All of the classic film franchises in cinema history have often faced a question that all of the best have before: which is better, the original or the sequel? This will be come a regular feature on my blog, as examples can be found everywhere: Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back, Superman or Superman II, Back to the Future or Back to the Future II, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark or the Temple of Doom, Die Hard or Die Hard With a Vengeance, just to name a few.
Terminator 2 was the first R-rated film that I have ever seen and it left a major impact on me as a child. With Terminator 2 considered to be one of the greatest action classics of all time, I always looked at The Terminator as the low-budget and imperfect foundation upon which an amazing film was born. But isn't it fascinating how significantly our perceptions and conclusions can change over time? Let's take an in-depth look at The Terminator vs. Terminator 2. ***Warning: Major spoilers to follow***
VS.All good stories have one thing in common: writing. Whether it be a simple romantic comedy or a high-concept action-adventure, a film lives or dies on the strength of its writing: its plot structure, its character development, its functionality, and its meaning. The essence of my review can be boiled down into how the writing for each film makes them significantly different. I will, however, also add a few comments about style, subtlety, and a comparison of the action scenes.
What is the basic story of The Terminator universe? In the near future, an AI program will become so advanced that it will gain self-awareness and target humanity for extermination. At first, the shape of our destruction came in a purely mechanical form: whether it be a metal robot, airships, tanks, or nuclear weapons, we could clearly identify that which threatened us. But two terrifying developments changed the game entirely: the enemy found a way to create a cybernetic organism that perfectly mimicked the human form, and they discovered a means of traveling back through time. The human resistance had a leader, John Connor, who was the sole hope in leading humanity to victory. So the Terminators hatched a plan: travel back in time and kill his mother, Sarah Connor, before John could even be born. The humans could only send one soldier, Kyle Reese, back in time to try and protect her. The fate of the human race depends on who gets to her first.
This simple premise infuses the entire film with the single most important feature of a good plot: stakes. The consequences of the success or failure of the characters we are watching on screen is not only immediately clear to us, but we directly feel their importance. If The Terminator prevails, the human race is finished. If Kyle Reese can protect Sarah, maybe we have a fighting chance. Every single scene that follows is directly connected to these stakes. Every moment that The Terminator gets closer to finding Sarah, every action scene where Kyle and Sarah barely get away, every near miss, they all bring us closer to salvation or destruction. In Act I, it's a race to see who can get to Sarah first. In Act II, it's Kyle trying to keep Sarah as far away from the Terminator as possible. In Act III, a final confrontation must be waged that can only yield one victor. This simple plot structure displays a brilliance not found in most current films: that every scene is of immense important to the larger whole. Every scene builds upon the last leading to the climax. The result is an incredibly tense, exciting, and enjoyable story. For a good example, note the tension at the end of Act I, where antagonist meets protagonist:
Another crucially important feature of a film's writing is the way in which its characters are developed. There are a large number of different ways that a screenwriter can show you the nature of a character and develop them throughout the course of the film. The most obvious way is through narration: where a character literally tells you what he/she or someone else is thinking and feeling. A slightly less obvious way is through exposition: one character talks about his/her thoughts and feelings directly to another character. The hardest way is to show a character's thoughts and feelings through action, silent looks and reactions, and changes in behavior throughout the course of the plot. Every good story utilizes a mix of these three methods, as it is next to impossible to not have at least some narration or exposition. At its best though, The Terminator achieves character development through this last, most difficult means. Let's look at the two most important examples: Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor.
At the start of the film, Reese is a relative unknown. We know that he is the last chance for the human race to prevail, but we know nothing about the man. In Act I the film shows us, through action, who Reese is. Somehow he has to overcome a powerful and relentless cyborg without appearing like a madman either to Sarah or the rest of the society to which he has traveled. He is a man out of his time, struggling to cope with rules like: you can't walk down the middle of the street brandishing a weapon and firing wildly at an enemy target. But despite the odds, Reese is ready and willing to fight for the cause no matter how difficult. In Act II, although he tries his best not to appear insane, inevitably both Sarah and the police conclude that he is nuts. He doesn't say to Sarah, "Hi my name is Reese and my problem is that I'm crazy." Rather, his apparent insanity is a direct function of who he is and how he must logically appear to Sarah having acted the way he has so far.
As Sarah sees more proof that the terminator and the future he comes from is a real threat, she realizes exactly how much Reese has done for her. He came from a future devoid of hope, but he had one image that filled him with something to strive for: a photo of Sarah that John gave him. He fell in love with her and the hope that she represented. He loves her so much that in Act III, he is willing to die to protect her. And so we have the evolution of a character: from a hard-nosed soldier doing whatever it takes to win a war to a man who loves a woman. All of it was achieved through the progression of the plot and through subtle developments in how he and Sarah interact with each other. That is the essence of good character development.
