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In “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” the future once again comes hunting to kill John Connor . Though the world after the nuclear holocaust of 1997 is ruled by machines, a single man can still make a difference - and that man is Connor, who is a youngster as the movie opens but is destined to grow up into the leader of the human resistance movement against the cyborgs.

You will recall from the original “The Terminator” (1984), or perhaps you will not, that the first Terminator, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger , was sent back from the future to kill Connor’s mother ( Linda Hamilton ). That mission failed, and the young man was born, and so, now, in “Terminator 2,” two Terminators journey back from the future: A good one, played by Schwarzenegger, who is assigned to protect young Connor, and a bad one, played by Robert Patrick , whose mission is to destroy him. (Terminators, by the way, look like humans but are made of high-tech materials and have computer brains; the bad one, named T-1000, was apparently named after his great-grandfather, a Toshiba laptop.) You'd think those machines of the future would realize that their mission is futile; that, because Connor is manifestly the leader of the human resistance, their mission to kill him obviously must fail. But such paradoxes are ignored by “Terminator 2,” which overlooks an even larger one: If indeed, in the last scene of the film, the computer chips necessary to invent Terminators are all destroyed, then there couldn't have been any Terminators - so how come they exist in the first place? Science fiction has had fun toying with such paradoxes for generations, but “Terminator 2” takes the prudent course of simply ignoring them and centering its action in the present, where young John Connor (Eddie Furlong) is a wild street kid, being raised in a foster home because his birth mother (Hamilton) is a prisoner in a mental hospital. They think she’s crazy, of course, because she keeps trying to warn mankind about the approaching nuclear disaster.

From the opening chase scene - in which young Connor, on a fast motorcycle, outruns T-1000, at the wheel of a semi - “Terminator 2” develops a close relationship between the young boy and the good Terminator. Before long young Connor even discovers that Schwarzenegger is programmed to follow his instructions, and so he orders the awesome machine to stop killing people. The result is a neat twist on the tradition of the Schwarzenegger special effects film; this time, instead of corpses littering the screen, the Arnold character shoots to maim or frighten.

It’s fun for a kid, having his own pet Terminator, and that’s one of the inspirations in the screenplay by director James Cameron and William Wisher . Schwarzenegger becomes a father figure for young Connor, who has never met his own father because, as nearly as I can recall, his own father came from the future. Another intriguing screenplay idea is to develop the Terminator’s lack of emotions; like Mr. Spock in “ Star Trek ,” he does not understand why humans cry.

Schwarzenegger’s genius as a movie star is to find roles that build on, rather than undermine, his physical and vocal characteristics. Here he becomes the straight man in a human drama - and in a human comedy, too, as the kid tells him to lighten up and stop talking like a computer. After the kid’s mother is freed from the mental home, the threesome work together to defeat T-1000, while at the same time creating an unlikely but effective family unit.

While that’s happening on the story level, the movie surpasses itself with special effects. There are the usual car chases, explosions and fight scenes, of course, all well done, but what people will remember is the way the movie envisions T-1000. This cyborg is made out of a newly invented liquid metal that makes him all but invincible. Shoot a hole in him, and you can see right through him, but the sides of the hole run together again, and he’s repaired and ready for action.

These scenes involve ingenious creative work by Industrial Light & Magic, the George Lucas special effects shop. The basic idea for T-1000 was first tried out by ILM in “Abyss” (1990), in which an undersea station was invaded by a creature with a body made entirely of water. The trick is to create a computer simulation of the movement desired and then use a computer paintbox program to give it surface color and texture - in this case, the appearance of liquid mercury. The computer images are then combined with the live action; T-1000 turns from shiny liquid into a human being through a dissolve from the effect to the actor.

All of that work would simply be an exercise if the character itself were not effective, but T1000, as played by Patrick, is a splendid villain, with compact good lucks and a bland expression. His most fearsome quality is his implacability; no matter what you do to him, he doesn't get disturbed and he doesn't get discouraged. He just pulls himself together and keeps on coming.

The key element in any action picture, I think, is a good villain.

“Terminator 2” has one, along with an intriguing hero and fierce heroine, and a young boy who is played by Furlong with guts and energy. The movie responds to criticisms of excessive movie violence by tempering the Terminator’s blood lust, but nobody, I think, will complain that it doesn't have enough action.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

135 minutes

Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor

Joe Morton as Miles Dyson

Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator

Robert Patrick as T-1000

Earl Boen as Dr. Silberman

Edward Furlong as John Connor

Produced and Directed by

• James Cameron

Photographed by

• Adam Greenberg
• William Wisher
• Conrad Buff
• Mark Goldblatt
• Richard A. Harris
• Brad Fiedel

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Terminator 2: judgment day, common sense media reviewers.

Thrilling sci-fi action sequel has lots of violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The idea of creating one's own future and fate is

John Connor teaches the Terminator sent to keep hi

Frequent and unrelenting violence. Postapocalyptic

Brief scene depicting a guard licking the face of

Frequent profanity: "f--k" and variations, "ass,"

A Pepsi can clearly shown.

Cigarette smoking. Tequila drinking.

Parents need to know that Terminator 2: Judgment Day -- the first sequel to Arnold Schwarzenegger's sci-fi action hit The Terminator -- is extremely violent and features disturbing postapocalyptic imagery, all of which are likely to be more intense in the movie's 3D version. Characters are shot and…

Positive Messages

The idea of creating one's own future and fate is frequently discussed. This gives characters the hope and strength to try to change the destiny of the planet despite what they know of the future.

Positive Role Models

John Connor teaches the Terminator sent to keep him safe not to kill. He also explains why people cry and have feelings.

Violence & Scariness

Frequent and unrelenting violence. Postapocalyptic sci-fi violence. Vehicle chases. Gun and artillery fire. Explosions. Characters killed by swords through the head. Blood. Characters shot at in their homes by machine guns. Broken mop handle to the skull. In a recurring nightmare, adults and children laughing and enjoying the rides on a playground burn alive from nuclear war. In the parking lot of a desert diner, two young boys are shown chasing each other with what look like real guns, pretending to shoot at each other.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Brief scene depicting a guard licking the face of a restrained mental patient. Naked male buttocks when the Terminators make their first appearances.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Frequent profanity: "f--k" and variations, "ass," "dips--t," "d--kwad."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Terminator 2: Judgment Day -- the first sequel to Arnold Schwarzenegger 's sci-fi action hit The Terminator -- is extremely violent and features disturbing postapocalyptic imagery, all of which are likely to be more intense in the movie's 3D version. Characters are shot and killed, and blood is shown. There's lots of swearing, including "f--k" and its variations. Viewers will see naked bottoms when the Terminators make their first appearances. But the movie does a surprisingly good job of addressing the issue of collateral damage, which is often glazed over in big action films. The point is made by multiple characters, most importantly young John Connor, that killing bystanders must be avoided at all costs, even though the fate of the world may hang in the balance. In this way this movie has more of a conscience than many other films in its genre. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (40)
• Kids say (194)

Based on 40 parent reviews

THE BEST MOVIE EVER

I love all terminator movies, what's the story.

