was sent back by Skynet to kill John while he's still a child. The T-1000 is made of "a Mimetic polyalloy," essentially liquid metal that looks like the element mercury, allowing it to imitate almost anyone or anything of equal size. In its systematic process to locate John, the T-1000 murders John's foster parents, Todd and Janelle Voight after imitating Janelle and talking to John by phone. The T-800 imitates John's voice and discovers the T-1000's ruse. The T-800 then explains to John that the T-1000 would likely imitate and kill Sarah to get to John. Alarmed by this statement, John tries to leave to alert his mother, prompting the machine to grab him. Desperate, John struggles to free himself while calling for help, alerting two strangers nearby. However, the moment he demands to be freed, the Terminator instantly releases him. The Terminator flatly tells John he must obey the boy as a mission parameter. However, John decides to use his authority irresponsibly to defend himself when he's insulting to one of the men. When the T-800 almost murders the man’s intervening friend, John stops him. John suddenly realizes the responsibility of commanding a machine designed for killing, handling his command over the Terminator more wisely, as well as ordering the T-800 to refrain from killing people and assist in breaking out his mother.
John and the Terminator leave to rescue his mother. At Pescadero, Sarah escapes from her prison cell and knocks Douglas (a corrupt, patient-abusing member of Dr. Silberman's staff) unconscious with a broom handle until it breaks. Locking him in her room, she takes his police baton. Catching Peter Silberman and an orderly off guard, she beats the orderly unconscious, hits Silberman on the arm, fracturing his wrist and takes him hostage, holding him with a syringe full of a poisonous industrial-grade drain cleaner jabbed into his neck. She uses him to force the other staff to release her by opening all the security doors. However, on the opposite corridor, another staff member sneaks behind Sarah's back, yanking the syringe from Dr. Silberman's neck, releasing him. She knocks that orderly down and runs down the corridor through a double lock security checkpoint, breaking off the key in the second barred door, which forces the pursuing staff to double back. She then makes her way to the elevators. When the door of one of the elevators finally opens, the T-800 walks out. Sarah is instantly mortified by the sight of the same Terminator that had attempted to kill her and runs back, but the staff trip her up and attempt to restrain her while she struggles. Just before Dr. Silberman can sedate Sarah, the T-800 interferes by throwing staff members off her. Dr. Silberman is left unharmed and stares in stunned silence, while the Terminator reaches down and tells her "Come with me if you want to live," John then tries to shake Sarah out of her shock by telling her that the Terminator is here to help. Dr. Silberman is then even more stunned as he sees the T-1000 walk through the barred security gate Sarah had previously broken the key off in. Sarah watches as the Terminator fights off the T-1000 while she and John make a run for the elevator. Though the T-800 blows the T-1000's head apart, it reintegrates itself and leaps down onto the elevator. While stabbing through the elevator's ceiling with long-bladed extensions, the T-1000 injures Sarah while she joins the T-800 in fighting it off. The trio steal a police car from an unsuspecting cop and flee with the T-1000 chasing them out of the facility, down the highway on foot but failing to keep up with them when the T-800 blows it off their car.
Later, while the trio are hiding out in an auto repair garage (in a deleted scene), Sarah removes the bullets left lodged in the T-800's outer layer of human tissue. The T-800 also reveals that its CPU (its processing chip which holds its A.I. and controls its systems) in fact has advanced learning capabilities, but is pre-set to a 'read-only' mode due to Skynet's paranoia towards other machines' intelligence. At John's suggestion, he and Sarah remove the T-800's CPU so that it will reset to 'read and write' and improve the T-800's intellectual usefulness. Upon the chip's removal, Sarah, still mistrusting of the machine, sees an opportunity to render the terminator completely inert by destroying the chip, but John stops her at the last second, telling her they need its help. Sarah is reluctant but listens to John when he tells her that he'll one day be a powerful leader and that his decisions will one day be important. She very reluctantly agrees not to destroy the chip, and the terminator is reactivated.
As the trio head south fleeing from the city, the Terminator tells Sarah about the future of Skynet as the sentient computer that will destroy humans. He tells her about its creator, Miles Bennett Dyson (Joe Morton), who designs a learning computer that is entrusted with command of all military force. When Skynet becomes "self-aware" and its terrified controllers attempt to shut it down, Skynet retaliates by launching a nuclear attack against its targets in Russia knowing the Russian counter-attack will eliminate its enemies in the US, an event referred to by the survivors as "Judgment Day."
