T2 Complexity

"T2 features thrilling action sequences and eye-popping visual effects, but what takes this sci-fi/ action landmark to the next level is the depth of the human (and cyborg) characters."

Not only does it stay true to the spirit of the original, it expands upon its themes, turns characters on their heads and puts them in startlingly inventive perils.

I think T2 was better than the first. There's an art to sequels. You have to make audiences comfortable while playing against that. It's hard to do

James Cameron doesn't allow himself to be seduced by visual effects no matter how sexy. For Cameron, story and characters are enhanced by effects wizardry, not manipulated or controlled by it. effects remain merely a means to an end signposts to a destination his heart has already discovered. Terminator 2 was a creative triumph. It served as the vehicle for an incredible FX breakthrough and became one of the highest grossing films ever, cementing Cameron's reputation as a master storyteller and visionary effects filmmaker (Cinescape Magazine 1996).

For Cameron, Terminator 2 was only a matter of time: It was inevitable that the terminator sequel will get made and I wanted to be at the helm, I wanted to make sure it didn’t kind of drift off the concept of what it should be about.

Fantastic Films Magazine 1985: With Terminator 2 already in pre-production stages, there seems to have been more truth to his words than he realized when Schwarzenegger intoned to the uncooperative desk cop "Ill Be Back

"We've got a story worked out but it hasn't gone beyond the talk stage" - James Cameron on Terminator 2 in English Magazine 1985

William Wisher: Jim pulled out this old yellow sheet of paper from a notebook and handed it to me without saying anything. there was one sentence scribbled on the dog eared page. It read: Young John Connor and the terminator that comes back to befriend him. (The Making of T2, 1991)

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Although then in 1984 he paid a lot of attention to the acting he pays much more attention to the acting now. The way he goes about directing actors, how much time he spends with rehearsals, how much time he spends with perfectioning the moves and gestures. He wants to do basically everything because he has such a clear vision of what he wants to see (...)He worked harder on the different emotions, talked us through it more, insisted on rehearsing.

Stan Winston: Sequel must be true to the first film but yet it has to be more than a first film. We have to get them what they had in the first and we have to give them something new and fresh and I think that’s what we've done in Terminator 2. Its new and that’s what's necessary. We can't have a sequel and just have it more of the same.

James Cameron: (Same) themes twist and turn through the two Terminator films. The can be seen in the love between Sarah and Reese which is a candle burning in the darkness of a doomed world, and then in her love for the product of that union, John, the reluctant savior of humanity who teaches the value of life to an unfeeling machine. The redemption of the Terminator himself, at the end of the second film, closes the cycle as the machine becomes human, learning the pain and joy, and thus the meaning, of life....even as he must lose his.

HIGHLIGHTS

The following highlights have been pointed out by James Cameron, T2's creative consultant Van Ling, William Wisher, Joseph Nemec III and other filmmakers involved in making the movie. None of it is author's interpretation. ALL of the following are taken from various magazine & video interviews, as well as commentaries and articles.

1. Just like he did in Aliens, James Cameron took care of the expected right away so he wouldn't have to deal with it later and can go on with the story. He showed the audiences what they expected to see, the iconic endoskeleton, right in the opening scene. The opening also represents the artistic consistency within the story. Just like the first movie, it opens with the message and the battle scenes and then proceeds to opening credits. More about the artistic story rhyming and consistency later on.

2. John Connor is shown as a haggard, tired and scarred man. A major preoccupation of the Terminator saga is the interplay between human and machine. But particularly in T2 this theme is paramount. In the shots of John Connor in the future war, John is mimicking the characteristic T-800 scanning function in which the eyes shift side-to-side slightly in advance of the head's rotation. Already that early in the movie the great theme is introduced, which will be expanded on so much culminating in the thumbs up: machines becoming more human and humans more machine. The image of stoic Connor creates an incredible contrast to the original Coda ending in which we see Connor who didn't get through the war and didn't have to carry the burden - Connor who becomes a senator and starts a family. Such closure creates a great poetic bookend to the story, beginning and ending with the same setting and character, yet in such different context.

3. The movie is designed in such way that the audience doesn't know which of the time travelers is the good guy. The way the movie is shot and the story and angles constructed is to make them think that T-800 is the antagonist and T-1000 a human character. T-1000 is never shown to kill the cop or copy his clothes and seems very genuine when talking to John Connor's foster parents, while the T-800 is shown to go through the bar like a tank, crushing hands, breaking arms and seriously injuring people.

