Here’s the deal: I told myself I wasn’t going to write about Terminator 2: Judgement Day for my ongoing Summer of 1991 retrospective. I feel like I’ve worked tangential references to this film into roughly half of the 250 reviews on this website. That’s probably a gross exaggeration...but I have talked about it a lot. Also—other people have talked about it a lot. It’s friggin’ Terminator 2! It’s the Cadillac of all summer movies! Ultimately, I feel like it’s simply not possible to discuss film in the summer of 1991 and avoid talking about T2. It’d be like visiting the Louvre and skipping the Mona Lisa. Like making someone a Best of Lynyrd Skynyrd mixtape and leaving out Free Bird! (Note: I have no idea why one would want to make such a tape. I mean...I guess “That Smell” is decent enough). If you’ve spent any time here at VHS of the Week you know that T2 occupies a special place in my heart. I have never anticipated the release of a film with such desperation...before or since. This is a bit strange given that I did not, and do not, particularly care for the original Terminator....or the entire science fiction genre.That shit ties my head in knots! I wanted to review the NeverEnding Story but found it too confusing to put into words! And I’m 42 years old! In the years following the 1984 Terminator, Austrian bodybuilding fuck boy and two-term governor of the state of California Arnold Schwarzenegger blew up like Gallagher’s watermelons. My dad, himself a fledgling bodybuilder in his younger years, was obsessed with Arnold’s physique and his skull cracking flicks like Commando and Raw Deal. I dug his crossover jams like Twins and Kindergarten Cop. Ours was the house of Arnold. We just loved that big motherfucker! So when T2 appeared on the docket, the excitement was paralyzing. The film came with an $80 million dollar price tag, making it the most expensive flick ever made at the time. Folks tend to work themselves into a lather when someone spends an unfathomable amount of money on a film. You know how many homeless people you could feed with that kind of dough? A lot. You know how many Gulfstream Jets you can buy your leading A-list action star with that kind of dough? Just the one! The knives were out for T2 for sure, but it was also a foregone conclusion that it would be good and that it would pull it an ass ton of money. And you know that? It was...and it did! I’ll go to my grave saying that Point Break is the best film of the summer of ‘91...but T2 does exactly what it’s supposed to do. It’s the apex of summer moviegoing. I know I’m on an island here but that CGI shit does nothing for me. Zilch. On the other hand, everything that happens in T2 feels like it could actually happen. I know—you’re thinking “dude...there’s a man made of liquid metal who hijacks a helicopter with his flying motorcycle!” To which I would say: AND!? T2 made Arnold Schwarzenegger the biggest movie star on the planet...a title he only held onto until the release of his very next film, the interminable Last Action Hero. After his bafflingly successful political career, Schwarzenegger returned to making movies but nobody watched them. It was certainly an odd sight, though, after all of his years as a cigar chomping, dick swinging, Republican alpha male, to see Schwarzenegger post videos of himself in quarantine...hanging out with his donkeys and espousing decidedly non-republican talking points. Just a withered grandpa with a bum ticker begging people to stop being racist. Arnold—I still don’t mind the guy!
