Ep. 26 - Terminated! Part 1

This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] J.J.: So I don't know if you can tell, but I got a new chair.

[0:05] Olaf: Oh, look at you swivel!

[0:06] J.J.: I'm swiveling and I feel like elevated and now I can do more with the microphone.

[0:11] Olaf: I also like the lighting that you've added where there's just this streak of light coming down over your face.

[0:16] J.J.: I know. I'm like an angel that's come down to inspire and amaze.

[0:21] Olaf: It's one of these lights that's super harsh.

[0:23] J.J.: But that's because I've got this new chair.

[0:26] Olaf: Yeah, the chair has increased the lighting in your space.

[0:30] J.J.: See, I love mine. It's like a very nice soft leather.

[0:34] Olaf: You've got leather.

[0:35] J.J.: Yeah, Corinthian leather.

[0:36] Olaf: Oh my goodness, stop.

[0:39] J.J.: JJ, what's going on with your life?

[0:43] Olaf: You know, not a whole lot going on. My wife and I are finally taking our honeymoon in a couple of months.

[0:48] J.J.: How long have you been married now?

[0:50] Olaf: It'll be four and a half years when we finally get to our honeymoon.

[0:54] J.J.: Well, you know what they say. Nothing like striking while the iron's hot.

[0:58] Olaf: Thanks, COVID.

[1:01] J.J.: Yeah, that's what's happening here. But what's happening today, and I know we seem to do this, which is talk about franchises as a whole and we end up bulldozing through however many movies are in a particular franchise that we want to hit.

[1:14] Olaf: We very much are good at generalizing.

[1:16] J.J.: Right, and so what's interesting about the franchise we've decided to talk about today is we're only going to focus on the first two movies of this particular franchise.

[1:23] Olaf: So before we jump into that, it is time to go back to the movie theater.

[1:29] J.J.: Back to the movie theater.

[1:31] Olaf: I've got my popcorn.

[1:32] J.J.: I got my snacks. What are we talking about today, JJ?

[1:36] Olaf: Well, Olaf, we are going to be talking about the first two movies in the Terminator franchise slash series.

[1:43] J.J.: Da da da da da.

[1:44] Olaf: Yes. So we're going to be talking about the Terminator franchise.

[1:48] J.J.: We're going to be talking about the Terminator franchise.

[1:50] Olaf: The Terminator franchise slash series.

[1:54] J.J.: Da da da da da.

[1:55] Olaf: Yes. And like you mentioned with Aliens, you could couple Alien and Aliens as two movies that tell a whole story from beginning to end.

[2:02] J.J.: Yeah.

[2:02] Olaf: And there really doesn't need to be anything beyond the second movie. You could walk away from Aliens feeling very satisfied with the story that you've been told if you started with Alien and ended with Aliens.

[2:12] J.J.: And so what I think is a really cool parallel here is that James Cameron, who is the common denominator here when it comes to Aliens and then the first two Terminator movies, is you could say the same thing about Terminator and Terminator 2.

[2:23] Olaf: And he even says it too. James Cameron will say, I told the story that I wanted to tell with the first two Terminator movies. I'm good. I don't need to say anything else beyond what I told in the first two movies.

[2:34] J.J.: Yeah, it really was a complete story. And what's great about Terminator and Terminator 2 is they were both written by James Cameron.

[2:40] Olaf: It wasn't James Cameron adapting a sequel to something someone else made, like Ridley Scott in Alien, but being able to have complete total control over the entire arc of all the characters, everything.

[2:52] J.J.: And Terminator 2 is arguably one of the greatest movie sequels of all time, of all time.

[2:58] Olaf: I would completely agree. I would argue that James Cameron is one of the best sequel makers of films because look at Aliens. It's incredible. Look at Terminator 2. And despite the fact that hot take here, I hate Avatar.

[3:10] J.J.: That is a hot take.

[3:11] Olaf: I cannot stand it. I did watch Avatar 2, and I will say that despite not liking the first one, either of them, I did think the second one was better than the first.

[3:19] J.J.: Well, the first one, a lot of people would say is the same type of Last of the Mohicans, Dances with Wolves type of story where the guy comes in and saves the tribe or the colony of whatever that's being taken out.

[3:30] Olaf: And this is off the topic we're talking about today, but I've always loved James Cameron. And one thing that I love about him is his originality and the freshness that he brings to his films.

[3:41] J.J.: And there was nothing fresh or original about Avatar. It really felt like he took ideas from other movies like Dances with Wolves and Last of the Mohicans, but also took the scripts from all of his past films and just put them all in a blender and just pieced it all together into this.

[3:55] Olaf: What's selling is the visual. He's selling you on the visual effects of going into that world.

[4:00] J.J.: Sure. And that's great because he's an innovator with technology as well, but he's never been lazy. And that is lazy.

[4:06] Olaf: Sure.

[4:06] J.J.: If he's like, I'll just put out some generic plot because I'm just focused on this visual and I didn't buy it and I was really disappointed in it.

