Round 5: Sarah Connor vs the T-1000
Part of why Terminator 2 felt SO DAMN SATISFYING is because it bookends so many pieces of the first movie.
After two movies and over a decade facing off against Skynet, Sarah Connor enters her final confrontation. Look at the mirrored elements to the finale of the prior film. Trapped in a factory, Sarah once hobbled away from the terminator.
Now she rushes to confront it in order to save her son and our future. She nearly succeeds in defeating the T-1000—one more shell would have done it—but the gun runs on empty. I half expected her to turn herself into a weapon, charge the T-1000, and drag it into the molten liquid with her.
Instead, the T-800 emerges. He’s damaged, missing limbs, his humanity stripped from him—similar to the finale in the first movie, when the cyborg pressed relentlessly forward until only Sarah was left to stop it. Only now, the two work together to stop Skynet.
I really do love the theatrical ending that leaves things kind of open—who knows if Judgment Day was truly averted? They’d better stay ready.
But after seeing how much any further sequels suck, I do sort-of wish they’d stuck with the original ending. It had Sarah at the playground—the one her nightmares previously showed her screaming at while a nuclear blast hurled toward her—and her son John, now a Senator, is seen playing with a family of his own.
There are a couple of screamer quotes in here.
First, LOL
1997 came and went. Nothing much happened. Michael Jackson turned 40.
Second, LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
John fights the war differently than it was foretold. Here on the battlefield of the Senate, his weapons are common sense and hope.