Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema I Terminator 2: Judgment Day
In this episode, we explore Terminator 2: Judgment Day as part of our special summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. At the heart of T2 is a remarkable idea: a robot reprogrammed not to destroy, but to protect, putting the safety of another ahead of itself at every turn. A machine living its existence on purpose, dedicated to serving others, is pursuing the very goal we all hope to reach as we move beyond our own crucibles. If a Terminator can get there, what’s stopping us?
Want to explore our three prior summer series about the lessons we can learn about overcoming crucibles from film?
Check out these playlists featuring every episode of each one:
LIGHTS, CAMERA, CRUCIBLES (2022): • Beyond the Crucible: Lights, Camera, Cruci…
CLASSIC FILMS, CLASSIC CRUCIBLE LESSONS (2024): • Classic Films, Classic Crucible Lessons: A…
BIG SCREEN, BIG CRUCIBLES (2025): • Back To A Better Future 2026
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.
So we see in the Terminator a machine that has been programmed to take care of John even at the point of its own life. It's rare to have people in our life that will care for us no matter what and will do everything they can to protect us and care for us even at the cost of their own life. I mean, that's love at a level that few of us can imagine. It's really the ultimate expression of living a life dedicated to serving others.
Gary Schneeberger:
That's the definition of a life of significance, and it comes from a surprising place in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which we discussed this week in the third episode of our special summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. A machine that lives its robotic life on purpose, dedicated to serving others, is pursuing a goal we all hope to achieve as we move beyond our crucibles. How can Terminators help us arrive there? Stay tuned.
Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. You have tuned in to, 1, 2, 3, the third episode of our summer series, which we are calling Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. That means, once again, we're going into the theater to talk about what we can learn about overcoming our crucibles and moving toward a life of significance that films can teach us. We've done this now three years before this year, this is our fourth year doing so, and it's just been a lot of fun. But also, we have discovered that movies, the movies that we choose, really do provide great examples of crucibles and how to overcome them, and that's really why... It's two things. We love doing it, and two, it helps you, it helps us move beyond our crucibles.
Just to level set us all, after doing movies spotlighting heroes, classic movies celebrated by the American Film Institute, AFI, and last year, movies that featured really major crucibles, this summer, we're examining a film genre that is one of Warwick's favorites. Watch him when I say this, he just smiles. He gets very happy when I say... We are indeed doing science fiction films. That's why this is called Back to a Better Future, get it, a little pun on Back to the Future, The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. That's what this year's series is about.
Warwick, before we dive into the film that we're discussing this week in the third week of the series, why movies again? I said a little bit about why movies, but you have more in-depth kind of perspective on it. This is the fourth time we've done it. What are you hoping listeners and viewers get out of our discussions this year?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I mean, we both love movies and we've enjoyed looking at movies from Beyond the Crucible perspective, which we always say, "When you're watching a movie for fun, it's very different than when you're watching it from Beyond the Crucible." What's the arc of the characters? Are they growing? How do they overcome crucibles? In some cases, a couple of years or so ago with Citizen Kane and The Godfather, they really didn't learn. The kind of growth went backwards, if that's a word, so-
Gary Schneeberger:
Which is also very helpful to discuss for folks, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, exactly. You don't want to be a Citizen Kane.
Gary Schneeberger:
No.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Typically, movies portray protagonists that faces significant crucibles that they seek to overcome. Really the question is, are they going to overcome those crucibles? Are they going to become defined by their worst day or not? We've covered superheroes, sports heroes, historical heroes, as well as, you mentioned, the American Film Institute's top 100 movies. As you said last year, we focused on film with significant crucibles. This year, it's going to be a little different.
Gary Schneeberger:
It is. Good setup, and it really is. Again, watch his face, folks. He's delighted by this because...
Warwick, you're particularly excited about this series this year because it's science fiction. Just why do you love science fiction so much? And what about science fiction films in particular resonate with this idea of discussing crucibles and how we might move beyond them? These are good movies for crucibles, aren't they?
Warwick Fairfax:
They surely are. I've loved science fiction, both books, movies, and TV since I was very small. One of the most influential science fiction movies ever made was 2001: A Space Odyssey that came out in 1968. And what was amazing is you could see space shuttles, you'd see screens on the back of seats in front of you, which is commonplace in airlines today, but was not in 1968. You flew Eastern Air Lines or American or United [inaudible 00:05:22] was back then, and you would not have found a screen in front of you. You would not have found any movie screens in the plane. So it was very different back then. In this movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, you had talking computers that were almost sentient. They had a brain, a video conferencing.