Continuing the story of the first film , TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY finds the Terminator, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger , sent back in time from the future again but this time switching sides to become the protector of the human race's future hope, John Connor ( Edward Furlong ). Meanwhile, Connor's mother Sarah ( Linda Hamilton ), who tries to spread the knowledge of an apocalyptic future that she acquired in the first film, is deemed insane and confined to an institution. The action is almost nonstop, with shopping-mall shoot-outs, truck/motorcycle chases, and various other action set pieces saturating the film.

Is It Any Good?

This is the film that made CGI effects seem palatable and, as such, can be considered a promulgator of all subsequent big-budget action effects movies. Its greatest technical achievement is the shape-shifting T1000 character who pursues John Connor and makes it necessary for the Terminator to act as protector. The film continually ratchets up the tension as the T1000 comes closer and closer to destroying young John, making Terminator 2 a thoroughly exciting thrill ride.

Though he plays the character with the same steely stoicism as in the original, Schwarzenegger obviously relishes the chance to be the "good guy" in this one, and the script provides him with plenty of silly one-liners to provide the otherwise dark film with some levity. Linda Hamilton turns in a frantic performance as a desperate mother locked away because everyone thinks she's insane.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the development of such amoral killing machines as the Terminators. What would the ramifications of the existence of such machines be?

What comments does this movie make about fate, destiny, and the future? Do you agree or disagree?

Why do you think violence is such a prominent feature in blockbuster action movies? Would anything have been lost from the story with half as much violence? Why, or why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 3, 1991
• On DVD or streaming : October 22, 1997
• Cast : Arnold Schwarzenegger , Edward Furlong , Linda Hamilton
• Director : James Cameron
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Columbia Tristar
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Cars and Trucks , Adventures , Robots
• Run time : 147 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : strong sci-fi action and violence, and for language
• Last updated : February 23, 2024

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day Reviews

[Cameron's] showmanship is legendary, his capacity for orchestrating mayhem unparalleled. And Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a prime example.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 7, 2024

There is not a single rift under its metal shell and, after so many years, it still retains the groundbreaking spirit with the science fiction journey of the machine that learns the value of human empathy. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Feb 9, 2024

One of the best franchise sequels ever made.

Full Review | Sep 19, 2023

Bigger, bolder and slicker, T2 is one of the greatest sci-fi/action films of all time. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 10, 2023

The movie amounts to one long, long chase scene, and damned if the American public isn't lapping it up as if it were something special.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 9, 2023

Aside from technological hubris, it's nothing out of this world. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jan 26, 2023

Amazing things happen in Terminator 2, things you've never seen in movies -- things you didn't know the movies could do.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 17, 2021

Its legacy still holds up today, thanks to all of those elements- the plot, the effects, the action, and that performance from its leading man. (30th anniversary)

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 16, 2021

While bigger isn't always better, writer/director James Cameron's follow-up is genuinely bigger and better in nearly every way.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Sep 24, 2020

James Cameron's update of his sci-fi action classic is a great night at the movies. Just don't expect it to change your mind about 3D.

Full Review | Apr 16, 2019

Inarguably one of the greatest sequels ever made, Terminator 2 builds itself upon a few key ideas that upend the audience's expectations and work like gangbusters with industry-altering technological execution.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2018

No matter how bad the sequels get they can't undo the greatness of Terminator 2. This is a movie that will live forever.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 31, 2018

Cameron's vision makes the engine go and shows why he is one of the best blockbuster directors ever.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 10, 2018

Terminator 2 is genuinely reverential towards Arnold, gazing raptly upon his physical form and elevating his lack of affect to something like a Platonic ideal of masculinity.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 25, 2018

T2 truly attains the test of time with a fabulous story connected with smart and effective special effects that complement the story.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 22, 2018

With Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Cameron has bested his own earlier effort with a sequel that takes the original themes, the darkly high-tech style and the cutting wit of his 1984 sci-fi hit The Terminator and pumps the energy up to kinetic overload.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 3, 2018

This time Mr. Heavy Metal is on the side of the good guys. Naturally, he isn't quite as much fun.

Full Review | Apr 27, 2018

The main point to take away from this: Terminator 2: Judgment Day is (a) still great and (b) retroactively depressing because these characters all seem to be in a better situation than we are right now.

Full Review | Jan 3, 2018

Terminator 2 is not only a bigger work than the original, it also cares more about the characters and their development, something that in the 1984 version was solved in a somewhat schematic way. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Dec 7, 2017

embodies all that is great about summer movie thrills while also weaving through the various chase scenes, shoot-outs, and massive billowing explosions a genuine sense of human feeling and moral concern

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 16, 2017

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day : EW review

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the most popular movie star in the world today — but when The Terminator came out in 1984, his career was in a state of impending fizzle. The reason seemed obvious: How many times could you watch this guy? With his steely Teutonic monotone and his, well, selective range of facial expressions (he had exactly two: the blank stare and the angry glower), he was like some grimly idealized worker off a Soviet propaganda poster from the ’30s. The Terminator changed all that. By casting Arnold the robot actor as a futuristic killing machine, this unbelievably canny thriller unshackled Schwarzenegger’s appeal in two ways: It merged his hulking gladiatorial presence with the gaudy, bloody nihilism of contemporary action flicks, effectively turning him into a post-punk Dirty Harry; and, more than that (for this was the movie’s genius), it transformed his lugubrious one-dimensionality into a comic attribute.

A lot has changed since then. Arnold, in his stardom, has become likable — an enforcer with charm, an outsize hero who proved he could step lightly in comedies like Twins and Kindergarten Cop . And so, in the enjoyably overwrought Terminator 2: Judgment Day , director-cowriter James Cameron pulls a smart switch: This time, Arnold’s terminator isn’t a menacing villain but a good guy, a father protector who is sent from the future to guard the son of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). The first movie, you may recall, ended with Sarah becoming pregnant. Her son, now a punky preteen (Edward Furlong), is destined to become the rebel leader in the coming war against the machines. Now another terminator has been dispatched to alter history by killing him.

