There’s no director out there who makes more satisfying sequels than James Cameron. In 1986, he followed up Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien with the action-packed Aliens, a sequel that topped the scale and spectacle of the original by replacing its single bloodthirsty alien with a festering hive full of them.
His 1991 blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day similarly raised the stakes from its predecessor. The first Terminator movie was an intimate neo-noir, but the second one was an all-out action extravaganza. T2 still holds up as a timeless classic to this day.
Raising The Stakes From The Original
Like all the best sequels, T2 significantly raises the stakes from the original movie. In the first film, Sarah’s life was threatened by a T-800. In the second one, her 10-year-old son’s life is threatened by a far more advanced T-1000, with a T-800 now acting as a protector.
Adding another Terminator into the equation isn’t the only way Cameron raises the stakes. The first movie is about ensuring John’s survival so the Resistance will have a leader when the machines rise up, but the second one is about preventing the machines from rising up in the first place.
James Cameron & William Wisher’s Tightly Structured Screenplay
While Terminator 2 is hardly a short movie at 137 minutes, it doesn’t feel overlong because the screenplay – credited to James Cameron and William Wisher – is so tightly structured.
It has an epic scale but tells the story succinctly. There are no unnecessary scenes in the script. Each sequence leads into the next, adding to the conflict and progressing the narrative. Every character is necessary to either advance the plot or to show the relentless brutality of the T-1000.
The Groundbreaking T-1000 Visual Effects
CGI wouldn’t become Hollywood’s new favorite thing until Steven Spielberg’s hugely influential blockbuster Jurassic Park hit theaters in 1993, but T2 broke a bunch of new ground in the field of computer-generated effects.
Cameron had experimented with CGI in his 1989 science fiction movie The Abyss, but T2 was the film where the effects were needed to create the intimidating villain. The liquid metal form of the T-1000 marked the first time that CG had been composited onto human motion, thereby creating a constantly transforming machine that could assume the identity of anyone at any time. The CGI was so impressive that it helped the film win the Best Visual Effects Oscar that year.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Turn As A Heroic Terminator
Arnold Schwarzenegger got his big break playing the titular cyborg in The Terminator as a cold, callous villain. The second movie’s subversive premise turned the T-800 into a hero, more befitting of what was then Schwarzenegger’s established on-screen good-guy image.
Schwarzenegger’s turn as a heroic Terminator going up against a much more advanced villainous Terminator provided audiences with endless thrills (even if that formula has since been done to death in the subsequent Terminator sequels). Schwarzenegger would return to the role intermittently in 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, 2015's Terminator Genisys, and 2019's Terminator: Dark Fate.
Brad Fiedel’s Foreboding Score
Brad Fiedel returned to compose the Terminator sequel’s score. Just like in the first movie, his foreboding sound sells the gravity of the world being at stake. Fiedel also added some metallic clangs to the iconic main title track from the first movie, which ties into the story’s larger scale.
Guns N’ Roses also contributed an awesome song to the soundtrack: “You Could Be Mine,” which John and his friend play from their boombox on the way to the mall. Schwarzenegger would make a cameo in the band's music video as a stoic member of their raucous Los Angeles concert.
The Story’s Complex Ethics
After the first Terminator movie realized the very real fear of artificial intelligence becoming sentient and turning on humanity, the second one dealt with those themes in an even more thought-provoking way by mixing complicated ethics into the narrative.
Preventing Skynet from going live would save millions of lives, but Sarah’s plan to do so – murdering an unsuspecting Miles Dyson in front of his wife and young children – is pretty questionable.
The Father-Son Dynamic Of The T-800 And John Connor
The emotional core of the first Terminator movie was Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese falling in love and unwittingly conceiving John. The emotional core of the second one saw the T-800 becoming a sort of surrogate father figure for Sarah’s son.
It’s initially set up as a boy-and-his-dog dynamic, but it becomes a father-son story when Sarah notices how perfect John’s unconventional paternal guardian is: “It would always be there. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up.”
Robert Patrick’s Chilling Performance As A Killing Machine
The T-1000’s most impressive abilities are handled by the CG artists, but its characterization is handled by Robert Patrick, who plays its most commonly used human form.
There’s an unnerving head-tilt and a chilling calmness in Patrick’s voice that makes his performance as a killer cyborg even more terrifying than Schwarzenegger’s turn as the villainous T-800 in the original Terminator movie. Patrick's ice-cold performance would later be unsuccessfully copied in later Terminator movies by less imposing machines like Kristanna Loken's T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
The Breathtaking Stunts
While T2 features plenty of groundbreaking CGI, Cameron still utilized practical stunts where possible. His stunt team crashed a giant truck into the L.A. drainage canal and flew a helicopter under a bridge.
Practical stunt work results in much more visceral and engaging action scenes than the often flat, lightweight, CG-heavy set pieces found in modern blockbusters. That's why T2 still holds up today; the action scenes film 30 years ago are much more thrilling than the ones seen in multiplexes today.
Linda Hamilton’s Badass Portrayal Of Sarah Connor
Sarah Connor undergoes a ton of character development over the course of the first two Terminator movies, and Linda Hamilton plays her journey beautifully. After The Terminator charted her transformation from an everywoman into a hero, T2 catches up with Sarah as a bonafide badass.
In the years since the first movie took place, Sarah has trained herself to be a lean, mean killing machine in anticipation of the Terminators’ return. Alongside Ellen Ripley, Sarah broke new ground for female heroes and paved the way for Buffy, Black Widow, and countless other female action stars.