MUBI

A great improvement over the first. What a difference almost a decade makes to the visual effects! I liked the fact that even though most audiences today are aware which terminator is good and which is bad, both are pursuing the young John Connor early in the movie. Since Arnold’s cyborg was the killer there’s still something menacing about him until you quickly realize the twist. The liquid metal (shape-shifting, regenerating) T-1000 makes for the type of unstoppable villain to infuse excitement into this sequel that basically has the same never ending chase plot as the first movie.

Plenty of SLAM, BANG, BOOM action. Arnold’s Terminator has been reprogrammed to protect and he is learning the value of human life. Linda Hamilton is better as this buff, slightly crazy woman with a mission to stop the apocalypse. I like that she makes every effort to save herself from the mental hospital and can fight along side the Terminator now. Furlong as her son provides an identity that is supposed to appeal to boys, the target audience of this movie. He’s never known his dad, his mother has had several boyfriends in an effort to train for being a great resistance fighter, he’s been in trouble with the law, and he forms a temporary family with the Terminator and his mom while on the run and trying to destroy Cyberdyne. Not a childhood I particularly identify with, but some of it works to add more family drama, and some of it is melodramatic. Furlong’s voice was changing too and so in a handful of scenes he sounds over-excited. Boen as the psychiatrist Dr. Silberman and Morton as the computer scientist Dyson give good supporting performances.