This new terminator (Robert Patrick) is boyishly handsome but with pursed lips and cold, dead eyes. He suggests a stoic, emaciated James Dean — he’s like Dean as a troop leader of the Hitler Youth. For most of his screen time he skulks around in a policeman’s uniform, pursuing his prey as relentlessly as Arnold did in the first picture. This time, though, Cameron adds a special-effects coup. Where Arnold has a metal skeleton under his synthetic skin, the evil terminator, one of the advanced T-1000 series, is made entirely of liquid metal. He’s a kind of mutating mercury globule who can bleed through bars, pour through windows, and take on the physical characteristics of any object he touches, from a person to a floor. His arms instantly convert into three-foot-long stilettos, and when he’s shot in the head, his exploded ”flesh” simply welds itself back together. The transformation effects are spectacular, in part because there’s real magic to them, a sense of technological wonder. By the end of the movie, we feel that this shape-shifting terminator, this sinister mass of chameleonic metal, has an identity all its own.

I wish I could say the rest of the movie was as good. It’s a solid thriller — witty at times, and packed with extravagantly violent sequences in which helicopters, diesel trucks, and entire buildings are blown up with delirious gusto. Cameron, director of the first Terminator , Aliens , and the underrated deep-sea epic The Abyss , has become our reigning master of heavy-metal action. Yet he has obviously labored to make Terminator 2 a kick-ass fantasy with soul, a pop vision that taps into apocalyptic fears and yearnings. And compared to such visionary spectacles as RoboCop or the Mad Max films, it’s really little more than a $90 million B movie.

The first hour has a genuine emotional pull. Sarah has been confined to a mental institution because she can’t stop babbling about terminators and the nuclear holocaust she knows will occur in 1997, when the automatic defense system set up by the United States — it’s called Skynet — takes on a life of its own. Hamilton brings these scenes a raw anguish, especially when she stares down the weasely Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen), whose bureaucratic manner is a form of petty sadism.

But once she escapes and hooks up with her son and Arnold, the movie’s narrative power leaks away. Cameron introduces the fantastically hokey idea that world-destroying computer technology could all be the creation of one relatively innocent scientist (Joe Morton). He also makes the mistake of dropping the evil terminator out of the picture for nearly an hour, while Sarah has elegiac nuclear nightmares in the desert. For a while, the movie loses its pace, its kinetic thrust — even if it is fun to watch Arnold’s terminator get humanized (like a hulking Mr. Spock) by learning such catchphrases as ” Hasta la vista , baby!”

The movie becomes a glorified countdown to the big blowout between the terminators. When it’s finally King Kong vs. Godzilla time, Cameron delivers the goods. The movie preserves the underlying joke of the original Terminator — that these murderous robots aren’t at all malevolent in intent. They’re just maximally efficient , programmed to carry out a mission at any cost. And so if cars and phone booths have to get smashed, and innocent bystanders are blown away — well, that’s just so much meaningless detritus.

This reckless indifference to human life is, of course, intrinsic to the appeal of Terminator 2 . The movie is a great big feast of wreckage. But that’s also what makes it a bit numbing. At one point, Sarah’s son, whom Arnold is programmed to obey, forces him to pledge that he won’t kill anyone. Arnold takes the pledge — and then, in order to stay true to it, he keeps shooting people in the kneecaps and smashing them against walls not quite forcefully enough to kill them. I kept wondering if Arnold’s pledge was such a good idea. From the looks of it, these people may live, but they’ll all end up in wheelchairs. Terminator 2 is a state-of-the-art action movie, all right: It gets you thinking that the most reasonable thing might just have been to blow everyone away. B+

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day

A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her ten year old son John from an even more advanced and powerful cyborg. A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her ten year old son John from an even more advanced and powerful cyborg. A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her ten year old son John from an even more advanced and powerful cyborg.

• James Cameron
• William Wisher
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Linda Hamilton
• Edward Furlong
• 1.5K User reviews
• 230 Critic reviews
• 75 Metascore
• 39 wins & 33 nominations total

• The Terminator

• Sarah Connor

• John Connor

• Dr. Silberman

• Miles Dyson

• Tarissa Dyson

• Enrique Salceda

• Janelle Voight

• Todd Voight

• Cigar Biker

• Old John Connor
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Linda Hamilton Returns to Her Iconic 'Terminator' Role

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Did you know

• Trivia Robert Patrick undertook a rigorous running regime and practiced breathing only through his nose, in order to appear to be a cyborg that could run at high speeds without showing fatigue. He had trained so hard that he was able to catch up to Edward Furlong on his dirt bike with ease.
• Goofs If the T-1000 can mimic any person or form it touches, there is no logical reason why it keeps reverting back into the form of Robert Patrick dressed as a cop once the Connors are aware of this guise. It could achieve its mission objective far easier if it used other forms to conceal its identity and then kill the Connors before they even realized. POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: It is probable that the T-1000 knew that a uniformed police officer would be the form of human most likely to be let alone and permitted to go anywhere he pleased without being questioned or otherwise hindered, especially at security checkpoints like the prison's gate and front desk. And indeed, he is always just waved on through or buzzed in without question at these spots.

The Terminator : Hasta la vista, baby.

• Crazy credits Play the Nintendo Game from Acclaim/Lin Entertainment
• Alternate versions On the 'Ultimate Edition' DVD as well as the 'Skynet Edition' Blu-ray, there are three versions of the film, albeit only two at the menu, the Theatrical and Special Edition versions. However, highlighting the 'Special Edition' option and keying in '82997' (August 29, 1997), will open a Extended Special Edition Option, with the T-1000 searching John's room and an Alternate ending added on and replaced. Some DVD players may need to push ENTER between each digit.
• Connections Edited into EBN: Commercial Entertainment Product (1992)
• Soundtracks You Could Be Mine Performed by Guns N' Roses Written by Izzy Stradlin and Axl Rose Published by Guns N' Roses Music (ASCAP) Courtesy of Geffen Records

User reviews 1.5K

• Mar 6, 2020

The Amazing Arnold

• Is The Terminator a hero?
• Why does the T-1000 stick to the appearance of the first person that he killed throughout the whole movie? Any time he kills and takes the form of a person he always changes back to the first policeman he killed
• In the hospital scene when Terminator and John rescue Sarah. The T-1000 goes through the bars and then the pistol gets caught in the bars what does that represent?
• July 3, 1991 (United States)
• United States
• Official site (3D re-release) (Germany)
• El Exterminator 2
• Bayside Parkway & Gateway Boulevard, Fremont, California, USA (Cyberdyne, Exterior)
• Carolco Pictures
• Pacific Western
• Lightstorm Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $102,000,000 (estimated)
• $205,881,154
• $31,765,506
• Jul 7, 1991
• $520,881,154

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 17 minutes

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Film Review: ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’

By Variety Staff

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As with Aliens, director James Cameron has again taken a first-rate science fiction film and crafted a sequel that’s in some ways more impressive — expanding on the original rather than merely remaking it. This time he’s managed the trick by bringing two cyborgs back from the future into the sort-of present (the math doesn’t quite work out) to respectively menace and defend the juvenile John Connor (Edward Furlong) – leader of the human resistance against machines that rule the war devastated world of 2029.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is more comfortable and assured here than the first time around, reprising a role so perfectly suited to the voice and physique that have established him as a larger-than-life film persona.

