Jubilee of the T2

On July 1, 1991, the premiere of James Cameron's fantastic blockbuster "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", the sequel to the 1984 film "The Terminator", took place in Los Angeles.

The idea to shoot a sequel to "The Terminator" appeared almost immediately after the release of the first part of the film in 1984. Moreover, this idea was immediately supported by calculations of the budget for the future sequel, the estimated size of which was $ 12 million, i.e., twice as much as the budget of the original film.

However, some legal issues related to copyright kept it from getting started on the sequel for several years. It was only when the Hemdale Film Corporation, which owned 50% of the franchise rights, found itself in a difficult financial situation in 1990 and agreed to cede its rights to Carolco Pictures for $ 5 million and thereby open the way for the filming of the sequel, did the practical work on the film begin.

Curiously, work on the film began with the fact that in the summer of 1990, when there was not even a script for the future film as such, it was announced that "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" would be released next summer. The announcement was made in the form of a $ 500,000 teaser shot by Stan Winston. All footage was original and never used in any of the films. It showed the Terminator assembly line, describing the sequence of creating cyborg tissues. After that, Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on the screen and uttered his famous catch phrase: "I'll be back."

Stan Winston explained in an interview that with this teaser "James Cameron wanted to show that all Terminators look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and also to justify the return of Schwarzenegger after he was killed in the first film."

In 1990, a budget of $ 75 million was initially allocated for the filming of the sequel, that is, already 6 times more than it was planned in 1984. However, over the course of filming, the budget rose to $ 102 million, which caused extreme concern for Carolco Pictures. However, all production costs of the film were reimbursed even before the release of the film, thanks to a smart advertising campaign including the aforementioned teaser, as the film was sold in advance in most countries of the world. And after the release of the film on the screens, the film collected at the box office an amount five times higher than the budget.

In 1992, James Cameron's film "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" received 6 Academy Award nominations and won 4 of them. However, all these nominations were of a purely technical nature, mainly related to visual effects. In the same 1992, the film received 3 nominations for the British BAFTA award, won 2 of them, but again all of these nominations were technical. Only the Japanese Film Academy nominated James Cameron's film for Best Foreign Film. But in this nomination "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" lost to Kevin Costner's film "Dances with Wolves." The company of "losers" for Cameron's film was formed by the film "Awakening" by Penny Marshall, "The Silence of the Lambs" by Jonathan Demme and "Nikita" by Luc Besson.

As for the reviews of the film from professional film critics, most of them were of a benevolent nature, but the main subject of praise was all the same visual effects. For example, one of the most authoritative Russian film critics - Sergey Kudryavtsev - noted in his review: "A successful and clever continuation of the fantastic action movie "Terminator", implemented by the same director James Cameron.... It was the achievements in the field of special effects that allowed the creators of the next “Terminator” to surprise the whole world with the transformations of screen robots capable of a fluid transformation that is visible even to the ordinary eye. Also, an excitingly staged scene of a chase on the highway can not but cause admiration."

And therefore, the ratings of the most authoritative professional film critics were quite high, but not the maximum. For example, the same Sergey Kudryavtsev gave the film 8.5 points out of 10, Roger Ebert - 3.5 stars out of 4, James Berardinelli-3.5 stars out of 4, Mark Savlov - 3 stars out of 5 maximum, etc., etc. The most adequate, in my opinion, is the assessment of the film given by Mark Savlov: "There's a fairly well-drawn moral message in T2 that was more or less absent in the first film. When ten-year-old Connor tells Schwarzenegger that it's wrong to go around killing people left and right, the Austrian cyborg has no choice but to obey and from there on in, he only aims for the kneecaps. It's an ambitious film that sometimes gets ahead of itself action-wise, but Cameron is a relentlessly good action-adventure auteur who manages to pull it off once again, making what will doubtless be the single largest film of the summer."

But the highest rating of the film was given by the mass audience. 30 years ago, this high estimate was manifested in the high box office of the picture, which amounted to $ 517 million, or $ 1.05 billion in 2021. 40% of this amount was collected in the United States, 60% - outside the States. The modern moviegoer expressed his attitude to the film in the form of ratings on the websites IMDB and Kinopoisk. 79% of users of these sites gave the film ratings from 8 to 10. And 27% of users rated the film with the highest score - "ten".

With that said, the rating of James Cameron's film "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" according to FilmGourmand was 8,522, which allowed it to take the 318th place in the Golden Thousand.

And one more important detail. The film shows the date of the nuclear collapse - "Judgment Day" - on August 29, 1997. The date is not accidental: on August 29, but in 1949, the Soviet Union produced the first explosion of an atomic bomb.