Sarah Connor goes through an even more impressive character arc. When we first meet her, she is a nobody living a mundane existence. She hates her job, is struggling to find a companion, and is just living the best life she can. But her biggest challenges are facing rude customers at work and finding a date for Friday night; nothing compared to being the mother to the savior of humanity. We see all of these character qualities through her actions. She doesn't say that she hates her job or that she is upset she can't find a man, we see it. When she learns of the murder of two other Sarah Connors, we see the fear in her face and her entire body. When the Terminator is moments away from shooting her in the head, she looks like an innocent puppy that does not understand why its life is about to be extinguished.
Throughout Act II we see a woman who is still terrified of what the future holds, put into concrete terms by the horrible monster from the future chasing her. She does not yet understand what it will take to defeat the Terminator, nor what is at stake should they fail. She is entirely reliant on Reese to protect her. That is, until Reese receives a gunshot wound in the police station shootout. Suddenly she is thrust into field duty, and despite never having done it before, she dresses Reese's wound. This creates a natural bond between them. Sarah develops a love for Reese as she discovers all of the things he has had to do for her. In this moment she takes her first steps of independence and joins the fight. When the final confrontation with the Terminator is waged, she has developed from a hostage, to someone being protected, to finally, a soldier in the battle. With Reese serving as an example, she becomes the hardened warrior of legend, she becomes the mother of John Connor.
(As a side comment, I would like to note that Reese uses exposition quite often to explain the Terminator's motivations. Now while that may seem like a weak method of storytelling, I found it to be perfect in this context. First of all, the Terminator is a ruthless killing machine. He kills without hesitation or pity. He would have no reason to explain or display his motivations to anyone, he just kills. But why he is there and how/why the Terminators are trying to kill us is important for us to know. Second, and more importantly, it is refreshing to see a villain not explain his entire master plan to the hero. That is one of the most annoying cliches in film.)
Now onto the plot structure of Terminator 2. Any good film has one central conflict that underlies the entire plot. The actions of every character exist on one side of that conflict, or they contribute towards it in some fashion. The main character has a dramatic need: something that they need to avoid or achieve in order to bring them the satisfaction that they lack at the beginning of the film. In The Terminator, the dramatic need of Kyle Reese is to save Sarah Connor. The dramatic need of the Terminator however is to kill Sarah Connor. Thus, this brings them into direct conflict, and the core of the plot is the evolution of that conflict towards the success or failure of their needs. (Sarah Connor's dramatic need is essentially the same as Reese's, and in fact, she takes complete ownership of that need in the third act).
At first, the plot structure of Terminator 2 would appear to be almost identical to this structure with only slight tweaks. Having failed to successfully kill Sarah Connor, the machines decided their next best option was to target John Connor as a young adult. One protagonist would seek to protect John while one antagonist would seek to kill him. Indeed, that is precisely how Act I of the film is structured. Although in a clever twist, we are unaware that the same Terminator model from the first film (who I will hereby refer as "Arnold") has been sent back to protect John. Meanwhile the creepily friendly T-1000 model is there to kill him. But it is from this point that the plot takes a significant deviation from the example of its predecessor, and it is here that Terminator 2 begins its decent into inferiority. It is not that I would expect the sequel to follow the same exact plot structure as the original, in fact I think that would be cheap. However, Terminator 2 gets rather confused as to what story its telling. The dramatic need of the main character not only changes completely, but it is taken over by a different character who suddenly becomes the main character in the middle of the story.
After being saved from the hands of the T-1000, Arnold tells John that its next move is most likely to acquire Sarah Connor, kill her, and imitate her in order to lure John. Naturally, John's response is to insist that he and Arnold must save her. While Arnold protests that his mission is to protect John and saving Sarah is far too risky, we discover that Arnold must do what John commands. Thus, John's dramatic need shifts from being protected from the T-1000 to saving Sarah from the T-1000. It is at this point that Sarah becomes the main character and John ceases to be of any central importance. Indeed, the film now focuses on her effort to escape on her own as the T-1000 breaks into the mental hospital and prepares to terminate her. In what I admit is a fantastic action sequence in its own right, John and Arnold rescue Sarah in the nick of time and they escape to Mexico.