The story finds Connor living with foster parents, his mother Sarah ( Linda Hamilton ) having been captured and committed to an asylum for insisting on the veracity of events depicted in the first film. The machines who rule the future dispatch a new cyborg to slay him while the human resistance sends its own reprogrammed Terminator back – this one bearing a remarkable resemblance to the evil one that appeared in 1984.

The film’s great innovation involves the second cyborg: an advanced model composed of a liquid metal alloy that can metamorphose into the shape of any person it contacts and sprout metal appendages to skewer its victims.

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Script by Cameron and William Wisher at times gets lost amid all the carnage. Hamilton’s heavy-handed narration also is at times unintentionally amusing, though through her Cameron again offers the sci-fi crowd a fiercely heroic female lead, albeit one who looks like she’s been going to Madonna’s physical trainer.

If the reported $100 million budget is a study in excess, at least a lot of it ended up on the screen.

• Production: Carolco/Pacific Western. Director James Cameron; Producer James Cameron; Screenplay James Cameron, William Wisher; Camera Adam Greenberg; Editor Conrad Buff, Mark Goldblatt, Richard A. Harris; Music Brad Fiedel; Art Director Joseph Nemec III
• Crew: (Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1991. Running time: 136 MIN.
• With: Arnold Schwarzenegger Linda Hamilton Edward Furlong Robert Patrick Earl Boen Joe Morton

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‘terminator 2: judgment day’: thr’s 1991 review.

On July 3, 1991, seven years after 'The Terminator' became a surprise hit, James Cameron unleashed the R-rated sequel in theaters.

By Duane Byrge

Duane Byrge

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On July 3, 1991, seven years after The Terminator became a surprise hit, James Cameron unleashed the R-rated sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day in theaters, where it would go on to gross $520 million globally. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below.

Judgment Day has arrived and Tri-Star will need Arnold to secure all the Humvees in the world to lug off the loot from this.

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Storming with relentless, carpet-bomb intensity, Terminator 2  is at nucleus an apocalyptic story in the sci-fi form of Man vs. Machine. Following its narrative predecessor The Terminator ,  when a cyborg sent back from the future was unable to kill the woman who would bear a child who would save mankind from the Armageddon technology programmed for world destruction, Terminator 2  features a more-deadly Terminator T1000 (Robert Patrick) sent to Earth to destroy the woman’s now 12-year-old son (Edward Furlong).

The mother (Linda Hamilton) is now ranting and foaming that the supercomputer, Skynet, will soon be beyond human control and will unleash an unstoppable nuclear war. Her “revelations” are treated with, not surprisingly, lots of Thorazine. The only chance her son will be saved, and thus the world, rests with a more primitive Terminator, a T800 (Schwarzenegger) sent by the human resistance to protect the boy.

That the salvation of the world hinges on the existence of a scruffy, asocial Valley Kid is a wonderfully ironic mythological notion, and throughout, Cameron and co-writer William Wisher lace this dark but ultimately light-bearing vision with a crazy, transcendent reverence for human vitality.

Although the first act is somewhat constricted by hardwaring of the story arteries, chunks and bursts of raw, quirky human behavior ultimately burst into this carnage colossus. These small, funny, odd moments do much to soothe us from the bombast, as well as clue us to the film’s ultimately optimistic vision.

Throughout, state-of-the-art technical contributions thunder like explosions. Adam Greenberg’s torrid cinematography; Conrad Buff, Mark Goldblatt and Richard A. Harris’ kinetic cuts; Joseph Nemec III’s visionary production design; together with Brad Fiedel’s heart-pounding score and Gary Rydstrom’s percussive sound design infuse Terminator 2  with a power and force a quantum leap beyond its generic peers.

The players, astoundingly, more than hold their own against this torrential visual/aural onslaught. Schwarzenegger is not only back, but he’s more imposing and heroic than ever. His comic sense, once again, is one of the strongest parts of his arsenal and often helps to save the action from its massive musculature. Furlong’s nervy performance as the nervy 12-year-old savior catapults the story to its fullest human dimension, while Hamilton is superb as his gutsy mother.

We will forgo passing judgment on the special effects contributors — Stan Winston for the Terminator effects, ILM for the visual effects — as their accomplishments are simply beyond our level of understanding. — Duane Byrge, originally published on July 1, 1991

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day Review

16 Aug 1991

136 minutes

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Tipping the scales at a reputed $100 million dollars, this is allegedly the most expensive movie ever made. The original 1984 film cost one-twelfth as much, but obviously the nice people at Carolco did their sums right because this sequel hauled in more than the gross of the first picture, in its first two days of release in America.

With James Cameron needing to re-establish himself commercially after the semi-flop of The Abyss, and Big Arnie revisiting the role that still stands as his best, there was obviously a lot of pressure on this one to deliver the goods, and it certainly does. No-one can walk out of this and say they didn't see the whole hundred mil up there on the screen in exploding vehicles, wrecked buildings, monster effects and sheer sweaty action.

It opens with an intriguing re-run of the first movie's premise as a gigantic cyborg (Schwarzenegger) and a slimline ordinary joe (Patrick) are zapped back from the future, this time to seek out ten-year-old John Connor (Edward Furlong), the son of the heroine (Hamilton) of The Terminator, and struggle over his life, with the balance of a future that may or not be ruined by a cataclysmic war between man and machines up for grabs in the titanic struggle. However, the twist is that Patrick, a fresh-faced type who impersonates a cop, is the deadly mechanical baddie, and Arnie, in biker leathers and mean shades, has been reprogrammed to protect the brat and his mom and, in between the extensive carnage, gets to reveal that biomechanical killing machines from the future can have their sensitive sides.

While the rewriting of Arnie's persona smacks of commercial cop-out, a sop to the Kindergarten Cop audience, this strategy really pays off when it comes to Patrick's villain, who is constructed from a liquid metal that can shape itself into anything it wants and also pull itself back together if blasted apart. A high-tech version of the Blob, utilising some of the most astonishing and surreal effects ever filmed, Patrick's T-1000 stands as one of the great monsters of the cinema. Like all Cameron movies, this shuffles its character stuff out of the way in the first two-thirds, and then delivers a succession of untoppable climaxes that are routinely out-awesomed by the next set-piece. Because it is a sequel, it's less satisfying than the more idea-driven original, but this is still top-flight kick-ass entertainment, and firepower fans will be in Heaven when Arnie does his shotgun twirl.

