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