[4:12] Olaf: Sure. And again, I think I saw the second Avatar once. I'd have to rewatch the second Avatar, but going back to Terminator, which is, yeah, we really went off.

[4:20] J.J.: We went somewhere that may not even make the final here, but who knows? And it's interesting when you start to really think about Aliens and Terminator and the similarities because he did Terminator before he got Aliens. Terminator was his first sort of, but the movie came out two years before Aliens.

[4:35] Olaf: So he, this was his first feature film direct. You know, I mean, if you discount Piranha 2.

[4:40] J.J.: Well, he was fired from Piranha 2.

[4:42] Olaf: So that's not his movie.

[4:43] J.J.: He would argue that it wasn't his movie, but just to clarify, he started Terminator, but had to pause production because of a contract issue with Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Conan films. They were like, no, you have to make this sequel to Conan before you do anything else.

[4:58] Olaf: So while James Cameron was still working on Terminator stuff and he drew a lot of things and storyboarded a lot of stuff, he took on writing jobs and he wrote a lot of the script for Aliens while they were basically shut down on Terminator, waiting to get their star so they could actually start filming.

[5:15] J.J.: And it all works out too because Terminator, and I just did a rewatch and just from the simplicity of the film, there are some minor issues with the movie itself. But if you take it in as just this action science fiction movie, it's amazing.

[5:29] Olaf: Even now, it's still, I'm curious to hear what your issues are with Terminator.

[5:34] J.J.: Well, the issues that I have are more about the technology being where it was at the time. Sometimes when you see Arnold after he takes the eye out, those things is what I'm talking about.

[5:43] Olaf: Sure.

[5:43] J.J.: The visual elements of it don't age well.

[5:46] Olaf: I would argue that that still holds up because a lot of that, even though some of it might be a little janky because clearly that's a dummy. It's all practical.

[5:54] J.J.: It's all practical. It all exists in the space. It's tactile. Everything's lived in. Even though it doesn't feel dated, it's still a film of its time, the 80s. It has that look. It has that feel. The clothing styles, the cars, all that stuff, there's not that timelessness of it, but it works because the enemy's coming from the future and you have to remember that they had no money to make this movie.

[6:16] Olaf: Yeah, no, none at all. And considering what they did with the little money they had, it is incredible. This is when he meets Stan Winston and they team up and create some of the most iconic things from not just this franchise, but also from film. It's just amazing.

[6:31] J.J.: And the stop motion stuff, I don't mind it. I don't mind, oh, that's a dummy head moving around.

[6:36] Olaf: It somewhat took me out of the movie.

[6:38] J.J.: And again, I've seen this movie a ton of times. I've seen it a ton of times because I grew up watching it.

[6:43] Olaf: But see, I'll watch one of the newer Terminator films and I get taken out by the same effect, just done with CGI as opposed to practical.

[6:50] J.J.: Yeah. Well, and I think because you don't have to do it practically anymore. And so is it too clean if it's a CGI? And obviously, Cameron, there are moments in the futuristic when the ships are landing that you can tell, okay, but it's not anything that takes me out of the movie.

[7:05] Olaf: And again, when you're like, you're curious about objections that I might have, these are very nitpicky objections.

[7:11] J.J.: Sure.

[7:11] Olaf: I was just curious. One of the other ones is when in the middle of the movie or in the back half of the movie, they really take you into the future where Kyle has the picture of Sarah in the hidden bunker and then they get attacked by a Terminator. Actually, I think it was two Terminators.

[7:27] J.J.: But they're in the actual skin and the whole thing.

[7:30] Olaf: Yeah, yeah. Which led me to think, like, why is this the only time we see a Terminator in the human flesh in the future moving forward? This is the only time, like, we never see.

[7:41] J.J.: Well, you see, you see.

[7:42] Olaf: Every other robot you see is a machine.

[7:44] J.J.: You do see an older model in Salvation where Kyle had talked about in the first Terminator film that the older models wore rubber skin.

[7:51] Olaf: The 600s, right.

[7:52] J.J.: Which were easier to detect. I didn't have too much of a problem with it anytime we saw future stuff because for the most part, they were just out in the open fighting and I don't think Skynet felt that it needed to waste resources for something that, I mean, they were making these with the flesh and everything to infiltrate.

[8:07] Olaf: Right.

[8:08] J.J.: Not to battle in the open, wide open. And a lot of times when you saw the future, it was just big open battles.

[8:13] Olaf: Right. Okay. And I'll buy that and I'm okay with that. It just, it struck me as, wait a minute, one of the other issues, and I have this issue when it comes to a lot of movies, it always seems to stick out for me. And that is the age that they decide to make these characters in these films.

[8:31] J.J.: So you're looking at Sarah Connor, Linda Hamilton in the first movie. She's supposed to be insanely young.

[8:36] Olaf: It even becomes a bigger issue with me in the second movie. We're going to get to that in a second.

[8:40] J.J.: I think she's not supposed to be any older than 25, but I think she's supposed to be like 21 or 22.