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Terminator 2 at 30: groundbreaking sequel that led to CGI laziness

James Cameron’s show-stopping follow-up to his surprise sci-fi hit was a spectacular display of both stunts and soul but its major strides caused others to trip up

H ow do you kill the man who has everything? In broad strokes, this was the quandary facing James Cameron as he formulated plans for a sequel to The Terminator, the little action picture that rocketed him and star Arnold Schwarzenegger into the ranks of the industry’s most sought-after names.

The once and future Governator wowed audiences with his credibility as a cybernetic killing machine, his famously sculpted physique a plausible wrapper for the unstoppable metallic skeleton underneath. (It didn’t hurt that the actor’s shall-we-say limited range also lent itself readily to the role of an entity unencumbered by human behavior.) Even if he was ultimately felled by a hydraulic press, the T-800 evinced the feeling of invincibility, posing a unique challenge for those conceiving his follow-up. It wouldn’t be enough to revive Schwarzenegger’s character and sic him on Linda Hamilton’s mom-of-the-millennium Sarah Connor and her son John one more time. The strongest man in Hollywood, armed literally to the teeth with titanium weaponry, needed a worthy foe.

Cameron and writing partner William Wisher would crack this riddle in time, as $520m’s worth of viewers learned first-hand upon the release 30 years ago today. There was no way they’d find someone more physically imposing than their leading man, so they went in the other direction with character actor Robert Patrick, whose lean and angular frame made him look like the sleeker new model to Ahnuld’s obsolete bulkiness. He gave a humanoid face to the T-1000, a liquid-metal android capable of absorbing and spitting out bullets, melting into floors for camouflage, and reconstituting his exploded cranium. The abilities that would make him a formidable match for the original Terminator solved a conceptual problem and created a slew of practical ones, cueing up the customary beginning phase of Cameron’s process; first, he had to invent the technology he would use to realize his madman vision.

At the time the most expensive movie ever made, Terminator 2: Judgment Day represents the perfect fusion of resources and resourcefulness, Cameron’s pioneering technical might working in concert with his analog film-making skill. In 1991, computer-generated imagery was still a novelty, used to hokey effect in Tron, The Last Starfighter, and even his own The Abyss with the conspicuous check-this-out quality of a futuristic Smell-O-Vision. Beyond collaborating with George Lucas’s elves at Industrial Light and Magic to develop the first-of-its-kind motion-capture process that would make the T-1000 cinema’s first CGI character, Cameron pushed it past gimmickry by tactfully integrating Patrick’s silvery form into the film. $5m was earmarked for a 10-month schedule employing 35 experts, all of it for about five minutes of screen time. Crucially, that’s a cumulative total, with the T-1000’s superpowers – a knife-arm here, a squish through prison bars there – inserted at sporadic intervals instead of in one showstopper sequence detaching viewers from the fiction.

Everything, including and especially the deployment of special effects both digital and jerry-rigged, has been calibrated for maximum popcorn catharsis. The elaborate landscape of miniatures incinerated during Sarah Connor’s prophetic dream of fiery holocaust may not pass for the genuine article when shot in closeup, but by virtue of being corporeal, they’re realer than the CGI-assisted shot of Sarah’s disintegrating skeleton. Same goes for the various robots and copters rumbling through the war of tomorrow, most likely now living second lives as decor in Cameron Manor. It didn’t matter if he had somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred million bucks to burn. He stretched every last cent as far as it could go, improvising crafty workarounds to bring an organic authenticity to his ghastly melding of flesh with machinery.

There’s a tragic poetry in the timeliness of Terminator 2, having arrived at the fleeting moment right after computerized effects had become feasible, and before they’d grow commonplace. Like the apocryphal story of the escalator inventor who dreamed of accelerating mankind only to watch in horror as lazy people used his creation to stand still, Cameron has seen the equipment he forged to visualize the impossible adopted as a cost-effective way out of doing the work. The recent Terminator sequels have provided a discouraging illustration of that very fall from grace, devoid of the CGI’s revelatory wonder or the handmade effects’ soul.

T2 contains many warnings of apocalyptic events to come, and the most pressing among them concerns the dark fate awaiting the sort of movies produced on this scale, generating this caliber of payday. Aside from the artisanal care taken in its construction, the film has a spiky personality absent from the franchise installments manufactured by assembly line as of late. The pubescent John Connor’s foul mouth, the sudden jags of merciless violence – they come from a time before standards for nine-figure budgets had ossified into palatable routine. The programmer of Skynet, the neural network that would bring about the robo-armageddon the Connors must prevent, stood by as his triumph mutated into his downfall. Cameron, now entombed within the billion-dollar mausoleum that is his perpetually delayed Avatar sequels, could’ve heeded his example.

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day (United States, 1991)

When James Cameron crafted The Terminator in 1984, the concept of a sequel was far from his thoughts. The film's box office performance, while more than justifying the movie's understated $6.5 million budget, did not result in studio executives rushing to Cameron to make a follow-up. However, The Terminator arrived on tape just as the mid-'80s home video revolution was gathering steam, and it became one of a few titles whose VHS success oustripped its theatrical performance. By the late 1980s, there was no question that Cameron would make a Terminator sequel. The only mystery was how spectacular it would be. Aliens , Cameron's first big-budget directorial assignment, had been an edge-of-the-seat ride and indications were that he had every intention of topping it with Terminator 2 . (In between Aliens and T2 , Cameron made The Abyss , a film plagued by production issues that received a lukewarm initial reception but was re-evaluated once a more complete version of the director's vision was released for home viewing.)

At the core of The Terminator lies the concept of time travel, with machines from the future returning to the past in an attempt to change it while future humans sought to retain the status quo. For Terminator 2 , Cameron changed the game. Once again, there are pro-human and anti-human factions tripping through time, but on this occasion, both sides have the same eventual goal: change the future. For Sarah Connor (an ultra-toned Linda Hamilton) and her 10-year old son, John (Edward Furlong), it's a chance to avert the coming apocalypse. However, for the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), the latest machine weapon, the mission is to kill the Connors. With those two eliminated, the future human resistance will be toothless, thereby assuring eventual machine dominance.

For T2 , Cameron's planed "major twist" was unveiled before the movie's release because of marketing considerations. This time, Arnold Schwarzenegger would portray a good Terminator instead of a bad one. Had this been kept a secret, it would have packed a wallop. Unfortunately, the trailers let the cat out of the bag and few (if any) members of the audience were unaware of this switch-up. Knowing the twist beforehand neither ruins the overall movie-going experience nor damages its integrity, but it's not unlike being aware of the identity of Luke's father while watching The Empire Strikes Back .