Film Review Magazine 2002: Re-imagining the Terminator as a father figure and protector to errant teen John Connor was one of the three inspirational decisions that marks this out as one of the finest sci-fi sequels ever made.

T2 conquered one of the biggest challenges in storytelling ever - to completely spin the audience's emotions on the character and turn the most ruthless killer into a sympathetic father figure.

James Cameron ( ugo.com 2009): The thing we did with the second film is that we reinvented the first film completely; spun it on its ass and made the Terminator the good guy, and came up with a whole new concept for a villain, it felt fresh

James Cameron (Globalnet): On T2, I wondered if I could get the audience to an emotional place where they would cry for the Terminator. That was my goal: Could I take world's coldest motherfucker and turn you around in a two-hour time period to where you actually felt sorry for him? Forget about all the hoo-ha with the liquid metal guy: that was fun, but getting the audience to cry for the Terminator was the big cinematic challenge. That's the reason I made the movie

James Cameron (SydField.com interview): I absolutely refused to do another film where Arnold Schwarzenegger kicks in the door and shoots everybody in sight and then walks away. I thought there must be a way to deflect this image of the bad guy as hero, and use what's great about the character. I didn't know exactly what to do, but I thought the only way to deal with it would be to address the moral issues head-on. The key was the kid. Because it's never really explained why John Connor has such a strong moral fiber. For me, John was pushed by the situation when he sees The Terminator almost shoot the guy in the parking lot. I think everybody invents their own moral code for themselves, and it usually happens in your teens based on what you've been taught, what you've seen in the world, what you've read, and your own inherent makeup.
So, I started asking myself what is it that makes us human? Part of what makes us human is our moral code. But what is it that distinguishes us from a hypothetical machine that looks and acts like a

human being, but is not? John Connor intuitively knows what's right but can't articulate it. John says, 'You can't go around killing people,' and The Terminator says, 'Why not?' And the kid can't answer the question. He gets into a kind of ethical, philosophical question that could go on and on. But all he says is, 'You just can't.'

I thought the best way to deal with this was not be coy about it and hope it slides by, but to tackle it head-on and make this a story about why you can't kill people.

Essentially, you've got a character associated with being the quintessential killing machine; that is his purpose in life. Devoid of any emotion, remorse, or any kind of human social code, he suddenly finds himself in the strangest dilemma of his career. He can't kill anybody, and he doesn't know why. He's got to figure it out. He's got to, because he's half human. And he figures it out at the end. The Tin Man gets his heart.

I thought it would be a real coup if we could get people to cry for a machine. If we could get people to cry for Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a robot, that would be terrific. That was the fun of the whole thing. It wasn't all the chases and special effects and all that stuff

(John) knows, from his future experience, that killing is bad for you. Because the Terminator was sent from the future by the leader John, to protect the child John, so the boy's character has to be woven with a strong moral fiber. The fact that the Terminator was ordered not to kill people becomes a major point of the story.

Spike TV: Cameron's scripting of Arnold as good guy Terminator was such a great touch and his relationship with a young John Conner gave the movie a depth that few action/science fiction films can compete with.

Just when the audiences have thought that they've seen it all, here comes the original idea never seen before. While sci-fi failed to invent a new synthetic villain that wouldn't be just a rehash of the first Terminator character, James Cameron brought us a shape changing, liquid killer. But even such idea was based on reality and real physics as much as possible. James Cameron is known for his extremely realistic portrayal of the sci-fi characters and elements. Just like he does with all of his creations, James Cameron carefully thought up the technical data and details for the Terminators to inject as much plausible reality into them as possible. He was recently described as someone who doesn't create science-fiction, but science facts.

James Cameron: The more fantastic the subject the more realistic the situation needs to be for it to work (The Making of T2, 1991)

So how do I inject the fantastic element into a contemporary story? I didn't want to make a fantasy, like a magic mirror communication with another dimension. I wanted it to be gritty realistic, kind of hardware based, true science fiction, as opposed to fantasy science fiction.