And then there were other science fiction shows like Star Trek. I'm a fan of all Star Trek shows, but the original one was aired from 1966 to '69. Certainly, pathbreaking in not just its view of technology, they had machines you could talk into almost like smartphones and all sorts of interesting things, but it also really dealt with significant societal issues. And then in terms of science fiction novels, I read a bunch of them by great authors like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.
What I loved about science fiction and still do is not just that it explores future technology, which is amazing to think of, but at its best, it explores deep societal issues. It looks at the future of the human race, how we interact with other forms of life and technology. And many of the issues that science fiction brings up today are very relevant, such as AI. I mean, you had AI in the sense of how the talking computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that ended up being a pretty scary version of AI that ends up taking control. It's something to think about, AI and technology taking control, as we talk more in this episode. Science fiction tends to explore significant crucibles, huge questions about humanity, and really gives a rich palette, if you will, to look at how we overcome crucibles and do we get defined by them. So that's some of the reasons why I love science fiction.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. You said a couple of minutes ago when you were talking about 2001: A Space Odyssey that there was a computer, and it became sentient. That's a pretty good bridge to what we're talking about, the film we're talking about this week, because this week, we are talking about 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which was the top box office draw of the year that it was released, in 1991. There's a thing about computers becoming sentient in here that we're going to talk about as a crucible as we go on. But here is the summary of the movie known in the film industry as the logline, and I love these things because they're so tightly written. As a writer, I'm just jealous every time I read one. But here's the logline from Terminator 2. "A cyborg from the future, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her 10-year-old son John from an even more advanced and powerful cyborg."
And Warwick, before we dive into talking about the movie, I noted something about... So we've done three episodes, right? This is the third episode of the series, and we have another one. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but trust me when I say this, in the three films that we've talked about so far, Planet of the Apes, Alien, and now Terminator 2, these movies and the one that we're going to talk about next week, rife with sequels. I mean, all four of the first films we're talking about have sequel after sequel after sequel being made. I think you'd even be hard-pressed to find superhero movies that have as many sequels as just these first four that we're going to talk about. That speaks to something about their appeal and what you talked about there about the issues that they raise, I think, doesn't it? Because they keep coming back to the well.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it is. I mean, they've got great characters in Terminator and some of these other movies. I mean, how many Star Wars movies have there been made? There were the three original and countless other ones since Disney acquired them from... the rights to the Star Wars and Lucasfilm. But yeah, there's something about the future of, what's the world going to be like? How are we going to address issues from the environment, climate change? Is the human race going to be a kind of gentler one, or will we get into some dark future? People are fascinated about the future and what will happen or what might happen. It's just part of people's innate curiosity.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Well, in this movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, right off the bat, opening credits are unfurling, folks. We see the global crucible in which mankind finds itself enveloped, and it's a doozy. It's Judgment Day, the event so feared in the first film, which came out in the '80s, and that has occurred as this movie opens. So Warwick, let's explain first what Judgment Day is and how it happens so we can kind of get our feet under us as we begin this discussion.
Warwick Fairfax:
So in this opening scene, we see that we're in Los Angeles in the future, in 2029 AD. Can you imagine, folks? It's far, far to the future. I mean, who can imagine, 2029? It seems so far away-
Gary Schneeberger:
I know.
Warwick Fairfax:
... doesn't it?
Gary Schneeberger:
That's crazy.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, exactly. But in this version... Because as you said, the movie came out in 1991, so 2029 is a long time in the future. In this world, we see a dystopian world of burned out cars and skeletons. And we see, as the movie opens, that it says that three billion humans were killed in 1997, and the survivors of the nuclear war that caused this destruction that happened that year, they call... That year, 1997, what happened on that particular day when nuclear war occurred, they call it Judgment Day. And so the survivors of Judgment Day, now years later in 2029, they face a new nightmare. It's a war against machines. We see robots and robot aircraft, if you will, and it seems like the mission of these robots are to kill humans. There's something called Skynet that is a computer that controls all these robot killing machines.
