Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the rare sequel where just about everybody likes it better than the original. That’s for good reason. The 1991 sci-fi action thriller redefined the blockbuster with a relentlessly exciting story, mind-blowing special effects, and the superstar presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movie is so good it often outshines its predecessor, which also redefined the action thriller in the 1980s and is still exhilarating to watch for an entirely different reason than its sequel.
Directed and co-written by James Cameron, The Terminator, which is currently free to stream on YouTube (with ads), is the story of two opposing time travelers from the year 2029 who venture back to the year 1984 to the city of Los Angeles. The first of these time travelers is a robot (Schwarzenegger) with living tissue over its body. Called a “Terminator,” the robot is a killing machine sent back to murder a woman named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). In the future, the world is controlled by machines, but Sarah’s son John Connor will become the leader of the human resistance, which causes so much trouble for the machines that they send the Terminator back to eliminate him before he is born.
The other time traveler is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a trusted soldier in the human resistance who is sent back in time by John to protect his mother from the Terminator.
Terminator 2 is fun to watch because it’s all one big chase with crazy explosions and awesome gunfights. Schwarzenegger is a different Terminator in that movie, one that’s been reprogrammed by future humans to protect John Connor directly, so Schwarzenegger, while still being robotic, gets to be heroic and charming as a good-guy robot. But in the original 1984 film, Schwarzenegger is downright scary. While The Terminator wasn’t Schwarzenegger’s first movie, it was the one that turned him into a superstar, and he did it by being completely stoic and unfeeling. Obviously, with his bodybuilder physique and square jaw, he was convincing in the role of a robot, but his performance in The Terminator is a masterclass in doing more with less. There’s no humor or humanity in Schwarzenegger’s first Terminator. He’s a relentless thing and you feel that from the moment he comes onscreen.
The Terminator is also a slasher film
In a way, the reason why The Terminator works so well is that it has slasher movie vibes on top of what it was already doing with sci-fi and action. There are gunfights and car chases and cool stuff like that, but the Terminator has quite a bit in common with villains like Halloween’s Michael Myers, where he just keeps on coming no matter what the heroes throw at him. In interviews about the film, Cameron has even cited John Carpenter — and specifically Halloween — as an influence, explaining that he and co-writer Gale Anne Hurd saw The Terminator as “a low-budget slasher movie.”
The Terminator is also slower, quieter, and moodier than its sequel. Sometimes that means it dries up a little bit — like during the overlong flashes to the destitute future — but overall the methodical pacing helps the movie because it builds up an incredible sense of tension and fear. The sequel may be more fun, but it’s never as scary as the original.
The Terminator was also a monster success upon its release, and turned both Cameron and Schwarzenegger into immediate stars. It is still widely regarded as one of the best sci-fi films ever made and it helped to expand what people expected from the sci-fi genre, to include serious-minded, high-concept films for adults.
In a way, the first two Terminator movies mirror another franchise from the same era that Cameron also had a big hand in: Alien. Ridley Scott’s 1979 film was straight-up sci-fi horror with an alien aboard a spaceship, hunting down crew members one-by-one until all that was left was Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley. Then in the 1986 sequel Aliens, which Cameron directed after his success with The Terminator, Ripley and a bunch of soldiers face off against dozens of aliens in one of the best action movies ever made. The Terminator franchise had a similar trajectory, with the first installment leaning way more into horror tropes than its louder, more action-packed sequel. So while I encourage everyone to watch Terminator 2 and I admit that it is the superior, more entertaining film, I implore you not to forget The Terminator to go along with it.