Before we get to the getting, I feel like I need to mention this: the only thing in life I have anticipated harder than T2 was probably Guns N’ Roses Use Your Illusion albums, their long delayed follow up(s) to Appetite for Destruction. So imagine my reaction when I found out that the first single for this new Gn’R project would be dropping with a T2 tie-in video! I literally dropped dead. And yes...I know what “literally” means. The video premiered in May of ‘91 and I was right there glued to the tube...waiting to capture all of it with my mind’s eye. The video functions as both an extended trailer for the movie as well a palette awakener for albums...which were still a maddening three months away from hitting the shelves. If you haven’t seen the video, do yourself a favor and stream it where videos are streamed. The treatment for this video could fit on the back of a fortune cookie. Guns N’ Roses are playing a concert. Arnold Schwarzenagger, in character as the T-101, shows up with a shotgun, presumably to terminate the band and save us all from The Spaghetti Incident. The video is split between clips from the film, clips of the band performing the song with mild costume changes, and clips of Schwarzenegger making his way through the crowd with a shotgun. First off--It’s weird how the sight of a man walking through a packed concert venue with a shotgun didn’t seem weird at all back in 1991. Now--not so much. Must have something to do with the 70000 mass shootings we’ve had in the last 30 years. ANYWAY, the song is called “You Could Be Mine” and it just absolutely slays. It starts with a backwards drum fill before skipping straight into high gear. If you looked up “galloping drum beat” in the dictionary you’d see a gif of Matt Sourm playing the intro to “You Could Be Mine.” Duff is first act...chorus pedal on his bass just dimed out. Oh! And here come Slash and Izzy with their...erm...slash and burn guitarmonies. The works just keep building and building until PATOW!!! The whole thing blasts into place, smacking the listener like a line of pure cocaine. In fact--the original title of this song is “Cocaine Talking,” and that’s not just the cocaine talking! The performance is a sort of last gasp from the classic-era Gn’R…right before the wheels started to fall off. Axl wears a purple jacket with a mesh T-shirt underneath and a pair of nut hugging biker shorts. Slash and Duff are bare chested and swimming in substances. Izzy? He’s still around too. Our man Arnold, though, CANNOT seem to make it to the stage, even though this song is SIX MINUTES LONG!! When he catches up with the band outside after the gig, his Terminator hardware tells him that killing Axl Rose would be a waste of ammo. I bet Axl came up with that twist himself. He’s crazier than a shithouse rat, that guy.
Before I give y’all a rundown of the plot, I need to point out that, when Terminator 2 was released on July 3, 1991, it ran for 137 finely etched minutes. All killer...no filler. At no point in the last 30 years have I wished that there were additional minutes of Terminator 2 to be watched. At no point have I wished that there were additional minutes of ANY movie to watch, really. I tend to take an extremely dim view of director’s cuts. Just leave shit alone! Doesn’t Richard Kelly know that replacing Echo and the Bunnyman’s The Killing Moon with INXS’s Never Tear us Apart as the opening song of Donnie Darko RUINS THE ENTIRE MOVIE!!?? Anyway, extended cuts really became the order of the day during the DVD era, so I was a little surprised to find that my VHS copy of T2 runs for 15 minutes longer than the 1991 theatrical cut. I thought I might be able to circumvent those extra minutes by watching my DVD copy of T2 but THAT ONE has 16 extra minutes!! And what the fuck happens in that extra one minute?? The infamous cyborg bunga bunga party scene? I have yet to see any of this extra footage so you’re going to get my reactions in real time. Fun!
Anyway, what happens is this: We open with a little refresher course in Terminatorology, voiced by Sarah Connor, mother of the revolution and sole survivor of the original film. Sarah tells us that, on August 29th 1997, three billion people died in a fiery fireball. As someone who lived through 8/29/97 I can tell you that this does not check out. Although Princess Diana WAS killed in a car accident like two days later...which is kinda spooky. Right, so the Terminator (Schwarzy) was supposed to stop Sarah Connor from riding the dude from Navy Seals (Michael Biehn) like a mechanical bull but was unsuccessful. Everyone knows Mikey Biehn got the strong seed like whoa and so SC was instantly preggers with little JC. As in John Connor, the eventual leader of the revolution or something. So Biehn’s character, whom we’ll call Kyle Reese as that was his name, was terminated, but Sarah crushed the Terminator in a hydraulic press. Someone swept up his robot detritus and used the future technology to create iPads. Seriously though, a company called Cyberdyne Systems attempted to use the technology to automate the entire United States military industrial complex and all of its nuclear weapons.. On that fateful day in late August, the machines got sick of sitting around waiting for Titanic to come out and decided to turn against the human race. Now, in the year 2029, a constant battle rages between Skynet (the bad machines) and the survivors, led by John Connor. I probably just explained that all fucked up but I already told you this shit is like calculus to me! Who is in charge of the robot people then?? Skynet sends a Terminator back to 1991 to kill young John Connor. Not to be one upped in the race to erase himself, Connor sends his own Terminator back to the early 90’s to protect his younger self from termination. Too bad he couldn’t program the Terminator to prevent the kid who plays young John Connor from turning into a wife-beating piece of shit, eh? I digress. So there’s the plot of the movie...ish. I need a drink! The opening credits roll over scenes of burning playgrounds and honestly….this vision of 2029 doesn’t seem all that far fetched to me right now. Or unsettling. You think the sight of a flaming merry-go-round is gonna move the needle with me after the last two years? Please.