So this dystopian world of 2029, it seems like a pretty scary place to be a human. It's just a bombed out, deserted place where you're running around just trying to survive as these killing machines and robot killing machines are trying to kill you.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And the stakes are laid out in terms of what the forces in the future, the machines and those fighting against them, have sent from the future. In the first movie, I said in the '80s, the Terminator came back to kill a woman named Sarah Connor. This time, we're told one is coming to kill her son, John. While he is a boy, because he is going to grow up to be... As we heard about in the first film, in the first Terminator, he's going to grow up to be the warrior who leads the resistance against the machines, and the resistance led by John in the future has sent a warrior to protect the Terminator's target. Warwick, we see first a Terminator we're familiar with comeback played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's a Terminator that looks exactly like the one from the first movie, which shows up in the same way that one from the first movie did.
In these early scenes, it's easy to expect the same destructive mayhem as the machine that looked like this machine wrought in the first film, isn't it? Especially given the way it arrives on the scene.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it's a great point, Gary. If you watch the first Terminator movie, you expect Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator to be this killing machine. And early on, it would seem like this Terminator is like this. We see that at a truck stop where the Terminator comes out of this sort of lightning bolt... I guess for whatever reason, the Terminator, when they come out of these lightning bolt, they have nothing on. They're naked. The Terminator goes to this truck stop, and he beats up a few guys because he needs some clothes, and he needs boots, he needs a motorcycle. In fact, he even needs some sunglasses. The guy's like, "What do you want?" and it's like... At that point, they're willing to give him anything. At this point, really don't know who the good guy is. We see in this lead up that there's going to be a good guy, but it does not seem like the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a good guy. He's beating people up and taking things. So yeah, we really don't know what's going on.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and it does have some echoes to the first movie, to the Terminator. He does some similar things in the first movie. You're right. We're not exactly sure what's going on. But then, another Terminator shows up too. It's a new version, the T-1000 made of liquid metal. We'll find out a lot more about that as the movie goes on. What makes the machine's new form particularly scary, and it becomes pretty clear from early on, that it is an emotionless killing machine like the T-800 was in the original, isn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it really is. I mean, this second Terminator emerges from the lightning bolt, and it's also naked. Now, this second Terminator, this is sort of merciless. It kills a nearby policeman, takes his clothes and police car. It doesn't beat him up. It just kills a guy instantly without any emotion. So at this point, we're definitely confused. Both Terminators look pretty savage and brutal. Maybe there's another kind of gentler Terminator coming. I mean, neither of them look like this warm, fuzzy... here to help.
Gary Schneeberger:
Protector of the humankind, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, maybe we've missed something. I mean, the only slight clue is the fact that one kills and the other one just beats people up. Maybe that's because he didn't need to or... It's really hard to know what to make of any of that. At this point, they both seem like pretty savage machines, these two Terminators.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. So while we're sitting with that, who's the good guy? Who's the bad guy? Is there a good guy? Is there a bad guy? And they're not even guys, they're machines. As we're sitting with that, we're introduced to Sarah Connor, and she's a different woman than she was in the first film by a long shot. Warwick, how have circumstances changed and how has Sarah Connor changed from the kind of young debutante sort of party girl she was in the first movie? Different Sarah Connor this time around.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, she really is. Here, we see a Sarah Connor, and she's in some kind of prison that turns out to be a psychiatric hospital. We see her working out, and she is a patient there, it says, she's 29 years old, but she is seen as a violent schizophrenic. And there's no question she's violent, but they think of her as a schizophrenic because she keeps talking about some ludicrous story about some terminator from the future that came to kill her. Well, that'll end you up in a psychiatric hospital pretty quick if you start telling people that. She's in her cell. She seems very sinister and violent. She's stabbed a doctor with a pen, and she's repeatedly tried to escape. This Sarah Connor, she's spent years in a psychiatric prison and she's violent, she's full of rage. It's a different Sarah Connor than the one in the first movie.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And then we meet her son John, talked about in the first film, not seen in the first film. We see pretty quickly the T-1000 is trying to track him down. We still don't know exactly why the T-1000 is tracking him down for sure, to protect him or to terminate him. That's the phrase they use, to terminate him. But after Sarah tries to fake her way out of the psychiatric hospital she's been confined to and fails, both Terminators converge on John at an LA mall. Their allegiances are quickly revealed after they fight. Warwick, what we see begin to play out here runs for the rest of the movie. The unwavering commitment of both Terminators that they have to carrying out their missions. And it gets pretty intense, doesn't it? As the T-1000 tries to kill John and the Terminator, he's the T-800, the lower model, but the Terminator that we'll come to recognize as the same face of that Terminator in the '80s movie, he tries to save him, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. So here we see John and a buddy of his, they're playing video games in the Galleria, a mall in Los Angeles. And we also see the Terminator and the T-1000 are in the mall looking for John. John's buddy says that a cop gets the T-1000, as assumed. The image of a policeman is looking for John. Now, normally, you wouldn't necessarily be scared. I mean, you might be like, "What the heck's going on?" But it turns out that John is not exactly living a great life in a sense. He stole money out of an ATM machine. I mean, the guy's angry, obviously. He hasn't seen his mother in years, and he thinks his mother's crazy, locked up in some psychiatric hospital. So yeah, I mean, given that we just see earlier in a short while back in this movie that he stole money from ATM, John is naturally wary about the police. Maybe somebody saw them.
