that Arnie Terminator was the "nice" one?
I re-watched recently and nothing actually tells us he's the one who went back to defend JC, and we don't actually know which is which until the shoot-out in the corridor.
Were you surprised that Arnie was the hero, instead of the clean-cut cop?
I don't think so. We see Arnie beat up some bikers rather than kill them and then the comical moment where he puts on the glasses to the Bad to the Bone song insinuating that this is clearly not the same terminator from the first one. Then we get the T1000 who kills someone right away, but I think the biggest giveaway is the music. Every time we see the T1000 his music comes on so we know he is the big bad and Arnie is here to protect John.
Of course this is all given away by the trailer anyway.
If you were to go into this movie completely blind it's indeed deliberately ambiguous which of the two is the villain until the confrontation. Arnold's terminator badly injuring but not explicitly killing any of the bikers I think was more of artistic license rather than a giveaway to the audience that he's been programmed as a "good guy" as he later tries to execute two random guys in a less threatening scenario.
Also it was left visually ambiguous whether or not the T 1000 killed the police officer at the beginning (we see him approach the officer naked and appears to strike him in the stomach as he falls down unconscious. We don't explicitly see the impact and there is no blood shown) but through his later actions it can be reasonably surmised that he very likely killed him with his metallic blade arm attack that we later see him using frequently to dispatch his victims.
Yeah those are all good points. I guess we don't technically see the cop die so he could still be alive. I've always assumed he was dead since it would be strange for him to just keel over from a gut punch, but I guess my judgment has always been clouded since I've always known Arnie was the good guy prior to viewing.
shareI didn't see it til a year after it came out but knew he was the good guy because of the action figure commercials. I was only 6 years old and became obsessed with Terminator 2 because of those action figure commercials.
shareIt was certainly filmed in a way for it to be a surprise but the surprise factor would largely have been spoiled for anyone who saw any of the movie trailers or other related advertisements beforehand.
shareI'm 25 so the film was already "old" by the time I saw it on video, and all the trailers and toy commercials passed me by. That said, I saw T2 as a kid without having seen the first one, so I had no pre-formed reasons to know which would be which, so I just didn't know which was which until they all met.
shareI saw T2 before I saw the original as well. I was around 5 when it came out & wasn't allowed to watch it until a year or so later on video. I feel like it was spoiled for me through word of mouth (older siblings & friends) & toy ads as I didn't see it until a year or so later on video but I seem to remember watching it with the sense of knowing Arnold was the good guy.
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Completely agree. I was really into movies and saw this in the theater in high school and I had vaguely remembered hearing something about Arnold maybe being the good guy, so while I wasn’t surprised when he was - it was suspenseful and not a certainty as to who was trying to kill the boy.
I also think the cop uniform conjures up a number of thoughts and feelings for viewers. I think early on the uniform gives the viewer the sense that he is there to protect the boy.
But but after the initial confrontation the uniform evokes the images and distrust of the LAPD of the late 80’s and early 90’s.
Fear and distrust of the police in inner cities was at fever pitch when the movie premiered in the summer of 1991 - as just 4 months earlier the country had seen the LAPD beating Rodney King.
While the police uniform had obviously been chosen prior to the Rodney King beating - police brutality was a huge story years before that.
I think that Cameron chose it with the intention of capitalizing on that image of those who are supposed to protect us being the ones to attack us.
And it made the villain all that much more menacing.
The trailers gave it away. It was explicitly shown that Arnie was the good guy and he was up against a foe who could morph in to other shapes etc....
shareRight, but I think Cameron was definitely trying to surprise the viewer in the way he made the movie.
sharePossibly, but then did he not have any say over the trailers which gave it away?
shareHe probably let the marketers do what they wanted to with the preview. I just showed my 17 year old son the first and second terminators within a few nights of each other. He is obviously too young to have seen the trailers.
He was very surprised when Arnie protected the boy in that first conflict and thought it was a fun surprise from the first movie. He definitely agreed that the movie intended to keep it a surprise, regardless of what the previews showed.
Tons of movies every year are made to surprise or keep the viewer in suspense only to be ruined by a preview showing too much of the movie.
This was a complete missed opportunity, first of all the trailers ruined the reveal that Arnie was good this time, then when he beat up the bikers there was way too much comic relief and he didn't kill anyone. Then the T-1000 arrives and while it's not confirmed that he killed that cop or that he even has the liquid metal capabilities the menacing music totally gives it away.
They initially thought of casting Michael Biehn as the T-1000 and that would have been awesome, again such a missed opportunity.