Eventually, Sarah, John, and the Terminator arrive at the desert ranch of Enrique Salceda, who has preserved an underground weapons cache in the event that the war actually happens. Sarah plans to take John and flee over the border into Mexico. During the time at this camp, the T-800 begins to show increasingly advanced and humanized intelligence and behavior as it learns, and John bonds more closely with the Terminator. While watching John teach the Terminator a game, Sarah reflects on the fact that the T-800 makes a good father-figure for John; being a machine, the Terminator would never be abusive or abandon him, and would unreservedly let itself be destroyed while protecting him. In turn, John teaches the T-800 to be more human. Sarah falls asleep and sees her recurring nightmare where she sees herself playing with children on a playground. A nuclear bomb suddenly explodes in the distance, destroying Los Angeles and Sarah, several parents, a young John Connor, and all the children are immediately killed in the nuclear fire from the explosion of the nuclear bomb. Sarah wakes up, seeing that she's carved the words "NO FATE" into the table she fell asleep upon.
Sarah now believes that by assassinating Dyson she can prevent Skynet's creation, derailing Judgment Day and preventing the future war. After she leaves, John and the Terminator find the message she'd left on the table and quickly figure out what she is going to do and drive after her. At Dyson's home, Sarah tries to shoot Dyson but misses when Dyson's son distracts him from his computer monitor. Sarah is unable to hit her target and enters Dyson's home. She draws a pistol, shooting him in the shoulder, but finds herself unable to kill him in front of his family for a crime he hasn't even committed yet. When John and the Terminator arrive, they inform Dyson of the consequences of his research, and prove it to be true by having the T-800 cut the flesh from his arm to reveal the cybernetic arm underneath. As the team and Dyson exchange stories concerning Dyson's Skynet project, the Connors and the T-800 discover that the robotic arm and CPU of the previous T-800 survived the hydraulic press Sarah had used to destroy it. Both were secretly recovered by Cyberdyne and are the source of Dyson's Skynet microprocessor research; just as Kyle Reese's presence in the past brought about John Connor's existence, the original T-800's has brought about Skynet's. When Dyson says he'll discontinue his research and quit Cyberdyne the next day, Sarah and the Terminator convince him that they must destroy everything related to his chip design, including the T-800 pieces immediately, so that no-one can follow his work and take his place as Skynet's creator.
Sarah, John, the Terminator, and Dyson break into the Cyberdyne Systems building and retrieve the parts from the first Terminator. While preparing explosives to destroy all of Dyson's research, security alerts the police who show up in force. The T-800 holds the police off with a minigun it had taken from Salceda's arsenal, but the SWAT force still infiltrates the building. The SWAT team enters the building and shoots Dyson, who stays behind to trigger the detonator. While John, Sarah and T-800 are in the elevator, Dyson, mortally wounded in the gunfight, holds a piece of his prototype processor over the trigger. When the SWAT team finds him, he warns them he won't be able to keep from triggering the bomb and they retreat. A few moments later, Dyson dies and sets off the bomb. In the meantime, the T-1000, now disguised as a motorcycle cop, has also heard the alert and arrives at the site. After a brief gunfight with the SWAT team, Sarah, John and the T-800 escape, stealing the SWAT team's van.
Sarah, John, and the Terminator flee in the SWAT van, with the T-1000 in pursuit in a police helicopter. With the T-800 driving and Sarah trying to hold the T-1000 off from the back of the van, she is shot through the thigh and the van crashes when the helicopter crashes into it. They steal a small pickup truck and manage at first to avoid the T-1000, who has seized a large tanker truck. Taking an exit ramp off the highway, the T-800 once again holds off the T-1000 and flips the tanker over. It crashes into the entrance of a forge at a steel mill, spilling it's liquid nitrogen load everywhere. The T-1000 stumbles after them but the nitrogen immobilizes it. Seeing an opportunity, the T-800 shatters it with a gunshot, but the intense heat in a nearby cauldron thaws the shards and and the machine reassembles itself in minutes.
The terminator, John and Sarah retreat into the mill. The T-1000 marches relentlessly after them, dealing with a glitch that forces it to imitate several surfaces it passes. When the T-800 tells John and Sarah to find a hiding place, the T-1000 finds him, and they fight hand-to-hand. The T-1000 pins the T-800's arm in a giant gear and continues its hunt for John. Sarah drops her son into a conveyor belt over his protests and confronts the T-1000 directly. It finally pins her down with pointed extensions of it's fingers, demanding that she call John back. She harshly refuses. The T-800 then reappears, attacking the T-1000 with a large metal prying bar which he had used to free himself by severing the pinned arm. The T-1000 fights back, eventually gaining the upper and and impaling the T-800 to the deck, damaging its power cell.
