Terminator 2: Judgment Day  ★★★★½

SCI-FI action thriller Terminator 2: Judgment Day goes in the book along with The Godfather II, The Empire Strikes Back and Aliens as one of the greatest sequels ever.

From the opening theme music to the final moments this is a roller-coaster of a big screen experience.

The visual effects may have been bettered since its 1991 release, but the incredible second unit stunt work still harks back to an era that we rarely see these days.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was born to play the role of the Terminator, particularly in this sequel which enables him to add depth, humour and humanity to his performance.

If, for some reason, you don’t know what the film is about, here’s a quick summary.

In the first film a cyborg, The Terminator, arrives in the present day with a mission to kill Sarah Connor. Another man arrives to protect her.

It turns out they are both from the future where Sarah’s son, not yet born in the present day, is leading a human resistance movement against cyborgs that have taken over a world destroyed by nuclear warfare.

In this sequel Sarah has had her child, John, but her psychosis has caused her to be locked up in a hospital.

Two new cyborgs arrive from the future with vastly different missions.

Here’s a list of things that are great about Terminator 2:

1 The Terminator’s bar-room brawl that ends with him roaring off on a stolen motorbike to George Thorogood’s Bad To The Bone.

2 First look at the crazed, ripped person that Sarah Connor has become in incarceration.

3 The moment at the shopping centre when you suddenly realise the cyborgs’ missions…minds were blown in my theatre when I first saw it.

4 Truck vs motorbike chase on a slipway.

5 The T1000 liquid metal cyborg rises from the floor.

6 The first time you see the T1000 getting blown apart by shotgun blast and reassembling itself.

7 Arriving at Sarah Connor’s desert weapons stache.

8 John teaching the Terminator how to be human.

9 The Terminator demolishes 20 police cars.

10 Motorbike vs helicopter vs truck vs liquid nitrogen tanker on the highway

11 The T1000 shatters into a million pieces…but still isn’t finished.

12 The death of a main character.

Chill out, dick wad. No problemo.