BUT OH MY GOD, WAIT: Wouldn’t the Terminator and T-1000 both disappear once you destroyed the lab?????????????????????????????????????????????? How do they exist if Skynet was never developed???????? Please, I’m crying.
One big draw of Terminator 2 was that, in the ’90s, it was really exciting to hear a kid say, “Shit.”
T-1000 chases them to a steel mill, and Arnold crashes a liquid nitrogen truck into him. The liquid nitrogen briefly freezes T-1000 solid, so Arnold says, “Hasta la vista, baby,” which is precious because he learned it from his dad-son-boss and now he’s all grown up, and then he shoots T-1000 with a gun and explodes him into little pieces.
A lot of people don’t know this, but making hasta la vista, baby his catchphrase was huge for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political career. Hasta la vista got him the Latino vote, and baby got him the baby vote! He won the governorship in that moment.4
Arnold and John stand around feeling good about themselves for a minute, but then the steel mill’s river of hot lava thaws out the T-1000 and he starts to re-form. Dude, that’s why you gotta get the dustpan! Sweep that shit up! Now T-1000 is POed. If there’s one thing he hates, it’s being frozen and then blasted into little pieces and then thawed by lava.
T-800 and T-1000 have an epic battle all over the steel mill. At one point, T-1000 takes Sarah hostage and tries to get her to call out to John because apparently he only knows two impressions: Janelle and the mental hospital security guard!? Eventually, T-1000 thinks he has squished Arnold to death at last, but then Arnold’s alternative power activates and he blasts T-1000 into the lava for good.
John can’t wait to go home and start a life with his mom and new robot dad, but Arnold is like, “No. Dere is one more chip.” Sarah and John will have to terminate T-800 or else scientists could still use his brain to create Skynet. (Presumably, also Sarah will have to go to prison now for her many murders? Does John have to go back to being a foster kid? WTF?)
As Sarah lowers Terminator into the lava because he cannot “self-terminate” and she read a lot of books about how to operate smelting equipment in the mental hospital, I guess, he raises his arm above his head, and just before his hand sinks below the surface………he gives John a thumbs-up!!!!!! And I can’t BELIEVE NONE OF YOU EVER TOLD ME ABOUT THAT, SIMULTANEOUSLY THE WORST AND BEST MOMENT IN ALL OF MOVIES, THE CORNIEST AND THE TENDEREST, UNBEARABLY DORKY YET INTOXICATINGLY ENTERTAINING, A COMMITMENT TO PURE ENTERTAINMENT THAT I WOULD LIKE TO INJECT INTO MY VEINS TO COUNTERACT THE UTTER VACUUM OF CARE IN WHICH WE ARE ALL GASPING OUR LAST BREATHS, THE PLAGUE OF DISINGENUOUSLY IRONIC CRUELTY AND FASCIST INDIVIDUALISM THAT INFESTS THE DECAYING RUIN OF TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY AMERICA, THE TRUE RISE OF THE MACHINES (US). I DO NOT KNOW WHY OR HOW THIS ROBOT LOVES THIS TERRIBLE LITTLE BOY, BUT IT KINDLES IN ME A HOPE THAT ONE DAY WE MAY LOVE ONE ANOTHER AND OURSELVES.
I’m getting a dog.
RATING: 7/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
Footnotes
1 It’s possible this line of questioning reveals a lack of faith, on my part, in the creative imagination. Just as Pollux Troy gave his mega-bomb “Sinclaire” the persona of a cartoon woman with outrageous sky-high naturals, perhaps the creator of the T-800 too wanted to imbue his metal son with something personal, a signature of sorts, the accent of a beloved grandfather, maybe, or the dick of another beloved grandfather. Not everything has to have utility, Lindy!!!!! Some things are just art!
2 Also, I know that T-1000 is technically very skilled at mimicking the exact body and voice of a person, but here’s a harsh toke: Terminators have bad personalities and are obvious robots no matter how much their perm looks like your mom’s! Sorry!!!
3 Why do you keep shooting him? That just gives him more metal for finger knife!
4 It was way more successful than his previous catchphrase, “Auf wiedersehen, kinderbjorn!” Unrelated: I do not speak German.
Manual for Shitheads
Few things have shaped my existence more profoundly than the realization, courtesy of the 1994 film Reality Bites, that there are two kinds of women—Janeane Garofalos and Winona Ryders—and that I would never, ever be a Winona, the only kind that really matters. I wrote about this in my last book, The Witches Are Coming. That line of thinking fucked me up until I was about twenty-seven.
Rewatching Reality Bites, I nearly cried when it dawned on me: I can’t believe I ever thought I’d rather be Lelaina than Vickie. Not that I don’t still love (/hate) Lelaina the impossible saucer-eyed night-elf, but Vickie’s the only non-dickwad in this entire dang movie! I know you’re not really supposed to identify with these characters (I hope you’re not really supposed to identify with these characters) because Reality Bites is a commentary on ’90s slackerism or whatever, but I identify with funny, second-fiddle, lost-at-sea Vickie, and I’m pretty sure those teen feelings have had a tangible effect on how I turned out as an adult. I be’d the Vickie I wanted to see in the world. And you’re not going to trick me into wanting to be Lelaina by dangling that Ethan Hawke–shaped carrot in my face because Troy is a petroleum-jelly-dipped turd and I make plenty of those already with my butt.
Anyway, Vickie aside, everyone else in this movie is the fucking worst, and the worst thing about them is the stuff they say. (Oh, my bad, Sammy. You’re fine too.) But oh my GOD, as a ’90s teen, did I ever want to sit on a fourth-hand couch in a smoke-choked apartment and have these conversations and then eventually get “picked” by an emotionally abusive band guy!!! I had never come across any better thing to want. So, in honor of my long-deceased naivete, let’s take a look back at all
