Terminator 2: Judgment Day - He's Back For Good

 (1991) ★★★★★

T1: creative, Arnold The Hero turns into a vicious T-800, who would've thought of that? T2: a genre classic, introduces the unforgettable T-1000, heart-pumping fights and chases, the best of the series without a doubt. T3? Seriously, they shouldn't have made it. Arnold should've just turned it down coz it's so much of a cliche. T4: a comeback? No way!

Why is T2 a cut above all? James Cameron's directing? Arnold in good shape? Robert Patrick as the unbreakable T-1000? Great chases, special effects and score? It all counts I guess. But what touches us most is probably the love between T-800 and young John Connor deepening as the story goes, like Sarah Connor said, "watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The Terminator would never stop, it would never leave him. And it would never hurt him, never shout at him or get drunk and hit him or say it was too busy to spend time with him. 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. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice."

We, human beings, are trying to do everything we can to make this world a better place, but ironically, deteriorating it. We think we're better than anything else in the world, but we are not. We seem to understand the value and meaning of life, but as a matter of fact, we don't. T-800 gives us "a sense of hope, because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can, too."

"I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do." This is what T-800 says to John and Sarah as a kind of goodbye. We cry because we have emotions. And they make us suffer. Machines don't, so they have no fears, no hesitations, no selfish thoughts. That's why we sometimes look up to them as sort of perfection. The tension and difference between men and machines are always there. But are we better? I doubt it.