We touch down in Los Angeles in the year 1991. You know how some movies look greyscale? This one is bluescale. It looks like it was filmed inside of the Blue Man Group’s balls. The T-101 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) materializes from a lightning pod, naked as the day he was born and just ripped to shreds. He was 43 when he made this movie and was still a glistening mass of muscle meat. He walks into the nearest biker bar with his dingle danglin’. Y’all remember when that reporter from Rolling Stone asked Arnold if the Terminator fucks and he said “you disgrace your magazine wis deez questions. Sounds like a “yes” to me! The lady bar patrons stare at his pecker and seem pleased with what they see. The bikers are less pleased. They try to kick his ass but the Terminator proceeds to beat the shit of 10 dudes. He stabs one dude to the pool table and defenestrates Extra Who Looks Exactly Like Chris Cornell. He steals a pair of leather pants, a leather jacket, a pair of shades, and a motorcycle. He speeds toward downtown Los Angeles while the sounds of “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood and the Destroyers waft through the air like a fart. Fun fact: the theater where I saw T2 on opening day was showing this flick on two screens and Problem Child 2 on their other two screens. This means that it was NOT POSSIBLE to see a film at Showcase Cinemas in downtown Worcester on 7/3/91 WITHOUT hearing the song “Bad to the Bone.”
Meanwhile across town, a parallel lightning cloud shits out a second, more slightly built naked terminator. This one is the T-1000 (Robert Patrick)...which is approximately 899 Terminator points higher than the T-101. He also has the upper hand on the old school termy in a huge way as he is made of liquid metal. We don’t actually know this yet...but I know it because I have already seen this movie 200 times. He slaughters the nearest police officer and steals his uniform, which he will continue to wear throughout the entire film. I really have no idea why he decides to limit his wardrobe to one shitty cop uniform when one of the premier features of the T-1000 is that it can shape-shift into any human person on the planet. And also--floors. Why didn’t they cast a revolving door of the most insane actors they could think of to play the T-1000? They could've gotten Dolph Lundgren and Ernest Borgnine and Bill Paxton and Terri Garr...all appearing as the T-1000! No disrespect to Robert Partick (y’all know I’m a Fire in the Sky ride or die) but did they have to limit themselves to one dude who looks like Ray Liotta’s squirrely cousin? So it’s liquid cop versus leather muscle daddy. We’ve got a ballgame!
Even though the T-1000 is the thousandest T that they make, he still has to pound the pavement to try to locate John Connor. The T-101 just instinctively knows to drive his motorcycle towards Burbank. When we meet little JC, he’s living in the valley with his asshole foster parents. He’s kind of an asshole too, this kid. He mostly hangs around his garage listening to the Gn’R single and working on his dirt bike. Later, he blazes into town with his mullet head buddy to rob ATMs. I’m not getting “leader of the resistance” vibes from this kid AT ALL. I’m not sure how I missed this on my 7 dozen earlier viewings but John Connor totally rocks a Public Enemy T-shirt throughout the flick. I wonder what his favorite PE song is? I’m gonna say “Prophets of Rage.” While the kids are biking to the mall to spend some of their ill gotten gains, John tells his buddy that his biological mother is a “total loser” who has been locked up in a looney bin since her unsuccessful attempt at firebombing a computer factory. You mean like a Micro Center? Sounds pretty cool to me, bro. Cut to: the Pescatarian Asylum for the Clinically Insane, current address of one Sarah Connor. You may have noticed that I used the term “looney bin” a few sentences back, which is not the preferred nomenclature. That’s how the filmmakers chose to portray this particular facility. All the patients at this place are REAL fucked up! They are all lying in the hallway screaming and shitting and drooling on themselves. Don’t worry--it gets much, much worse! The cat in charge, Dr Silberman, is particularly cruel to Sarah ‘cuz she won’t get off her whole armageddon jag. When we’re reintroduced to Sarah Connor, she’s still played by the actress Linda Hamilton. But this time she’s JACKED. Like she’s been doing chin ups for 8 hours a day since 1984. The orderlies