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In Terminator 2: Judgment Day a new, more deadly Terminator (Robert Patrick) goes back in time to try again to prevent mankind from triumphing over the ruling machines in a future war. Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is the mother of John (Edward Furlong), her l0-year-old son by Kyle Reese (played by Michael Biehn in the original movie). Although just a child now, John is destined to grow up to become the leader of the anti-machine resistance, and defeated "SKYNET" in the guerilla war after (or he was to when SKYNET sent back the original Terminator to kill his mother). So it is that the future-era machines have declared that John must die.

To protect the boy, the human resistance sends another Terminator (Arnold) from the future - a cyborg programmed to be as relentless in his defense of the boy as his nemesis is bent on the child's destruction.

After alerting the boy to the danger he's in, the cyborg allies himself with the child to free Sarah from the mental institution where she's been held because of her apocalyptic prophecies. The three must now face the more advanced new model T-1000 Terminator, who, unlike the previous skin-covered model, is a molten-metal cyborg capable of assuming and abandoning human form at will. (In one horrifying moment, the T-1000 rises out of a checkerboard-tiled floor and seamlessly oozes into a cop without skipping a beat.)

While the "old model" Terminator starts out as a killing machine, inhuman and unthinking, he becomes gradually humanized by his young protégé, who makes him promise never to shoot to kill again.

Sarah decides that the only way to alter the future is to change the present, so she plans to kill Miles Dyson (Joe Morton), the inventor of "SKYNET", the military command computer system. But the three manage to convince Dyson to destroy his own preliminary research that would in time have led to the creation of the T-1000. Undeterred, the T-1000 pursues the old-model Terminator and the humans, involving them in a wild variety of car-and-truck chases, enormous explosions, and a final, deadly confrontation in a steel mill.

Coming in at a budget of some $94 million, Terminator 2 is the most expensive film ever made. It's also one of the most spectacular action/sci-fi thrillers ever produced. Unlike the modest conception of the original Terminator, there is nothing modest about this sequel, which grossed a phenomenal $70 million in its opening week and may well become one of the biggest-grossing pictures of all time.

Unlike most other mega-budget movies, where their very cost arouses hostility among critics for the sheer waste involved, Terminator 2 aroused no such reaction. The reason: All of the money that was spent can be seen on the screen. Chief among these visible attributes is Arnold himself, who received an $11 million jet as payment for his performance. The movie officially confirms Schwarzenegger's status as the world's most popular movie star. It is the absolute peak of his career, surpassing even Total Recall as the Austrian muscleman's ultimate vehicle. And this time he has a lot more dialogue than the 17 lines he had in the original Terminator, a measure of his growing confidence as an actor. "I've been offered a lot of money to do sequels to my other films, like Predator and Commando," Arnold told US magazine, "but the only one I really wanted to do was Terminator. I also made it clear I wouldn't do it without Jim".

Schwarzenegger was referring to director Jim Cameron, who had helmed the first Terminator adventure, and who went on to do Aliens and The Abyss. The star's decision to stick with Cameron was a wise one, for, as David Ansen noted in Newsweek, "Nobody knows how to use Schwarzenegger better than Cameron. He was born to play a machine .... As an emotion-less cyborg acting out the part of a foster father, he's impressive, hilarious, almost touching."

Terminator 2, which was shot in L.A. and other California locations, allows Arnold to repeat his most popular line from the original, "I'll be back!", and lets him coin a couple more, Such as "Trust me!" and "Hasta la vista, baby!". He is taught the latter phrase by John, in an especially funny scene in which the boy decides to make his cyborg protector "cool."
Arnold remarked to TV's David Letterman that the film allowed him to play "a kinder, gentler Terminator." He elaborated on the point during a chat with Interview: "There are certain feelings that I begin to understand by observing human beings. There is a wonderful scene where the boy cries and I say, 'What's wrong with your eyes?' Later I tell him that I have come to understand about crying, though it is something I could never do".

