They also used a practical effect for the scenes where the T-1000 needed to appear on screen at the same time as a character it had shapeshifted into.

They cast identical twins for the roles.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/h9rzry/in_ter...

It’s interesting to me that people thought/think this was a good effect. I saw t2 in the theaters when it was released and I thought this was the phoniest effect of the movie. It was extremely cheesy, so clearly sitting on top of the actor. They literally looked like aluminum flowers taped on to his shirt.

Holy shit. I thought the bullet splashes were CGI. I'm even more impressed that they were real practical effects, that is indeed nextfuckinglevel

My initiation was the first Alien movie on VCR. I watched it maybe in 1990 or 1991, but definitely before I reach 10 years old. It was also the first movie that I watched. The movie scared the shit out of me for months afterwards.

When looking back, all these movies (Alien, Terminator 2, and Jurassic park) were very well done. They never tried to achieve anything that was out of reach back then, and story-wise they were simply very entertaining. They didn't rely on, say, pornography (some movies clearly had too many naked men/women) to appease to their customers. The characters felt like real human-being who can hate and love strongly. They were done so well that it felt like nature. Movies nowadays couldn't do that anymore, somehow.

> But there was another aspect too and that was Linda Hamilton. This was one of the first mainstream big-budget movies that changed the way women were portrayed in film. Lots of people had posters of her wearing the sunglasses, carrying weapons, etc. It was actually a really big deal.

Yes, a strong female character in big budget movies wasn't a common theme. Aliens 2 also had a strong female protagonist played by Sigourney Weaver. The movie was also directed by James Cameron.

Terminator 2 was a huge cultural phenomenon. I remember going to the movie theater with my Dad to see it. I think it was the first R rated movie I saw in the theater, so it was something that we bonded over. Many of my friends had a similar experience.

> how big of a deal Terminator 2 was and how big movie releases can be. Like, nothing in the MCU era or the Star Wars prequels and sequels comes remotely close

I'm in that age range and I lived through T2 and Endgame and I'll have to disagree.

T2 is one of my favorite movies of all time but experiencing the Endgame premiere, as a hardcore fan, with the other hardcore fans, was something else, it had the whole teather howling during the climax.

I also get that T2 is "easier" to enjoy in the sense that you need to watch like 22 movies to really get into Endgame.

> I'm not sure that anyone under the age of 45-50 can truly appreciate just how big of a deal Terminator 2 was and how big movie releases can be.

100% agreed. Really was a magical time.

For me what "infinite CGI" has done is completely dull the wow factor of literally any movie. Decades ago the effects of T2 and others blew everyone's minds in a way people who weren't around can't comprehend. CGI was brand new and special effects really felt like you were witnessing elaborate magic tricks (since that's what they were).

Now we've seen movies do basically everything and the answer to "how'd they do that???" is just "yeah they used CGI." And CGI still doesn't feel grounded in reality like practical effects do.

> I'm not sure that anyone under the age of 45-50 can truly appreciate

Another possibility that fits these facts is that everyone is impressionable at 10-15 years old.

This is true, it was a big cultural moment, but the level to which they sold the absolute heck out of that film should not be understated. It was one of the first times I can clearly remember where a film came along at roughly the same time as all the secondary IP like games and merch, and seemingly more and more kept coming. Another film from around that time which had a similar media blitz was Alien 3, released the year after.

I think Jurassic Park was pretty similar craziness. Definitely pushing the CGI aspect, and super super popular.

I saw it in theaters, but was too young to be tuned in to the cultural significance. As someone who has watched it 6-7 times (including on laserdisc and as recently as 3 weeks ago), I can attest that it is a perfect movie. Frame for frame, everything is done with a purpose.

What’s interesting to me is how today, something like Avatar 3 has seemingly no traction or notable impact.

Perhaps it’s generational. It clearly did well in the box office, so somebody went out and saw it. But nobody I know directly, indirectly, or remotely has seen it.

