Over a decade has passed since Sarah Connor was targeted by a cyborg from the future. Now locked away in a mental institution, she must escape to protect her teenage son, John, the future leader of the human resistance. However, Skynet has sent a new, more advanced terminator, the shape-shifting T-1000, back in time to eliminate John while he is still a child. To survive, John's only hope lies with an unlikely protector: a reprogrammed T-800, identical to the machine that once tried to kill his mother.
Information |
|
|---|---|
Language |
English |
Country |
United States |
Premiere date |
July 3, 1991 |
Running time |
137 minutes |
Genre |
Sci-Fi Action |
Budget |
$102,000,000 |
Box Office |
$520,881,154 |
Crew |
|
Directed by |
James Cameron |
Produced by |
James Cameron |
Written by |
James Cameron William Wisher |
Music by |
Brad Fiedel |
Cinematography |
Adam Greenberg |
Edited by |
Conrad Buff Mark Goldblatt Richard A. Harris |
Production Co. |
Carolco Pictures Pacific Western Lightstorm Entertainment |
Distributed by |
TriStar Pictures |
Top Cast |
|
|
|
Official Trailer |
|
Movie Collection |
Movie Order: #02 in The Terminator Collection
|
The Plot
The War Across Time
By the year 2029, the catastrophic war between humanity and the malevolent rogue artificial intelligence, Skynet, has reduced the Earth to a scorched wasteland. In a desperate bid to secure its victory, Skynet attempts to preemptively eliminate the leader of the human Resistance, John Connor, by sending a T-1000 Terminator back through time to 1995. Unlike its predecessor, this advanced prototype—portrayed by Robert Patrick—is programmed to strike at John while he is still a child. Simultaneously, the Resistance manages to seize the time displacement equipment to send back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to serve as the boy's protector.
Both machines arrive in Los Angeles from the future. The T-800, arriving naked, enters a biker bar near a truck stop where he efficiently acquires clothing, boots, a motorcycle, and his primary weaponry—a pistol and a shotgun—before departing. Elsewhere, the T-1000 ambushes a police officer, killing him and instantly assuming his identity and uniform. Meanwhile, the ten-year-old John Connor (Edward Furlong) is living a troubled life as a delinquent with foster parents, Todd and Janelle Voight. Though raised on stories of his destiny as the future savior of mankind, John is currently disconnected from his mother, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). Sarah’s knowledge of the future has hardened her into a vigilant, desperate warrior, but her attempts to bomb a computer factory landed her in Pescadero State Hospital, a maximum-security facility for the criminally insane, where she is treated by the skeptical Dr. Silberman.
Collision Course at the Mall
The T-800 and the T-1000 converge on a local shopping mall, both having tracked John Connor’s location. A chaotic chase ensues through the service corridors, culminating when the T-800 successfully intercepts John, shielding him from the T-1000’s fire. After incapacitating the liquid metal assassin in a fiery explosion, the T-800 escapes with John on his motorcycle. In a quiet moment under a bridge, the T-800 reveals his identity as a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101, reprogrammed by John’s future self to protect him. He explains the terrifying nature of their pursuer: the T-1000 is composed of a "mimetic polyalloy," a liquid metal that allows it to imitate any object or person of equal size, making it nearly indestructible.
Realizing the danger, John attempts to call his foster parents. The T-1000, having already murdered Todd and Janelle, mimics Janelle’s voice on the phone to lure John home. The T-800 detects the deception by mimicking John’s voice, tricking the T-1000 into revealing its ruse. When the Terminator deduces that the T-1000’s next logical move is to kill Sarah Connor to get to John, the boy insists they rescue her immediately. During a confrontation with two men nearby, John realizes the machine must obey his commands. He intervenes just as the T-800 prepares to kill one of the men, seizing the opportunity to teach the Terminator a crucial lesson: he must not kill people. Under John’s orders, they set off to break Sarah out of Pescadero.