But there had to be limits about his shape-changing. Could it turn into a Coca-Cola machine? No, because it can't change its mass. It certainly can't change its weight; weight and mass are two

physical constants. But it can become things. It could not turn into a small dog because it was too big, there was too much mass, too much material. It could mimic weapons, but it couldn't mimic a weapon that would actually fire. A gun has moving parts, and there's gunpowder inside a brass shell, so it can't make itself into that

I started thinking about the film in two stages. In the first stage the future sends back a mechanical guy, essentially what The Terminator became, and the good guys send back their warrior. In the end, the mechanical guy is destroyed. But up there in the future, somewhere, they say, well, wait a minute, that didn't work; what else do we have? And the answer is something terrible, something even they're afraid of. Something they've created that they keep locked up, hidden away in a box, something they're terrified to unleash because even they don't know what the consequences will be - they being the machines, now in charge of the future.

And that thing in the box becomes a total wild card; it could go anywhere, do anything; it's a polymorphic metal robot that is nothing more than a kind of blob. I saw it as this mercury blob that could form into anything. It's powers were almost unlimited, and even in the future, they couldn't control it.

That scared me. Just sitting there writing the story scared me. (Syd Field interview)

Stan Winston: People think of what great special effects, but in fact, that T-1000 has become a memorable character in motion picture history (and an icon replicated and referenced in many movies, TV shows, cartoons and commercials)

DVD Review Magazine 2001: It's still one of the most exciting and eye popping action movies ever, and the morphing T-1000 is still unmatched as the most imaginative bad guy ever. But the blistering set pieces are backed up with a very human story

4. The story and characters are carefully constructed. Tim, John's friend, was created solely to explain the story to the audience and find out the whereabouts of Sarah and John's attitude towards her and her stories. This way the audience gets filled in in many areas without even realizing that they're being fed. Another great story element is John's character. He appears to be a complete opposite of what the audience would expect, continuing the story's artistic consistency in representing the characters in a least expected way. Just like in the first movie when Sarah, the 'mother of the future', is a clumsy waitress.

5. The scene at Voights' house showcases a great but tough one continuing shot. The scene had to be designed with perfect timing - note that John's bike is getting ready to leave just as Todd is exiting the house

6. Characters in dream sequences serve several purposes and in this case it's to present the inner monologue to the audience and show Sarah's state of mind and hidden vulnerability.

Sarah's story gets even more heartbreaking from the very first time we hear about her from John. Right away we find out that the poor woman who lost everyone and everything and who lived through so much got to suffer even more, physically and mentally. Not only is she closed in mental hospital, ridiculed and physically abused and treated like an animal, but even her own son despises her and she is all alone in every possible way.

James Cameron: From a writing standpoint, the things that interested me the most were the characters. Sarah Connor was really interesting, especially in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In the time difference between Terminator (made in 1984), and T2, I had to backfill those intervening nine years. I had to find efficient ways of dramatically evoking what had happened to her. The tricky part was having it all make sense to a member of the audience who didn't remember or hadn't seen the first Terminator. Basically, I had a character popping onto the screen in a certain way, and therefore had to create a backstory for that character. I told myself I had to write the script just like there had never been a first film. The sequel had to be a story about someone who encountered something nobody else believes, like the opening scene of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where Kevin McCarthy swears he's seen something shocking, and nobody believes him; then he starts telling the story.

The first time we meet Sarah in Terminator 2, she's locked up in a mental institution, and that raises the real question - is she really crazy? The advantage of doing a sequel is that you can play games you can't play in the original. For example, I know the audience knows that The Terminator is real. So they're not going to think she's crazy. But the question still remains: Is she crazy? Has the past ordeal made her lose touch with reality?

What I found so interesting is that a lot of people made the mistake of thinking I was presenting Sarah Connor as a role model for women. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I wanted people to invest in her emotionally, to feel sorry for her, because she had been through such hell. Sarah's not really a hero. She's an ordinary person who's been put under extreme pressure, and that makes her warped and twisted, but at the same time strengthened, in a sad kind of way. (SydField.com interview)

Total Film Magazine 2000: For T2: Judgment Day, Cameron used the same formula : heroine remade by a doomed hero whose death frees her to follow her own destiny. In the first film, reese Reese models Sarah into a warrior and paradoxically fathers the man who'd sent him on his mission. In Titanic, Jack gives Rose the strength to break free of her class depression. In T2, Sarah regains her soul by learning humanity from, of all things, a a killing machine

Film Review Magazine 2002: Wearing his screenwriter hat, Cameron reasoned that living with the knowledge of Earth's future nuclear annihilation would have had a devastating effect on Sarah Connor's mind. In other words, she turned from a scared, vulnerable waitress into a tough, aggressive killer with a muscular physique to match. It's a startling physical transformation that adds a whole other level of psychological credibility to Sarah's character and makes this a convincing continuation of the terminator saga

And then there's the issue of Sarah loosing her morals while T-800 is learning them.

