I just watched “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (the theatrical re-release in 3D). This is my favorite action film and I am so pleased I finally saw T2 in the theater.[1]I was far too young to see this rated-R movie at the time of its initial theatrical run.
The film is a masterpiece. James Cameron’s writing is fascinating. The stunts are awesome. The acting, especially by Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong , is nuanced and believable. The editing works out so well. The famous music is great. The effects pretty much all hold up to this day, I think because most were practical.
Many scenes have subtle references to the previous film, but also other on-theme media. Did you ever notice that when the terminators are looking for John Connor at the beginning, John is playing “Missile Command”? It’s an arcade game about nuclear war (with a game-over screen that says “The End”, which is displayed in the movie).
I could probably discuss the film for twice as much time as it takes to watch and still not finish complimenting it.
But here’s something that stuck out to me on this viewing: when the police arrive to stop the main characters from attacking the research lab in the last act of the movie, the police shoot the only significant black character, Miles Dyson, as soon as they see him, right in the back, even though he is unarmed and facing away from the cops. Dyson actually works at the lab and was not listed as a suspect in the police radio instructions overheard by the audience. He dies.
A few moments later, the Terminator, a huge white man, walks towards the cops HOLDING A GUN. His character is a wanted cop-killer because he is identical to the terminator from the previous movie, and the police mention this more than once. The same cops who shot Dyson on sight give an armed cop-killer not one but TWO warnings before opening fire. He lives.
What a contrast – and the scenes are only a moment apart.
Although the movie does present most authority figures as misguided and threatening (the psychiatric hospital mistreats Sarah, the government eventually gives nukes to the machines, the T-1000 impersonates a cop, engineers create the terminators and a hostile AI), I think the juxtaposition of these two moments in the movie is not exactly intentional and I suspect that most other white people who have seen the movie never noticed that this happens. I think the police are written to summarily kill Dyson because black characters are consistently written by white writers to sacrifice their lives for white characters’ causes. Sarah Connor’s character arc hinges on sparing Dyson’s life, but once Dyson has served that purpose, the script treats him as disposable and he is never mentioned again after his death.
James Cameron’s approach to this Dyson character is….crap. It’s crap. It’s the worst thing in the film. His writing of this character seems like a tremendous hypocrisy to me because the moral of the story is that every human life matters (e.g., the Arnold Terminator kills zero people in the movie, which is a neat idea).
Anyways, Linda Hamilton literally tells the audience before the credits roll that the lesson she learned is that humanity has a chance because the characters learned the value of a human life. What a misfortune that the very film espousing this moral message conveys, through the script’s treatment of its black character, something different. “All Lives Matter” indeed.
If you have seen this movie before and never noticed this, perhaps this review will stimulate your thought.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | I was far too young to see this rated-R movie at the time of its initial theatrical run. |
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