Director James Cameron
Staring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn
Rated M
Score 5.5/6
A seemingly indestructible robot is sent from 2029 to 1984 to assassinate a young waitress, whose unborn son will lead humanity in a war against sentient machines, while a human soldier from the same war is sent to protect her at all costs.
Director James Cameron
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong
Rated M
Score 6/6
A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her teenage son, John Connor, from a more advanced and powerful cyborg.
Director Jonathan Mostow
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken
Rated M
Score 3/6
A cybernetic warrior from a post-apocalyptic future travels back in time to protect a 25-year old drifter and his future wife from a most advanced robotic assassin and to ensure they both survive a nuclear attack.
To the best of my recollection I originally watched Judgement Day before I watched The Terminator. This occurred when I was significantly younger and prettier than I am now, during a time when you can get away with those kinds of things (so I suppose Judgement Day is my favourite movie of the trilogy). Though of course, for the purposes of this review I watched the movies in the order that they were released.
The good thing about watching these movies one after another is that you can see noticeable differences in the special effects used for each of the movies. The biggest change is the difference between the ‘Time Travel’ scenes in The Terminator compared with Rise of the Machines. Then of course there is the stop-motion used for the skeleton of the T-800 in The Terminator compared to the T-1000 (portrayed by Robert Patrick). I loved the arch Sarah Connor went on between the two movies and as I sit here writing this review that Sarah Connor is one of my top three badass female characters from science fiction. I loved the soundtrack for the original movie particularly how eerie the main title music is and that unlike the other movies in the trilogy it doesn’t have that Big Loud Action Movie feel. In Judgement Day the playground dream sequences are probably the most memorable scenes of the movie, sure there is the stand off with police but to fully appreciate that scene you need to be watching it on a screen with a decent set of speakers. I also loved the differences in the on-screen presences of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert Patrick.
Rise of the Machines is the lesser of the three movies and I suppose where the cracks in the franchise started to develop considering by all accounts Schwarzenegger did not want to do the movie unless James Cameron was directing, Cameron told Schwarzenegger “Just do it and ask for a shit-load of money,” he received $29.25 million, a record at the time.
I also would have liked to have seen Edward Furlong reprise his role as John Connor, but I understand why he didn’t. Although watchable, Rise of the Machines wasn’t fun to watch, the only thing that really sets it apart from the other movies in the trilogy was the improvement in special effects and it should be noted that Stan Winston was responsible for the special effects in all three movies. Judgement Day is so good as a sequel because it managed to top what was done in the previous movie Rise of the Machines failed to do that.