James Cameron: We wanted (T-800) to change, and we wanted Sarah to change; she starts out one way, becomes fixated on that, ends up becoming more of a machine that he does. We wanted the two of them to change characters as the film went on: she becomes the Terminator while he becomes a human being. And it's partly through the Terminator's transformation that she understands what humanity really is.

Mali Finn, Emmy winning T2 casting director: Jim Cameron movie (T2) does have all of those special effects but still is a character driven piece and has wonderful characters. We've got to have good actors as they're playing against all the special effects. That’s what distinguishes his action movies from other people’s action movies

Syd Field: Not only were the special effects extraordinary, but the thoughts and ideas behind the film were marvelous

Mario Kassar: He's a great storyteller who can always take a plot to much higher levels.

As the movie progresses, Sarah becomes the Terminator. The sunglasses and use of red dot for targeting accent the transition visually.

7. The tape that Sarah and Dr. Silberman watch during the hearing scene mirrors the tape of Reese that Sarah was watching in the first movie, freeze framing on Sarah in the exact same position, situation and emotional outburst as Reese's. It symbolizes and shows that Sarah has become what Reese was - a dedicated tough fighter. Note the subtle comic relief when Sarah is getting sedated and her angry face is freeze framed on the monitor. Also, the scenes with Silberman give more expositions to the story in a natural and organic way

8. Taking lessons from his favorite filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, James Cameron puts subliminal meaning even to the set and the surroundings. Cyberdyne Systems interiors were designed and envisioned as it had been machined out of a block of aluminum, reflecting the cold technological motif of what Cyberdyne was to become. The sets are very cold with reflective, sleek surfaces and busy space. The sleek, precise and machine looking architectural envelope mirrors the inner guts of a robot and the cold terror and lack of emotion that the fruits of this company will bring upon the world. It was a nightmare to shoot and light because of the reflective surfaces, but it didn't matter - the story cannot be compromised.

9. Example of a great technique of using editing and camera work to reflect the mood of the scene: static shots with slow close-ups focusing on the character and the eyes vs. shaky handheld camera when the action starts and the pacing shifts. Also, note the use of silence - a device that James Cameron is known to use in all of his movies often contrasting it with heavy, busy sounds that it either proceed or succeed it.

10. The scene is very interesting for several reasons, from both filmmaking and story point of view. It challenges the suspense of disbelief within the body of the story, answering the challenging questions the audience might have for the T-1000 character and is also setting up the future scenes. We're also introduced to one of many themes of the movie

Van Ling: One of the central themes of the movie; Technology itself is amoral and it is how it gets used that gives it a morality. Terminator is essentially a gun, who can be either used to destroy or to protect.

We also see the first signs of leadership and tactical decision-making from John Connor. Connor decides that it's better to take a chance on T-800 and take responsibility for it, which is a hard decision since he was brought up to hate and despise it for all his life. Siskel and Ebert pointed out that John is ironically the father figure for both the T-800 and Sarah

LIGHTNING: Here's one of many examples of a breath taking lighting from Adam Greenberg, who received nominations for Oscar , American Society of Cinematographers for Outstanding Achievement and British Society of Cinematographers awards for his work on T2. In this scene cold lighting and low camera angles show the T-800 as a piece of technology, with eyes hidden behind sunglasses to reinforce the sense of inhumanity.

The sunglasses are an important story device in The Terminator and T2. In the first movie they meant to dehumanize T-800 more and more as the movie progresses and as he takes on more damage, becoming less and less human-like in appearance. In T2, the meaning of the sunglasses has an even deeper meaning and message. The sunglasses symbolizes his gradual transformation - he wears the sunglasses in the beginning when he is nothing more than a killer with a blank mind and looses them when he's starting his journey to become more human. T-800 looses glasses to reinforce beginning of humanization of the character from the hospital scene to the end of the film.

11. LIGHTING: Even the water on the streets was put there on purpose. Wetting the streets is a time-honored part of lighting night scenes as it provides interesting reflecting lights.

12. LIGHTING: Adam Greenberg lights the spare white walls by using a combination of heavy outside backlighting or side lighting with a good balance of ambient light to fill in the shadows, while still keeping the moody nighttime feel.