With the hulking Schwarzenegger, at the height of his cinematic popularity in 1991, playing the heroic figure, someone else was needed to assume the villain's mantle. Since it would have been foolish to attempt to out-bulk Schwarzenegger, Cameron opted instead to make the T-1000 the picture of ordinariness. In fact, based on the story's original conception, the T-1000 would have been played by Michael Biehn (Kyle Reese in The Terminator ), making the role reversal symmetrical. Fearing audience confusion, however, Cameron abandoned this idea and offered the part to Robert Patrick. The T-1000's seeming physical inferiority is more than compensated for by the unique nature of its construction. It is a creature of "living metal," capable of re-forming into almost any shape of equal mass and virtually indestructible. With the T-1000, T2 became the first motion picture to make significant use of the then-new CGI technology that Cameron had pioneered in The Abyss . In the wake of T2 , CGI would become an increasingly used staple of special effects-heavy motion pictures, with 1993's Jurassic Park taking it to the next level.

T2 features bigger, bolder, more energetic action sequences than its predecessor (Cameron had a budget of more than ten times that of the original for the sequel). The big moments include a chase scene in which the T-1000, in a truck, pursues John Connor and his Terminator on a motorcycle; the prison break of Sarah Connor; and the explosive finale at Cyberdyne. The film is long enough to allow for more character development than in the original. We come to understand how her obsession with the future has transformed Sarah into a driven woman. A touching friendship develops between John and The Terminator, lending aspects of an off beat "buddy movie" to T2 . And Miles Dyson (Joe Morton), the scientist/engineer unlocking the secrets of the 1984 Terminator's chip, must face the moral and ethical implications of what he is inadvertently doing. By trying to help mankind, is he instead becoming the author of its genocide? The time paradoxes addressed in this film are more complex than those in The Terminator . This storyline postulates that actions from the future have formed a cornerstone of the past, raising questions about the non-linear nature of time. Cameron's original ending for T2 would have made future sequels unlikely; producer Mario Kassar forced Cameron to abandon his planned "coda" to allow for the possibility of additional Terminator movies. Thus far, there have been two (plus a television series), but Cameron has not been involved, claiming the story he wanted to tell concluded at the end of T2 .

T2 opens with two Terminators arriving in 1995 through separate time portals. The nuclear cataclysm caused by Skynet's gaining awareness is barely more than two years in the future. The "superior" Terminator, the T-1000, has made the trip to ensure that nothing impedes Skynet's development and that John and Sarah Connor are terminated. The "inferior" Terminator, a "series 800 model 101," has been sent back through time by the future John Connor to safeguard his mother and past self. The idea of destroying Cyberdyne and averting the bleak future is not part of his original mission but is decided upon by Sarah after her son and his Terminator free her from the psychiatric hospital where she is being confined.

There's a little more humor in T2 than there was in The Terminator . Most of it results from the interaction between John and the Terminator, where the human child attempts to teach the robot killer the intricacies of offhand social interaction. This includes slang expressions such as "Hasta la vista, baby." It's also worth noting that, although it would be a stretch to call Schwarzenegger's Terminator "kinder and gentler" in this film, he does not kill anyone. Even before John explicitly orders him not to commit murder, the Terminator's visit to the past lacks a body count. (The same cannot be said of the T-1000.) Of course, injury, intimidation, property damage, and general mayhem are exempted.

Although the theatrical version of the film clocked in at 137 minutes, the most commonly viewed home video version is the extended director's cut, which adds about 15 minutes of additional footage, and the new scenes do not impede the breakneck pace. Perhaps the most notable of the inclusions is a dream sequence in which Sarah interacts with Kyle Reese. This sequence - the only one in T2 featuring Michael Biehn - provides stronger connective tissue between The Terminator and its immediate sequel.

Combined, the first two Terminator movies offer some of the best contemporary-based science fiction action ever provided in a motion picture series. Although the third Terminator movie continues the legacy of impressive, big budget action, the screenplay is lacking in both depth and substance and it feels inferior, especially when viewed back-to-back with Cameron's efforts. Although The Terminator is arguably the more visionary of the first two films, T2 is the more visually and viscerally satisfying. It's an exhausting experience and, even 18 years after its release (as I write this review), few films have matched it within the science fiction genre for sheer white-knuckle exhilaration.

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day – “A James Cameron Film” | Review

• October 16, 2023

Director: James Cameron

by Tony Rayns

Some ten years after the arrival of a T-800 Terminator cyborg from the future on an unsuccessful mission to kill Sarah Connor (see The Terminator , MFB, February 1985), a more advanced T-1000 Terminator arrives in Los Angeles to kill Sarah’s son John, destined to become leader of the human resistance in the 2029 war between mankind and ‘intelligent’ machines. The T-1000 is narrowly preceded by another T-800, programmed and sent back by the adult John Connor to protect his childhood self. Sarah is now incarcerated in Pescadero State Hospital as a dangerous paranoid schizophrenic in the care of the unsympathetic Dr Silberman, while John is a ‘problem child’ in the care of foster parents Janelle and Todd Voight.

Clothing themselves as a biker and patrol cop respectively, the T-800 and T-1000 independently search for the young John Connor and clash for the first time when they locate him in a video-game parlour. John flees with both Terminators in pursuit, and eventually accepts the T-800 as friendly; realising that it is programmed to obey him, he orders it to stop killing people and insists (over the T-800’s objections) that they must free his mother. The T-1000 (which is composed of liquid metal and able to take on almost any organic or inorganic form) kills and impersonates John’s foster mother in a failed attempt to lure the boy home. It then heads for the hospital, intending to kill and impersonate Sarah.

Before it reaches her, she manages to escape from her cell and gets away with the help of John and the T-800. They drive south to the homestead of Sarah’s friend Enrique Salceda, who guards a munitions cache, and the T-800 explains what the future will bring. Cybernetics genius Miles Dyson will soon develop the super- computer Skynet, using a microchip salvaged from the first T-800 sent back in time; Skynet will become ‘self-aware’ in 1997, launch a nuclear war and then mastermind the subsequent war to wipe out all remnants of humanity. Brooding on this information, Sarah strikes out alone to kill Miles Dyson at his home, pursued by John and the T-800.

Sarah devastates Dysons home but cannot bring herself to kill him. But when the T-800 proves that it is, indeed, a cyborg from the future, Dyson agrees to lead them to his lab to destroy his research. There they run foul of security guards and are forced to shoot their way out; Dyson dies a hero, ensuring that his work to date is blown to pieces. The T-1000 hears of the fracas on police radio and gives chase, cornering Sarah, John and the T-800 in a steel foundry. After a series of violent clashes, the T-1000 is terminated in a vat of molten steel. The T-800 insists that it, too, must be terminated so that its controlling microchip can never be misused. Sarah and John tearfully lower it into the molten steel.