[8:46] Olaf: She's clearly living on her own with the roommate, but I feel like she's playing a lot younger than she actually is. And it didn't, because I'm going with that knowledge, it sort of, there are times when that bothered me.

[8:58] J.J.: That's interesting because I don't recall them ever really referencing her age.

[9:02] Olaf: I think they referenced it in the second movie on a computer screen. And that's when I did the math.

[9:07] J.J.: Oh, wow.

[9:08] Olaf: If they did, I did not pay attention.

[9:10] J.J.: I pay attention to that because to me, if you're writing and you're creating this world and these characters, then that's important because somebody's going to be out there.

[9:18] Olaf: I've just, I've never watched either film and gone, I wonder how old they are.

[9:22] J.J.: I don't do that either until they tell me how old they are. And then I'm like, wait a minute, they're this old?

[9:27] Olaf: I don't think so.

[9:29] J.J.: Apparently a quick scene on a screen in the second film has ruined the first film for you.

[9:35] Olaf: Man, I don't think I ever said ruined the movie.

[9:39] J.J.: Okay, I was just checking.

[9:40] Olaf: I was just telling you that there are certain things.

[9:43] J.J.: It seems like it really is affecting you.

[9:45] Olaf: Certain things like this, I clock. I clock timelines because if you're going to make the effort to create these things, and this franchise has done an amazing job golf clap at annihilating their own timeline just to keep this franchise going. They're going to just keep backing up Judgment Day and they're going to keep, they're going to give you an alternate just so we can make this thing relevant.

[10:06] J.J.: And I say that with all sarcasm because come on, y'all. This is why we're just going to focus on the first two movies right now because Cameron was very deliberate with this is the storyline. So much so that he shot a different ending to the second movie, which we can get to that later.

[12:26] J.J.: I don't want to bulldoze through the first movie. So we're going to talk about what happened to this franchise, but this episode specifically, we're going to focus on what went right. And that's us talking about the first two films. I mean, there's not a lot wrong with either of them. And we can talk about issues because as much as I love Terminator 2, there's a thing that bothers me in that movie. And we'll have another episode where we focus on the other ones. Let me ask you this. The second one hit the theater and then you went and saw the first one so you could see the second one. How was it introduced to you?

[13:04] Olaf: Okay. So a lot of films like Aliens and Terminator and Predator, I saw all that stuff in the 80s and the 90s, but I was very exposed to edited for TV movies. That was a big deal back when we were kids where all these big films would get edited down and put on TV. So I, as a small impressionable child, got to see Terminator and Aliens and Predator edited to death. And I just loved it. As a kid, I was just like, this is amazing. And Terminator was such a huge thing for me as a kid. I just thought it was incredible. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I'd ever seen Michael Biehn. It was probably the first time I'd seen Linda Hamilton. I don't know if I had seen the Beauty and the Beast TV series before I saw Terminator. I can't remember. But all these actors were new to me except for Arnold. I knew Arnold from Predator and all those other early films of his. But Predator came out after Terminator.

[14:19] J.J.: Yeah, but you have to remember, I was watching these on edited for TV.

[14:22] Olaf: And that's what I'm saying. I can only imagine our parents going, where were we? We let you guys just watch these movies that you loved.

[14:30] J.J.: Oh, absolutely.

[14:31] Olaf: I was watching them with them.

[14:32] J.J.: Yeah. Well, because they were edited.

[14:34] Olaf: Edited for TV. Right.

[14:35] J.J.: So my parents were like, they're fine.

[14:37] Olaf: Yeah. And we might do an eye cover here and there, but for the most part, language was never an issue because it was edited out. The violence was tamed down and it never took away from the actual story of the film. And so all I know is that I was in line in 1991 when Terminator 2 came out, excited to see it, even though I had no business being in line in 1991 to see Terminator 2. But I was with my parents.

[15:03] J.J.: Well, I believe it was PG-13.

[15:05] Olaf: No, no.

[15:07] J.J.: Terminator 2?

[15:07] Olaf: Terminator 2 is a hard R, my friend. It is a hard R.

[15:11] J.J.: I don't know why I thought that was.

[15:13] Olaf: No, the third one was PG-13. They didn't go to PG-13. No, the third one is R also. They didn't go to PG-13 to Salvation. However, I had already seen Terminator enough to get excited for a sequel. And I'd seen it on TV as well. So it wasn't like I saw the first movie in the theater, but I had seen it enough on television to get excited about the second one.

[15:38] J.J.: Oh, absolutely. Like I said, thank God for edited for TV movies, because that's how I got to see all these amazing films. My huge imagination as a kid, I was always out playing, pretending to be Indiana Jones or the Terminator or all these other characters from these movies and reenacting stuff and building Legos to try to build the dropship from Aliens and stuff like that and then getting all the action figures for the films and stuff. I ate that stuff up. It's a great time. I absorbed it like a sponge, and I was always such a huge fan of Terminator and Terminator 2.

[16:16] J.J.: So what about the first one then?

