Great movies come in threes ! : The Terminator

2005-04-28T02:56:00.000-07:00

The most involving part of all great trilogies is generally the second movie in
the series. While the first one is so busy establishing the context for the plot that
it seldom has time to flesh out the characters, the last movie in the series almost always has a trite plot and a tough time in holding the audience's attention.

Therefore the second movie benefits from having a context already in place,characters already known, lots of scope for twists, turns and wit, and an audience whose appetite has been whetted by the first one.

So it is with T2-Judgement Day. The twist (given away by the movie's advance publicity) is that this time Schwarzenegger's character (another T-800) is the rescuer, having been re-programmed by the resistance to protect John from the more advanced prototype T-1000 (Patrick) that has been sent back to kill him. The newer robot's liquid metal construction gives it
the ability to change shape, an ability which was the focus of many of the movie's Oscar-winning special effects.

The relationships depicted throughout this movie between the machine and a suspicious mother vis-a-vis young John who takes a liking to the machine, makes the movie much more than just a SFX saga. Especially the ending sequence, where The Terminator having destroyed T-1000 destroys himself with the help of Sarah Connor despite the protests of the young John, is heart warming with the machine's famous dialogue:
"I know now why you cry. But it's something I can never do."

Speaking of catchlines, of course the entire series has some of the most famous ones - from "Hasta la vista, baby!" (The T-800 tothe T-1000) and "The future is not set. There is no fate butwhat we make ourselves." in Part 2 to the mother of them all- "I'll be back." in Parts 1 and 2.
(T3, however contains only a variation of this line as two paraphrases: "She'll be back" and, later,"I'm back.")

However a line(If it can be called so...) that is mostly overlooked is "Get out!" which is said in all three films. (The T1000 shouts this to the helicopter pilot in "T2" and the T800 gives the same
command to a truck driver under similar circumstances in "The Terminator".)

Another example of continuity dialogue is seen When John and the T-800 rescue Sarah from the hospital, the T-800 says to her, "Come with me if you want to live." Reese said the exact same thing to Sarah after the nightclub shootout in the first film.

Guns N Roses sang "You Could Be Mine" in T2 which had a scene featuring Arnold carrying a gun in a box of roses!

An interesting face to "T2" is the use of twins. While Linda Hamilton's "softer" twin sister, Leslie Hamilton Gearran, appears in the film in the scene where Sarah is remembering playing in the park with John (She also appears in the scene where the T-1000 is impersonating Sarah), identical twins Don Stanton and Dan Stanton played the hospital security guard and the T1000(after it takes up the guard's shape).

And for all you software junkies out there, it seems Shots through the Terminator's vision show Motorola 6502 microprocessor assembler code(the 6502 chip is the main CPU for the Apple II computer). Other code visible is written in COBOL. Also When the T-101 is rebooting after destroying the Jeep Cherokee, among other things loaded is a "Quicktime Video Codec"!

Interestingly, for the first movie O.J. Simpson was considered for the role of the terminator, but the producers feared he wouldn't be taken seriously. Arnold on the other hand was chosen for the role of Biehn,the hero, but he felt he wanted to be the terminator!

That was the smartest career move any actor's made in history and the T-series (specially T2) is truely a path-breaking one in the sci-fi action genre.

-moviebuff

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Great movies come in threes ! : The Terminator