Wowsa. I remember sitting in the theatre waiting for T2 to begin, and as the lights began to dim I had my doubts that James Cameron would pull it off. He had a tough act to follow, even if it was his own. I was a huge fan of the original film, especially Michael Biehn’s portrayal of Kyle Reese, a soldier on a mission he probably doesn’t have the means to accomplish, but has to attempt anyway, even if, as seems inevitable, it costs him his life. I was utterly won over by the scene in the fleeing car following the melee in Tech Noir, when young Sarah Connor, a thoroughly unimposing waitress at a fast food joint, begins to believe Kyle is who he says he is, and that she really is on the hit list of an invincible cyborg assassin from the future (underneath it’s a hyper-alloy combat chassis. Micro-processor controlled. Fully armoured. Very tough). “Can you stop it?”, she asks, fearing the answer, and Reese tells her no lies. You can sense both determination and something close to resignation in his pained, matter-of-fact reply: “I don’t know…with these weapons? I don’t know”. Maybe he can’t. But he sure as Hell means to try.
Biehn really sold it. You believed Reese, just like Sarah did. From there it all just hung together in a way that sci-fy/action movies, particularly those involving time travel, rarely do, while seducing the audience into making a huge emotional investment in the outcome; for behind all the science fiction razzle-dazzle, Terminator 1 was, believe it or not, a character-driven love story. It relied upon the same thing that elevated Jaws above others of its genre: you really cared about these people. But Reese dies at the end, and Biehn wouldn’t be back. All that chemistry between Kyle and Sarah was lost. Anyway, what was there left to do? The ending of the first movie didn’t seem to leave any logical room for a sequel.
It didn’t take long for all such doubts to evaporate under the hot light of what remains, over 30 years on (!), one of the greatest action movies ever filmed. The attached scene is the first big set-piece, occurring at an early stage of the story when the viewer isn’t really sure what’s going on. There seem to be two Terminators stalking this kid, one identical to the unit in the first film, the other much different, though we don’t yet understand the horrifying extent of this new model’s capabilities. When the two Terminators lock horns in the maintenance corridor behind the galleria, and you realize that Arnold is the new Kyle, and has just about as much hope of besting his foe as Kyle did, you just knew, boy, was this going to be good. The subsequent chase through the concrete bed of the L.A. River, with Arnie on his big bad Harley tearing after an enormous tow-truck about the size of an 18-wheeler, while firing and spin-cocking his Winchester in the same way that John Wayne used to do it, is one for the ages, creating expectations that are fully borne out by the rest of the film. We’re made to understand that Arnold’s Terminator, just like his predecessor, absolutely will not stop trying to fulfill its mission, not ever, no matter what. We also know, having experienced just a little of the power of his terrifying liquid metal antagonist, that the unflinching resolve of an old T-800 unit might not make any difference.
the needlefish 