enter her room to give her her daily dose of thorazine and she’s like “I’m all set” so these male nurses throw her on the ground and kick her and zap her with a cattle prod. While she’s in the middle of her narco nap, she receives a visit from the ghost of Michael Biehn and WHAT THE FUCK IS HE DOING IN THIS MOVIE!?? This is all news to me, folks! You mean that Michael Biehn had actually returned as Kyle Reese in Terminator 2 and they cut his scenes?? What a bunch of dicks! That’s no way to treat the star of The Seventh Sign! Dream Kyle tells Sarah that the Terminators are after her son and that she needs to protect him. She’s like “that’s gonna be tough to do from this padded cell that I’m locked in 24/7 ya dense prick!” Biehn tells her to remember “The Message.” You mean that song by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five? Good tune. When Sarah comes to, she’s brought before the parole board so she can lobby for a move to the minimum security wing and a restoration of her visitation privileges. Here I’d like to point out that Sarah is always wearing really fancy sleepwear at the Pescadero. At least they dress their patients well before they beat the shit out of them, eh? At the hearing, Dr Silberman shows Sarah a video….of Sarah going apeshit and screaming about the end of the world and how “anyone who isn’t wearing 2 million SPF Sunblock of 8/29/97 is gonna have a pretty fuckin’ bad day!” Do they even make sunblock that strong?? What if I took my 100 SPF and applied it 20000 times? Would that count? Silberman asks Sarah if she feels like she’s made progress and she’s like “Yup. Now let me out.” He is not impressed. He sentences her to six more months in the cooler. She leaps out of her chair and tries to murder him. I feel like he kinda had it coming.
Both Terminator’s get a bead on John and converge on the mall, where John is absolutely crushing ass at Afterburner. I guess maybe he’ll be a good army commander ‘cuz he’s good at video games? John hears that 5-0 is looking for him, presumably for robbing ATMs, so he attempts to escape through the bowels of the shopping mall. When he enters a maintenance hallway he runs smack into the T-101, who is walking in slow motion and carrying a box of long stem roses with a shotgun stashed inside. Wait a minute...GUNS and ROSES!?? I seriously never put that together until now. Maybe I haven't actually seen this movie before!! John sees the gun and naturally assumes this cat is gonna shoot him. Those of us who have seen the first Terminator assume this as well. But then the T-1000 appears on the scene and the T-101 starts blasting away at HIM and not this kid! He’s trying to terminate the terminator! Problem is--the bullets leave shiny, metallic splotches where the human gore should be. This guy is made from liquid metal…unlike the T-101…who is made from plain vanilla metal. I’d love to tell you what the consequences of a liquid metal man are but my knowledge of liquid metal begins and ends with this movie. He’s, like, super duper hard to kill….particularly with bullets. Does this mean that they don’t try to shoot him again and again and again and AGAIN even when it’s abundantly clear that he is impervious to the effects of gunshots??? Not kids...it certainly does not.
While the machines of hating grace throw each other into cement walls, John hops on his dirt bike and sets the throttles for the sun. The T-1000 gives chase on foot and I gotta say...that dude can lay down some serious shoe leather! This film is really just a showcase for Robert Patrick’s running prowess. I bet that guy could’ve taken that shit to the Olympics (assuming it isn’t just a running double, of course). Luckily, dirt bike beats runner but then T-1000 steals a tractor trailer and tractor trailer beats dirt bike. Every time. The chase spills into the LA river basin and It’s looking like curtains for little Johnny C, and hence, all of mankind, but the T-101 has got his back. He jumps his motorcycle into the basin like it’s the friggin’ wagon queen family truckster! I’ve always admired James Cameron for allowing this scene to go out with a close up of a stunt double who looks more like Martin Short than he looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger. John is rescued and the truck crashes into a bridge and explodes. But our pal the T-1000 emerges fully engulfed in flames before simply turning back into police costume-wearing Robert Patrick. As I wrote in a review for my 8th grade English class—“it...is...MINT!!!”