It got zero chatter in any of the places that I frequent, and that includes some SF themed communities.

Big picture. Lots of tech, very expensive, Cameron, the whole kit. But whatever impact it had, clearly I was out of its blast radius.

45yo here, pretty much just testifying that this is exactly what I remember, and I was young at the time.

I still listen to Guns'n Roses "You should be mine" frequently mostly due to that movie.

Also, Robert Patrick is the best terminator.

39 there; T2 was several times in TV reruns in my childhood. Before that, well... the best SFX I could see were in BTTF and the like.

T2 and Robocop.

If that's the same 4K remaster that was released on UHD Blu-Ray then I'd skip it - that one is de-noised to hell making it significantly worse looking than the previous 1080p master used for home media.

I wonder if they'll show the director's cut?

I was in high school when the movie came out, and we were on a 6 week road trip all over the USA that summer, so I couldn't see the movie. Those days they also published books for a lot of the popular movies (sold at gas stations), so I bought and read the book. I only got to see the movie a month or 2 after release when we were back home in Baton Rouge. The book was the director's cut, and to this day I seem to remember that the version of the movie I saw also had that ending (my brain playing tricks on me). There's also the scene where they cut open his skull to put his cpu in learning mode in the gas station. I don't know why they cut that, it works so well with John asking "are we learning yet" in a next scene.

The preview they released is so smudged though, like they tried to denoize it.

That would be the 29th anniversary, because the in-universe Judgement Day was in 1997.

The T2 nuclear destruction of LA was done by Electric Image. Small software house doing 3D rendering on the Mac.

Apparently it's available to stream for free:

> Steve 'Spaz' Williams is a pioneer in computer animation. His digital dinosaurs of JURASSIC PARK transformed Hollywood in 1993, but an appetite for anarchy and reckless disregard for authority may have cost him the recognition he deserved. Directed by Scott Leberecht

Jurassic Punk (2022) 80mins

https://watch.plex.tv/movie/jurassic-punk-2022

Nextlander (former Giant Bomb NYC crew) did a fun episode on this documentary.

> I'm not really sure that contemporary CGI will really age as well.

Because today the film is subordinate to the CGI. In the early days, as is apparent in this oral history, CGI usage was deliberate and each shot received unusual scrutiny, time, and senior talent. And the technology simply wasn't used when the illusion didn't work; the imagery really had to blend with the physical footage. Today, obviously, the same considerations don't apply.

Not the disaster of a print they have for the 4k masters. It's upscaled using 2010 tech and amazing deficient, but to Cameron, I'm the problem, so it actually looks better on DVD

https://nedhardy.com/2023/02/12/terminator-2-helicopter/

It's confirmed in the DVD commentary. The stunt pilot had to do it at a high enough speed that it would "outrun" the rotor wash.

I’m pretty sure the PPV feature the back in 1992 said it was real, and if not that, one of the documentaries on the Laserdiscs or DVDs. Nearly everything, besides the T-1000 morphing was practical. They blew up the front face of a building, jumped a motorcycles (with rigging), jumped through candy glass, and much more.

I saw claims for that in multiple sources. I think they initially wanted to do CG but it was too hard back then so the pilot did it anyway.

James Cameron claims it’s real. But I think that doesn’t exclude filming slow and speeding up later.

Hey, just what you see, pal.

Is that not what both humans and terminators are firing “lasers” in the future war scenes in both T1 and T2?

Also I think we are pretty close to the year 2027 which was supposed to be the year that humans defeat Skynet.

Time flies.

It's not from the VFX team but someone wrote a clone of the ATM hacking program

https://bert.org/2021/01/04/t2-pin-cracking/

I thought that's an ZX-81 Spectrum but I watched it again and found out that it was not!

Edit: Watched again and it is an ATARI laptop because the brand showed up in a few frames. This is probably the one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio

A screenshot I just made: https://imgur.com/6I34YyN