Another example of outstanding camera work evident during the hospital chase: It's important in an action sequence to shoot and cut the scenes so that the audience always understands what's going on. This means making the layout of the immediate set very clear and maintaining the "axis" or "stage line" of the scene from shot to shot. This means staying consistent with the left-to-right orientation of the scene. For instance, Sarah is running left to right, then her pursuers stay screen-left of her, regardless of camera angle. The rule of the thumb is that you change the axes if you either have the character switch direction within the shot of if you cut away to a neutral shot. Sticking to those lines will generally make the scenes flow more smoothly and play more clearly.

13. This is a pivotal scene for John and Sarah since it defines their dysfunctional family relationship. Sarah sacrificed herself and her life for the cause and the war but she lost very important values and lost herself as a mother. She isn't the mother for him.

14. This scene shows even more of John's leadership skills. He is the one taking charge, he is the one thinking clearly and unstained by emotions even despite the recent events, thinking logically and analyzing their situation, position and assets. He is also smart enough to know how to psychologically handle and stop his mother, presenting his skills in handling people and his psychological knowledge.

LIGHTING: Note the specific use of lighting to illuminate the character - in this instance Sarah's intense mental state. Adam Greenberg uses lighting to create the mood of the environment but also to reinforce the performances.

15. This scene covered three narrative issues simultaneously: resonance, setup and motif. It had resonance by having T-800 perform the same action as in the first film but in a different context. The scene also set up the gag of finding the keys in the visor later on. The choice of station wagon reinforces the recurring motif of the trio as a strange kind of family. Good storytellers think about these things and try to incorporate them even in action films about robots from the future.

16. Another theme of the movie is introduced: it's all about the decisions you make - it's less about running away and more about fighting back and taking actions and challenges. Sarah is thinking beyond simply running or treating the impending apocalypse as inevitable. Knowing that a straight assault on the company is a futile effort she is looking for more effective offense.

17. Rather than just covering the plot points, Sarah's narration is more contemplative of the overall themes of the film. It also echoes the way idea in the first movie when Sarah was recording the tapes which is another narrative tie to the first movie, unifying both stories. The scene also shows that desert mercenaries lead a more normal life than Sarah. The beautiful light from the sunset reinforces the moment

18. Clever use of editing and storytelling to echo/mirror the current events: the scene of John and T-800 racing in their Bronco truck is instantly cuts to little Danny's toy truck racing on the carpet to the same destination - Miles Dyson. Danny's little toy is symbolizing both John racing to Dyson's rescue and the the fate that John is trying to save him from - getting "hit"

19. The previously mentioned theme is now getting expanded more. When T-800 becomes more human, Sarah becomes even less so, reinforced by her sunglasses and paramilitary wardrobe. Sarah has now became the Terminator, right down to the music used to score the shot.

The use of red dot and Sarah's stoic, unmoved face mirrors the image of the Terminator from the first movie, while Dyson mirrors her own character from the past - an innocent targeted for termination for something he hasn't done yet. A brilliant twist and character shift.

In the following scenes she redeems herself as a human being and a mother and when she meets John she realizes that her son is truly becoming the tactical and moral leader. This is the emotional climax and resolution for the relationship between mother and son.

20. Note the movement of the camera around Dyson that ends up with a close-up. It's designed to make Dyson look like a suspect during an interrogation. Miles Dyson had the biggest character arc in the film. The character had to move from innocent technophile to a mortified believer who selflessly sacrifices himself for the good. He didn't have to go and didn't have to lose his life. He had a perfect life in Malibu, rich and with loving family and yet for the good of humanity he chooses to give that all up. Just like Sarah.

21. T-1000's glasses also have a subliminal meaning within the story. He was given reflective sunglasses to create a cold, insectoid feel and to reinforce the chrome motif of the liquid metal killer.

22. To insure absolute accuracy and reality, Police consulting firm Call the Cops was contacted and real SWAT team was used in the movie. The Police Consulting firm not only served as technical advisors for the police procedures in the scene, but also led the police extras in performing them. They worked with Cameron to realistically block out the action and the director would then choreograph the camera work to follow their movement through the building.

James Cameron: The more fantastic the subject the more realistic the situation needs to be for it to work (The Making of T2, 1991)

23. SOUND: Sound designer Gary Rydstrom added a lion's roar into the sound of the truck to add a subliminal danger.

24. LIGHTING: Note the subliminal lighting on T-800. Since it was a very human moment for T-800, his damaged, mechanical side is in the shadow. Also, the mechanical part is lit with cold blue, and the human side with warm colors. That symbolized the humanity that was prevailing in him at the time, and the moment when he truly became as close to the human character as possible. It was a so called fire and ice motif, expanding on the theme of human and machine interfacing.