John and the T-101 take a little sidebar to explain some important plot points to the audience. Arnold details the physiology of the T-1000. He can transform himself into any form, human or weapon. But not...like...a cantaloupe. In fact, at that very moment the T-1000 is busy murdering John’s foster parents with his liquid arm swords. John says that they were “dicks” anyway...but you can tell he’s minorly bummed. John tells his new metal machine buddy that they need to break his moms out of Pescadero ASAP but the T is all “does...not...compute.” What is he supposed to do with the kid, then? Rent an apartment at the Oakwoods and wait for the bomb to drop?? John remembers that he’s the leader of the free world and that this Terminator is essentially his property. John is like “wait a minute: aren’t you supposed to do whatever I say??” The T-101–“yes” (begrudgingly). John is like “stand on one foot! Bark like a dog! A big dog! Sing the Soul Glo jingle!” The Terminator obliges. Well...not the last three things. John tells the Terminator that he’s hereby barred from killing anyone for the rest of the film, which has gotta be tough shakes for a terminator! What happened was—between the first Terminator and this one Arnold Schwarzenegger became an unlikely family friendly movie star and the producers must’ve figured 2.5 hours of this dude just murdering the shit out of people would be a bad look. Luckily, this killing embargo does not extend to fellow Terminators.
JC & T bike up to the nut house, where Sarah is currently having the side of her face licked by yet another pervy male nurse. This facility is the fucking pits, man. Oh—the T-1000 has already slithered into the hospital too, so there’s also that. He briefly disguises himself as a checkered floor before rising like a liquid Phoenix to start violently dispatching the hospital staff. I gotta say—the special effects in this movie still look pretty bomb 30 years later. Before any Terminators can reach her, Sarah manages to unlock her cell with a shiv. She immediately finds that motherfucker who licked her face and beats him to death with a broomhandle. I have no problem with that. Then she tracks down Dr Silberman and jams a Roto Rooter-filled syringe into his neck and demands to be let out of the hospital. He acquiesces. Sarah tries to make her way out of the asylum, but as she’s running down one of the hospital’s poorly lit, abandoned corridors, see sees the T-101 step off the elevator and she freaks the fuck out! Mind you, last time she saw this dude was way back in ‘84 when he was still playing for the bad guys. She dudn’t know that he was reprogrammed to not murder her. She’s like “oh HELL no!! You can jingle all the way back to 2029 or whatever fiery hellscape you came from!” But then she sees the liquid guy and Arnold extends his hand and says “come with me if you want to live.” She does want to live so she goes with him. They have to do battle with the T-1000 all the way to the parking lot. A lot of neat stuff happens that just isn’t going to sound interesting if I try to describe it. Maybe just watch the movie?
Sarah, John, and the T-101 steal a car and finally manage to outrun the running T-1000. As they speed south toward the Mexican border, John briefs his mom on the latest comings and goings in Terminator land. The Arnold Schwarzenegger machine? He’s a buddy now! Sarah looks at him like “cool. So...erm...what you been up to these last seven years?” and he’s all “not much--did Red Heat with Jimmy Belushi. That guy tokes like a beast!!” When this unlikely trio makes camp for the night, it’s the T-101’s turn to play show and tell. We learn that his battery lasts 120 years (you hear that, APPLE!?) and that you can shut him off by peeling back his scalp and yanking out his CPU, which is French for “central processing unit.” This is all new to me as none of this was in the theatrical cut. Now I know! They power him down and Sarah grabs the CPU and prepares to smash it with a hammer. Man, that would’ve brought this flick to a screeching halt! But you know--even if they ended it here it still would’ve been better than, I don’t know, Hudson Hawk? John refuses to allow his mom to destroy the computer chip. Totally pulls rank on her! He’s all “I’m de captain now!” The next morning, John attempts to socialize the T-101 by teaching how to cuss and use street lingo (because John Connor has his ear to the streets? I guess he does have that one Public Enemy shirt). He teaches him “Hasta La Vista, Baby” and “eat me.” He also teaches him how to say “chill out,” a line he unfortunately repeat in the unfortunate 1997 film Batman and Robin.
