Terminator 2: Judgment Day – He’s Back For Good

 (1991)

T1: creative, Arnold The Hero turns into a vicious T-800, who would’ve thought of that? T2: a genre classic, introduces the unforgettable T-1000, heart-pumping fights and chases, the best of the series without a doubt. T3? Seriously, they shouldn’t have made it. Arnold should’ve just turned it down coz it’s so much of a cliche. T4: a comeback? No way!

Why is T2 a cut above all? James Cameron’s directing? Arnold in good shape? Robert Patrick as the unbreakable T-1000? Great chases, special effects and score? It all counts I guess. But what touches us most is probably the love between T-800 and young John Connor deepening as the story goes, like Sarah Connor said, “watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The Terminator would never stop, it would never leave him. And it would never hurt him, never shout at him or get drunk and hit him or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there and it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice.”

We, human beings, are trying to do everything we can to make this world a better place, but ironically, deteriorating it. We think we’re better than anything else in the world, but we are not. We seem to understand the value and meaning of life, but as a matter of fact, we don’t. T-800 gives us “a sense of hope, because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can, too.”

“I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do.” This is what T-800 says to John and Sarah as a kind of goodbye. We cry because we have emotions. And they make us suffer. Machines don’t, so they have no fears, no hesitations, no selfish thoughts. That’s why we sometimes look up to them as sort of perfection. The tension and difference between men and machines are always there. But are we better? I doubt it.

The Abyss – Is Something Down There?

 (1989)

When Titanic won 11 Academy Awards for James Cameron in 1997, no one seemed to remember this piece of sci-fi masterwork he once made a few years earlier. To be honest, Titanic doesn’t impress me much. To me, it’s nothing more than an old-fashioned, surreal love story, but The Abyss is a lot more than that.

Why does The Abyss so fascinate me? Well, I guess Ed Harris is part of why. He’s so cool and manly in the film. And the story, which is so mysterious that no one really knows what’s happening, or say, what they’re dealing with till the end. James is very good at telling (love) stories by using stunning visual effects (the upcoming Avatar I guess is just another trick of that). It did win the 1990 Oscar for Best Visual Effects, that’s not why it attracts me much though. As a matter of fact, it was to make us reflect on our violent nature. Can violence bring us peace and solve our problems? We all know the answer, don’t we? Why, however, do we still think violence can be the choice?

Only if we overcome our violent nature, we’ll be able to understand the mystery and beauty deep down The Abyss.

 (1997)

Alien – The Scariest Movie Of All Time

 (1979)

The Exorcist is considered the scariest movie of all time, but I’d rather pick this one. It really scared the shit out of me when I first watched it. It did leave me an after-burn of what I think I saw. Just like Director Ridley Scott said, the most important thing in a film of this type is not what you see, but the effect of what you think you saw. Though it’s called Alien, it’s not the alien that scares you the most. It’s the backdrop of a lonely spaceship floating in the creepy deep dark space, where on one seems to hear or care about your scream for help when you’re in danger. The crew die one by one. You think you saw the murderer, but you didn’t. You never did till James Cameron created more and let you see what it’s really like in Aliens. Gross scenes can never make a scary movie the scariest. They’ll only make us sick. The scariest feeling is always like something you can’t see, but you know it’s coming to get you.

 (1986)

  (1973)