Initially, Cameron and Arnold kicked around the idea of casting Arnold as both Terminators, who would look alike despite their inherent differences. The notion was nixed in favor of what Schwarzenegger told Interview would be a "more streamlined-looking character", the star's opposite.

Although Robert Patrick's physical elasticity (courtesy of computer graphics images by George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic) is a show stopper, Arnold - attired in biker leather - is not easily eclipsed. Indeed, thanks to makeup wizard Stan Winston, he himself undergoes a remarkable physical transformation in the course of the adventure. "In the final Stage", he told Interviem, "my body is shot up. The chest is open, and you can see the steel coming through. The mechanism of the knee is exposed, and the flesh is hanging out. Half the flesh of the face is gone. Needless to say, I'm a big mess. ..."

The appearance of Arnold's combat-abused face was a vital part of Terminator 2. As makeup designer Winston explained, "We were able to take what we did the first time and do it bettcr the second time. A number of stages were designed as Arnold's Terminator deteriorates. An actor must know going into a situation like this that there is physical stress involved with this makeup process. Fortuantely for us, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a real pro throughout".

Winston, assisted by makeup, artists Jefferson Dawn and Steve LaPorte, and by hair stylist Peter Tothpal, transformed Arnold into the Terminator some 35 times during the course of the shoot. The star's patience was undoubtedly put to the test, for the time needed for that many makeup sessions is equal to six days! Enduring the application of makeup and waiting for complex special-effects shots to be set up were only part of the challenge faced by Arnold during the shoot; the real test came when the cameras began to roll. As Arnold told T2 Movie Magazine, "I had to act like a cyborg, which meant I couldn't show any kind of human fear or reaction to the fire, explosions, or gunfire that were going off around me. That can be difficult when you're walking through a door with its frame on fire, trying to reload a gun, and at the same time, thinking in the back of your mind that people have accidents doing these kinds of stunts and that it might be my turn". But Schwarzenegger added, "Every time you work in front of a camera with new actors and directors, it's a new growth experience. The more experience I've gained, the more confident I've become in my abilities as an actor".

Jim Cameron noted that Arnold appeared in only about 20 percent of the original Terminator, but is in nearly every scene of the sequel. Linda Hamilton underwent her own metamorphosis. Cast in the first film as a lonely, almost passive woman, she emerges in Terminator 2 as a take-charge warrior who exhibits a bodybuilder's physique and a will of iron. "In her own way", Cameron told Starlog, "she has become a terminator herself".

While some critics were concerned about the film's extreme violence -Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman termed it "a great big feast of wreckage" - the general reception was overwhelmingly positive. Reviewers - applaubed the film's exhilarating execution, and noted the interesting paradox of the script's anti-violence message being presented via wall-to-wall brutality.

But the director doesn't see any contradiction here. "Our violent and aggressive nature is probably responsible for our success on this planet, equally with our intelligence", he explained to a studio-publicity interviewer. "But the price that we have to pay is that we always hover on the edge of annihilation. Ultimately, the film is about the value of human life. This film empowers the individual. It says that no matter how inconsequential you may seem to others or even to yourself, your individual existence may have great value in the future".

Cameron continued, "The Terminator was a cultural phenomenon that people responded to on a psychological level. The Terminator represented the dark side of the human psyche, and audiences embraced - the fantasy of being totally stripped of all moral constraints and having the ability to do exactly what they wanted whenever they wanted. It's a dark fantasy, but is one that people can have fun with. ..."

Fun - and heavy doses of excitement - are what Terminator 2 is all about. And those qualities sum up the screen appeal of Schwarzenegger. Caryn James of The New York Times went a step further, evaluating Arnold's role in Tenninator 2 and describing him as "the perfect Bush-era Terminator, a machine as sensitive war-hero". By contrast, she wrote, "The bad old Terminator [in the original movie] reflected the heady Reagan '80s. ... As pop icons do, [Arnold] captures the temper of his times".