And every time you copied something, you lost something.” Many of the facsimiles are entertaining, but they’re still facsimiles. Most imitators, ILM’s nine-time Academy Award recipient Dennis Muren says, are like “Xeroxes of Xeroxes of Xeroxes. Precious few massively budgeted, VFX-laden, star-filled tentpole pictures, however, have been able to replicate the alchemy of T2. The top-grossing movie of 1991 escalated a big-screen arms race that’s played out in American cineplexes every summer since. Industrial Light & Magic’s cutting-edge visual effects, a Kevlar-tough woman as the lead, dozens of memorable one-liners, and terrifyingly prescient themes combined to form a blockbuster that pushed the limits of the medium. But that somehow undersells its appeal and influence. The juxtaposition of warmth and spectacle is what elevates Terminator 2 above nearly all other ’90s popcorn flicks. “Look at Titanic, it’s all about relationships,” says Arnold Schwarzenegger, who relished the chance to turn the cybernetic bad guy he played in The Terminator into a good guy. And the T-800, once a remorseless killer with a curious but hypnotic Austrian accent, somehow helps bring them together as a family-then helps them save the world. Her son, John, the future leader of the resistance in the war against the genocidally self-aware defense system Skynet, is in foster care. T2 is a departure from the far bleaker original, 1984’s The Terminator, which its creator calls a “science-fiction slasher film.” Linda Hamilton’s franchise protagonist, Sarah Connor, has transformed from a put-upon heroine to a self-trained commando whose attempts to thwart the coming apocalypse land her in a psychiatric hospital. This movie is about the Tin Man getting his heart.” “Sure, there’s going to be big, thunderous action sequences, but the heart of the movie is that relationship,” Cameron says from his home in New Zealand. The sequel wouldn’t work without a strong bond between the reprogrammed title character and the teenager he’s sent back in time to protect. To its director, T2 is the story of a boy and the father he never had. ![]() Yet the science-fiction epic, released 30 years ago this week, hinged on more than technical wizardry. ![]() And by the time he was done, he’d created one of 20th century cinema’s greatest “Holy shit!” moments. He’d landed on the idea of the T-1000, an android assassin seemingly made of flowing mercury that could shape-shift into any other organism. ![]() Something that, in the early ’90s, had never even been attempted. In the brainstorming phase for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, he knew the sequel to his first big hit had to have something no one had seen before. James Cameron wanted a villain made out of liquid metal. Ahead of the release of James Cameron’s latest boundary-pushing project, Avatar: The Way of Water, there’s no better time to revisit this oral history of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
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