In a league of its own

Rating: 10/10 (12 July 2015)

I remember as if it was yesterday when I first became aware of this movie. It was a summer in the early 90s, there was a massive heat wave going on and whenever you watched TV or shuffled through magazines, you couldn't get around something not related to this movie. The hype about it was out of this world, seemingly even more than "Batman" got, which also was unreal. Everybody seemed to blown away by it and the commercials and trailers really got you pumped. Naturally, I was too young to watch it at the cinema, and that's something I am truly envious of people who did first time, so I had to wait until it was shown at a pay TV channel at my uncles apartment. And boy, it left an impact that sticks to this very day, more than 20 years later. If you by any chance haven't seen it yet, stop right there - go watch this movie with a good set-up with big speakers and a big screen, you can thank me later.
Regardless how I look at it, how this movie excels at seemingly everything is fascinating to say the least. Starting from the powerful and symbolic intro with the beautifully emotional score to the countless memorable and instant classic moments until the last lines of the simple yet incredibly effective epilogue, all of it feels like everyone involved in it knew exactly what they want to do, how to do it and why. It may be even more rare than winning the lottery. The level of production, amount of talent and creativity involved is something that no one came even close probably until "The Matrix".
The first striking impression about it is obviously the action and rightfully so as it is indeed groundbreaking. I still remember people talking about how amazing the chase scene where the truck drives of the bridge was. Even more impressive is that each and every action scene is consistent in quality so that you're constantly wowed by what is happening. The stunts are insane and hold up to this day and will years to come.
But don't let it's bombastic action and one-liners lead you into believing that it's all about it. No, there is so much more to it. Terminator 2 has evolving characters, each interesting and equally likable, a superb script which in clever ways expands on what already did happen and ads new twists to it, a deep story that deals with legitimate fears about bringing our own doom by constantly developing new, potentially dangerous inventions, about destiny, hope and what makes us human. Aside from all that, similar to the first movie, it retains the grueling tension and sense of danger that sometimes is on par with horror movies. A big contribution to this is of course the character T-1000 played by Robert Patrick. He truly understood how to make his character as intimidating and menacing as possible; that aura he has about him and frightening, cold stare is something only he can pull off. But it's not only his amazing performance, James Camerons direction is as equally important to make him so fear inducing. Every time he appears on screen you can hear his theme that has so much intensity to it that it always gave me a feeling of uneasiness and not without reason as he kills his victims in nightmarish ways without flinching. It wouldn't be as half as tense were it PG-13 I assure you.
Everyones performance in it is great. Arnold Schwarzenegger is incredibly professional, bad-ass, serious but with so much style and a bit of subtle humor in just the right doses. Linda Hamilton with perhaps the most difficult character to pull off but does it completely convincingly with a remarkable power performance through emotions, Edward Furlog as the charismatic 90s kid, both believable and relate-able. And so on and so forth. The true star however has to James Cameron, the man that managed it all. He must've have some sort of sixth sense in order to have a such clear vision of what he wanted in each in every scene, and it's not just the whole big picture of it, but all the small things too. How he build up that mall scene is just one of many displays of his genius.
Its perfect as filmmaking gets. If I had to nit-pick I'd say that in the second half are some slight lengths and it slows down a bit until the final confrontation, but in all honesty it is absolutely insignificant and minor. It's through and through fun, tense, smart, horrifying, cool, emotional... all the good stuff. I can't praise it enough, the music, the tone of the movie with its blue and black colours, the make-up, the truly convincing special effects which don't feel artificial as they do in newer movies and nowadays... just everything I possibly could think of is on a whole different level. Words don't do it justice, it needs to be seen. Even now, 24 years later, it still holds up extremely well and that alone is a testament on what of an accomplishment this movie is.