Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) (Stephenverse)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (also promoted as T2) is a 1991 American science fiction action film produced and directed by James Cameron, who co-wrote the script with William Wisher. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong and Joe Morton as its principal cast. It is the sequel to the 1984 film The Terminator, as well as the second installment in the Terminator franchise. Terminator 2 follows Sarah Connor (Hamilton) and her ten-year-old son John (Furlong) as they are pursued by a new, more advanced Terminator: the liquid metal, shapeshifting T-1000 (Patrick), sent back in time to kill John and prevent him from becoming the leader of the human resistance. A second, less-advanced Terminator (Schwarzenegger) is also sent back in time by the "Resistance" to protect John.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released in the United States on October 25, 1991 by TriStar Pictures. It was a critical success upon its release, with praise going towards the performances of its cast, the action scenes, and its visual effects. Regarded as superior to the original film and one of the greatest sequels ever made, the film influenced popular culture, especially the use of visual effects in films. It grossed $627.4 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1991 and of Schwarzenegger's career. It received several accolades, including Academy Awards for Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Sound, Best Makeup, and Best Visual Effects, and the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation - Long Form.
In 2016, Terminator 2: Judgment Day was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was followed by Terminator 3.
==Plot==
In 1995, John Connor is living in Los Angeles with his foster parents. His mother, Sarah Connor, had been preparing him throughout his childhood for his future role as the human resistance leader against Skynet, the artificial intelligence that will be given control of the United States' nuclear missiles and initiate a nuclear holocaust on August 29, 1997, known thereafter as "Judgment Day". However, Sarah was arrested and imprisoned at a mental hospital after attempting to bomb a computer factory. In 2029, Skynet sends a new Terminator, designated as T-1000, back in time to kill John. The T-1000 is an advanced prototype made out of liquid metal (referred to as "mimetic polyalloy") that gives it the ability to take on the shape and appearance of almost anything it touches, and to transform its arms into blades and other shapes at will. The T-1000 arrives, kills a police officer, and assumes his identity; he also uses the police computer to track down John. Meanwhile, the future John Connor has sent back a reprogrammed Model 101 Terminator to protect his younger self.
The Terminator and the T-1000 converge on John in a shopping mall, and a chase ensues after which John and the Terminator escape together on a motorcycle. Fearing that the T-1000 will kill Sarah in order to get to him, John orders the Terminator to help free her, after discovering that the Terminator must follow his orders. They encounter Sarah as she is escaping from the hospital, although she is initially reluctant to trust the Model 101. After the trio escape from the T-1000 in a police car, the Terminator informs John and Sarah about Skynet's history.[a] Sarah learns that the man most directly responsible for Skynet's creation is Miles Bennett Dyson, a Cyberdyne Systems engineer working on a revolutionary new microprocessor that will form the basis for Skynet.
Sarah gathers weapons from an old friend and plans to flee with John to Mexico, but after having a nightmare about Judgment Day, she instead sets out to kill Dyson in order to prevent Judgment Day from occurring. Finding him at his home, she wounds him but finds herself unable to kill him in front of his family. John and the Terminator arrive and inform Dyson of the future consequences of his work. They learn that much of his research has been reverse engineered from the damaged CPU and the right arm of the previous Terminator who attacked Sarah back in 1984. Convincing him that these items and his designs must be destroyed, they break into the Cyberdyne building, retrieve the CPU and the arm, and set explosives to destroy Dyson's lab. The police arrive and Dyson is fatally shot, but he rigs an improvised dead man's switch that detonates the explosives when he dies. The T-1000 pursues the surviving trio, eventually cornering them in a steel mill.
The T-1000 and Model 101 fight and the more advanced model seriously damages and shuts down the Model 101. However, unbeknownst to the T-1000, the Model 101 brings itself back online using an alternate power source. Sarah tries unsuccessfully to knock the T-1000 into a vat of molten steel with shotgun blasts; as it is about to kill John, the Model 101 shoots it with a grenade launcher, knocking it into the steel where it melts and dissolves. John tosses the arm and CPU of the original Terminator into the vat as well, but the Model 101 explains that its own CPU must also be destroyed in order to ensure that Cyberdyne cannot use it to reverse-engineer Skynet. Acting against John's tearful pleas and orders, the Model 101 says goodbye, has Sarah lower it into the vat since it cannot act to destroy itself, and gives a final thumbs-up before submerging. Sarah drives down a highway at night with John, reflecting on her renewed hope for the future based on the actions of the Model 101.
==Cast==
* Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator: An android, built as a synthetic organism composed of living tissue over a titanium "hyperalloy" endoskeleton, reprogrammed and sent back in time to protect John Connor. Schwarzenegger was reportedly paid $15 million for the role.
* Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor: The mother of John, the future leader of the Resistance in the war against Skynet. Hamilton reprised her role from the 1984 film for a salary of $1 million.
* Robert Patrick as T-1000: An advanced shapeshifting prototypical Terminator composed of liquid metal sent back in time to assassinate John. Cameron stated that he "wanted to find someone who would be a good contrast to Arnold. If the 800 series is a kind of human Panzer tank, then the 1000 series had to be a Porsche.
* Edward Furlong as John Connor: The ten-year-old son of Sarah, given survival training from a young age, but taken into foster care after his mother is institutionalized. He was discovered by casting director Mali Finn while visiting the Pasadena Boys and Girls Club.
** Michael Edwards as Old John Connor
* Joe Morton as Miles Dyson: The director of special projects at Cyberdyne, whose research will lead to the formation of Skynet. Dyson has a wife, a son and a daughter.
* Earl Boen as Dr. Silberman: Sarah's psychiatrist, Boen reprises his character from the 1984 film.{{efn|The character of Dr. Silberman is described in The Terminator as a psychologist. In the sequels Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the character is retconned as a psychiatrist. Dr. Silberman is trying to convince Sarah that the Terminator is not real, but when he witnesses the T-1000 and T-800 he begins to doubt himself.
==Reception==
===Critical response===
The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes – established on the Web in 1998 – retroactively reports that the film holds an approval rating of 96% based on 146 reviews, with an average score of 8.93/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "T2 features thrilling action sequences and eye-popping visual effects, but what takes this sci-fi/action landmark to the next level is the depth of the human (and cyborg) characters." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 87/100 based on reviews from 38 critics, indicating "Universal acclaim". CinemaScore reported that audiences had given the film a rare average "A+".
Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, and wrote: "Schwarzenegger's genius as a movie star is to find roles that build on, rather than undermine, his physical and vocal characteristics." Hal Hinson, reviewer for The Washington Post, was also positive, writing that: "No one in the movies today can match Cameron's talent for this kind of hyperbolic, big-screen action. Cameron, who directed the first Terminator and Aliens, doesn't just slam us over the head with the action. In staging the movie's gigantic set pieces, he has an eye for both grandeur and beauty; he possesses that rare director's gift for transforming the objects he shoots so that we see, for example, the lyrical muscularity of an 18-wheel truck. Because of Cameron, the movie is the opposite of its Terminator character; it's a machine with a human heart.
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