Okay, I'm clickbaiting. It's a great film, just not as good as the first.
While it may be objectively a better film in terms of production, the writing lags far behind what made the original so memorable to me.
Terminator 1 (yes, technically just "The Terminator" blah blah I know) is a better movie overall, at least so I think.
Terminator 2 totally broke the whole time travel confusion arc. In Terminator 1 it sort of made sense. Killing machine and guy are sent back in time, killing machine is stopped, parts are left at Cyberdyne thus enabling development of killing machine in the first place. Yes, this is a circle but if you think of time linearly it almost makes some sense. Terminator 2 adds in a bunch of crap about alternate timelines and how judgement day can be stopped.
Even the opening scene of T2, cool as it is, breaks my suspension of disbelief right as the movie starts. I just can't imagine this bar full of bikers simply giggling away and completely dismissing him the way they do when the T-800 walks in.
I know they are all supposedly tough bikers or whatever, but like, even ignoring the fact that he is absolutely jacked and that they don't know he's a terminator, nobody, NOBODY, would openly laugh at him like that that. Maybe a nervous laugh, but not a comedic laugh. I don't care how tough you are or how many drinks you've had, a bareass naked stonefaced man demanding your clothes makes it clear that, if nothing else, he is 100% totally batshit insane. Nobody would feel comfortable or safe around someone like that. Their reaction is just too silly for something like this. I'd expect alot of "what the fuck"s and weird looks, but not open mockery. At the very least, you'd know someone like that ain't going down without taking somebody with him. But no, the biker stereotypes just cackle like there isn't a very obvious threat right in front of them.
Also, why did the terminator need sunglasses? In the first movie it made sense: he used the sunglasses to cover up his damaged robot eye and keep his disguise going. Here he takes them just to take them. At night, no less. And it wasn't some type of planning because he puts them on after observing they can be kept in a pocket. Riding a bike with shades at night is very non-human and would actually attract attention. Not a very logical thing for a computer driven infiltration unit to do.
I can appreciate the Hollywood factor of the scene, but in T1's opener the reaction of the teenagers is more believable, because they are dumb (probably high) kids, and more importantly the instant that they see what the naked guy can do they get scared and back off. Not so in T2, where the bikers continue to uselessly attack him even after they watch him destroy their buddies. Also, even though young John Connor has yet to tell him not to kill anyone, pretty sure the throwinator just tosses everyone around. No ripping guts out, no skull stomping, no killing from the killing machine, because we can't have the good guy do a murder in our kid-friendly blockbuster sequel. Can't have a moral grey area that gets the audience thinking too much. Kyle Reese was ready to kill cops to protect Sara, and only stopped when she pleaded with him that they would win the fight. It's not nice, but that's the kind of no-nonsense soldier you need when the fate of the world is on the line.
Terminator 2 also puts Sarah in a psych ward under some pretense that requires a major suspension of disbelief. Yes I know coverups are a real thing but are we really expected to believe that a whole police department got killed, the killer is never found, the only survivor connected to the incident is just simply brushed off as crazy and shoved into a mental hospital? And nobody is asking questions? Not the FBI? No investigative journalists? Are all the families of those officers not demanding information? Why is this not priority #1 for basically everybody even remotely involved?
T2 removes what makes the first so scary. No disrespect to Robert Patrick or his stellar performance, he is not at all the problem here. For the role of the T-1000 I can't imagine anyone else. His movements are perfectly mechanical, and he even shoots his guns without blinking. Very hard skill to master. Honestly, in my fantasy world I'd take him playing the T-800 in Terminator 1 to make the perfect Terminator movie. The problem is the T-800 in T2, and not for Arnold, he did great too, it's the writing. This killer robot "learns the value of human life" according to Sarah's own speech at the end of the film in some drippy, cheesy, cornball example of how mankind needs to do better. This directly opposes Kyle's "It can't be argued with, it can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or pain, or remorse, or fear, and it ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT STOP. EVER." Michael Biehn's brilliant delivery here conveys real desperation and pain. It conveys the horror of a man trying to go toe to toe with a killing machine. You can really feel his PTSD from a life of running from, and watching his friends get killed by, these things. But in T2, ah fuck it, the robot is some middle schooler's power trip now. Yeah yeah, there's a deleted scene where they turned its learning mode on, blah blah, but the premise is stupid. T1 directly said the T-800s are just convincing enough to infiltrate. T2 made them into basically human in order to pull some generic heartstrings, setting up the franchise for the crap that would follow but undoing the brilliance of its predecessor. The first film was a love story in a horrific backdrop. A storyabout mankind's willpower and ability to persevere against all odds. A story of a relentless soldier bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. The 2nd was some 5th grade level niceties with no real drama or meat. 'We need peace mannnnn, humans are bad, um, 'cause wars and stuff. We gotta like, um, learn how to see the value of human life mannnnn'
Maybe it says something about me, but I vastly prefer the darker and grittier tone set by the first. The 2nd one feels too corny at times. All those "touching" moments with young John Connor and his robot daddy don't do quite the same thing for me that Kyle/Sara's relationship did. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a total cynic, and the ending of T2 can definitely still get a tear or two out of me... But I can't say the same for the rest of it. Yes, it's definitely objectively "better" as an action movie, but to me that's all it is: a (very) good action movie. I still appreciate it for what it is, but it's a themepark ride. Fun for some cheap thrills, but it doesn't leave the same lasting impression the original did. Terminator 1 tells the better story, but Terminator 2 is better if you just want to watch robots do robot stuff.
Oh, and I'm not even bothering with 3 or anything after that... 3 is the last one I could stomach. I don't care enough to watch any of the others, but from the clips I've seen they take all the worst parts of T2 and amplify it, with none of the good parts that, again, at least make T2 good as an action movie. I'll stick to Critical Drinker's reviews.
Eh, maybe I just like being a contrarian.