The Escape from Pescadero
At the mental hospital, Sarah Connor launches her own desperate escape attempt. She knocks the abusive guard Douglas unconscious with a broom handle, steals his keys and baton, and then ambushes Dr. Silberman. Breaking his wrist, she takes him hostage, holding a syringe filled with poisonous industrial drain cleaner to his neck to force the staff to unlock the security doors. However, her escape is thwarted at a double-lock checkpoint when the staff pursues her, forcing her to flee toward the elevators. As the elevator doors open, Sarah is terrified to see the T-800 step out, triggering her traumatic memories of the machine that tried to kill her in 1984. She attempts to flee, but is restrained by the hospital staff.
Just as Dr. Silberman prepares to sedate her, the T-800 intervenes, tossing the orderlies aside. He extends his hand to the terrified woman, reciting the same words Kyle Reese once told her: "Come with me if you want to live." Sarah’s shock is compounded when the T-1000 flows through the barred security gate she had locked behind her. The T-800 engages the liquid machine in close combat, buying time for Sarah and John to escape into the elevator. The T-1000 pries the doors open and attacks from the ceiling with bladed limbs, injuring Sarah before the T-800 blasts its head apart. The trio flees to the parking garage, stealing a police car. The T-1000 pursues them on foot, latching onto the trunk, but is eventually blown off the vehicle by the T-800 as they speed away from the facility.
Resetting the Chip
Seeking refuge in an abandoned auto repair garage, the group tends to their wounds. In a tense moment, Sarah surgically removes the bullets lodged in the T-800’s back. The Terminator explains that his CPU is currently set to "read-only" by Skynet to prevent him from thinking too independently. At John's suggestion, they decide to remove the chip to switch it to "read-and-write" mode, allowing the machine to learn and adapt. Once the chip is removed, rendering the Terminator inert, Sarah seizes a sledgehammer, intending to destroy the CPU and end the threat of the machine forever. John desperately intervenes, stopping his mother’s blow. He asserts his future authority, arguing that they need the Terminator’s help and that if he is to be a great leader, he must be allowed to make his own decisions now. Reluctantly, Sarah agrees, and they reinsert the chip.
No Fate But What We Make
As they head south toward the Mexican border, the T-800 provides detailed information about the origins of Judgment Day. He identifies Miles Bennett Dyson, a high-ranking engineer at Cyberdyne Systems, as the man who will unknowingly create the microprocessor that leads to Skynet. Skynet will eventually become self-aware and, in a panic of self-preservation, launch nuclear missiles at Russia to provoke a counter-attack that will wipe out its enemies in the United States. The trio arrives at the desert ranch of Enrique Salceda, a friend of Sarah’s who maintains an underground weapons cache. Here, the T-800 begins to display more human-like behavior as he bonds with John, who teaches him slang and high-fives. Watching them, Sarah realizes that the machine, incapable of abandonment or abuse, is the perfect father figure for her son.
That night, Sarah falls asleep and suffers a horrific nightmare: she watches her future self playing with John and other children at a playground, only to witness a nuclear blast that incinerates Los Angeles, stripping the flesh from their bones in seconds. Waking with a start, she sees the words "NO FATE" carved into the wooden table before her. Filled with a grim resolve, she packs her gear and leaves alone to assassinate Miles Dyson, believing his death will prevent the war. When John and the Terminator discover her plan, they rush to intercept her.
The Assault on Miles Dyson
At Dyson’s home, Sarah attempts to snipe the engineer through his window but misses when his son distracts him. She storms the house, shooting Dyson in the shoulder, but finds herself unable to execute him in front of his terrified family. She collapses, overwhelmed by the morality of killing a man for a crime he has not yet committed. John and the T-800 arrive shortly after to de-escalate the situation. To prove their story, the T-800 peels back the skin on his arm, revealing the robotic endoskeleton beneath. Dyson, horrified but convinced, reveals that his revolutionary research is based on the wreckage of the original Terminator found in the factory in 1984—specifically a CPU and a robotic arm.