[16:18] Olaf: I mean, I think the idea of this robot under the skin just like blew my mind, and I just took to it. I was like, that is so cool. And then the performance that Arnold put in was so good, and to me, especially as a kid, was so believable. And Michael Biehn was just the best kind of everyman, soldier. Yeah, it's hard to really nail down. The effects really spoke to me, like seeing an actual full body endoskeleton T-800 made by Stan Winston. It existed. It was there. It moved, and the puppetry that they did to have it work in camera, then splicing in some stop motion and stuff like that, it was incredible. It blew my mind, and I was so impressed, and I just fell in love with it.

[17:13] J.J.: Yeah, no, I'll agree. Like you said, they didn't have a huge budget. They were really working off of what Jim Cameron had in his mind and his imagination as to how to execute this thing, and they didn't need to do a lot. They didn't have to force anything. We always talk about wasted moments, wasted characters, pacing of films. This movie, he knew exactly what he was wanting to do. He knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish by telling the story about sending a machine back to take out the mother of the guy who's going to end up taking out. I mean, it was just very, this is what the objective is, and this is how we're going to do it. But even the pacing of the first movie is done really well.

[17:54] Olaf: Oh, it's fantastic.

[17:55] J.J.: Because there's only like maybe three or four set pieces. There's the club, there's the police station.

[18:01] Olaf: Which the club, which they built.

[18:03] J.J.: I always thought that that was such an interesting location. It's in the middle of the streets in LA, but it's very unassuming.

[18:10] Olaf: Yeah, and they made it so convincing that people tried to pay to get in to go to the club, and they were so hard up on cash that Galen heard the producer said they'd actually considered taking the money.

[18:24] J.J.: Right, but there's only, there's that piece, there's the police station set piece, and then there's the end. I mean, everything else is just kind of them trying to get to that next place.

[18:33] Olaf: Yeah, they did a lot of guerrilla film in the making of this. The scene where Arnold breaks the window of the car that he's stealing, they did not have a permit for that. They just showed up on a street, he got out in costume, broke that window, and got out of there.

[18:52] J.J.: The final scene of the movie where she's driving off down the road, they drove out there, they were getting set up, haven't seen a single car for hours, and they're just about to start filming, and they see a dot on the horizon. And I believe it was James Cameron said, I bet you it's a cop. And it was! And the cop shows up, and he's like, what's going on here? And the DP had his son there, and he tells the cop, oh, my son's doing a school project, and we're just helping him film it for his project, because we don't have a permit. And the cop was just like, okay, well, you just can't be in the middle of the road for traffic. And they're thinking, there hasn't been a car out here for hours, you're the only car we've seen. And then the cop left, they got their shot, and ran off.

[19:53] J.J.: I don't think anybody was assuming that, and I don't know if Cameron always had two stories involved, because clearly it's left wide open, the first one, and it's still seven years later, until the sequel comes out. And Arnold has become a huge star, so the idea of making a sequel is that much easier to greenlight, because...

[20:08] Olaf: Sure, he'd done so much more since then.

[20:13] J.J.: And Cameron as well. The original film was a product of a fever dream of Jim Cameron. He was penniless and stuck, he'd just been fired from Piranha, and ended up having a fever dream of this skeleton coming out of the fire, and it's a robot. And he actually sketched it, and it's an incredible portrait, if you ever get a chance to see it. And it was so good, that after they decided they were going to make this movie, and got with Stan Winston, and Stan Winston starts trying to design the look of this endoskeleton, they went through a whole bunch of different ideas, and they kept going back to that first drawing of Jim Cameron's. And finally, he's like, we're going to do that.

[20:59] Olaf: We're just going to do that, yeah. So, we can jump to the second movie, because like you said, it's probably one of the best sequels of all time. It's almost, to me, it's very, very close to almost being a perfect film, too. I mentioned that with Raiders of the Lost Ark, maybe Empire Strikes Back, that company that it keeps, Godfather Part Two.

[21:18] J.J.: You wouldn't consider, just in terms of a movie, because Raiders isn't a sequel, but you wouldn't put Terminator up there? As a perfect movie? No.

[21:28] Olaf: Yeah. No. Why not? I mean, we were just talking about the brilliance of the pacing, the structure, its simplicity, the effects, even though today it could be considered dated.

[21:39] J.J.: Oh, they're dated. I mean, they're dated. That's going to be nice. I think they still look good. I'm telling you, man, it's the scene, not to be repetitive and go back to stuff, but it's like, it is, it's the two scenes that he's in his little motel, rundown motel room, the first one where he actually pulls out the eye and he does surgery on himself. And then the second one where he's looking up Sarah Connor's mom's cabin and he still, he takes the sunglasses off and it's just, it's this sort of thing. Mind you, I'm being very picky here. Terminator, to me, because Terminator Two is so, it's amazing. I mean, he took this simple story in Terminator and he blew it up into this other thing that is the second one that now I always wonder, well, do people gravitate to Terminator because of Terminator Two?

[22:30] Olaf: Well, I definitely think that Terminator is on the side. Everyone knows Terminator Two. You're going to go see Die Hard because Die Hard is one of the best action movies of all time. You're going to go see Raiders of the Lost Ark and these are because of, they're the first films. You would still see Godfather without Godfather part two. You could see Terminator Two and not necessarily need to see the first movie because they explain a lot of the first movie in the second movie or what you need.

