Terminator 2: Judgment Day

James Cameron was not, is not, and never will be a directorial wimp, as the vast majority of entries in his filmography are icons of their genre, and Terminator 2 is certainly no exception. I'm not a big fan of action movies, and in fact I don't even seek them out, but this classic changed my opinion of this type of film from a certain angle. All the action sequences and chases are absolutely perfect and authentic, which is not that common for that time. And when it comes to the special effects, I just stared in disbelief, thinking "Is this really from 1991?!" In the first one, every visual effect was accompanied by a lot of choppy movements, but here everything goes like clockwork. Schwarzenegger was just born as a Terminator and this role suits him best of all his other characters. In short, a timeless sci-fi film that won't get old with time and I will definitely find time to watch it again in the future. (19/07/2011)

What can I say other than praise. Right from the first viewing, I encountered an extended version, and those 154 minutes are absolutely unique at first sight. I've never liked Arnold as much as here, and Cameron's explosive ego I accept without question. Exciting action, amazing tricks, one of the best villains I've ever seen, and the Terminator reloading a shotgun with one hand. (24/05/2006)

In part one, Arnie promised that he’d be back. And he kept his word like a real gentleman. But the stumbling block here is the sticky epilog which I have never come to terms with (and have no plans of doing so in the future) and this also applies to the special effects which are unusually frequent for Cameron. P.S.: This is one of the few movies that HD is detrimental to. The picture is so crystal clear that in most stunt scenes you can easily recognize Arnold’s stand-in, who really doesn’t look much like him. (08/01/2010)

The second installment of The Terminator was the pinnacle of Cameron's career at the time, mainly because he managed to completely refine the script into the perfect crowd-pleaser. In his previous three films (Piranha II doesn't count), you can feel that he had to force a lot of things and therefore they felt more auteur, idiosyncratic, and innovative. In Judgement Day he already knew exactly what to add, what to trim, what to emphasize, what to cut. It's technically competent, but what can we say, it lacks heart. Suddenly we've got comic figures, a badass villain, would-be on-the-spot musings about humanity, and an jacked-up Linda Hamilton whose character is pretty much written as a militant feminist for no other reason than Cameron had been getting big props thus far for how he'd been working with female protagonists and their abilities to make it in a man's world. After all, he himself said in the 80s that he himself doesn't understand how the film industry can ignore the 50% of moviegoers who are still 80% deciding which film to see. (28/11/2017)

An action blast with revolutionary visual effects never seen before. Five stars for the T-1000 and its metamorphosis, five stars for the vision of nuclear war, three stars for the script, as well as for some scenes that were too militant for my taste (Arnie vs. a column of police cars). But to overlook the fact that this film meant so much to the development of filmmaking technology and visual effects would be a great sin. Therefore, the only and correct rating is for five, it’s just awesome! (11/05/2003)