25. Narrative unity: both Terminator movies had moments when the audience was sure that the villain is dead

26. LIGHTING: Cameron and Greenberg's use of rotating and flickering lights added a dizzy staccato effect to the action. There's a lot of brilliant cinematography in the steel mill. For example, the steel grating was an excuse to do a lot of fantastic low angle lighting effects through the floor.

27. Many of the fight scenes were undercrancked at 16fps to 21fps to heighten the sense of impact between the two terminators. Also, note the use of the backlight

28. James Cameron: All of the knowledge about how much punishment a Terminator can take now comes back but it's completely turned around, now it's pathos instead of terror that's created.

29. Even when the future is saved, Sarah still remains a tragic character with a sad story. She doesn't remarry and remains alone. She still loves Kyle and remains faithful to him, but she will never see him again. He exists only in her memories now

Film is a form of art (or, used to be), and as an artist and former literature student, James Cameron treats his movies and stories as such. Film as an artistic story and isn't any different than a poem or a song, it has to have a cohesive structure, repeated or echoed themes and "lines", like rhymes. For example, a song cannot just start with one thing and proceed into something completely different, It's confined within its structure, the bridge matches the verse and the lines rhyme. Same can be said about stories - same elements have to match and reoccur according to the context. It has to be maintained even if both movies are extremely different. The Terminator was a love story about a soldier with horrible, tragic life and pushed around, clumsy waitress, which showed evolution of both characters. T2 was about paternal love between mother and son and her struggle with her sanity, morality and feelings, as well as a story of human life with two "robots' going at it. Those are completely different movies yet narratively unified as one cohesive story from beginning to end, with artistic consistency with similar, echoed sequences and events which are equivalent to rhymes in a poem, called story rhyming or Narrative Symmetry. It's when you have the same or related characters doing similar/same moves, yet achieving a complete turntable on the emotions and/or different outcome. Brilliant but hard to achieve literary device which achieves both narrative unity and tricks the audience into believing that they're gonna witness the same result.

Narrative Symmetry is defined as "the same idea expressed and interpreted in different ways, using recurring themes; taking the same motif and twisting it into a different way" (George Lucas)

James Cameron: Together, "The Terminator" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", comprise a single, complete narrative. I like to think there is more the same about these two pictures than there is different. And though they were made seven years apart, one can hopefully see the themes and ideas which unify them.

You wanna have touchstones with the first film without going through the same ground kind of laboriously.

Van Ling: The challenge of doing sequels is finding novel ways and contexts in which to reiterate the classic beats and concepts from the original film.

Let's take a look at the scenes which created the narrative touchstones, unity and story rhyming with the first movie.

1. The bloody X-acto knife insert. This time it's curiosity and tension instead of disgust and terror

2. The scene when Sarah goes after Dyson mirrors the scene of Terminator and Ginger in the first movie. Both Ginger and Dyson were trying to get away and were shot. Both the Terminator and Sarah followed their victims like stone cold killers using infra red targeting. The difference is the outcome - Sarah cannot pull the trigger when she sees Dyson's eyes.

3. "I'll Be back" - T-800 announces that he'll be back and comes back soon after driving through the front door. Another turntable - this time its not fear and terror but hope and tension. This time we WANT this to happen

4. "Get Out" - the villain takes the control of a new vehicle commanding the pilot/driver to leave. This isn't really a story rhyme per say but a wink/homage to the first movie and Rambo II.

5. The scene mirrors the first movie's scene from the innocent bystander reacting to T-800's face to the villain commanding a tanker truck. The same question is born: will the main character get out of there in time? Well scored, propulsive action music ads to the tension.

6. The villain walking out stumbling from a damaged truck, collapsing eventually tricking the audience into thinking that it's over. Also note the contrast of fire and ice

7. Sarah ordering John to go, deciding to stay and face the villain alone while the villains is slowly climbing the stairs. That mirrors Reese and his face off with the endoskeleton. Again, this time we see the different outcome and Sarah survives. One of the ideas of the story rhyming is not only to have the narrative structure and consistency but also to lead the audience into believing that they're gonna witness the same result.

8. Another turntable on emotions: Sarah once again kills the Terminator by pushing a button, yet this time it's sadness and grief instead of a relief and tension. The scene and this ending concludes the cycle with her and the Terminator.