[23:03] J.J.: I agree that T2 could be a standalone film. You're not really missing anything other than maybe a little bit of context and some emotion, but I don't know. I hold Terminator up higher than I think a lot of people do because of Terminator Two. It gets kind of left behind and I don't think it should.

[23:17] Olaf: I don't either, but you asked me, do I consider Terminator to be a perfect like, and for me, it's, I go back to, I think a lot of people got introduced to Terminator with the second movie and then went and go, oh, let me go see the first one and they see, oh yeah, the first one's good, but it doesn't hold a candle to the second movie in terms of, because the effects caught up. He even says, Cameron even says that he was able to do the T-1000 and the liquid metal because when he did Abyss, he realized the technology had caught up and now he could bring in the T-1000.

[23:46] J.J.: I get that. What bothers me about Terminator Two, and this is probably the only thing that does, well, there's two things. There's one scene at Cyberdyne where Arnold looks fake again and it's just one shot where he walks out of the elevator and he decides to take on all of the cops in the lobby and he's just getting shot at. They intercut him and the dummy, but the dummy still is arguably so well done by Stan Winston. Completely. He won an Oscar for it. Yeah, and it's the same thing with CGI with the Uncanny Valley. We see it and our brains automatically are like, that's fake. Sure. But if it's done well, which it was. And Stan Winston was a genius. I mean, the movie won four Academy Awards, including visual effects. So the other thing that bothers me, and this goes back to Sarah Connor's age, is John Connor's age. He's supposed to be 10 years old. Well, he also had a growth spurt and went through puberty. But I understand that. And the only thing that's going to

[24:53] J.J.: Make me sort of really buy that he's doing all of these things at 10 is that he grew up fast. He never had a childhood. And he did. Right. He even talks about it. He even talks about it. But I'm like, you're not 10 years old. You're not 10. Well, because they didn't film it in order. When they get to Mexico and they're kind of regrouping, he is very much... 13, like the age he actually was when he shot it, as opposed to anywhere else when he's 14. Well, his voice hadn't broke yet. Right. No, I know. They had to redouble a lot of his dialogue. He was shorter. Yeah. You can definitely see he's more of a baby in that part of the scene than anything else. Than in the mall or than when they're running through Cyberdyne.

I know. I know. But... You know, again, suspension of disbelief. I know. But again, if you're going to give me his age, which they do, because it takes place in 1995. So anybody can add to 10. You know, okay, he's 10. Like, okay. And I will say this, when I first saw this movie, and even subsequent times after that, I never liked Edward Furlong. He bugged me to no end. However, I just saw this movie again a couple weeks ago. Right. And he did great. He was great. I've never been a fan of Eddie Furlong. I think when I was younger and I would watch Terminator, I would fluctuate between being annoyed by his John Connor and... All of it. ...just not caring. But the older I've gotten and the more I've watched the movie, and I have watched it many times, he doesn't bother me.

And you're right. I think he actually does a pretty good job. He does. Having it be his first movie, and he was like 13 when he shot it. One of those, again, where they discovered him somewhere. He didn't even read for the... I mean, he wasn't acting. But I remember... And because he and I are the same age. And so I was 13 when the movie came out, and I saw it, and I'm like, this kid is annoying. I am not buying anything this kid's doing. I don't like him. But then watching it again, just most recently, he does a really good job with wanting to connect with his mom, and his mom is not on that wavelength with him. No. And he brings you in, and at least he brought me in, and he really turned my opinion around on him because, yeah, you don't like him because he's bratty, and he's had no parental figures, and he's carrying the weight of his unknown future with him, and he's been carrying it since he could walk and talk.

He is sort of oozing this angst with everything he does. But then once he finally gets to the institution to save her, and then they're on the run, and he's trying to connect with his mom, and he can't. And so he's connecting with the Terminator. He does a really good job of pulling me, because I'm carrying a really strong opinion of his performance with me for a long time, and for me to see it and go, you know what? He's doing a lot of really good things here that I didn't give him enough credit for previously. I didn't appreciate his performance when I was younger because I wasn't thinking about the motivations, and I wasn't really putting a lot into what has he been through and where is he at now.

It was just, this kid's annoying. This kid's whining a lot. When I watch it now, whether it was a conscious choice or not, he plays the role of a kid who grew up fast, who suddenly was told that everything is a lie by everyone else, to where he is angry at his mother, only to then find out that it's real, and now he has basically an action figure for a companion, and then getting to a point where he's like, we have to get my mom back and reconnect with her. You watch that movie now, and you think about all of those things in every scene that he's in, and it changes everything.

