Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

The first two Terminator movies were a bit of a headache because of the bootstrap paradoxes.  If The Terminator hadn’t been sent back to kill Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese never would have been sent back to protect her only to become John Connor’s father.  Thus, the correct way to get rid of John Connor before he was born was to not try to kill him before he was born.

When this movie opens, Sarah is in a mental ward and John is in foster care.  He’s grown up thinking that she’s a nut job, which is a justifiable point of view.  She’s telling everyone that a machine from the future came back to kill her before her son was born.  This hasn’t stopped the apocalypse, which she needs to help John prepare for.  This would look like maybe the absolute worst Cassandra complex ever.  Except that it’s true.

Skynet has sent back an even better Terminator, the T-1000, to terminate John as a child.  Also returning from the future is a reprogrammed T-800.  This time, the original Terminator is going to protect John rather than kill him.  The same dynamic exists with a superior hunter and an inferior protector, but the same imperative exists: John Connor must live to defeat the machines.

The movie is done well enough that you can enjoy it without asking too many questions.  I originally wondered why the T-1000 didn’t, say, overload a power plant and destroy the whole city.  That would have been too easy.  Plus, the T-1000 has to be sure.  This means actually finding John Connor.  Still, you’d think that a computer system designed for defense could make a machine that could do better, or maybe even send back several terminators to work in concert.

In this case, I understand why some ideas weren’t used.  Sure, Skynet could have killed Sarah Connor while she was pregnant or killed John Connor as a baby, but this is something audiences wouldn’t react well to.  Sending something back in time is probably difficult, so sending an army back probably isn’t a viable option.  There isn’t a really great, obvious idea that I can think of.

We do get two more bootstrap paradoxes.  First, it seems likely that the arrival of the T-1000 either allowed Sarah Connor to get out of the hospital, or at least got her out early.  This allowed her to further train John Connor, who doesn’t appear to be battle ready just yet.  (Had she stayed in the hospital, John may not have done as well against the machines.)  We also find out that the arrival of the T-800 in the original movie gave Cyberdyne the idea for the terminators’ hardware, thus allowing for the creation of Skynet.  So, where did Skynet come from?

The movie could have been a simple action movie about two machines fighting over the future of the planet.  Instead, we get a commentary on the destructive nature of humanity.  Throughout all of the Terminator movies, the downfall of human civilization is inevitable.  We tend to fight one another.  This is what leads to the creation of Skynet in the first place.

IMDb page

American History X (1998)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.


What makes a person look at an entire group of people and decide that those people are inferior simply because they belong to a different group? Ed Norton plays Derek Vinyard, a white man who believes that all other races are inferior. When the movie starts, he’s getting out of jail after serving half of a six-year sentence. He murdered three black men when they attempted to steal his car.

Derek is, or at least was, the poster boy for skinheads in his area. Cameron Alexander runs the local group, but uses Derek as his front man to recruit and organize everyone. Derek is good at it. He has that personality that people seem to want to follow.

Then, three black men try to steal his car. Derek kills all three and is arrested moments later. It’s because of this that Derek comes to realize the errors of his ways. When he sees his younger brother, Danny (played by Edward Furlong), following in his footsteps, Derek knows that he has to do something.

While I highly recommend this movie, I can’t say that it’s for everyone. There are a few scenes that are extremely disturbing, which I’ll go into detail about now. If you don’t want to know what those disturbing details are, here’s your warning. One scene involves a prison rape. Another shows Derek killing a man by stepping on his head. While the scenes don’t necessarily show all of the details, there’s no doubt as to what’s going on.

Not everyone will be able to handle this. Had this movie come out a few years prior to its actual release, I think that the full impact of the message would have been lost on me. I don’t think that I would have been able to get past the violence in the movie and the extreme hate that Derek has.

The movie takes a look not necessarily at why racism is wrong, but where Derek went wrong and where Danny is going wrong. There are many scenes, done in black and white, showing everything that led up to Derek’s release from prison and his change. Eventually, Derek has to come to terms with his beliefs and make a choice.

Danny knows the exact moment when Derek started to buy into racism. It’s hard for Danny to change his attitudes, but he eventually also comes to terms with his own attitudes and begins to really look at what’s going on. Take a look at all of the posters and written propaganda that Danny and Derek have in their rooms. They’ve literally surrounded themselves with hate.

This is a five-star movie. I would say that everyone should watch this movie at some point. (Whether or not everyone will watch it or will like it is another story.) You have to watch it with an open mind.

IMDb page