DVD Movie Rating for: Terminator 2 Judgment Day

Rating 5 out of 5

Movie Plot of: Terminator 2 Judgment Day

Sequel to Terminator. Skynet, the 21st century computer waging a losing war on humans sends a second terminator back in time to destroy the leader of the human resistance while he is still a boy. His mother is the only one who knows of the existence of the Terminators, human-like robots that exist only to kill and are nearly indestructible, and Sarah, the boy's mother is currently in a state mental hospital because of her 'delusions'. A second protector is sent back to the past by the Human resistance to protect John Connor, their future leader, at all costs.

DVD Production Details of: Terminator 2 Judgment Day

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton

Director: James Cameron

Format: Color, DTS Surround Sound, Widescreen, Dolby

Studio: ARTISAN ENTERTAINMENT

DVD Release Date: January 1, 2001
DVD Features:
Commentary by 26 members of cast and crew

Commentary by director James Cameron

Commentary by Arnold Schwarzenegger

Theatrical trailer(s)

1.85 Widescreen - Theatrical Version

1.85 Widescreen - Special Edition Version

Over 6 hours of content

"The Making of T2" Featurette

"T2: More Than Meets the Eye" Featurette

"The Making of T2: 3-D: Breaking the Screen Barrier" - in depth look into the making of the MCA/ Universal theme park attraction "Terminator 2: 3D: Battle Across Time"

Supplemental Material - additional features which cover every aspect of the Terminator 2: Judgment Day film making process

Cast and crew information

Entire screenplay

Over 700 storyboards

Limited edition case

Special 32 page collector's booklet

Widescreen anamorphic format

DVD Terminator 2 Judgment Day Easter Eggs

 Upon its 2000 release, this two-disc set could have been lauded as the most extensive DVD ever produced. Not that the vast materials presented here are new; many were released previously on DVD and laserdisc. The important additions are an impressive DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack along with a remastered picture. Along with two versions of the film, the numerous special effects are broken down in the impressive Supplemental Materials section. James Cameron's complete script and over 700 storyboards are included; they can be viewed separately or together in the DVD-ROM supplement. There's even the ultimate Easter egg: a third version of the film for those who dig deep enough

Laserdisc Terminator 2 Judgment Day

Detailed information on Terminator 2 Laserdisc release: "Terminator 2 Le Jugement Dernier" French version. Language: French, PAL, 135min, released 1992, LD-12979

Cast of the movie: Terminator 2 Judgment Day

• Arnold Schwarzenegger .... The Terminator
• Linda Hamilton .... Sarah Connor
• Edward Furlong .... John Connor
• Robert Patrick .... T-1000
• Earl Boen .... Dr. Peter Silberman
• Joe Morton .... Dr. Miles Bennett Dyson
• S. Epatha Merkerson .... Tarissa Dyson
• Castulo Guerra .... Enrique Salceda
• Danny Cooksey .... Tim
• Jenette Goldstein .... Janelle Voight
• Xander Berkeley .... Todd Voight
• Leslie Hamilton Gearren .... T-1000 Sarah
• Ken Gibbel .... Douglas
• Robert Winley .... Cigar-Smoking Biker
• Peter Schrum .... Lloyd (as Pete Schrum)

Photo Gallery of the movie: Terminator 2 Judgment Day

Terminator 2

Reviews of the movie: Terminator 2 Judgment Day

After he pushed the envelope of computer-generated special effects in The Abyss, director James Cameron turned this hotly anticipated sequel to Terminator into a well-written, action-packed showcase for advanced special effects and for one of the most invincible villains ever imagined. Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a legitimate sequel: there's more story to tell about a hulking, leather-clad android (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who arrives from the future to protect a rebellious teenager and future leader (Edward Furlong) from being killed by the tenacious T-1000 robot (Robert Patrick), whose liquid-metal construction makes him seemingly unstoppable. The fate of the future lies in the balance, with Linda Hamilton (who would later marry her director) reprising her role as the rugged woman whose son will change the course of history.