And so John runs, and the T-1000 chases him. And now, we see a scene where the Terminator comes on the scene and fires at the T-1000, and the T-1000 fires back. And these two Terminators, they get in a fight. So John then runs away while the Terminator follow. There, we see a great chase scene in which John is on a motorbike, little motorbike, kids' motorbike, and they're racing through the aqueduct in Los Angeles, and he's being chased by the T-1000 in a truck and the Terminator on the motorcycle, another motorcycle, chasing the T-1000. As any aficionado of the movies would know, there's a lot of movies in which there are chase scenes in this aqueduct in Los Angeles. It's one of the go-to places for chasings, and it's great in this movie. So the Terminator ends up rescuing John, and John begins to see that this Terminator is the good guy. John has seen that these two Terminators fight. Well, one of them actually wants to protect him from this other malevolent T-1000. So he's beginning to realize there's a good Terminator and a bad Terminator.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And John and the good Terminator stopped to talk, and John learns some things that change what he believes about his mother. So not only does he come to learn that there's a good Terminator, but in talking to that good Terminator, he learns some things that changes his view of his mother. How does that happen, Warwick?
Warwick Fairfax:
So John has heard all the stories from his mother, and he says, "You're a Terminator," and the Terminator says, "That's right." John sees the bullet holes in the Terminator's jacket, and the Terminator's obviously still living, functioning something. So John realizes, all these stories about the Terminator, it's real. It's true. And the Terminator says he's a cyber robot with living tissue over a metal skeleton. John can't believe what he's seeing. The Terminator says that his mission is to protect him, to protect John. And John asks who sent him? Well, the Terminator says basically, "Well, you did. You, John, 35 years from now, sent me." And the Terminator says that John in the future has reprogrammed him to protect John in this time in the past when John was a kid. So John asks about the other Terminator, and the Terminator says that the other machine is a T-1000, an advanced prototype. The T-1000 is made of liquid metal, which we'll see in future scenes how scary that really is being up against this T-1000. As we just said, it was made of liquid metal.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. That's a whole lot of stuff to be laid on 10-year-old John Connor. There's a lot of stuff flying at him that he just... How does he make sense of it all? And it's interesting the place that he goes to right after this. John makes sure the Terminator protecting him doesn't actually terminate anyone. How does he do that and how does he change the Terminator's mission? Because there's a lot of directions he could have gone. These are the directions he went in. How does he do it?
Warwick Fairfax:
So when he realized the Terminator is a Terminator, one of the things he realizes is that everything that his mother told him is true. John thought his mother's just crazy. Maybe he thought she needs to be in a psychiatric prison because he's just nuts talking about these future killing machines. But in this instance, he realizes it's all true. Everything his mother told him happened. The Terminator is a killing machine. And so at that point, he says to the Terminator, "Well, we've got to rescue my mother." He realizes she doesn't deserve to be in some psychiatric hospital. Well, the Terminator says no, because the T-1000 is very advanced and will probably realize what John is thinking and will try to copy her and kill her. Because one of the things we learn is this T-1000 has the ability to copy living beings and take their shape and even sound like them.
So yeah, at this point, we've seen the T-1000. He doesn't just copy and mimic people, he then kills them. So the Terminator says, "It's not a priority to rescue your mother." John finds out that the Terminator has to do what John says. This is one of the Terminator's mission parameters. So at this point, John is going to alter the Terminator's mission, and this will have profound consequences throughout the movie. When the Terminator was going to kill some guy that got in the way, John asks, "Why?" The Terminator says, almost slightly sarcastically, "Because he's a Terminator."
