Here's why it outdoes the original:

Rating: 7/10 (17 October 2005)

You see, the first "Terminator" had someone protecting Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), and she depended on him. In "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", Sarah goes all bad-ass to protect her son John (Edward Furlong, in an impressive debut). Oh, and of course there's the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) battling the villainous T-1000 (Robert Patrick), sent back in time to kill John.
Okay, so "T2" goes a little overboard on special effects, but it does manage to have a plot. The threat of a nuclear holocaust is always unnerving. Obviously, sending someone back in time to change history violates the paradox of time travel (meaning that if you change the past, then the future will be completely different, so there would be no incentive to change the past to begin with), but this is a pretty good movie, as action flicks go. Among other things, it shows that when Ah-nuld tries, he can act.