[28:57] Olaf: Absolutely. And it did for me. It absolutely did. Aside from the fact that I'm like, he's not 10 years old. Wow. And that is something that could easily have been corrected. That's an easy fix, y'all. That's an easy fix in writing. It's so funny. I just, I never ever gave it any thought. You could have set this thing in 1997, which is when Judgment Day happens. You could have set it in 97 and made him 12, and that would have been closer to, I would have just, again, that's just me. That's just my own thing. Well, I think maybe Cameron wanted somebody a couple years older than 10 to give you the idea that they had to grow up fast. Well, you have to. There's no way you're going to cast an actual 10-year-old and have him do everything that he had to do.

This day and age? Well, 30 years ago, even the kids in Goonies are 13. They're not 10. Sure. I mean, Mikey, maybe Sean Astin, Goonies, maybe he's supposed to be 10, but he's not. He's not. I just never got wrapped up in ages. I was just like, okay, this is that character. That's this character. Let's go. Let's go. I wasn't carding any of the characters as they were introduced. Well, if you're going to continue to throw out a Judgment Day date of 97 and continue to show me a future that's set in 2029, then at some point, I'm going to start doing math. At some point, I'm going to start- That's you and the math nerds, because the rest of us are like, I'm not going to think about that. I don't want to do math.

I'm like, how old is this kid supposed to be? 10? No, he's not 10. Nope, he's not 10. I'm out. And that's my only real issue with the movie, because like I said, this movie overall, how are you going to make Arnold a Terminator and then tell the audience, oh, by the way, this dude isn't going to kill a single person in this movie, and you're going to be okay with it, even though you just maybe watched Terminator and that's all this person is supposed to be doing? Brilliant. Which is funny, because I feel like a lot of people hadn't watched Terminator when they watched this movie. Which is my point again, which now you're just confirming my point from earlier. Well, I never said you were wrong.

I just, I told you, I hold Terminator higher than most people, because we wouldn't have Terminator 2 without Terminator. Right. There's nothing wrong with the structure of Terminator, and just like a lot of James Cameron's early films, there's not a lot of fat. Everything's paced perfectly. You look at Aliens and you look at Terminator 2, they both now have special editions. And honestly, I'm sad that those scenes were cut, because they don't take away and they don't slow anything down. They only add to what's going on. And it's a shame that at that time that the film was being made, the powers that be were like, no, it has to be this long. Well, the second movie is almost two and a half hours, which is about 20 to 30 minutes longer than the first movie.

And speaking of pacing, speaking of there's not a lot of fat, watching Terminator 2, it's like an hour into the movie before they even rescue Linda Hamilton from the institution. It doesn't even feel like a two and a half hour movie because of how nothing is wasted. Every scene, the stakes are there. I mean, it's not a breakneck pace the whole time, but even when they slow down so John can understand what's going on and he'll pull Arnold into the alleyway and he finds out, oh, you'll do whatever I say. Great. They don't dwell. No dialogue is wasted. It's always moving. It's always moving. They get into the Pescadero is the name of the institution. They get there. That whole scene. Yes. It's like they took the police station scene and they just elevated the police station scene into this institutional scene.

And it's amazing. Something that always stuck out with me about the first Terminator was a lot of the first Terminator has to do all of this heavy lifting because we have to know about the history and how these Terminators were made and how their time traveling, all of these things. And so there's going to be a lot of exposition in this movie. And something that I honestly hadn't even thought about or noticed until Michael Bean pointed it out in an interview was James Cameron had the foresight to shoot all the exposition while they're moving. Yes, I noticed that too. Michael Bean is they're in hot pursuit. They're driving away from a Terminator in a garage and Michael Bean is spitting out all of this important exposition and information that we need.

And he's doing it in about 90 seconds. Yeah, so anytime he's doing exposition, they're in a car chase, a shootout running. There's so much going on and it's all exciting. And he's filling Sarah Connor and us, the audience in on all of this stuff. And it works so well. And I just love that pacing that he does.

[34:49] Olaf: Yeah. And what's interesting about the second one is you're right in the slowdown moments where they stop at the gas station to get a bite to eat, which is the same gas station that she stopped at at the end of the first movie where they hole up for the night. Arnold fills in some exposition there while he's being sutured up, but it never felt like the movie was going at a super high and then we crashed down to some sort of snail like pace, even in Mexico to get all the weapons before she goes after Miles Dyson. None of the slowdown scenes felt like they dragged the movie down. No, because I'm looking at it going, well, how could you cut this movie and make it a little tighter than it already is?

Well, you can't because even the scenes that slow down, they still feel there's still an energy underneath them that make him feel like they're moving faster than they actually are. And yet he still managed to cut the movie down. And so just like Aliens with Terminator 2, I can't watch the original version anymore. I have to watch the special edition because it includes some really great, important scenes that add a lot to the film that at the time they're like, well, we have to trim 10 minutes, so we got to make some hard choices. And you watch these scenes by themselves and it just goes to show how efficient Cameron was because nothing was really wasted.

