Terminator Summary

The final film in our History of Sci-Fi Films unit is going to be Terminator 2 - a sequal, obviously, to the original The Terminator. Here's the trailer:




And here's a plot summary from Wikipedia:

In a post-apocalyptic 2029, artificially intelligent machines seek to exterminate what is left of the human race. Two beings from this era are transported back in time to 1984 Los Angeles: one is a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a cyborg assassin programmed to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). The other is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a human resistance fighter sent to protect her. The Terminator stalks Sarah by killing all of the Sarah Connors listed in the telephone directory one by one.

Kyle explains that in the near future an artificial intelligence network called Skynet will become self-aware and initiate a nuclear holocaust of mankind. Sarah's son John will rally the survivors and lead a resistance movement against Skynet and its army of machines. With the Resistance on the verge of victory, Skynet has sent a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah before John can be born, as a last-ditch effort to avert the formation of the Resistance. The Terminator is an emotionless and efficient killing machine with a powerful metal endoskeleton, but with an external layer of living tissue so that it resembles a human being.

In the end, Sarah leads the terminator into a hydraulic press, which she uses to crush it, causing it to deactivate.

Some time later, a pregnant Sarah is traveling through Mexico. Along the way she records audio tapes which she intends to pass on to her unborn son John. She debates whether to tell him that Kyle is his father. A young Mexican boy takes a photograph of her which she purchases — it is the photograph that John will later give to Kyle. She drives on towards approaching storm clouds.

And here's the police station scene, where the terminator comes to kill Sarah Connor and Arnold becomes world-famous for saying, "I'll be back.":



Keep in mind this film is also where and when James Cameran of Avatar fame became a cinematic force. Some people argue (like me) that the original The Terminator - which cost something like $6 million to make - is also Cameron's best film...even better than Titanic or Avatar. But as good as it was...it was still a low-budget, midnight feature. Terminator 2, however, changed the way the world made movies. Expensive. Special effects and action driven. Total spectacle.