Where can the story logically go at this point? Sarah has a dream that Judgement Day (when the machines become self-aware and attack humanity) is really going to suck, so she decides to take it upon herself to prevent it from ever happening. Now her dramatic need has taken over the story. So we have a sequence of her trying to kill the man who is primarily responsible for SkyNet but she is unable to do it. So, they decide to blow up all of his research and progress to prevent it from happening. They break into Cyberdyne (in what I also admit is a really cool action scene), blow it all up, and face a standoff with police but escape. And then oh that's right, there was that pesky T-1000 chasing John. Right. Boy that feels like ages ago. So, the story switches back to John's original dramatic need and he becomes the main character again. (Conveniently, Sarah is shot in the leg and ceases to be of much use). The chase resumes leading to a climactic confrontation.
Now, to be fair, the individual action scenes in Terminator 2 are stellar. The escape from the mental hospital, the attack on Cyberdyne, the escape from the police standoff, the T-1000 chasing our main characters in a helicopter, and the climactic confrontation in the coal mine are among some of the best action scenes ever made. But, they could have been so much more had they logically flowed from one scene to the next. What makes the action scenes in The Terminator so powerful is the simplicity of the stakes and the logical connection to the development of the characters. From one action scene to the next you feel like you barely had time to catch your breath. After each scene the Terminator gets closer and closer and the chances of being able to outrun him get slimmer and slimmer. In Terminator 2 we do not see the T-1000 for almost a 45 minute period between Sarah's escape and after they blow up Cyberdyne. This sucks all of the energy and power out of the righftul energy of the last confrontation. That it still manages what it achieves is a testament to Cameron as an action director, but it could have been so much more. The entire "stop Judgment Day" sub-plot is a massive distraction from what Act I sets up the movie to be truly be about: saving John Connor. (At the end of this review, I will discuss how I think the film should have been structured differently).
As for character development, Terminator 2 suffers from the same kind of ornamentation and lack of subtlety that makes the plot structure problematic. In The Terminator, the Terminator is established as a ruthless antagonist by ripping the heart out of a passerby that makes fun of him. Kyle Reese is shown to be a bad ass by sawing off the end of a shotgun, tying it to a rope around his arm, and tucking it under his trench coat to keep it concealed. In Terminator 2 however, we get this:
Did you get it? Arnold is a bad ass. He's bad to the bone, and he makes big motorcycle noises, and he wears sunglasses at night to look cool. This is silly and it completely undercuts the seriousness of the situation that our characters are about to be placed in. Unfortunately, the film is filled with such humor that destroys any real sense of dread or terror. Worse yet, it turns from mere ornamentation to genuine character development when John decides he needs to humanize Arnold. John teaches him the slang of his age and all sorts of funny phrases. Isn't it funny that Arnold says things like "no problemo" and "chill, dickwad"? This walking joke is supposed to be the last hope for protecting the savior of humanity? By the end of the film, Arnold has developed some sense of emotional attachment to John and learned something about what it is to be human. But he has only learned superficial qualities at best, namely, humor and emotional attachment. When he asks a serious question requiring a deeply philosophical answer, he gets a meaningless response. For example, when John tells him that he just can't go around killing everybody, he asks why. John's response? "Because you just can't." Look at their interaction when Arnold is curious why people cry:
- Terminator: [pauses] Why do you cry?
- John: You mean people?
- Terminator: Yes.
- John: I don't know. We just cry. You know. When it hurts.
- Terminator: Pain causes it?
- John: Uh-unh, no, it's different… It's when there's nothing wrong with you but you hurt anyways. You get it?
- Terminator: No.
At the end of the film, Arnold says, "I know now why you cry. But it's something I can never do." This statement hasn't been achieved either through dialogue or the course of the plot. It's stated, but not earned. In other words, the characters are talking at you, rather than showing what it is that they want you to see.
Let's jump to our supposed hero, John Connor. Without the guidance of his mother, John has become the epitome of the 90s teenager: he is ambivalent towards everything, distrustful of authority, and in his case has become a petty thief. It would be an interesting story to see how this annoying kid develops qualities throughout the course of the film that not only mature him but teach him leadership, strength, and determination. But, don't get your hopes up. He doesn't change at all. If anything, he only strives to imbue his annoying qualities to Arnold. He doesn't assert his own independence from his mother, he doesn't learn an ounce of the leadership qualities he will need in the future. John has almost no character development whatsoever.
The only interesting character development in the movie comes from Sarah. In between the first and second films, Sarah apparently attempted to blow up Cyberdyne and was locked away in a mental institution after telling her story. Now that is interesting. She has now completely supplanted Kyle Reese and faces the same exact problems. Not only has she become incredibly more hardened and single-minded, but there is a genuine question as to whether she has snapped under the pressure. Was it simply the psychological weight of knowing her future role and the seemingly insurmountable odds she knew she would face? Why couldn't we see that story?