James Cameron ’s sense of his own mission seems to be growing as fast as his production budgets. Terminator 2 is less a sequel to The Terminator than a benign revision of the earlier film, a parable in which Arnold Schwarzenegger’s matchless T-800 is transformed from an unstoppable killing machine into man’s best friend and an ideal father figure. This transformation is, of course, in line with the shift in Arnie’s image from macho action star to potential Republican candidate and family favourite, but it has been clear since The Abyss that Cameron is a writer-director who takes his messages very seriously. Here he gives Sarah Connor an occasional voice-over narration that points up the moral of the story as preachily as anything in a 30s social-problem picture: “If a machine can learn the value of human life”, she gasps, “then maybe we can too”.

If the original film flirted with the idea of a secular alternative to New Testament myth, Terminator 2 goes the whole hog by subtitling itself “Judgment Day” and introducing a redeemer-to-be with the initials J. C. The film sentimentally rhymes the T-800’s ‘personal growth’ with the boy John Connor’s discovery of his social conscience as he moves from skateboarding, video-game-playing and petty crime to filial piety. Like much else in the movie, this is accomplished with economy and a fair measure of wit. When the T-800 starts trashing an innocently obstructive bystander, the boy intervenes: “Jeez, you were gonna kill that guy”. “Of course”, intones Arnie, “I’m a Terminator”. From this point on, the T-800 goes out of its way to avoid terminating anything except its implacable foe, the T-1000.

This caring sensibility extends even to the embittered Sarah, who vengefully clobbers her way out of captivity in the asylum but then cannot bring herself to kill the black scientist Miles Dyson when she discovers him at home in the bosom of his Cosby Show family. Sarah’s incarceration, incidentally, is one of several non-sequiturs from the original film (she is locked up for babbling on about Terminators and impending nuclear devastation, as if no one else had seen the old T-800). But she is none the less a clear descendant of the heroine of Aliens — another in Cameron’s gallery of strong and resourcefully maternal women. The price she has to pay for her independence, inevitably, is exclusion from the tremulous male bonding between her son and the T-800; it’s hard to project her role beyond the final fade-out.

The element that enables Cameron to reconcile his conviction that human life is sacred with the more profane demands of the genre is the appearance of the T-1000, without doubt the most sophisticated monster so far in screen history. The T-1000 marks the point where computer-generated imagery equals and overtakes the protean effects achieved with lower-tech resources by the Rob Bottin crew for John Carpenter ’s The Thing . The T-1000 is essentially a puddle of liquid metal capable of taking on human and mechanical forms instantaneously, resulting in both a series of ingenious physical transformations and numerous shots in which the actor Robert Patrick appears part-human, part-metal.

There’s no disputing that its quaint morality earns Terminator 2 the label “A James Cameron Film”, but there is equally no doubt that it represents another triumph for corporate film-making. What price the auteur in the days of five-minute credit-title sequences? Maybe the Academy should introduce a new Oscar for the Camerons, Burtons, Verhoevens and McTiernans of the New Hollywood: Best Ringmaster?

Sight and Sound , September 1991

• More: James Cameron , Movie reviews , Terminator 2: Judgment Day

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TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY

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(LLL, VVV, S, Ab) 40 or more obscenities & roughly 15 profanities; extreme, graphic violence; sexual innuendo; and, anti-biblical philosophy.

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True to his words, “I’ll be back,” in the 1984 TERMINATOR original, Arnold Schwarzenegger does just that in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. Understandably so, since TERMINATOR 2, estimated at a cost of $85 to 100 million dollars (biggest budget tally ever–much of which went to Arnold), is this summer’s most hotly anticipated sequel.

The title refers to an August 29, 1997, nuclear holocaust that wipes out over 3 billion people. Schwarzenegger’s cyborg, back from the shop and reconstituted as a good guy, makes for an effective killing machine in his new mission of protecting teenage future hero John Connor (born of the Connor-Reese liaison in 1984 TERMINATOR) from alien forces.

Meanwhile, Connor’s mother, Sarah, languishes at Pescadero State Hospital for the mentally insane in California. Seems she keeps talking about “Terminators” and the world being destroyed in a nuclear holocaust on August 29, 1997. Of course, no one believes her, so she is kept heavily sedated in solitary confinement.

The scene shifts to John and his foster parents’ house where John’s foster father tells him to do some chores. Ignoring him, a surly and rebellious John takes off with a friend on his cycle. So much for the Proverb “Children obey your parents” (Ephesians 6:1).

Shortly, a clean-cut policeman comes to the house and asks for John but will not say why he wants him. When he locates John a little later, the chase is on, since he is the evil Terminator who wants to kill John. He is also Schwarzenegger’s deadly antagonist. Connor, according to TERMINATOR I, is destined to lead the humans against the machines in the mother of all battles on August 29, 1997.

Fortunately, for John, Schwarzenegger comes to his rescue. Not wanting to divulge the film’s outcome, suffice it to say that a chase makes up the rest of the film with the evil Terminator assuming various shapes, ruthlessly killing any human in his way, and becoming nearly impossible to destroy.

The sci-fi effects in TERMINATOR 2 are dazzling and remarkable. Not only are the pyrotechnics impressive in certain scenes with huge blazing fires and thick, billowing smoke, but the evil Terminator’s “oozing” in and out of various materials, such as flooring, as he first melds with the substance, then resumes his own silvery robotic shape, takes one’s breath away.

Although TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, for Sci-fi buffs, is probably the ultimate in its genre, it also has a down side. The distorted view of women and mothers as depicted by Connor is deplorable. She curses like a sailor and physically attacks everyone in her way (after escaping from the hospital). The mother-son relationship, understandably, turns out to be strange. How does a child relate to a violent, foul-mouthed mother? The example set for young people in this regard is unfortunate.

The film also contains considerable violence which limits its audience. One of the questions that needs to be asked in light of film’s violence and killing (the Terminator, for example, skewers people with his sword-like arms): Can young people separate the fantastical, unreal elements (such as the Terminator being repeatedly shot or “killed” in another way but always emerging seemingly unscathed) from the truth of our own mortality? Extensive research emphatically says, “No,” which is especially disturbing when we look at the effects of such violent role-modeling on our youth and consider that over 130,000 teenagers carry a gun to school every day in the United States.

