"The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too." This is how "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", ended in 1991, 33 years ago. Now, after these 33 it looks to me that the world is more worried about hypothetical scenarios, either like being wiped out by the AI like in the movie, or getting back to the dark ages when the demographics of a place didn't matter in face of any invaders, or other apocalyptic outcomes. The essence of the last phrase above is sort of lost, given that in the objective reality some die stupidly in overfinanced armed conflicts while others die stupidly in underfinanced hospitals. But when I started this blog, 17 years ago, I didn't do it for politics...
When I started this blog 17 years ago I did it with a personal top 5, and "T2" was just out of it at that time, after watching "The Jacket". I don't have a top 5 anymore, and I'd like to rewatch "The Jacket" because I don't remember it very well. But, by chance, I recently got to see a TV screening of "T2" that somehow came at a moment when I needed it. So, I thought it's the proper time to fix the issue of including this on my blog. I doubt, however, that it does make much sense to discuss the subject of very well known movie, so I'll just stick to a couple of ideas.
I had the privilege to watch "Terminator 2" for the first time in a movie theater, I think in 1992, when in Romania the distribution of made in Hollywood movies just started expanding, with some delay after the official release dates. I was either 9 or 10 years old, and my father decided to take the family out to see a movie, despite the fact that he never was too much into SciFi. The motivation were the visuals, which it was said they're over anything that was released to cinema until then. Re-watching the movie many times, and many years after, I can only say that from this perspective, it sticks to a very select category, maybe together with the first two in the "Alien" series and a few others, where the effects don't show much of their age. The visuals are complemented by one of the two scores (the other being "The Serpent and the Rainbow") that impress through their expressivity considering the specific minimalism of Brad Fiedel, a synth oriented composer, who wasn't used much in the Hollywood mainstream, given that the specific sound lost its trend afer the '80s.
I was saying above that my father was never much into SciFi, but "T2" somehow got to him. And probably it did because the script of "T2" is not one of a deep SciFi, like the "Matrix", which builds up on the same ground idea, but a script that's anchored in a real life context, and besides the credibility factor this creates as well an empathic factor. It's also using the concept of time travel in probably the most direct way, by making an effective journey to the past in order to change the future. But "T2" is not out of nuances, some of which I only see now. For instance, for somebody who watched the first movie in the series in chronological order before "T2" (not my case), at a first watch of this one, excluding spoilers, for a good part of the movie, you couldn't know that Arnold isn't still the evil character and not the positive hero. And there are others too.
Probably what makes "T2" detach from other movies directed by James Cameron, generally lacking depth, is the the contrast it brings at the end on this. A terminator cannot self-terminate, but it can pragmatically decide when it would be the proper time to end its existence, even though it understands the tears of the child who attached to it. In some sense... you could interpret this as not being our right to decide when it's the time to leave, but we could though pragmatically evaluate when it would be most "appropriate" to have an exit from this world, and if that's really the the case, we might get it from -somewhere- ... The problem is that I don't really know who has the right to evalueate this, and maybe sometime it must be considered that a sequel is needed ( "T3" wasn't that bad :) ). Well... it's a way too look at it, a movie is a movie, life is life, and I'm not very objective these days...
It's the first time in the history of this blog when I'm going to close the entries for this year at a number of one digit only, so I'm going to make a wish of "Happy Hollidays!" in advance. I've had blog breaks before, but now I think it's the moment to say stop for longer time. Still, as pragmatic I could see an exit at an anniversary moment, a sequel might be needed someday. So, depending on how -somewhere- it will be decided or on how I will decide, "I'll be back"
Rating: 5 out of 5 ( I said I must fix leaving this out in 2007 ;) )
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