Eye-Popping But Frustrating And Annoying Spectacular Sci-Fi Adventure Sequel

Rating: 6/10 (20 January 2008)

In the early 1990's, John Connor is a streetwise kid who will grow up to be a great military leader. Two cyborgs from the future are sent back in time; one to kill him, and one to protect him. Will he survive, and can he somehow avert the nuclear Armageddon which gives rise to an endless war between man and machines ?
Most movies I either love or hate; this one I find incredibly frustrating because I love parts of it and hate others. It has some fantastic action scenes - particularly in the first half-hour and last half-hour - amazing visual effects (which set the benchmark for CGI work and were incalculably influential) and lots of good ideas. However, it has two connected major liabilities which succeed in almost completely ruining it. The first is the Sarah Connor character, who (unlike the first movie) is loathsome, moronic, superfluous and appallingly badly played by Hamilton. She's the example par excellence of the Idiot Plot - we find out about twenty minutes in that shooting the T-1000 doesn't do any good but over the next two hours she fires about a million more bullets at him. Good plan Einstein - the one thing that definitely doesn't work, she does. Why not try playing Barry Manilow music at him, or using incisive satire ? At least those techniques haven't been ruled out ! Also, her great idea to stop the apocalypse is to shoot the pivotal microchip designer (which ultimately she's too chicken to do, despite all her macho bravado). Here's an idea - why not just ask him not to build it ? She's an unnecessary waste of space in this movie - the T-1000 isn't interested in her, it's after John - and it's saying something when two actors playing robots give more subtle and interesting performances than the leading lady. I can forgive a movie credibility gaps (e.g. John should really be less than ten years old) but not stupid, offensive and redundant characters who slow up the plot. The second problem is the whole mid-section of the film, which is slow and boring - the T-1000 is the essence of the story (and Patrick is sensational in the part) and he disappears for an unforgivable forty minutes. At least half of this material could be dumped. I guess my main gripe with this movie is lame sequelitis. Whilst the original The Terminator had a limited scope and budget, everything else about it is better, particularly Big Arnie as the Ultimate Bad Man. Here he's a namby-pamby do-gooder who isn't even allowed to kill people, although he still gives a very effective performance. Everything is overinflated just for the sake of it, which adds spectacle but detracts from character, suspense and atmosphere - all the things the first film did so well. I also find the moral tone of this film pretty tasteless; it purports to be about finding the humanity needed to avoid self-destruction, but its idea of a funny moment is having people get shot in the kneecaps. Its pretensions are amateurish at best. Oh, and it also doesn't know how to spell the word judgement. Whilst it may not sound like it, I really do admire this film and rate it better than average - it just could have been so much more than it is. I put the blame for this squarely on Cameron; he made three great movies but the last one flopped (The Abyss) and ever since then he's retreated into boring, formulaic, overlong, ludicrously overindulgent blockbuster fluff. There is still much to enjoy here however, most notably Patrick's spellbinding physical performance, and the extraordinarily imaginative Oscar-winning visual effects by Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Robert Skotak and Gene Warren Jr. It's a good film; it just makes me annoyed how stupid it is. Followed by an ill-advised sequel, Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines, in 2003.