A satisfying sequel

Rating: Null/10 (6 February 2009)

"Terminator 2: Judgment Day" is a bigger, dumber, louder movie than the first, which on its own hardly a very intelligent film in the first place, but just a great action thriller with a fantastic atmosphere and interesting mythology. This sequel boasts better action scenes, better effects (or at least newer effects) and a better musical score, but is inferior in every other way: the characterization is trite, the acting mediocre, especially from Linda Hamilton (although the child actor who plays John Connor is surprisingly decent), and James Cameron more liberally uses his trademark corny dialogue about love and friendship, and adds a lot of humor. The humor actually worked for me, a lot of it did anyway, particularly when it was one-on-one stuff between the Terminator and John Connor.
More importantly, although it is very different and also inferior as far as I'm concerned, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" is a satisfying sequel. Not the one I would've made, but I can only dream of being in James Cameron's place, and this is most definitely not the misfire it could've been. Like "Aliens", this takes some aspects of the first film and puts them in a vastly different context of a non-stop action thrill ride. My preference is with the originals, both of which I feel have significantly better screenplays and better atmosphere, but this pretty much appears to be what Cameron wants to do with sequels: do it bigger, do it louder, do it with more explosions. At least in this case he is making a sequel to his own film and not someone else's. In any case this movie adds some significant details to the Terminator mythology and works as a good, albeit different follow-up to the original film.
Ahnuld's actually pretty good in this one in his own extremely limited sort of way, and as I said before I have few problems with the humor, although it gets a little messy when you have the worst of Cameron's sentimentality, the cheesiest of his humor, AND a big explosion in the same scene. Robert Patrick is easily the best actor in the movie, though, even if he's playing a similarly limited role. Again, it's the screenplay that's the big problem here: it's too intentionally mainstream, too for-the-masses. I have less of a problem with even "Titanic". There's almost no need to comment on the technical aspects of the film, which are all excellent of course and Cameron is one of the best action directors in cinema history, even if I have some issues with his sensibilities during the portions of the film in which explosions don't occur.