Terminator 2: Judgment Day

A great movie... A pop epiphany, marking that commercially creative point where the power of Hollywood meets the purity of myth. Read full review

More elaborate than the original, but just as shrewdly put together, it cleverly combines the most successful elements of its predecessor with a number of new twists (would you believe a kinder, gentler Terminator?) to produce on e hell of a wild ride, a Twilight of the Gods that takes no prisoners and leaves audiences desperate for mercy. [3 July 1991, Calendar, p.F-1]

Terminator 2 imagines things you wouldn't even be likely to dream and gets these visions onto the screen with a seamlessness that's mind-boggling. [3 July 1991, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Because it is a sequel, it's less satisfying than the more idea-driven original, but this is still top-flight kick-ass entertainment Read full review

Cameron's achievement isn't only technical. He's using all the not-so-cheap thrills of a violent genre to make a movie with an antiviolence message, and the wonder of T2 is that he pulls it off without looking silly. Read full review

The key element in any action picture, I think, is a good villain. Terminator 2 has one, along with an intriguing hero and fierce heroine, and a young boy who is played by Furlong with guts and energy. Read full review

T2 features bigger, bolder, more energetic action sequences than its predecessor. Read full review

The movie is a great big feast of wreckage. But that’s also what makes it a bit numbing. Read full review

As with "Aliens," director James Cameron has again taken a first rate science fiction film and crafted a sequel that's in some ways more impressive - expanding on the original rather than merely remaking it. Read full review

Visceral to the point of overkill (and beyond), a berserk blizzard of kinetic images, it doesn't even give you time to be scared. Read full review

The action in Terminator 2 is edited for maximum suspense, and much of it is mounted on such a grand scale that little in movie history comes close. (Scenes in last summer's Die Hard 2 did, but they lacked the finesse of the new film). Read full review

Arnie is Arnie. He has all the cute lines ("No problemo," "Hasta la vista, baby''). And he does more with a squint than anyone since Popeye. [3 July 1991, Life, p.1D]

A good summer movie, directed with great verve and imagination and filled with innovative, eye-popping effects. Cameron never relinquishes his grip on the audience, smoothly segueing from action sequence to action sequence and topping himself each time. [3 July 1991, Tempo, p.1]

The film's relentless pummeling grows wearying at 135 minutes. The first Terminator, a half-hour shorter, was leaner and meaner. Read full review

It's a joyride until you think about the film's biggest contradiction. How come this movie celebrating the superiority of human feelings over machine precision is most alive when thrilling in the mechanical perfection of the Terminator and T-1000? Inside Terminator 2 beats a human heart. But its soul is that of a killer machine. Read full review

Trend-setting visuals compensate for a plot that lacks the imagination and edge of the 1984 original. Read full review

Mr. Cameron has made a swift, exciting special-effects epic that thoroughly justifies its vast expense and greatly improves upon the first film's potent but rudimentary visual style. He has also broadened his initial idea to encompass better developed characters (after all, the first Terminator was barely verbal), a livelier wit and a more ambitious, if nuttier, message. Read full review

What is notable, though, is the amount of compassion invested in the film by Cameron and co-screenwriter William Wisher. There's a fairly well-drawn moral message in T2 that was more or less absent in the first film. Read full review

All the virtues of the original... are present here, though when Cameron tries to milk some sentiment out of the "personality" and fate of his top machine he comes up flat and empty, and the other characters are scarcely more interesting. Read full review

A humongous, visionary parable that intermittently enthralls and ultimately disappoints. [8 July 1991, p.55]

If you change the course of history, the world will experience a different kind of chaos. That's a time-honored movie cliche. Terminator 2: Judgment Day chooses to go against that philosophy, noisily and with some monotony. Read full review

The surprise is that a picture made to be exciting for 136 minutes is so unexciting most of the time. It starts with a bang and keeps banging, so there's little suspense and no crescendo. [12 Aug 1991, p.28]