Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Watch The Film Terminator 2: Judgment Day

By Naomi Gilliam

Terminator 2 - Judgment Day is one of the best action/sci-fi movies that has ever been put to screen. Though it may not seem like it has much to say about the human condition, it actually has a few things to say. Add to that a little bit of campy dialog and action and some wonderful cinematography and you are left with a very charming movie.

This movie pits the ragtag group of John Conner, Sarah Conner, and the Terminator against a much more futuristic Terminator known as the T-1000. The T-1000 is a nearly indestructible robot from further into the future than the original Terminator.

The heroes of the story are trying to stop the global Armageddon that lead to the rise in the machines. They believe that if they can change a few things in the present, then the robots will never be able to rise up against the humans. By the end of the movie they think that they have succeeded. We find out later, in the next movie, that they only moved back the date of the robots taking over.

A large part of this movie deals with aspects of fate and destiny. People can change the future, things don't have to be the way they were going to be. It can be changed. This is a message that could be applied to some things that people are talking about in our current political climate. Environmentalists could take that message and say "we don't have to destroy the planet. We can still save it. We can make a difference."

There are other issues at play here as well. Sarah Conner is in a mental institute at the beginning of the movie. This could be seen as a sort of discussion on the state of mental health care in America. Though her story does seem very crazy, and she has become quite a violent woman, she actually isn't crazy. The audience knows that.

Everyone treats her like she is nuts. The filmmakers may be trying to say that this is part of the problem with our system. If someone says something that seems outlandish, it must be mental illness. Granted what she was saying did seem very crazy, and maybe they were trying to point out how hard it was to be Sarah Conner and not really saying anything bad about our health care system, but it seems fair that it could be saying something about both.

John Conner is supposed to be the great savior of mankind when he grows up. Yet at the time of this movie he is just a kid who has had a bizarre upbringing and is starting to get into a life of crime (stealing from ATM machines). John doesn't actually know that what his mom has told him is true anymore than the mental health professionals think its true.

It is strange to think that if you take the time travel and the robots out of Terminator 2 - Judgment Day, then you are left with a story of an insane woman, a kid that is being bounced around in the system, and a complete lack of caring or understanding from anyone else in the world. Thankfully for the theater going population the robots do show up and engage in some seriously awesome showdowns for our amusement. But it would be such a sad movie about a lost kid if it weren't for those robots. - 2361

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