Sunday, October 10, 2010

A Friendly 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 of the story are trying to stop the global Armageddon that lead to the rise in the machines. They believe that if they can change a few things in the present, then the robots will never be able to rise up against the humans. By the end of the movie they think that they have succeeded. We find out later, in the next movie, that they only moved back the date of the robots taking over.

A large part of this movie deals with aspects of fate and destiny. People can change the future, things don't have to be the way they were going to be. It can be changed. This is a message that could be applied to some things that people are talking about in our current political climate. Environmentalists could take that message and say "we don't have to destroy the planet. We can still save it. We can make a difference."

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 in the movie treats her like she is insane, at least in the beginning of the movie. This might be saying something about the state of mental health care systems. Even though her story is true, everyone treats her like she has a mental illness. She knows that she is a sitting duck in that hospital, as well, so she has some violent tendencies and wants to escape to help her son. This only furthers their theory that she is simply insane and not someone who is, in reality, trying to train the savior of the human race for what is going to be coming his way when he grows up.

There are issues of fate surrounding John so much it seems to stick to him. He doesn't really believe everything that his mom has told him. A part of him does, it seems, but he doesn't really know that she isn't just crazy. It takes the arrival of the robots from the future in order for him to see that he is not actually being raised by a crazy woman.

It is strange to think that if you take the time travel and the robots out of Terminator 2 - Judgment Day, then you are left with a story of an insane woman, a kid that is being bounced around in the system, and a complete lack of caring or understanding from anyone else in the world. Thankfully for the theater going population the robots do show up and engage in some seriously awesome showdowns for our amusement. But it would be such a sad movie about a lost kid if it weren't for those robots.

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