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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2306 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026

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What strikes me looking back at the whole series, actually, is how much every film except Terminator 2 feels profoundly of its time. The Terminator is a 1980s action horror. I watch it and I am back there in the 80s. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is definitely a film of the 2000s, with a lot of early CG effects, trotting out a film star who is just starting to look too old for this, and a lot of military-industrial complex, War-on-Terror paranoia. I have not seen any of the films past 3 (I hear I'm not missing much), but I'd be shocked if anybody remembers Genisys or Dark Fate as anything other than interchangeable, forgettable action films.

Terminator 2, by contrast, feels fresh and timeless every time. Maybe it's because it was one of those seminal films that created the modern action film? It marks the end of the genre I think of as 80s action, creates the 'modern', 90s-and-onwards genre, and because we've spend the last thirty years or so in cultural stagnation, that still feels new?

Maybe it's just that Terminator 2 is really good, but I'm not sure that's it - if nothing else, I like the first film more! But notwithstanding, I think Terminator 2 transcends its origin in a way that The Terminator does not.

It marks the end of the genre I think of as 80s action, creates the 'modern', 90s-and-onwards genre

Yeah, Terminator 2 was the template until The Matrix came out.

I feel like any Terminator 2 influences weren't nearly as overt as The Matrix and everyone and their cousin trying to ape bullet time or something similar.

Agreed. With the exception of some questionable soundtrack choices and John's totally radical slang, Terminator 2 feels remarkably timeless.

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