Twice the fun
Arnold Schwarzenegger is back as the Terminator from the future, but this time he has come back to protect it from the T1-1000. This film provided a better look into that grim future the previous movie provided a look at. This movie had better action sequences and effects (that's to be expected when the budget is like $100 million and last film's was like $6.4 million). This movie came out long after Arnold became a big star, which was because of Conan the Barbarian and not because of the first Terminator or Predator, and he still gives great performances. James Cammeron once again delivers an amazing story that makes you sit in suspense and wonder what will happen next. Two thumbs way up!

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) is the well-executed, action-packed sequel to the earlier film of the same name. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator (cyborg) character of the first film, The Terminator (1984) told everyone: "I'll be back" - and proved it with this film. The sequel reunited director James Cameron and the two major stars, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton. The screenplay was written by Cameron and William Wisher, and Cameron was responsible for both production and direction. The science-fiction blockbuster is known for its computer-generated special effects (created by George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic) and dazzling, non-stop action sequences. The film won four Academy Awards for its Sound, Visual Effects, Makeup, and Sound Effects Editing.

Under the credits, the film opens with a 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] speaks:

Three billion human lives ended on August 29, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare, a war against the machines...

A metal foot from a high-tech figure crushes the skull from above with a bone-shattering sound. The camera pans up to reveal a silvery, skeletal, humanoid machine holding a massive battle rifle. It scans the black horizon of the war-torn terrain, revealing its red, glowing eyes. War is raging behind the chrome skeleton in the post-nuclear inferno - there are flashes of light from searchlights. Bombs explode and laser-like beam-weapons shoot across the sky. A battle is in progress between human guerrilla troops fighting against stalking robots (terminators), tanks, flying HK's and death-hungry machines. The voice-over continues, describing the supercomputer of the future - Skynet:

The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent two terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human Resistance...John Connor - my son.

The first terminator was programmed to strike at me, in the year 1984...before John was born. It failed.

The second was sent to strike at John himself, when he was still a child. As before, the Resistance was able to send a lone warrior. A protector for John. It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first.

Terminators have been dispatched to the past from the future:

The first Terminator was sent to the year 1984 [the setting of the first film]. The relentless, unstoppable Terminator character was on a mission to kill Sarah Connor, the waitress whose unborn son John would lead the rebel war against Skynet. That mission failed and the young son was born.
Around the year 1995, two Terminators are then sent to the world of young John Connor, the boy who is destined to grow up to become the leader of the Resistance against the cyborgs. One Terminator (sent by the humans) will be programmed to protect the ten-year-old boy, the other (a new prototype sent by Skynet and the artificially-intelligent robotic cyborgs) will try to destroy him.

As the above voice-over introduces the main context for the film and the major characters, the camera pans in on the figure of John Connor, the rebel, freedom-forces leader, who scans the combat with night-vision binoculars. He leads the remaining human Resistance forces after the nuclear disaster left the world under the domination of evil, killer cyborgs in a life-and-death struggle. His face is rugged with heavy scars.

The remainder of the credits play above reddish-yellow, billowing flames and the burning furnace of the war - the playground horses, swings, seesaw, and other apparatus are on fire. A Terminator endo-skeleton emerges from the fire - the camera ominously closes in on the eyes of the evil, shiny figure.

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, a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger). 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. As waitresses and patrons turn their wide-open eyes toward him, his 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:

I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle.

The biker laughs with his pool-playing buddies and responds: "You forgot to say please." Then, he takes a long, red-hot draw on his cigar and stubs it out on the Terminator's chest. The Terminator, naturally, feels no pain. In the ensuing action sequence, the Terminator breaks the man's upper arm, throws the man's pool partner out the nearest window, and then heaves the cigar-smoking biker into the kitchen. He lands on the hamburger grill - his hands sizzle like bacon. That's enough to be convincing - the Terminator takes the man's .45 automatic gun and bike keys - and his clothes (off-screen).