The crew continue on to Mexico for a little Mexican intermezzo (now would be a good time to stretch or hit the loo if you gotta go). How they manage to cross the border as an escaped convict, a metal cyborg, and a missing child we do not know. Sarah hits up her pal Enrique, who has a cache of automatic weapons and enough plastic explosives to orbit Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not really sure what they need the guns for as it has already been WELL ESTABLISHED that the T-1000 cannot be killed by conventional (or any) weapons! T-101 explains that a brilliant scientist named Miles Dyson is the one who took the discarded Terminator hand and developed the technology that inadvertently led to the downfall of society. John looks at T-101 and says “we’re not gonna make it, are we? People?” T-101 says “it’s in our nature to destroy ourselves.” Man, ain’t that the fuckin’ truth! So prescient, this movie. Damn. Anyway, Sarah is like “soooo...this Miles dude--what does he look like?” T-101 says that he should be easy to find as he is THE ONLY BLACK PERSON IN THIS MOVIE. We finally meet Miles and he’s just a good natured workaholic, diligently plugging away on his creation that he thinks will change the world for the better while his young children beg him to take them to Water Whizz. Hey, I’m sure the person who created the internet thought they were changing the world for the better too. Now it’s a swirling cauldron of garbage...like this review that you’re currently reading! After Sarah has a terrible nightmare about Judgement Day (note: I know I said I hate CGI, but these scenes of LA being obliterated are pretty damn effective. I think they’re CGI, anyway…and that they didn’t actually destroy Los Angeles for this film), she decides to abandon John and the T-101 and go whack Dyson herself.
When the Dyson family return home from Thunder Lagoon, Sarah is already waiting outside in her makeshift assassin’s nest. She fires about 700 rounds into the house, catching Miles with one bullet and completely missing everyone else. She moves inside to finish the job but then has a massive panic attack. I mean….she’s had a pretty eventful 24 hours! John shows up with the T-101, who brandishes a knife and starts carving up his arm. Everyone starts freaking out! Do they think he’s committing suicide or something? No, he flexes his metal robot arm and Dyson is like “I know that thing!” They sit Dyson down and tell him that he’ll eventually have the blood of three billion humans on his hands. You know how much blood that is?? A lot. I see here in my notes I wrote “he takes it well.” Does he really though?? I’m sure he feels WICKED bad! In fact I know that he feels bad because his immediate reaction is to bring his new pals to the Cyberdyne building to blow it up! All he has to do is destroy the old Terminator bits and all of his research and the future will be saved. Oh, we’ll still get Justin Bieber, Donald Trump, and Covid-19 though...so forgive me if my enthusiasm begins to wane. They sneak into the lab and start laying down explosives but someone drops a dime on them and the building is crawling with police in no time. The T-1000 is back on the scene, riding his police motorcycle right up the emergency stairwell. Speaking of the T-1000: where the fuck has HE been for the last forty minutes?? Did he buy a map of the stars and putter around Beverly Hills looking for Dyan Cannon’s house? Did he melt himself into a vibrator to see what’s what? What a lazy ass Terminator! T-101 grabs his gatling gun, blasts out a tenth floor window, and machine guns the balls out of the plaza below. His gun is so powerful it uproots trees! But hey--according to his scorekeeping screen, there are no casualties. Or rather--0.0 casualties, which is the same score Pitchfork Gave to Liz Phair’s self-titled 2003 album. Nice shootin’, Tex! While T-101 keeps the authorities at bay with his fusillade of bullets, Dyson grabs all of the necessary materials and exclaims “we got Skynet for the balls!” which is great. Then the swat team breaches the room and shoots Dyson ten times, which is less great. Inexplicably shooting the only black character to death? Not a good look, folks...not good at all. Oh wait! He’s not dead yet! He’s just holding onto the detonator and gasping for breath OPE! Now he’s dead. The building explodes. Or...I guess just part of the building because everyone else inside is still alive. Problem is there’s still 500 cops down in the lobby, guns drawn. T-101 decides to head on down to suss out the sitch. Before he leaves, though, he tells the Connor’s “I’ll be back.” The audience members leap from their chairs and applaud rapturously. Seriously, I saw T2 four times on the big screen and this line brought down the house EVERY SINGLE TIME! What a weird line to attain legendary status. I’ll be back? It’s like...cool. Maybe grab some Doritos? When the T-101 steps into the lobby the police light him up like an unarmed black teenager reaching for his wallet. They pump about 1000 rounds into him but he remains on his feet. Don’t you think one of these cops would have the good sense to say “you know--we’ve put an unreasonable amount of bullets into this man and he does not seem injured in any way. I wonder if there isn’t something else going on here??” But no--they keep right on blasting. T-101 honors his no kill pact and simply shoots all of the police officers in less essential-type areas. Arms and legs and such. I know I say this a lot...but being shot ANYWHERE is always gonna be a big deal! While T-101 is putting the entire LAPD on extended disability leave, the T-1000 pilots his motorcycle off of the top of the exploded building and has a midair collision with a police helicopter. He pours himself into the chopper like a broken lava lamp and tells the pilot to get out. He does.