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Terminators terminate. The Terminator's thinking, "Well, what kind of a question is that? That's kind of what I do." And John says that the Terminator is not a Terminator anymore and must not go around killing people. Terminator doesn't understand. John basically says, "That's the way it is," and he orders the Terminator to help him rescue his mother. So now he finds that he can change the Terminator's mission parameters, he's going to do that, "No killing of people, and you've got to rescue my mother."
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. We didn't talk about this beforehand, but this kicks off when John realizes whatever he tells the Terminator to do, the Terminator has to do. There's some really cute things that play out throughout the rest of the movie where he teaches him hip '90s slang terms and those kind of things. I mean, it's important to mention this sort of kicks off what can be the comedy relief that comes up in the film. There are some comedic touches and flourishes throughout after this, after John realizes his power, quote, unquote, "over the Terminator."
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. He teaches him phrases like [foreign language 00:26:36] and all sorts of phrases that will come in handy for the Terminator later on.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, for sure, and entertain audiences for sure as well. Sarah then manages to break out of the psychiatric hospital. She overpowers the doctor that committed her back in 1985 and begins to run toward the exit when the T-1000 shows up, kills a guard, and takes his form, and pursues her. Before he can reach her, before the T-1000 can reach Sarah...
Well, let's not talk about that scene, Warwick. Let's watch it and listen to it.
MOVIE CLIP:
Orderlies: Let's go around. Come on. Move it. Come on.
Sarah Connor: No. No. No.
John Connor: Mom, wait. Mom.
Orderlies: Come back here.
Sarah Connor: No. No. No.
Orderlies: I got it.
John Connor: Help her.
Terminator: Wait here.
Orderlies: Hurry up. Hurry up.
Sarah Connor: He'll kill us all. He'll kill us all.
Speaker 7: Hold her.
Orderlies: Get her up.
Sarah Connor: He'll kill us all.
Orderlies: Get her up.
John Connor: Mom, are you okay? Mom.
Terminator: Come with me if you want to live.
John Connor: It's okay, mom. He's here to help. It's okay.
Terminator: Go.
Sarah Connor: What the fuck is it? What the fuck is going on?
Terminator: Get down.
John Connor: Mom.
Sarah Connor: Out of the car.
Gary Schneeberger:
So Warwick, that was a very interesting scene because what the Terminator says at the end of that, "Come with me if you want to live," is what was said in the first movie. And in fact, in all the other sequels, there's a line where somebody who's on the side of good says, "Come with me if you want to live." So talk a little bit about the clip and what it sets up as the film goes on.
Warwick Fairfax:
From Sarah's perspective, when she sees the Terminator, you have a reason to fear because Terminators terminate. They're there to kill you, so she's like, "Oh, my gosh." She starts running because she's just afraid for a life. And then we see John pop out from behind the corner and basically say, "Mom, it's okay." And for her to hear a Terminator say, "Come with me if you want to live," the Terminator in the first movie never said that, others might have, but not the Terminator, so it's like, "What is happening here?" She realizes this is the good Terminator or she realizes even such a thing as a good Terminator. And then they flee the prison. But it completely changes her perspective in what world are we living in now when there's actually a good Terminator. I mean, it must blow her circuits to kind of think about that. Obviously, she doesn't have too much time to think because they've got to flee for their lives from the bad Terminator, the T-1000.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right, and they do indeed do that. Sarah, John, and the Terminator then go on the lam to meet up with some of her old gun running friends to get some weapons to defend themselves. It's while observing the Terminator and her son interacting here that she comes to a conclusion about the Terminator that sounds a lot like we say it Beyond the Crucible, with some sci-fi flourish added in, about living out our vision of living a life dedicated to serving others. That's sort of the warp and woof of what she talks about in this next scene, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. So here, we have the Terminator, Sarah, and John. They're fleeing to the desert, and they meet up with an old friend of Sarah's, Enrique, and we see Enrique. Again, this is in the desert with his family. It's almost like a trailer area with a trailer and some different buildings. Sarah's coming to get her stuff. So they pull off this heavy metal plate off the ground, and there's this massive weapon storage with every kind of weapon you can imagine. I mean, you're there to kind of gear up for war. It's what it looks like.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right, exactly.