A short distance away, John hears his mother calling him. When he finds her, she appears to be injured but before he can walk to her, another Sarah appears behind her. John sees that the first Sarah is the T-1000 disguised as Sarah. John ducks and Sarah shoots at the T-1000 until she's out of shotgun shells, almost toppling it into a molten metal vat. The T-800, having reactivated itself using an alternate power source, blasts the T-1000 with a grenade launcher which causes it to deform and lose balance, and fall into a vat of molten metal. They all watch the T-1000 flail helplessly in the molten steel until it melts, ultimately destroying it. John asks the terminator if the robotic arm from the first T-800 will melt in the steel. The terminator tells him it will and to also destroy the processor chip as well.
After John throws the arm and chip from the first Terminator into the molten metal, the T-800 says that he too must be destroyed to prevent his own technology from being used to create Skynet. He tells Sarah that he cannot self-terminate, and she must lower him into the steel. John tearfully begs the Terminator not to leave, but the Terminator insists it must be done. The T-800 apologizes to John and hugs him like a father, before proceeding to the railing. Sarah finally offers her hand in friendship to the Terminator, which he graciously shakes. As the Terminator sinks into the molten steel, he gives both Connors an encouraging thumbs-up, bidding them farewell. With the death of the closest paternal figure he'd ever had, John breaks down crying in his mother's arms, while Sarah gives a mournful look of respect at the Terminator's sacrifice. Sarah ends the film with a voice-over, in which she describes her newfound optimism regarding the future.
Characters and Machines[]
Resistance and affiliates | Skynet | Others |
---|---|---|
|
Machines[]
Locations[]
Organizations[]
Technology[]
- Combat chassis
- Endoskeleton
- Head-up display
- Hyperalloy
- Living tissue
- Mimetic polyalloy
- Neural Net CPU
- Plasma
- Time displacement equipment
Continuity notes[]
Notes[]
- While a central point in Terminator 2, the phrase There is no fate but what we make for ourselves is not said in The Terminator. The phrase comes from a deleted scene.
- Contrary to Wikipedia, the mall scene was not filmed at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. It was filmed at Santa Monica Place and the Northridge Fashion Center.
- John Connor was born on February 28, 1985, as it is displayed on the on-board computer of the policeman's car (This policeman was murdered by the T-1000 at the beginning of the film), and so he is a 10-year-old child, the film taking place in 1995. Yet, John Connor has the looks and behaviour of a 13-year-old teenager, and Edward Furlong, the actor who plays John Connor is 13 years old at the beginning of the filming of T2.[2]
- It should be noted that the strategy to destroy the chips and the remains of the first and second Terminator at the end of the movie will apparently lead to a time paradox. Indeed, if this strategy works, Skynet will never be created and therefore John will not become the leader of the human resistance against the machines. So assuming John manages to find a time machine and Kyle Reese later in the future, he will never be able to convince Kyle to go back in time and meet Sarah to protect her in 1984 since Kyle will no longer have any reason to do this. Therefore John should immediately be a victim of temporal erasure and disappear at that time, in the same way as Marty McFly did in Back to the Future.[3]
- However, one could argue that due to Kyle appearing in the past of the now timeline happening, the timeline cannot be easily undone by the erasure of Skynet, hence the reason why John and Carl still exist in the Dark Fate timeline.
- A further explanation of this theory is that if a potential future is erased by breaking a causal loop, anything having already arrived still exists and will not disappear.
- The arm of the first T-800 has a slightly different design than the first film, having more square-shaped finger joints.
- In older versions of the film, the windshield of the truck is destroyed after landing in the canal despite the T-1000 smashing out the windshield when the roof is ripped off by low clearance. This continuity error is later fixed by a CGI restoration in the 4K version of the film, fixing an issue that had apparently annoyed James Cameron for 17 years.
Deleted and Alternate scenes[]
Several scenes were removed prior to the theatrical release of the film but were put back in in the Special Edition release. The most notable removals are as follows:
- Pescadero: In the hallway of the Pescadero Mental Institution. Dr. Silberman has just finished showing Sarah Connor to some other doctors. He asks Douglas and another unnamed attendant to make sure Sarah takes her Thorazine.
- Theatrical release: Cut to T-1000 patrol car pulling up at John's foster parents' home.
- Altered release: Cut to Silberman walking away. Douglas and partner enter Connor's room. Douglas and his partner administer Sarah her medication in their own (violent) way.[4]
- Dream sequence: John Connor relates to his friend Tim how his mom is a loser. They ride off to spend the money. Cut to Terminator pulling up on his bike.
- Theatrical Release: Cut to Dr. Silberman and Sarah watching an old videotape of Sarah describing a recurring dream of nuclear Judgment Day.
- Altered release: Cut to Sarah sitting on her bed in her cell. Sarah has a fever dream of meeting Kyle, who gives her further inspiration. She follows him down the hall and finds herself looking into a playground. Suddenly, a nuclear explosion hits, obliterating everything. Sarah then wakes up in her cell.[5]
- Max: At the house of John's foster parents, Janelle changes into the T-1000.
