It's almost impossible for an action movie to get any better than this

Rating: 9/10 (3 June 2010)

Terminator 2 is one of the rarest things in Hollywood. It's the big honking sequel to a great little film that manages to be great itself.
The great little film is one of the joys of watching movies . It's a movie that doesn't have a lot of money or star power behind it. It's just storytellers with an idea who makes it come alive on the big screen. Unfortunately, if someone makes a great little movie today, they oftentimes get a buttload of money thrown at them to make a sequel. And almost invariably, that sequel sucks.
Terminator 2 is the exception to that rule. This isn't just a great movie, it's actually a more complex and sophisticated film than its predecessor. Ostensibly, it's a chase movie very much like The Terminator, just with the action and spectacle amped up by spending a lot more money. But there's a depth and craft to the story that goes beyond the first movie.
Once again, two warriors have been sent back in time, one seeking to kill and one to save John Connor (Edward Furlong), the future savior of humanity from its machine enemies. John's now a budding juvenile delinquent living with foster parents in Los Angels, while his mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) is locked up in a mental institution after being caught trying to blow up a computer factory. Eventually, John hooks up with a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzengger) like the one from the first film, but this one has been programmed to obey his commands. The other future warrior (Robert Patrick) is a more advanced Terminator, made out of liquid metal that can shapeshift and imitate anything it touches. John and his pet Terminator break his mother out of the institution and come to realize they have a chance to change the future, to avoid the nuclear holocaust that allowed machines to begin hunting down and exterminating mankind. But to do so, they've got to overcome their seemingly unbeatable, unstoppable foe.
Perhaps the best and most impressive thing about Terminator 2 is how well written it is. Exposition is one of the hardest things to do well in movies. Usually, there are some things that the audience needs to know and the only way you can tell them is to have a character just say those things out loud. The exposition dump is frequently the worst scene in any film. But there's no one big dump scene in Terminator 2. Instead, we get little bursts of exposition spaced throughout the first three-quarters of the story and every time it makes perfect sense for the characters to be saying the things they're saying. The story also does a tremendous job of establishing things in the audience's mind that later play a major role in the action. The worst sort of writing is when the only way you can resolve a problem or move the story forward is by pulling something out of thin air that's never been referenced or mentioned in the story before. There's never a point in Terminator 2 where you have to wonder "Where did that come from?" because it establishes everything you need to know so the next step in the story is surprising and compelling, but it still flows logically and naturally from what you've watched. There are also numerous moments in Terminator 2 where characters echo things from the first film but with completely different meanings and context, adding another level of enjoyment if you watched The Terminator.
The writing also creates a world where things make sense, even in an outlandish sci-fi concept like this. Sarah Connor starts out the film as a deeply emotionally damaged woman, which is much more realistic than the idea a person could go through what she's gone through and came out smiling and happy on the other side. And even though one of the main characters is this action-adventure is a young boy, he's treated like an actual boy. He doesn't pick up a gun and start blowing people away or turn into some incredible warrior. His mom and The Terminator take care of all that and John helps them in believable ways. It's not like Star Wars: Phantom Menace where young Anakin Skywalker does things just as dangerous and deadly as any of the adults, thereby undermining any real sense of threat of menace.
The quality of the writing also enhances the special effects, which usually works the other way around. Many times effects are thrown on the screen to amaze the audience and take the place of the story, but because the effects in Terminator 2 only serve to enhance the tension and energy built up by the story, they still work even they're more than a decade-and-a-half behind today's FX standards.
Beyond the quality of the film, Terminator 2 is also remarkable for the message woven through it. This is a movie where numerous people are shot, stabbed, burned and blown up, but it fundamentally believes that human life is valuable and killing is just wrong. John Connor embodies that simple idea, insisting in even the most dire of circumstances that life be respected and protected at all costs. Most violent movies present violence as the way to solve problems. Terminator 2 contends that while you may sometimes need to shoot someone, the only way to really make things better is to get past the need to hurt and kill other people.
Terminator 2 is one of the best action movies of all time, with a moral center to it that even elevates it above other great action flicks. And it's also a wonderful example of how an artist can grow and improve himself. The James Cameron who made Terminator 2 was a much better filmmaker than the James Cameron who made The Terminator. George Lucas has shown us that it's just as easy for a filmmaker to go in the opposite direction.