Message to humankind...

Rating: Null/10 (2 April 2002)

The Terminator and the T1000 represent desires within humans, and their struggle in the film represents the classic fight between good and evil. The Terminator fights for a future embracing life and humanity, while his enemy fights for death and destruction. Through their actions, both characters transcend their machine form by tapping into an aspect of the humanity around them. Terminator 2 presents a grim future in which the war against the machines establishes the enemy as technology; however, the threat that the T1000 poses to mankind is a smokescreen shielding the true identity of the enemy. At the gas station where two children are shooting each other, John realizes that the reason humans won't survive, and the real enemy threatening their existence, is the human tendency to destroy themselves.
The T1000 embodies the evil within humans; human technology created him, he takes the human form of all the people that he kills, he shows a consistent lack of respect for human life throughout the movie, and his mission is to destroy the leader of the human resistance. As the T1000 meets his doom in the hot pit, he manifests all the human forms that he has embodied, men and women of different races. He is more than a machine. He is a cross section of the evil in humanity.
The Terminator is a larger than life character, able to walk through gunfire without flinching and throw people out windows with force; however, his most important heroic aspect is the wisdom and hope that he brings to mankind. Sarah states the theme in the last narration of the film, saying that she `faces the future with a sense of hope because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe [humans] can too.' The wisdom that the Terminator brings is his own evolved respect for the human life. His initial instinct as a Terminator is to kill, but John begins his evolution by telling him that he is, `not a Terminator anymore,' and he can't just go around killing people. When the Terminator says goodbye to John and Sarah before he is lowered into the pit, there is a close-up of his human profile, not showing the exposed mechanical side, and he tells John that he `knows now why [John] cries.' This CPU computer has learned what it is to be human by acquiring human emotions. Then the camera focuses on the handshake between Sarah and the Terminator, which is another example of his increased humanity. Finally, as a last sign of the Terminator's embodiment of the human desire to strive for life, he claims that he must be lowered in to the pit because he `cannot self-terminate.'
The film's message is best summarized by the quote Sarah carves on the table; `The future is not set. There's no fate but that which we make for ourselves.' The technology that humans created for the year 2029 shows a grim future to look forward to, but that is only if humans continue on their self-destructive path. Technology and progress are not the enemies, but rather where humans choose to take that technology that is the enemy. Though Terminator 2 is a science fiction movie, the message is not far removed from reality, which serves to make the movie highly ideologically disturbing.