Let’s start with the movie poster.
It’s simple. It’s clean. It kicks ass.
We’ve got Arnold in his classic Terminator leather jacket sitting on a motorcycle holding a shotgun.
That’s it. No frills. No bullshit.
And it works.
I was twelve when T2 came out and I distinctly remember seeing that poster in theaters in the months leading up to its release and it was impossibly alluring to pre-teen eyes for many reasons, the most important of which was the fact that I was a little kid when the first Terminator came out so I never saw it in the theater.
The arrival of T2 (and my being old enough to see it) was a red-letter day in my movie watching life. Not only was I going to see T2, but the ability (see: parental permission) to rent the first Terminator, and by default, most other R-rated movies, marked a true step towards cinematic viewing adulthood. At this time, Blockbuster was in its full glory and hitting age 12, which was nudging up against 13, opened up a portal into a world of movies in the ‘action’ and ‘comedy’ aisles I’d dreamed about watching for years.
According to a slew of older kids in the neighborhood, friends’ older brothers, older cousins and even my own dad always talking about how amazing The Terminator was, I had built it up as such a crucial movie for “cool, grown-up dudes” to see that I half-expected hair to start growing on my chest as soon as the opening credits rolled.
Thus, if watching the first Terminator was the equivalent of getting my movie viewing driver’s license, T2 was going to be my first trip on the autobahn, speeding 200mph down the road with all the other bearded manly men.
Adding to the sense of urgency was the mind-bending trailer for T2 that fueled the fire of my anticipation by including critical callbacks to the first movie (security cam shots of Arnold), instantly memorable catch phrases (Come with me if you want to live) and, the coup de grace, the special effects of Melty Man, AKA, the police man/Terminator, AKA, the T-1000, AKA, the most important special effects-laden character in modern movie history.
I can’t overstate what it was like to watch the T-1000 go from being a man to mercury and then back to being a man wielding metal rods as weapons on screen for the first time. It was like watching the future… And the trailer actually waited about 2/3 of the way through to reveal the effects. Genius.
And if that wasn’t enough…
If my 12-year-old brain wasn’t already jacked up to full capacity…
James Cameron went ahead and had the number one band that your parents didn’t want you listening to in 1991 (Guns N’ Roses) write a loud, brash, pump-you-up original song for the movie in You Could Be Mine.
When you add it all up, you’ve got the perfect storm of rebellion, radness (perfect 90s word) and the first taste of outright cinematic glory and adulthood for me and millions of other film boys itching to become movie men.
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