In the next scene, a direct cut, the Terminator is already outside - from a boots-eye view. To the tune of "Bad to the Bone," the camera pans up showing him fully dressed in the bruised biker's leather clothes. As he swings his leg over the biker's wheels, another biker appears at the diner's door with a shotgun, threatening that he can't take the man's bike. The cyborg turns and coldly stops, sets the bike's kickstand, and walks over to the guy. He quickly yanks the 10-gauge shotgun from the man, closes in, and then snatches the man's sunglasses from his shirt pocket. He puts them on and then takes off on the Harley.

In another area of run-down Los Angeles where papers swirl in the night air, a Los Angeles policeman investigates a blue-white glare and more crackling electrical arcs in the air. While surveying a vaporized, circular section of chain-link fence, he is attacked from behind by another menacing, naked man - the second Terminator time traveler sent from the future. The lean cyborg changes into the man's uniform and sits in the squad car.

With access to the onboard computer terminal in the car, the Terminator (Robert Patrick) types in an on-screen inquiry for: "Connor, John" - the dramatic reason for his mission. Although John is only ten years old [it is 1995], his police record is extensive:

Trespassing
Shoplifting
Disturbing the Peace
Vandalism
Information concerning his natural mother and father is unknown. His legal guardians (foster parents) are Todd and Janelle Voight - the cyborg memorizes their address in Reseda, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.

[Those who saw the earlier 1984 film assume that the first Terminator is there to complete the job that his predecessor failed to finish - to kill the boy. For a while, that appears to be the case - their clothes seem to reflect their personalities: the 'Arnold' Terminator wears bad-ass biker clothes, and the other Terminator wears a policeman's outfit. To turn the tables - in a neat role reversal - the former cyborg assassin from the first film is really a good-guy Terminator, programmed to protect the young boy.]

In a smooth transitional cut to the next scene, it is the next day. John Connor (Edward Furlong) is working on reassembling the carburetor of his Honda 125 dirtbike - amidst the noise of his boombox music and bike, he ignores his foster mother Janelle (Jenette Goldstein) yelling at him to clean up his room. When Todd (Xander Berkeley) orders his foster-son to get inside and obey his mother, John responds defiantly toward his parental authority figures: "She's not my mother, Todd!" - and zooms off on his bike. John is being raised in a foster home because his mother has been institutionalized in an asylum.

In another transitional scene to the next character - John's mother - a sign on a fence reads:

PESCADERO STATE HOSPITAL - State of California - A Criminally Disordered Retention Facility

In one of the institutional, bare brick cubicles of the high-security wing, one of the female inmates is grunting and sweating while doing pull-ups on the upturned frame of her bed - the tendons and muscles of her arms bulge as she dips and pulls up rhythmically, like a machine.

In the corridor outside, a group of young hospital interns are led by Dr. Peter Silberman (Earl Boen), who introduces the next patient. Because of her mad ravings about terminator robots and her delusional fantasies and recurring dreams about Judgment Day, she has been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic:

This next patient is interesting. I've been following the case for years. A 29-year old female, diagnosed as acute schizo-affective disorder. The usual indicators - depression, anxiety, violent acting-out, delusions of persecution....The delusional architecture is fairly unique. She believes that a machine called a 'terminator,' which looks human of course, was sent back through time to kill her. And also that the father of her child was a soldier, sent back to protect her - he was from the future too (he chuckles) - the year, uh, 2029, if I remember correctly.

At the door to the patient's room, Silberman greets her through the intercom: "Morning Sarah." She (Linda Hamilton) turns and her wild, angry eyes peer out through a tangle of hair, as she responds: "Good morning, Dr. Silberman. How's the knee?" He turns to the interns and is forced to confess that she has made repeated attempts to escape: "She stabbed me in the kneecap with my pen a few weeks ago. Repeated escape attempts."

The police squad car (with its emblem "to protect and to serve" emblazoned on the car door) pulls up in front of the Voight home. At the door, the Terminator questions John's foster parents and finds that John is away. He borrows a snapshot of John, and then registers what they tell him: "There was a guy here this morning looking for him, too...Yeah, a big guy on a bike." [Both Terminators are hunting for John - up until this point, it is unclear which one is the bad-guy killer cyborg from the future.]