I must readily admit that the rest of her character development throughout the film is brilliantly portrayed. Given her incarceration she adopts a false serenity in the attempt to be released or at least moved to a minimum security wing so she can see John. When her hopes are dashed by Dr. Silberman she erupts in a shocking rage which solidifies her resolve that she must escape. After escaping, her nightmare of Judgement Day pushes her to consider murdering a man for what he would do in the future. She comes right up to the brink of killing him but realizes that murder is a line that she just cannot cross. She realizes that in her rage she nearly became the thing that she was trying to stop. That is a fantastic character progression, again achieved by action and the natural flow of what is happening to her.
However, Sarah is also the harbinger of the worst offense this movie makes in its attempt at character development. Almost all of the "serious" character exposition is achieved through straight up narration from Sarah. While she says next to nothing about herself, she explains the motivations of Miles Dyson, of Arnold, and of John through extended narrations. She explains how Arnold has become more of a father figure to John than anyone who came before, how Miles Dyson must feel terrible for causing so much death in the future, I expect that this was something done in the editing process, or was a script change made as a quick-fix, because Cameron realized that his character progressions were not earned through action as they were in The Terminator. This is the essence of bad character development.
So there you have it. The winner is:
This film is far superior primarily for its plot structure and character development. Every moment is not only meaningful, but important to the larger whole. The characters are subtle in their development, what's at stake is clearly established and compelling, and it's just a tight, efficient, great film. Moreover, the existential threat that the Terminator poses is genuinely frightening. The combination of Brad Fiedel's electronic, dystopian score, Schwarzenegger's stoic, robotic movements, Cameron's direction, and excellent performances from its actors makes The Terminator one of the best films I have ever seen. Oh and let's not forget Stan Winston's absolutely terrifying Terminator practical effects. It is a great film to watch especially if you want to understand good screenwriting. Terminator 2 has elements that are good, but it falls far flat of what it could have been.
As for what I would have done differently to make Terminator 2 a better film, that can get rather complicated. It is a discussion I would be very interested in having with my readers. For now, I have a few ideas to improve the overall plot structure and character development that wouldn't seem as drastic of changes as you'd might expect from my review. The film needed to be about one story, one conflict. Either it's a chase focused on getting to John Connor, or it's about stopping Judgment Day. It can't be both.
Here's what I would have done: I would have added some chase or danger scenario in between the rescue of John at the mall in Act I and the rescue of Sarah at the mental institution. Instead of suggesting that the T-1000's next move would be to acquire Sarah, I would introduce some other scenario that put John in harm's way. The end result of this scenario would have been Arnold's terminator doing something immoral, likely killing one or several people in the process of keeping John safe. Thus John would find it necessary to teach him humanity. His reasoning would have to be stronger than "just because" and would have to delve into serious philosophical topics like the sanctity of human life. What does it mean to be human and why is that something that should be the utmost protected? As a result, part of his teaching humanity is convincing Arnold that Sarah must be saved. Then we proceed as normal: Sarah begins her escape of the mental institution, John and the terminator save her from the T-1000, and then instead of the Skynet sub-plot, the chase continues down the highway to the steel mill and we have the climax of the film. This makes the movie very precise, efficient, and meaningful. The film is about not only surviving a harrowing chase, but about the limits of what can be done to ensure survival. Stopping the Terminators can't involve a pile of human corpses along the way. It's about teaching a terminator the meaning of human life, and in that, perhaps we can win the war in the best way. While the Terminator thought it was fate that some humans must die no matter what, in truth, there is no fate but what we make.
On the basis of "no fate by what we make", that sets up the third film perfectly. It would have one central conflict centered around our characters' one dramatic need: to stop Judgment Day. In fact, a scene from Terminator 2 could be moved to the very end rather effectively for this. After Sarah was rescued from the mental hospital, Sarah and John fled to Mexico and were stockpiling weapons in preparation for a fight. Sarah is sitting at a bench, watching a family play with each other and be happy. She realizes at this moment what she has lost because of Skynet. She realizes the trauma that John has gone through and that they can never be a normal, happy family as long as Skynet continues to send terminators after them. It's in this moment, and the dream sequence of Judgment Day that follows, that she realizes that Skynet must be stopped. BUM BUM! BUM! BUM BUM!
I hope you have enjoyed my rather long review! Please feel free to comment and share with friends.
I hope you have enjoyed my rather long review! Please feel free to comment and share with friends.
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