From: wbarnes@sura.net (Bill Barnes)
Subject: Re: terminator ii
Organization: SURAnet, College Park, MD, USA, NA, Earth, Milky Way
Distribution: rec
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 18:27:33 GMT

In article <1992Jul29.1489.24963@channel1> "eric walker" <eric.walker@channel1.com> writes:
>     Aside from the points mentioned in the previous message, I can point
>     out "T2's" major fault in two words:  Political Correctness!

Oh God, not this...

>     This whole movie was set up not to offend anyone.  We've got Ah-nold
>     Schwarzenegger, the #1 movie star in America, in the sequel to the
>     movie that made him a major player - and of course they cast him
>     as the good guy.  We can't have "Ah-nold" playing the villain now,
>     can we?

Gee, I thought the point was to have a role reversal to play off the
audience's expectations, namely that Arnie would be back as the
villian when in fact he's the hero (more or less).  [Or it least this
is what the audience should have expected if the point was not
*ruined* by all the advertising and other spoilers about this movie!]

>     This is why we have the idiotic final scene of the movie.  After
>     Sarah Connor goes through hell and high water to blow the T-1000
>     to hell, she JUST HAPPENS to run out of ammo at the crucial
>     moment.

Well, if you bother to count, you'll notice she loaded the same number of
rounds she fired into the T-1000 (I think it was five).  Yes, it is a plot
device (and no doubt a pisser for Sarah 8^), but not all that unrealistic,
considering she clearly only had a few rounds of ammo left.  [I *am*
annoyed by movies where, after spending the entire time with oodles of
ammo around, we suddenly run out when it's appropriate to the movie,
but that's another matter...]

>     So what do we do now?  Oh, it seems the Good Terminator
>     JUST HAPPENS to have an alternate power source, so that he can
>     come back and save everyone.

I would imagine this is the equivalent of a human finding the strength to
persevere even after suffering inhuman amounts of damage.  A cliche still,
but given a neat twist since it's applied to a machine rather than a person.
And as the first movie showed, these things are like Timexes - they can
take a licking and keep on ticking 8-).

>     This leads to the shamelessly
>     tear-jerking final scene, complete with a thumbs-up to show everyone
>     that the sacrifice was necessary.

"Shamelessly?"  Maybe a bit too melodramatic, but I dunno about shameless.
John was the only one who cried, and considering the Terminator became
his friend and a sort of surrogate father-figure, it's not surprising
he's a little broken-up about it.  Arnie's next to last line - "I know
now why you cry - but it's something I can never do." - was fairly lame,
I will admit.

>     1) It is no coincidence that the T-1000 disguises himself as a COP
>     for the entire movie.  Although the story tells us that it's not
>     a real police officer, the image on the screen is very strong.
>     These days, police-bashing is "in," and it's very fashionable to
>     cast a cop as a movie villain, because it lets the studio make money
>     off of the American public's fear of the police.  (Example: "Unlawful
>     Entry.")  So in effect, we have a COP for a villain in "T2."

Actually, it was a villian pretending to be a cop.  The intervention
of the cops at Cyberdyne does sort of make them villians, but I
thought this was a nice role-reversal to the first movie; in T1 the
cops were misguided good guys - they thought they were doing the right
thing but were making matters worse - while in T2 they were misguided
"bad" guys - they again thought they were doing the right thing but
were just making things worse on our heroes.

Say, didn't you state earlier that this movie was designed not to offend
anyone?  Don't police count as people who could be offended?  If the "cop
as villian" image is as blatant as you think it is, I would imagine various
police departments would be ticked off (and if you think these people
aren't annoyable, look at their reaction to "Cop Killer"), but I don't
remember any of them protesting T2 when it came out.  [IMHO, a truly
PC movie wouldn't have any "villians" and would be full of perfect people
from various cultures living their perfect lives - kind of like Beverly
Hills 90210 except with more variety to the racial makeup of the cast.  God,
how nauseatingly boring that would be!]

>     2) That old cliche rears its head again:  A black man dies so that
>     a family of white people can live.  If you take a close look at the
>     movie, you'll see that the only time the police simply charge in
>     and fire, WITHOUT yelling "Freeze" or "Hands Up" or "Don't Move,"
>     is when they blow Miles Dyson - a black man - away.  This image of
>     black men dying while the white people get away is so widespread
>     in Hollywood movies - and it's been like that throughout the ENTIRE
>     history of the movies - that the writers of that scene probably
>     didn't even think that they were writing a cliche; rather, they
>     were only writing a "dramatic death scene."  But it wasn't.
>     (The "kill the black guy" cliche also appears in "Alien3.")

Well, as near as I can remember, the first time the cops did anything was
when they first burst into Cyberdyne and started hosing and happened to
hit Dyson - Sarah took cover and Arnie protected John.  And since these
people were SWAT, it's understandable that they were a little trigger
happy.  There was the later scene when they told Arnie to get down on
the ground, but those guys looked calmer and more collected than their
cohorts upstairs; the first team wasn't taking any chances while the
second team was willing to give the "crooks" a chance to surrender.  Note
how they decide to "drop 'im!" when Arnie doesn't say anything.  Not
exactly kinder, gentler solution...

Also, in Dyson's case, he was dying for all humanity, in the long run.
Yes, at the moment he died so Sarah and co. could get away, but the
reason they were there in the first place was to give humanity a chance.
Not a bad way to go, even if only four people in the world know about
your sacrifice and will honor it.

Ummm, could you point out other "black man dies so white people live"
movies?  I can't seem to remember any others off-hand...a couple where
the black men die and the white men (occasionally) live, like Aliens,
but that's not quite the same thing.  And as stereotypes go, a
self-sacrificing black man isn't the worst Hollywood has come up with
for blacks, not by a long shot (even if he is sacrificing himself, as
you say, "so white people can live").
-- 
Bill "Whassamatter?!  Can't you take a joke?!" Barnes   wbarnes@sura.net
Disclaimer:  The author apologizes for any thought-provoking material he may
	     have accidentally included and promises not to do it again.
Datclaimer:  My employers wouldn't WANT to share some of my opinions.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies