Tuesday, August 31, 2010

A Short Review Of The Movie Terminator 2

By Naomi Gilliam

There is a lot to love about Terminator 2 - Judgment Day. It is up there with many other classic science fiction movies as one that is indispensable to the genre. The cinematography is great, and when the aspects of fate and trying to save the world are mixed in with the sometimes cheesy dialog and acting, we are left with one incredibly charming movie.

This movie pits a ragtag group, Sarah Conner, John Conner, and the original Terminator against a much more sophisticated robot from the future, the T-1000. The T-1000 is a nearly indestructible robot that has a liquid metal that allows it to mimic almost anything it wants to.

The heroes are trying to save the world from a global take over from the soon to be sentient machines. Sarah decides that it is possible to change the future, and goes on a quest to destroy the person that originally designed the terminators. They think that they have won by the end of the movie, but it turns out that they only delayed the, apparently, inevitable.

There is a lot about fate in this movie. Fate and destiny are recurring themes throughout the series. Strangely, there is a lot about changing fate, changing the future. There is a little bit of a modern political argument that can be seen here. Environmentalists say that humans are destroying the planet with pollution, but that we can still change the future and save the planet. This argument may or may not hold water, but what is safe to say is that it is a big topic, and this movie was on top of it a long time before it came into the mainstream of politics.

One thing that gets overlooked in this movie is part of what it is saying about the mental health system in the United States. The audience knows that she isn't crazy, but no one in the movie seems to agree with that statement. As far as they are concerned she is completely gone.

Everyone treats her like she is nuts. The filmmakers may be trying to say that this is part of the problem with our system. If someone says something that seems outlandish, it must be mental illness. Granted what she was saying did seem very crazy, and maybe they were trying to point out how hard it was to be Sarah Conner and not really saying anything bad about our health care system, but it seems fair that it could be saying something about both.

The major issue of fate is that of John Conner. He is supposed to be this great savior of mankind, and yet he isn't even really sure that he believes it. He is just a kid trying to get by and living with a mother who is probably crazy. He has no idea what to believe, and yet the audience knows what to believe - he's going to kick some robot butt when he gets older.

The strange thing about Terminator 2 - Judgment Day is that if we take the time-traveling robots out of the equation, then we see a completely different story. Without them showing up, John is being raised by a series of foster parents and a crazy woman. He is being told crazy things that really don't make a lot of sense. And it's all coming from the mind of a very seriously mentally ill woman. Fortunately, the robots do so up, so instead of a story about a horribly dysfunctional family, we are instead treated to a story with some of the most amazing action sequences ever put on film.

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