The so-called superhumans in so many movies today becomes quite disturbing when one tries to separate the real from the unreal. To the child or young person unable to make the distinction, the results could prove disastrous as he attempts to leap off buildings, play with fire, or even shoot at a friend, thinking the bullets will not harm him.

Near film’s end, Sarah Connor claims to have learned from a machine not to fear the future. As Christians, however, we don’t have to fear the future because we know the God who holds the future. Thus, the Lord says in Revelation, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” (21:6). We can trust Him with whatever the future holds instead of being anxious and worried about it like Sarah in this film.

Chances are you will want to skip TERMINATOR 2 (despite the special effects). In addition to the earlier problems, the pace slows to the point of boredom, the message becomes garbled and Schwarzenegger’s role switch is, finally, quite unbelievable. Despite the criticism, however, TERMINATOR 3 is undoubtedly in the works and will surface in the near future (surely before August 29, 1997!).

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Screen Rant

All 5 sequels to terminator 2 explained (& how they fit in the timeline).

Terminator movies deal with time travel, with the characters moving through time, but with so many entries in the franchise, the timeline gets messy.

• The Terminator franchise became fragmented due to time travel and attempts to alter history, resulting in multiple timelines.
• T2 3-D: Battle Across Time is a spin-off adventure that serves as the only official sequel directed by James Cameron.
• Terminator: Dark Fate ignores all the projects that came after T2 and follows a refreshed story, but the movie performed poorly at the box office.

Terminator may be an incredibly popular franchise with six movies, a TV series, and other interactive elements, but the timeline is also incredibly messy. Considering the central premise in the films deals with time travel and people in the future attempting to alter history, it makes sense that the franchise has been fragmented into various timelines. Both The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day were written and directed by James Cameron, who appeared to have a consistent vision for his films. It was after T2 that things started to get more confusing.

Cameron intended for the series to end with T2 , but that didn't mean he didn't have some idea of where the story could go after. In addition, due to the overall success of the movies, studios and producers were excited to capitalize on the franchise and expand it further . Since then, there have been plenty of stories that dig into potential futures and sequels for the series overall.

5 T2 3-D: Battle Across Time Is A Terminator 2 Tie-In

T2 3-d: battle across time (1996).

T2 3-D: Battle Across Time is an officially licensed and produced follow-up to Cameron's T2, directed and written by Cameron himself. The project was made to be part of an interactive live show experience at Universal Studios which lasted a little over 20 minutes. The actors from T2 reprised their roles and as the events played out on a large screen, while actors would perform and interact with the film on stage . While this mini-sequel doesn't add much to the larger arc of the series, it's a fun spin-off adventure bringing in Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800, Robert Patrick's T-1000, and the Connors, played by Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong.

Sarah and John hack into Cyberdine systems revealing a threat from the company that poses as being safe and legitimate. The T-1000 arrives from the future and kills the presenter before Schwarzenegger comes through the screen from the future and grabs the Connors to come to help him end the threat once and for all. Lots of action and interactive elements make it clear this story is made for the benefit of a theme park ride, but nonetheless, it's the only official sequel directed by Cameron , so it's worth mentioning.

12 Biggest Ups & Downs Of The Terminator Movies

4 terminator 3 was the first judgment day sequel, terminator 3: rise of the machines (2003).

The earliest feature-length sequel in the series still took 12 years to arrive in theaters after the previous entry. Following the successful destruction of Cyberdyne which happens in Terminator 2 , the future dystopia where Skynet rules the planet is delayed , but it is not completely resolved. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines sees a new threat sent back in time to disrupt the uprising and victory of John Connor, the T-X. While one element of the story plays out in the future with future John Conner's death , the bulk of the action happens in the present, with the T-X trying to eliminate as many, future leaders of the uprising, as possible including John and his future wife Kate Brewster.

Schwarzenegger returns as an updated and reprogrammed T-850 sent back by the resistance to protect John Connor and his future wife. All of these events take place after the main story in T2 , with a now grown-up John Connor played by Nick Stahl. Linda Hamilton did not return to reprise her role as Sarah Connor for several reasons, but ultimately, T3 still set up a path forward for the later sequel Terminator: Salvation in 2009.

3 Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Ignores Terminator 3

Terminator: the sarah connor chronicles (2008 - 2009).

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles depicts an alternative version of events after Terminator 2 . The series ran for two seasons before it was canceled. Despite the short run of the show, it still established its alternative history as Sarah and John tried to keep a low profile after destroying Cyberdyne , and they were aided in their efforts by a reprogrammed Terminator named Cameron, played by Summer Glau .

As with Rise of the Machines , The Sarah Connor Chronicles also starts with the premise that the Skynet uprising is merely delayed after Cyberdyne's destruction. The series explores Sarah and John building a resistance group, actively seeking out significant events in Skynet's formation , and they attempt to thwart them in their efforts to ensure the doomed future never fully comes to pass. As a TV series, the show had more flexibility to build out storylines and reveal other sides to the characters, which was a pleasant shift for the franchise.

Terminator: 10 Facts About Sarah Connor You Didn’t Know

2 terminator: genisys rewrites the entire franchise (including t2), terminator: genisys (2015).

As the name suggests, Terminator: Genisys takes a different approach and decides to reboot the franchise. The film kicks off with John Connor attempting to shut down Skynet just as the whole time travel narrative begins once again. This time, when Terminator machines are sent back to kill off Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke), it's revealed that her parents were killed earlier and a T-800 robot (Arnold Schwarzenegger) raised her and is affectionately referred to as Pops.

The story moves in a different direction from the originals, opting to travel forward in time to 2017 and put a stop to Skynet, which has been renamed Genisys , from taking over. This iteration of the franchise had some of the most creative and innovative updates to the franchise. Despite this, it performed poorly at the domestic box office and struggled to recover studio costs despite being the second-highest-grossing film in the franchise.

1 Terminator: Dark Fate Ignores Everything That Came After T2

Terminator: dark fate (2019).

After decades away from the franchise, James Cameron finally stepped back in for Terminator: Dark Fate to help write and produce the film. With Cameron returning, the decision was made to refresh the story to follow on from T2 and ignore the other projects in between. Dark Fate reveals that after Sarah and John manage to destroy Cyberdyne, John is killed by another T-800 sent back by Skynet . Sarah spends the following 20 years fighting off threats from the future with the help of a mysterious source who relays information about incoming threats.

When Sarah and some new friends track down the source, they find that it was the same T-800 who killed John, left stranded back in time, and without a new initiative, he developed a conscience and decided to help Sarah as much as he could, "For John." As a team, they all work together to stop a new threat from a mysterious AI known as Legion. Despite all of this, the movie flopped at the box office and any plans for a future sequel were scrapped, which may well mean Dark Fate is the end of the Terminator franchise.