Understanding that the existence of these artifacts creates a causal loop ensuring Skynet's creation, the group decides they must be destroyed. Dyson agrees to abandon his work and join them in breaking into the Cyberdyne Systems building to destroy all prototypes and research data, ensuring no one can continue his work.
Siege at Cyberdyne
Sarah, John, the Terminator, and Dyson infiltrate the Cyberdyne facility. They retrieve the original 1984 Terminator arm and chip while rigging the laboratory with explosives. Security alerts the authorities, and soon the building is surrounded by police and a SWAT team. The T-800 takes a minigun from their arsenal and approaches the window, unleashing a barrage of fire that destroys the police vehicles below without killing a single officer, adhering to John’s command. The SWAT team eventually breaches the building and opens fire, mortally wounding Dyson. Realizing he cannot escape, Dyson bravely holds the detonator, telling the others to run. He stays behind, clutching the trigger until his last breath. As he dies, the detonator falls, igniting the explosives and destroying the lab and all the research within.
Outside, the T-1000 arrives, disguised as a motorcycle cop. John, Sarah, and the T-800 hijack a SWAT van and flee the scene just as the building erupts in flames. The T-1000 pursues them, piloting a police helicopter in a relentless chase.
The Highway of Fire and Ice
The chase spills onto the highway, with the T-1000 firing from the helicopter. Sarah fires back from the van but is shot in the thigh. The helicopter crashes into the back of their van, causing it to flip. The trio scrambles into a stolen pickup truck, but the T-1000, surviving the crash, commandeers a tanker truck carrying liquid nitrogen. The chase continues to a steel mill, where the T-800 manages to flip the tanker truck. The vessel ruptures, spilling thousands of gallons of liquid nitrogen across the pavement. The freezing liquid washes over the T-1000, instantly freezing it solid. The T-800 steps forward and shatters the frozen villain with a single gunshot. However, the heat from the nearby molten steel vats quickly melts the shards, allowing the T-1000 to reform and resume its hunt.
Showdown at the Steel Mill
The injured group retreats into the depths of the steel mill. The T-1000, malfunctioning slightly from the freezing process and glitching as it touches various surfaces, corners the T-800. The two machines engage in a brutal hand-to-hand fight. The T-1000 gains the upper hand, pinning the T-800’s arm in a massive gear mechanism and then impaling him with a pry bar, rupturing his power cell and shutting him down. With the protector offline, the T-1000 hunts for John. Sarah, despite her injuries, confronts the machine on a catwalk, firing shotgun shells to push it back toward a vat of molten steel. However, she runs out of ammunition, and the T-1000 impales her shoulder, demanding she call to John.
John reveals himself, but just as the T-1000 prepares to kill him, the T-800 reboots, having rerouted his power to an auxiliary cell. He surprises the T-1000 from behind, firing a grenade launcher shell directly into its chest. The explosion distorts the T-1000, throwing it off balance, and it falls into the vat of molten steel below. The mimetic polyalloy writhes and screams, cycling through various human forms it has copied, before dissolving completely into the superheated metal.
The Final Sacrifice
With the immediate threat gone, John tosses the arm and chip from the 1984 Terminator into the molten steel. However, the T-800 reveals that he, too, must be destroyed to prevent his technology from ever being reverse-engineered to create Skynet. He explains that he cannot self-terminate and needs Sarah to lower him into the vat. John bursts into tears, begging his friend not to go, but the Terminator gently wipes the boy's tears, stating, "I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do."
The T-800 hugs John, cementing their bond, before walking to the chain hoist. Sarah shakes the machine's hand with newfound respect. As she lowers him into the molten steel, the Terminator keeps his gaze fixed on them. Just before his visual sensors go offline, he raises a thumb up—a final signal of reassurance. As the machine melts away, John cries in his mother's arms. The film concludes with Sarah’s voiceover as they drive down a dark highway. She expresses a newfound sense of hope, reasoning that if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, then perhaps humanity can too.
