Terminator 2 Essay Research Paper The movie

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Terminator 2 Essay, Research Paper The movie The Terminator, opens with a brief glimpse of a horrific future, one in which machines have taken over the planet and driven humans almost to the point of extinction. From this future, two men have traveled back through time to 1984 – the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a cyborg sent to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), whose unborn son will lead the human resistance against the machines; and Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a soldier who has to stop the Terminator from succeeding in his mission. At first, the movie is careful not to make you too sure which of them is the real bad guy or exactly what they’re up to, and part of its success lies in the slick exposition, which keeps the film tight and exciting. Under the credits,

the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day opens with a similar scene of Los Angeles on a hot, sunny, summer day. It is soon learned that it is August 29, 1997 – pre-Holocaust. Cars are moving along on the freeway. Children are playing on swings in a sun-lit playground – a destructive, apocalyptic, unholy white light suddenly envelopes the scene and vaporizes everything – hotter than many suns combined. As a title card fades in: Los Angeles 2029 A.D., the camera pans from left to right over desolate images of future death and destruction – blackened cars, skeletal drivers, a dark sky. The intense heat has dissolved and half-melted everything, including the bars of the jungle gym where the children were playing. In the smoking ruins, skulls lie on the ground amidst the ash-drifts

– the camera lingers on the charred remains of toys, swings, and slides, and then pauses on one tiny skull, as a voice over of Sarah Connor. When the Terminator is incarnated in 1984, he is first shown kneeling nude in front of a garbage truck with ominous music in the background. He dramatically walks to look over the city, where he turns and sees three punk-like men. The Terminator repeats what the men say. He then tells them to give him their clothes. A fight ensues, in which the Terminator violently rips the heart out of one of the men who try and resist. This is in stark contrast to how the Terminator obtained his clothing in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Electrical arcs of blue-white light snap and spark behind two parked tractor-trailers in an all-night truck stop. A

global time machine delivers the figure of a naked man, the Terminator. He is a replica of the Terminator model T-800 from the original film – with a muscle-bound frame and a perfect physique. Whether he is sent to protect or kill John Connor is left open to question. He scans his surroundings without any emotion, and his computerized brain registers the results of a digitized, electronic scan of the Harley-Davidson motorcycles sitting outside a bikers’ hangout called The Corral. In an amusing scene, he calmly strolls stark naked into the country-western cafe. The Terminator s alphanumeric readouts calculate body outlines to estimate and analyze which one of the customers is deemed suitable for leather clothing and boots. One of the tough-looking, cigar-smoking bikers is a

“MATCH.” The Terminator walks up and demands his attire – and bike. Another fight breaks out, but no one dies unlike in The Terminator. In the first movie, the slowly camera pans up revealing the Terminator s newly acquired studded boots, brown pants, black t-shirt with fluorescent pattern and studded gloves. In comparison to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the song Bad To The Bone, is playing while we see Arnold dressed in biking boots, leather pants, and jacket. When another biker confronts him outside the bar, the Terminator takes out his shotgun and simply takes the man s sunglasses- something he would not have done in the first movie. This is a good moment in the film because it makes the audience chuckle at the Terminator; again this couldn t be done with the first film.