[35:11] J.J.: Sure. But if you don't know about, I mean, that's the thing about sometimes a special edition does help the movie, the quality of the movie. You're going, oh, I wish they had released this version instead, because this version makes this movie a million times better than what could have been. But when you look at like Aliens and Terminator 2, if you never saw a special edition, you could walk out of there going, oh, yeah, absolutely. Especially with Terminator 2, where you look at it, you're going, he did everything he needed to do and wanted to do. There are similar shots from the first and second movie as well. Yeah, which are kind of neat. He kind of revisited certain things. And again, going back to the decision to not have Arnold's Terminator kill anybody in the movie is an interesting sort of bold choice because they even promoted that in the trailer. Like one of the trailers that came out, he does this kind of thing where he swears that he's not going to kill anybody in the movie. And you're like, that's interesting.

[36:06] Olaf: Yeah. We're getting into territory that I did want to touch on that really pisses me off. I just, I wasn't sure we were going to get to that right at this moment, but it's happening. I don't know when you wanted to get to it. Okay, so I wish for you and for myself and for so many other people out there, we will never get to watch Terminator 2 the way it was filmed and honestly, the way I think it was intended. Because for whatever reason, and this trend continued on with the franchise, the marketing spoils the twist. So what do we know about the Terminator? The Terminator is played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the villain. He's after Sarah Connor and he's trying to kill her.

So we go into Terminator 2. What do we know about the Terminator? If you lived under a rock and you didn't see any marketing for it, you would think, okay, Arnold's back. Now he's going to try and kill John Connor. Right. And if you watch Terminator 2 from a directing point of view, the entire beginning of the movie is set up for you to not know who's who.

[37:19] J.J. Gonzalez: We're still led to think that Arnold is a bad guy. We're not sure if Robert Patrick is a villain or not and he's for the most part with the occasional like tone shift or eye look as far as we can tell is a good guy. Sure. And it culminates into this amazing scene where they meet in a hallway and John Connor is in the middle and the reveal comes when Arnold says get down. It's such a huge moment and the whole film has built up to this scene and I can feel it when I'm watching it and I've seen it a thousand times. I know what's going to happen but just watching it from a filmmaker's eye and seeing how the shots were designed it's palpable that we're building to this huge twist where you're going to be like oh my god it's he's a good guy what and then you find out that Robert Patrick is not just a bad guy but he's also a robot right like well you don't know that well you know that he's well you don't know that I guess you never see him do any robot stuff that's true he's basically just right Michael Bean 2.0 yeah so now in there it just it blows my mind so I've always wanted to be able to watch Terminator 2 with someone who knows nothing about any of that.

[38:43] Olaf Adcet: Yeah but the problem is it's like the Terminator franchise is part of our culture sure just like Star Wars and there are people who have not seen Star Wars but they still know Star Wars they know enough so it's not impossible but it is really hard to find somebody who has absolutely no idea.

[39:03] J.J. Gonzalez: Well in their defense when the movie came out one Cameron at Stan Winston create a trailer with like $150,000 and it's just this trailer with machines on a sort of getting created and then it shows Arnold and you don't know and then they did a really good job of cutting trailers that didn't have Arnold and John Connor together so you didn't deduce that he was there to help him it wasn't until at some point it happened and it's like yeah why would you do that yeah the amount of work that is on the screen to set up this big twist it just it breaks my heart.

[39:41] Olaf Adcet: Well the only thing I can think of is is an audience going to go back to see the same machine same actor try to do the same thing he tried in the first movie well now he's going after a kid understood yeah and if you cut the if you cut the trailer right I mean you show that Linda is now a badass warrior yeah I and the first early trailers were very much like oh crap we got another Terminator let's go I mean there was hardly any plot there it was just we've got the Terminators okay yeah people were lining up for that.

[40:27] J.J. Gonzalez: My Terminator 2 story is I was in a line in the middle of the day because it came out summer 91 I think it was the fourth of July weekend right but I was in line and the line was one of these that wrapped outside you know the theater because people were anticipating this movie and in the line was Sean Elliott and Sean Elliott is beloved San Antonio Spur and he's beloved by Spurs fans from all over and he was also in line and of course he was in the league at the time he was playing for the Spurs and uh I went up to him and said hi to him and I it was a big deal I mean this um believe it or not I was a little bit shorter I wasn't I'm still short but I was a little bit shorter than I am now but not much going up to Sean Elliott who's 6'6 or 6'5 just like hey how you doing and I really wasn't even that big of a Spurs fan at the time I was a Magic Johnson to digress I was a Magic Johnson is my favorite player so I was a Lakers fan but it was still kind of cool to see like this person going you know to go see this movie at this time and that's how big a big deal it was even you know but the idea of you know how are you going to market this movie to get people to go see it and then to have that as an additional twist of like he's not going to kill anybody nah nah he's going to kill somebody and then they keep making a point of like nah he he didn't and at a certain point you're kind of like the good news is they didn't really run that joke into the ground they did it like no they mentioned it like the rule of three you know they did it like three times and that was it.

[42:01] Olaf Adcet: Well it wasn't even done as a joke except for I swear I will not kill anyone and then when he shot the guard at the to get into the game he's like he'll live yeah yeah but other than that it was all just this kid believes in life because the Terminator did try to kill people a couple times and John Connor right got in the way right he got in the way so and even his mom has sort of turned into that type of human almost machine she had basically become a terminator I mean she was about to kill Miles Dyson right in front of his kid you know right but John didn't stop her she stopped herself she does she stops herself.