John's character is demonstrated in the next scene at a bank's ATM machine. In a voice-over, he flippantly reveals that he is robbing the automatic teller machine: "Please insert your stolen card now." The stolen ATM card is rigged with a ribbon wire-band that is attached to the back of his lap-top computer, where he can crack the PIN number. He tells his friend Tim (Danny Cooksey) how he learned to defraud the bank: "From my mom. My real mom, I mean." After withdrawing three hundred dollars, his friend notices a picture in a plastic sleeve in his knapsack - it is a Polaroid of John's mother. Sounding macho, John tells Tim about his screwed-up mother, but reveals hurt in his eyes:

She's a complete psycho. That's why she's up at Pescadero. It's a mental institute, OK? She tried to blow up a computer factory, but she got shot and arrested...She's a total loser.

In the Pescadero Hospital, in one of the brightly-lit interview rooms, a video screen plays a tape of a previous session with her at least six months earlier - Sarah and the doctor watch dispassionately as she hysterically describes her recurring nightmare about the cataclysmic end of the world on Judgment Day, August 29, 1997:

It's like a giant strobe light, burning right through my eyes, but somehow I can still see. Look, you know the dream's the same every night, why do I have to...The children look like burnt paper, black, not moving. And then, the blast wave hits them and they fly apart like leaves...It's not a dream, you moron, it's real. I know the date it happens...on August 29th, 1997, it's gonna feel pretty f--kin' real to you, too! Anybody not wearing two million sunblock is gonna have a real bad day, get it?!...You think you're safe and alive. You're already dead. Everybody, him, you, you're dead already. This whole place. Everything you see is gone. You're the one livin' in a f--kin' training cell with me. Because I know it happens. IT HAPPENS!

After the tape is freeze-framed on her angry hysterics, Sarah stonily comments to the doctor: "I feel much better now. Clearer." As she is questioned further, the camera withdraws back behind a one-way mirror in an adjacent room. From there, Sarah is being videotaped and notes are being taken as she explains her improvement over six months and her desire to see her son John:

Silberman: Let's go back to what you were saying about those terminator machines. Now you think they don't exist?
Sarah: (in a hollow voice) They don't exist. I know that now.
Silberman: But you've told me on many occasions about how you crushed one in a hydraulic press.
Sarah: If I had, there would have been some evidence. They would have found something at the factory.
Silberman: I see. So you don't believe anymore that the company covered it up?
Sarah: No. Why would they?

The scene transitions to the "company," Cyberdyne Systems, the corporate headquarters of a mega-electronics corporation - Sarah was taped saying that the company covered up remaining artifacts left from the Terminator that was crushed in a hydraulic press. One long tracking shot follows Mr. Miles Dyson (Joe Morton), a black computer scientist, into a bluish-lighted, high-security area. He then enters a high-tech, stainless-steel vault to check out the artifacts from the first Terminator. In front of the cabinet, he expresses blind fascination at the first artifact, computer chips from the Terminator which are sealed in a glass-container. Then he moves over to the second artifact - it is an entirely intact metallic fist and forearm - a mechanical arm which stands upright in the vacuum-sealed cabinet. [Obviously, Sarah has been telling the truth about the wreckage of the Terminator, but no one believes her.]

Back in the interview room at the hospital, Sarah is denied her request to see John by her doctor: "I know how smart you are, and I think you're just telling me what I want to hear. I don't think you really believe what you're telling me today. I think if I put you in minimum security, you'd just try to escape again....I don't see any choice but to recommend to the review board that you stay here for another six months." Not taking the news well that she can't see her son and is ordered into isolation for another six months, Sarah leaps across the table and grabs Silberman's throat, viciously attacking him. She is quickly restrained by attendants and sedated. To the camera on the other side of the one-way mirror, Silberman quips: "Model citizen."

The Terminator has been riding around Los Angeles on his motorcycle trying to positively ID John. In contrast, the second, more advanced Terminator has been using sophisticated methods to track John: the use of the police computer system, questioning of the foster parents and two girls on the sidewalk, etc. From an overpass, the Terminator spots John coming up from a drainage canal, and pursues him to a large shopping mall called The Galleria (in Sherman Oaks, CA) where he parks his larger bike next to John's smaller Honda.