Right, so T-101 and the Connor’s take off in a stolen police van and T-1000 chases them in his helicopter. It’s rad. After crashing their respective vehicles, T-1000 hijacks a truck full of liquid nitrogen and the rest of the crew hijack...a shitty Nissan pickup truck? Hardly seems fair. They continue to shoot bullets at the T-1000, having learned nothing over the last two and a half hours. I guess the T-1000 doesn’t have his CDL license ‘cuz he jackknifes the truck and rolls it over. No sweat--he simply hops on the roof and rides that crippled beast like a surfboard as it sails toward the steel mill from the end of Sly Stallone’s Cobra. When the truck reaches the steel mill, the part of the truck that houses the dangerous chemicals splits open like an old pair of trousers. There's a deluge of liquid nitrogen that gives a million ametuer chefs watching at home a million terrible ideas. T-1000 gets covered in the gunk too and turns into a copsicle. Arnold sees that he’s frozen (note: can metal FREEZE??) and figures it’s time to try out his new tagline. He says “Hasta La Vista (pregnant pause) baby.” Then he shoots the T-1000, who immediately shatters and hits the ground like a sock full of nickels. This fell ghoul quickly melts back together and REFUSES TO DIE!! But Schwarzenegger already used up his new signature quip! I don’t know--there's some more Terminator-on-Terminator fighting. T-1000 briefly turns into Linda Hamilton to try to trick Linda Hamilton. Not having him morph into Danny DeVito during this climactic battle sequence seems like a massive lost opportunity. With the T-101 briefly down but not out, it falls on Sarah to dispense with T-1000 once and for all. She does that cool one-armed shotgun rack thingy that they showed over and over in the previews. It doesn’t hurt the T-1000 but it DOES cause him to take a few steps back...off a ledge and into a massive vat of molten steel. Ok, so you can’t freeze liquid metal people but you CAN burn them to death. Got it! The T-1000 squeals like a Veloceraptor with an abscessed tooth. As he’s dying, the ghosts of his victims leave his body and ascend up to heaven or wherever in a scene that was CLEARLY lifted wholesale from the end of A Nightmare on Elm Street Part IV: The Dream Master. Wes Craven should’ve sued the shit out of James Cameron! I’m thinking it’s too late now...for obvious reasons. The T-1000 transforms into a gelatinous butthole before disappearing completely. Sarah and John toss the antique Terminator parts into the soup, which, in theory, should save the world...from the four bullshit sequels that followed this one! Heyyyooo!!!! As much as I loved this movie I never even considered watching any of the subsequent Terminator’s. I know that there’s one where Christian Bale screams at a dude whose last name sounds like “halibut” and someone recorded it and posted it online to show the world what an immense prick that guy is (“You and me--we’re fuckin’ done professionally, man!). Oh wait! I did watch a few minutes of the latest reboot on TV last year. And...like...Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a regular old GILF who lives with his family in Utah or wherever. And he and Linda Hamilton drive a vehicle out of a crashing jumbo jet and then have a car chase UNDERWATER!! Hard pass.
ANYWAY, Sarah and John are like “well, we just saved the world--let’s go get a taco” but T-101 says that they need to destroy him as well ‘cuz he’s made up of the bad stuff. Since he cannot commit terminator seppuku, it will fall on John to lower him into the fiery sauce. John wails and punches the T-101 and commands him to stay and be a pal. Alas, this kid is just destined to not have a father. Through heavy tears, John lowers the best friend that he ever did have into the hot stuff. When the Terminator is about 95% submerged, he raises his hand and gives his buddy one final, triumphant thumbs up. Do you think you could still give a thumbs up after everything but your left hand has been incinerated. I bet that you cannot. In a closing voice over, Sarah Connor says that “if a Terminator can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.” Oh lord I wish it were so, my friend. And no I’m not crying. It is YOU who is crying!! Dun dun dun...dun dun….DUN DUN DUN...DUN DUN!! The end. Happy 4th of July, everybody.