There’s a lot in it, but what jumps into my mind every time is how Sarah Connor’s arc goes, how inextricable from the movie’s politics it is. She didn’t really have a believable character progression in the first film either, (that “ON YOUR FEET SOLDIER” is so goddamn cheesy, as is “YOU’RE TERMINATED FUCKER”) but surely T2 is the chance to show us how she became that brave, principled organiser that Michael Biehn told us she becomes, right?!? See her lead a revolution and shit?!

So when T2 opens Sarah Connor is in an asylum getting abused because she did an adventurism and tried to blow up a data center. Splendid.

But that’s not enough, really, and when John Connor and his pet terminator go spring her, the movie decides it’s time to sacrifice her entire character on the altar of a both-sides-ism. She gets armed up, but instead of training a guerilla fighting force, she just grabs the nearest Colt and goes off to shoot the Cyberdine research man who designs the “CPU” of the first terminators. John Connor and the gang do manage to stop her, because No way mom he’s just a regular guy doing work, he’s just a small bean banality of evil!!! Haven’t you read Hannah Arendt?! He’s just following orders, if you tell him it’s bad he’ll stop!!! And so she doesn’t ventilate this guy in front of his family, (imo the scenes of an aggrieved white woman holding a black man nursing a bullet wound at gunpoint in front of his family is kind of harrowing, the film goes out of its way to depict her as evil) and they all go blow up Cyberdine HQ together, because actually mom was just being silly, and saving history was as easy as “corporation bad”, and shit. It basically deflates any of the cool parts of the original film and subsumes it back into end-of-history liberalism.

Again this isn’t like I think The Terminator (literally 1984) is the goat or whatever, it’s a weirdly apolitical film for having so much great man theory and the central romance is piss-poor, but I’ve always thought Sarah Connor is one of the most done-dirty protagonists in US cinema. James Cameron is my mortal enemy.

EDIT: reflecting upon this thread and the script, I’ve realised that I think I want Sarah Connor to do literally anything much more than James Cameron wanted her to do literally anything. Her job is child rearing, ofc.

EDIT 2: I am only just now discovering that James Cameron is a fuckin’ canadian. Folks, this is a tragedy kkkanada

  • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    6·
    10 days ago

    It makes sense her impulse after the traumatic even of having that realization by watching a robotic death machine kill her messiah son’s father in front of her wasn’t to join the DSA but become an unstable doomsday prepper.

    Not untrue for her character I guess, but one wonders how she became the woman that Kyle Reese talks about from the future, and to me it doesn’t feel like we’re watching her develop about it. Also data center, computer factory, tomato tomato.

    You also leave out the part where she spent years dragging her son around the globe and dating military men and mercenary guys in exchange for training her son in guerrilla warfare.

    I completely forgot about the FUCKING EX-CIA WEAPONS DEALER IN TEXAS OR NEW MEXICO, holy shit lmao. This is not helping the idea that T2 character assassinates Sarah Connor imo.

    Also he is a guy doing his job, he wasn’t even working for an evil weapons contractor just a normal computer company,

    Sorry but there are lines in T1 about how Skynet resulted from military computers made by Cyberdine, which is kind of in keeping with how basically all of western computing is NATO capture and can trace its roots to DARPA. Even for what Miles says, there is no realistic way he wouldn’t know, imo that’s like Boeing engineers.

    But do you see what I mean? The film is a narrative in which all of the stuff I said about it is the probable and reasonable thing to happen. It’s a convenient story in which no systemic change or organising of resistance forces or anything is required. Just tell the engineer he’s doing a bad and he’ll blow up all the research at HQ. Just like in real life, right?

    the whole concept of two time traveling robots duking it out in the modern day over the life of a single kid makes for some good action.

    Something I’ve seen people miss about my lolcowing film analysis or whatever, is that I’m not coming at movies like “this is ontologically evil and impossible to enjoy”. I’m the fun police, but I still watch and enjoy Robocop despite it being sly copaganda, or The Running Man even though it’s a weird wrestling fan’s movie. I just think it’s important to look at what movies like this are saying with their stories, being products of the Hollywood military industrial complex and shit.

    • ConcreteHalloween [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      10 days ago

      I get the impression Sarah WAS trying to prep for the apocalypse by training her son to be some epic guerrilla leader, but it turns out doing that shit can result in your ass getting institutionalized. I doubt I would have handled the situation much better honestly. They probably could have done more to explain WHY she ditched the original plan of going underground to train John to be anti-Robot Che and instead try and adventurism Judgement Day into not happening, but as I speculated it may be because she was hoping to save her son from a life of nothing but blowing shit up. Idk.

      It is a good action movie if nothing else, and I’d argue the politics of it is better than a lot of other good action movies which are often just cop and soldier jerk off porn.