- Theatrical Release: Cut to officers showing Sarah pictures taken of Terminator at mall.
- Altered release: Cut to T-1000 leaving John's foster parents' home. Kills the dog and reads "MAX" on its collar.[4]
- Chip flip: At the abandoned garage. John asks the Terminator whether he can be more human.
- Theatrical Release: The Terminator tells John that his CPU is a neural net processor.
- Altered release: Sarah and John "operate" on the Terminator, removing his CPU. Sarah wants to destroy it, but John asserts himself and stops her. They later switch the CPU to "read-and-write" mode.[4]
- Learning to smile: John, and "Uncle Bob" pull the station wagon into a gas station; steam is coming out of the radiator.
- Theatrical Release: Cut to Sarah chewing on a burger, Terminator pouring water into the radiator.
- Altered release: John tries to teach Terminator how to smile, with mixed results. Cut to Sarah chewing away at a burger.[4]
- Dyson at home: Terminator is telling Sarah about Dyson, who developed the Skynet technology.
- Theatrical Release: Cut to station wagon pulling up at Enrique's ranch.
- Altered release: Miles tells Tarissa about his new processor; she convinces him to spend some time with their two kids at Raging Waters.[4]
- Salceda's Ranch: Enrique shows Sarah the truck that needs a new starter.
- Theatrical Release: Cut to Arnold pulling dust cover off chain gun.
- Altered release: Sarah tells Enrique to leave his ranch after they leave. As the Terminator selects weapons, John tells him about his life growing up.[4]
- John: John and Terminator are trying to prevent Sarah from killing Dyson.
- Theatrical Release: Cut to toy truck in Dyson's home.
- Altered release: John tells the Terminator the importance of human feelings.[4]
- Sledgehammer: T-1000 is at Dyson's home, hears that Sarah Connor is at Cyberdyne.
- Theatrical Release: Cut to police cars pulling up at Cyberdyne.
- Altered release: Miles helps destroy everything in his lab, including smashing the neural net prototype with an axe.[4]
- T-1000 Malfunctioning: After the T-1000 is shattered by the Terminator, we see that it's beginning to lose control of its morphing. Its hand takes on black and yellow stripes when it grabs a black and yellow striped railing, it also becomes "sticky" to the railing, and its feet squish and morph into the steel floor pattern on each step. When it morphs into Sarah Connor, John looks down and sees that the T-1000/Connor's feet have melded into the steel floor right before the real Sarah Connor begins blasting away at it.[4]
Other scenes[]
These scenes were cut out of the theatrical version, but were presented as a separated segment on the Special Edition, Ultimate Edition and Extreme DVD release on DVD.
- Room scan: T-1000 passes the bathroom where Janelle is lying dead in the shower. It searches John's room, touching everything gently with his fingertips. It touches a Public Enemy poster, rips it off the wall and finds a box with "Letters from Mom" written on it. It goes through a bunch of photos in the box.[4]
- Future Coda: Alternate ending showing a brighter future, an aged Sarah Connor reflecting about how Judgment Day never happened. John Connor fights in a different way now, as a senator.[4]
Both scenes and many others were later included in an extended version of the film released to home video and television, although the Future-Sarah ending is contradicted by the subsequent Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines which established that she died approximately three years after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, as well as the fact that in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Judgment Day actually does happen.
The Terminator references[]
Real-world references[]
Errors[]
- When the Terminator reloads its M79 grenade launcher, the "Thuuump" sound is actually the sound the launcher makes when being fired, not loading.
- When the T-800 rips its arm crushed by the T-1000 at the steel mill, the arm doesn't end up in the molten metal. This is inconsistent with the fact that they must destroy every single piece of yet to be made technology so that Skynet can never happen.
DVD Release[]
- Main article about the various home video releases.
Television spin-off[]
The 2008 television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a direct follow-up to T2, with several episodes making direct reference to events, and with several characters from the film—such as Dyson's widow and Dr. Silberman—making appearances. The producers of the film have stated in several venues that the series intentionally ignores the events of T3.
References[]
- ↑ Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on June 8, 2020.
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXtHdif5yLM&list=PLVUKzxu6ctwVCqCszdYWGC9imNXlcNhuo
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXtHdif5yLM&list=PLVUKzxu6ctwVCqCszdYWGC9imNXlcNhuo
- ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 From the Terminator FAQ, written by Karsten A. Loepelmann.
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IViWb4ojuHE
External links[]
- Terminator 2 on the Internet Movie Database
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day at Wikipedia
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day Depth and Complexity
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day Locations - James Cameron Online