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Revision as of 20:55, 22 March 2020

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Terminator_2_Intro

Terminator 2 Intro

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the 1991 sequel to The Terminator. The film was directed by James Cameron.

Synopsis

The year is 1995, after Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and Kyle Reese destroyed the original Terminator that was programmed to kill Sarah. Two men arrive in Los Angeles from the year 2029. The first is a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) identical to the one that Sarah first encountered, while the second is an unknown man (Robert Patrick) who kills a cop and dresses himself as his victim. John Connor (Edward Furlong) is now living 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 the Pescadero State Hospital- a maximum-security prison and hospital for the criminally insane.

Meanwhile, the Terminator and the unknown man eventually locate John Connor. The "police officer" is revealed to be a machine trying to kill John; the Terminator protects John and explains what is happening. 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, due to the original T-800 failing in its mission. 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 herself. Meanwhile, as the T-800 sticks to the road with John to evade the T-1000's pursuit, John discovers that the T-800 is programmed to follow his every command. However, when John decides to use this to get payback on a verbally-abusive stranger they encounter, the T-800 almost murders the man before John stops him. This prompts John to, realizing the responsibility of commanding a machine designed to terminate, handle his command over the Terminator more wisely, and to order the T-800 not to kill any humans.

When the T-800 tells John that the T-1000 will likely mimic Sarah and then kill her, he and the Terminator go to rescue her. At Pescadero, Sarah has escaped from her prison cell and beats Douglas (a corrupt, patient-abusing member of Dr. Silberman's staff) unconscious with a broom handle. Next, she knocks out another staff member, breaks Peter Silberman's arm and takes him hostage, holding him with a syringe full of a poisonous industrial grade liquid drain cleaner. 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, grabs her hand holding the syringe to Dr. Silberman's neck and releases Dr. Silberman. She knocks that staff member 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 and around the other way. She then makes her way to the elevators. When the elevator door finally opens, the T-800 walks out. Initially, Sarah is terrified 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 knocking out the various staff members holding Sarah down. 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. The T-1000 injures Sarah during the elevator shoot out, and continues to chases them out of the facility and down the highway on foot but fails to keep up with them.

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 skin sheath during the skirmish. 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 agrees not to destroy the chip, and the terminator is reactivated.

As the trio flee south 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 in the desert at the camp 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 suffers her recurring nightmare where she sees herself playing with children on a playground. A nuclear bomb suddenly explodes in the distance and Sarah, her double and all the children die in the intense heat of 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 change the future to prevent Skynet from being invented, derailing Judgment Day and the war with the machines. 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 kill Dyson with an M4 carbine 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 endo-arm underneath. As the team and Dyson exchange stories concerning Dyson's Skynet project, the Connors and the T-800 discover that the endo-arm and chipped CPU of the previous T-800 survived the hydraulic press Sarah had used to destroy it, and 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, including the T-1000, still disguised as a cop. When the SWAT team enters the building, they mortally shoot Dyson, who stays behind to trigger the detonator.

Sarah, John, and the Terminator escape in a SWAT van, with the T-1000 in pursuit, first in a helicopter then a tanker truck. Eventually, Sarah turns off and drives under a massive sign which is high up, which says, CSI STEEL in light-blue letters. By now they have changed vehicles. Sarah drives their small truck into the large entrance and crashes into the far end of the steel mill. The pursuing truck also crashes, causing the tank to rupture with liquid nitrogen spilling everywhere, freezing the T-1000. The Terminator shatters him with a gunshot, but the intense heat causes the pieces to thaw and reassemble. The T-1000 and T-800 begin to fight; the T-1000 brutally and heavily damages the T-800, first ripping off one arm with a giant gear, before deactivating him by impaling a metal pole through his power cell. The T-1000, disguised as Sarah, goes to hunt John. As John is confronted by two Sarah's, he identifies the real one and lets her shoot the T-1000/Sarah. Sarah shoots at the T-1000 until she's out of shotgun shells, almost blasting it into a molten metal vat. The T-800, who has reactivated itself using an alternate power source, finally destroys the T-1000 by shooting it with a grenade launcher which causes it to deform and lose balance, and ultimately fall into a vat of molten metal which destroys it.

After John throws the arm and processor chip from the first Terminator into the molten metal, the T-800 says that he too must be destroyed to prevent his own Terminator 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 as a Brother Warrior, which he graciously shakes. As the Terminator sinks into the molten steel, he gives The Connors an encouraging thumbs-up bidding them farewell, before he disappears under the surface and his systems melts down. With the death of the closest paternal figure he'd ever had, John breaks down in his mother's arms, while Sarah gives a mournful look of respect at the Terminator's sacrifice. The film ends with a voice-over from Sarah, in which she describes her newfound optimism regarding the future.

Appearances

Resistance and affiliates Skynet Others


Machines

Locations

Organizations

Technology

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.

Deleted 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.[1]
  • 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, the Terminator by her side. Suddenly, a nuclear explosion hits, obliterating everything, and turning the Terminator into a smoking endoskeleton. Sarah then wakes up in her cell.[1]
  • 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.[1]
  • 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.[1]
  • Learning to smile: John, and "Uncle Bob" pull the station wagon into a gas station; steam is coming out of 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 on a burger.[1]
  • 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 to Raging Waters.[1]
  • 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.[1]
  • 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.[1]
  • 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.[1]
  • 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.[1]

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.[1]
  • 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.[1]

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 does actually happen.

DVD Release

Main article about the various home video releases.

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 be immediately 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.

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 From the Terminator FAQ, written by Karsten A. Loepelmann.
  2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXtHdif5yLM&list=PLVUKzxu6ctwVCqCszdYWGC9imNXlcNhuo
  3. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXtHdif5yLM&list=PLVUKzxu6ctwVCqCszdYWGC9imNXlcNhuo

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