Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

"Deep penetration!"

What? It's just a line in the film. What?

I loved this film when I saw it first at the Cannon Cinema in Hinckley, Leicestetshire at the tender age of fourteen, and watched it many times during the course of the '90s. It has a real nostalgic power for me. And yet. X it's still a good film. Very good even. And yet... it's dated a little, hasn't it?

At the time the special effects were amaaaazing. They were what made the film look awesome. Looking at the T-1000 twenty-five years later, though, and it's just... early CGI. And without the wow factor of the special effects the film stands revealed. It isn't really a suspense thriller like The Terminator; it's more a straight-up action film, a film pretty much made up of a series of set-pieces bolted together. It works, don't get me wrong, but the first film was better.

It still works well as an action film, though, and the many set pieces that make up the film are extremely well made. It's even sweet to see Arnie's T-100 as a surrogate father to John. It's interesting, too, that this very testosterone heavy action film gets a fair bit of narration from Sarah Connor, both part of the narrative and it's chorus. This a female predictive gets done degree of apparent control over the narrative. I also like the visual parallels to the first film at the beginning and end. We even get a bit of social commentary on sexual abuse in mental institutions.

Not as interesting as its predecessor, then, and it's dated a bit, but it still needs to be watched every now and again because nostalgia. Always worth a revisit.