The Barbeardian

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

May 15th, 1992. My 7th birthday.

It was on that day that I became a man. You could say it was my very own Bar Mitzvah. (Also a 'hello' to our Hebrew readers from Israel. Did you like that Bar Mitzvah line? That one was for you.) There was no ceremony. No breaking of a wine glass under a cloth. (Mazel tov!)


No folks. It was on this day that I received quite possibly the most age inappropriate age gift to date. A VHS tape of Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

I don't really think at that age I was fully aware of how amazing T2 is. I mean, sure it was cool. It had motorcycles and a liquid metal man and plenty of guns. But as I got older the nuances of the story really came out. What makes someone human? Can we change the future? What really happens if you inject drain cleaner into a guy's neck?

James Cameron really sets up the tension from the get-go. We meet John Connor as a rambunctious youth just spending the days living care-free. Riding around on his moped with his best friend, Bobby Budnick, as they play pranks on local banking establishments.

Easy money indeed, John. Easy money indeed.

But from then on, it's a constant thrill ride as John, his mother, and his new best friend, the T-800 try to flee from the Lon Chaney of futuristic genocidal robots, the T-1000. Sarah Connor thinks she can stop it all if they destroy everything related to Skynet. That way the scientists won't be able to learn anything harmful enough that would destroy everyone. This means the chip from the first T-800 sent back to kill Sarah in the first movie, the arm, and even the new T-800 himself.

That's where we run into Miles Dyson. Head of something or other in the Cyberdyne building. This is where the shit goes down. The cops have followed them there in droves, but since T-800 has promised John that he wouldn't kill anyone, he gets to use that sweet FOOMP gun and just blow up the cars. Dyson has been shot and stays behind to buy our heroes some time. This gives us the scene constantly recreated by my circle of friends, and hopefully yours too.

From here on out it just becomes a suspenseful game of cat and mouse in a steel mill. T-1000 plays all his games in order to lure them to their deaths. In the end though, anything that came to our time in a lightning ball was burned up in a vat of molten lead.


Terminator 2: Judgement Day has so many perfect elements. The action is hard topped by anything else, that's a given. But to have such a ballistic movie matched in its drama and suspense is what makes this movie more than a classic. It's a pillar - a monument for other action movies to look up to. The CGI holds up to this day. The fight scenes are all practical effects. This is the same reason I said The Thing was so intense and still holds up. Practical effects are just plain more effective. I mean, every time Arnold got his face smashed with the girder in the steel mill, more and more of his "skin" came off. And it looked fucking real. If it was CGI, it would have lost all that grounding. And don't get me started on the arm scene at Dyson's house.

Blew my mind when I was seven, and it still looks fucking amazing today.

Even as that impressionable young boy watching Terminator 2 for the first time, I took more away from it than all the explosions and death and chases. As John Connor lowered his best friend to his death, T-800 gave him a thumbs up. At seeing this, I turned to my mom and asked, "Why's he giving a thumbs up, mom?" To which she responded, "Because he knows everything's gonna be all right."