Ayyyy we’re back! Back with Arnie that is!
Before I go ahead and review any further, I said it once and I’ll say it again: I want to be Linda Hamilton when I grow up. Even more so now, because she’s a complete and total motherf*ckin’ badass in this movie.
What I didn’t expect at all when going in to this sequel is to not enjoy it as much as the first Terminator film (click HERE for that review). But that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this one.
Most people know that Judgment Day is rated more highly than the introduction into the Terminator franchise, but for me, T1 was better. I probably hyped this one up too much in my head, which I really need to stop doing!
What I picked up on was the fact that T2’s technical prowess levels rose tenfold in comparison to T1. Unfortunately for me, that meant that some of its charm was lost. Whilst the visual effects were much improved, I felt like something was missing. It seems bizarre to criticise something that is actually kind of a positive though, so I will still give credit where its due to the effects coordinators involved!
Like T1, this is everything you could want in an action movie. There’s car (motorcycle) chases, nuclear war, guns, rocket launchers, hand-to-hand combat, napalm attacks… the list goes on. I can’t think of a single other action movie that manages to effectively squeeze every action trope into it without over-saturating it, other than this movie’s predecessor. So major kudos for that.
This may sound like a massive tangent, but if you know me in real life, you’ll know that I’m obsessed with Jonathan Nolan‘s sci-fi, artificial intelligence crime drama, Person of Interest. What appealed to me the most about Judgment Day was that I just couldn’t help but notice the parallels between it and that TV show. The most obvious comparison being that the main character in POI is named ‘John Reese’ of all things, but there are so many little nods to this movie in it that I am convinced that Nolan (and therefore his brother Christopher) is a T2 fan. This might not sound like much to someone who hasn’t heard of Person of Interest, but it’s little things like this that kept me gripped non-stop.
All in all, this is a very, very good sequel, which is so rare. The only thing is, now I want to watch all of the movies in the damn franchise… and that is so upsetting given their track record.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is available on Sky Cinema/Sky Go in the UK.
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