[42:55] J.J. Gonzalez: These first two films I just I love them the story is so good the characters are fantastic it's so original it's yeah that's what I miss about James Cameron is the originality the abyss fantastic true lies true lies it's just the Terminator films will always hold this special place in my heart because it captured my imagination as a kid and the first Terminator I love it for what it is which is basically a slasher thriller sure and then almost at a b film level it almost feels like a b film yeah you know like this low budget so James Cameron essentially did with Terminator 1 and 2 what Alien did because the first Alien was basically a slasher thriller suspense and the second one was all-out action and that's really basically the same with these you've got an unstoppable monster chasing you and then in the second one it's all action yeah and it's just done so well it's like it's not action for action's sake no that's what I'm saying there's nothing wasted in either of these two movies.

[43:43] Olaf Adcet: I will say if you have not seen the special edition of Terminator 2 watch that version it's just more complete because there are things that you miss that add to the film it doesn't make the film better it just adds to it and makes it richer.

[44:00] J.J. Gonzalez: Well and there's a scene you know at the end when Arnold blows him up and then the heat brings the t-1000 back the liquid metal forms back into him and what was cut out what you don't see is after that the t-1000 starts to somewhat glitch out he starts to take the shape of things that he's touching things that he's stepping on and that is how John is able to identify that it's not his mom coming after him like well I'd like to think that it was also because the other Sarah was like hey get down right but I think there's a scene what they don't show is John notices the boots of morphing into the ground and realizes oh you're not my mom you know and shout out to Linda Hamilton's twin sister for those that may not know Linda Hamilton had a twin sister who plays Sarah in like the playground scene and in the ending scene when there's two of them also in the mirror scene when they are operating on Arnold's head yes to reset the skynet programming so that he can actually adapt right I believe she passed away not too long ago.

[45:01] Olaf Adcet: She did she passed away I believe in I think it was like in 2020 yeah but no I think most people share our sentiment with Terminator 2 for sure but probably both movies as a collective movies that sort of stand the test of time both of them age really well the second one ages much better than the first one of course and that's just because from a technology standpoint but what I love about both of these movies is they're not relying on the tech to drive the story no and the story in and of itself is strong enough to stand the test of time so to speak that you could sit down and watch either one of these movies and be like these are still amazing movies you're not prisoner of the moment or you're not romanticizing these films because you saw them at a young age and you're carrying that because a lot of times you do you watch a movie you're young and you're like yeah this movie's great and then you show it to somebody and you're like ah it's not as good as I remember it I'm sorry I didn't mean to put you through this um and that's not the case with either of these two they still hold up very well.

[46:59] J.J. Gonzalez: Yeah I I don't know I just with everything for me I love originality I love a good story I love good character and early James Cameron had all.

[47:12] Olaf Adcet: Well and even like we always talk about characters and films and everybody's sort of bringing it right and that's there's not a lot of people in the first movie I mean when you think about it it's the three of them the three in the police station uh Paul Winfield Lance Hendrickson and the doctor and then the roommate and Rick Rozovich you know the boyfriend but other than that it's a pretty small cast and even in the second one they run into more people but even those people like even the people at the institution the guards the medics like everybody there's nobody's wasted there's no wasted character in this movie.

[48:43] J.J. Gonzalez: No and that's I just I love that efficient filmmaking I love not wasting the performer's time or the audience time and telling a captivating story yeah and it's nice to take the time to focus on like what we're doing today which is focusing on the two best movies of this franchise because ultimately what ends up happening is we have to hold on to these two because of what ends up happening down the road we're gonna get into those episodes later in another episode but I'm just gonna tell you right now it is a bumpy ride.

[49:14] Olaf Adcet: I oh I've got strong feelings well yeah and I've watched as recently as in the last month I watched all of them and I'm just going what happened yeah what are you guys even trying to do here towards the end you know like towards the last two I think it was I don't know I don't know what they were trying to do because I don't think they really knew I think they just had an idea of what people wanted yeah as opposed to I have something to say yeah so if we end up keeping this section in this episode of us sort of I don't want to end on a downer I'd much rather end on a high note and say that you know what a time to be alive when we were kids to be able to get an opportunity to experience both of these movies pretty much when they came out or even at the height of when they were out because to be able to have that experience and have it imprint in a way and then be talking about it decades later going at these movies still hold up we're not romanticizing terminator and terminator 2 in any way like go check them out and you'll hopefully get an idea of where we're coming from.

[49:36] J.J. Gonzalez: Yeah I got no I got nothing else man I mean that's it without at the risk of repeating ourselves I you know I think I think we've said what we wanted to say about them so that's our take on terminator and terminator 2 do yourself a favor check them out I say watch them back to back to really get a complete story and if you do watch terminator 2 definitely watch the special edition it just it's really going to reward you with a richer film especially if you just watched the first one and with that to be continued.