The lack of taste it takes to actually play the song “Bad to the Bone” right here belongs in a museum!
Meanwhile, somewhere else in LA, another time portal opens up, and another naked robot bloops into the ’90s. This time, it’s Robert Patrick a.k.a. T-1000 a.k.a. Robot Patrick a.k.a. a liquid metal absolute bitch. A cop notices him and is like, “10-4, uh, we got a liquid metal guy,” but Robot Patrick kills him easily and takes his clothes. OF COURSE liquid metal guy is a COP.
Basically what’s going on, I think, is that in Terminator 1, the T-800 (Arnold) was sent to the ’80s to terminate Sarah Connor, so that she could never give birth to extremely effective anti-robot resistance leader of the future John Connor. But it didn’t work (don’t know why, never seen it, not my purview), so now in Terminator 2, Skynet has sent a different, more advanced Terminator back in time to terminate John Connor as a child, while future John Connor sent a reprogrammed, nicer T-800 (that he STILL DECIDED TO MAKE AUSTRIAN AMERICAN) back in time to protect his child self from T-1000.
T-1000 looks up John Connor’s personal info in the cop car computer and, like, you didn’t have that already? You’re from the future! Print it out before you come!
John Connor is chillin’ out with his best friend, Bobby Budnik, riding his bike around town and not cleaning his room in a month. This is back when everybody liked the same things: bein’ bad, not cleaning your room, and pizza. John lives with his foster parents, who need to get a divorce but otherwise seem nice.
Sarah Connor, meanwhile, is confined to a mental hospital because she won’t stop trying to warn everyone about the upcoming nuclear robot apocalypse, and also she “blew up a computer factory” (fair).
Officer T-1000 swings by John’s house and asks his foster mom for a picture of him, for police business. “Do you mind if I keep this picture?” Yo, you don’t even have a picture of him? HE IS STILL ALIVE IN THE FUTURE WHERE YOU COME FROM. You have a computer for a brain!
T-1000 locates John at the arcade and starts chasing him around without even stopping to say hi to the video games, which are at LEAST his in-laws. In a back hallway, just when he’s about to get terminated, John runs into Arnold, who’s carrying a dozen long-stemmed roses in a box—isn’t that nice? He must have known that John Connor is having a tough day, what with being chased by a liquid metal guy. But Terminator’s roses are actually a gun! Terminator inconveniences T-1000 by shooting him about a million times, but, unfortunately, you know, he is liquid metal. They manage to get away on a motorcycle while T-1000 oozes his body (INCLUDING GENITALS—HE HAS THEM TOO) back together.
T-1000 can’t catch them on foot (why would there be a limit to how fast a liquid metal man could run?), so he carjacks a big truck and starts chasing them through Burbank. On the one hand, how does he know how to drive? They don’t drive 1984 Freightliner FLA heavy-duty commercial trucks in the land of the machines! On the other hand, why isn’t he better at driving? He basically is a car.
T-1000 looks stressed. Why is Arnold so much better at being a Terminator than he is? He’s supposed to be the newer model! He’s the one who can turn his arm into a pizza cutter! Why is this happening to him? It’s not fair! But, as Freckle tells us, sometimes things that are expensive are worse.
Eventually, T-1000 smashes into an overpass, and his truck blows up. He walks out of the fire, still dressed as a cop (if he can generate any outfit he wants out of liquid metal, WHY DID HE NEED TO STEAL THE COP OUTFIT THE FIRST TIME?), but Arnold and John Connor have already gotten away. They are safe, for now.
Eddie Furlong as a child has the energy of an old Kristen Stewart.
Arnold tells John they have to get out of town and avoid the authorities, which is why he chose such a subtle, low-profile look. John insists on calling his foster parents first, to warn them that a psycho robot from the future is probably coming over.
John: Look. Todd and Janelle are dicks. But I’ve got to warn them. Shit. You got a quarter?
Terminator: I AM A QUARTER.
Janelle picks up the phone, but it’s actually T-1000 who has shape-shifted into Janelle! Arnold is suspicious, so he performs the Wolfie Test, a complex tactical maneuver wherein you ask a woman whom you suspect of being Robot Patrick, “What’s wrong with Wolfie?” and if she says, “Nada, amigo, he’s my good boy,” then you know she has most likely just turned her arm into a big metal knife and impaled your foster dad through the face. If she says, “Our dog is named Max, do you need to go to the brain hospital?” then you can continue to love her. Janelle fails.
Terminator, to a child: Your foster parents are dead.
As they scram outta town, Terminator explains the plot holes to John:
T-1000 can imitate anything it touches, or “samples,” which is why it now has a permanent sexy policeman costume for skin.
“But only an object of equal size.”
But what about mass and density?
Don’t worry about it.
“But why doesn’t it just become a bomb or something?”
“It can’t form complex machines. Guns and explosives have chemicals, moving parts. It doesn’t work that way.”
HUMANS HAVE CHEMICALS AND MOVING PARTS.
“It can form solid metal shapes—knives, stabbing weapons.”
Disrespectfully, what the fuck is the point of a futuristic robot