Warwick Fairfax:
And so Sarah begins to think about this Terminator. She's still trying to get her head around the fact that this Terminator is not there to kill them. She realizes that this Terminator would never leave John, is there to protect him, would never hurt John because that's his mission, to protect John. This Terminator would never get drunk and would die to protect John. And Sarah thinks to herself that of all the would-be fathers that John could have... Because Sarah we learn has had multiple relationships with different men, and none of them have really worked out. We learn a little bit about that in this movie. That's why she thinks to herself of all the would-be fathers that John could have, that this machine is the only one who measures up. In an insane world, this was the sanest choice, to have the Terminator look after John. I mean, just a remarkable thought that Sarah is having.
And so we see in The Terminator a machine that has been programmed to take care of John even at the point of its own life. It's rare to have people in our life that will care for us no matter what and will do everything they can to protect us and care for us even at the cost of their own life. I mean, that's love at a level that few of us can imagine. It's really the ultimate expression of living a life dedicated to serving others. In relatively short order, Sarah sees this Terminator that's sort of this unemotional machine, but yet it has this mission, this programming that you can rely on. It will never deviate from its program. When she talks about wouldn't get drunk or would die to protect John, we don't quite know whether she's referring to herself or maybe guys that she's linked up with. We don't quite know, but we can imagine it might be all of the above in a sense.
So this is somebody, or a machine, if you call it, it seems like somebody in a sense, that you can trust and rely on. It will never deviate from its program. It will always try and protect her son. It's rare that you have anybody you can rely on with 100%. Some people, you would hope might have a good track record. But to rely on somebody 100% like that, Sarah realizes that John can have almost a surrogate parent, somebody that's more reliable than she is. It's just an incredible conversation, or not conversation, it's incredible moment as she's thinking these things to herself.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And this spotlights what you talked about at the beginning of this episode and every episode. We don't normally watch movies when we're just sitting around with our family having a good time. We don't normally watch movies and pull out bits of wisdom like this. I mean, the fact that we saw that when Sarah says that about the Terminator, that has an application to what we do at Beyond the Crucible, what your fellow travelers need to be like, those kinds of things. It's very interesting. And again, I've watched this movie probably a dozen times, and the first 11 times I watched it, that never occurred to me about the application that you just discussed.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's so true. And just the other sad thing is she marveled at the Terminator and how it could protect and care for her son, but yet there's a sense where she felt less than.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
There's a sense where she probably felt like she was a failure. Now, was it her fault that she gets locked up in a psychiatric hospital? Not necessarily. I mean, obviously maybe not the smartest thing running around telling people about machines from the future, but she didn't deliberately seek to abandon her son. It just happened because she's frantic and she's mentioning it and just digs herself in deeper. But that being said, she probably thinks to herself, "I wasn't there to care for my son for years, and maybe this Terminator would be a better parent than I would be." I mean, it's a very sad revelatory moment that we have as Sarah's just really contrasting herself with this machine, the Terminator.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. But then comes a little bit of hope in the next scene. Seeing that John is safe with the Terminator, Sarah takes a few moments by herself at a picnic table on the grounds. She carves something into the tabletop, and then she falls asleep. She has a horrific dream of Judgment Day, which is August 29th, 1997. That's when the three billion people are incinerated by a nuclear bomb. We learn that what fuels the destruction is the computer system Skynet, which becomes self-aware on that date. She decides that the only way to prevent the devastation is to prevent the development of Skynet. Warwick, that belief sets Sarah off on her next mission, doesn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. I mean, Sarah learns a lot about the future and that sets her off on her mission. So Sarah asks the Terminator, "How does Skynet get built?" Well, John asks if people are going to make it. Are they going to survive? And the Terminator says these very chilling words. He says, "It's in your nature to destroy yourselves." I mean, very sobering. So the Terminator says that Skynet came about because of this guy, Miles Bennett Dyson, and he's the director of special operations at Cyberdyne Systems operations. In a few months, the Terminator says that Dyson will create a revolutionary computer chip. In three years, Cyberdyne will be the largest supply of computer systems, of military computer systems. All stealth bombers will be upgraded with Cyberdyne Systems and become fully unmanned. After the Skynet Funding Bill is passed, the system goes online August 4th, 1997.
A short while later, in August 29th, 1997, Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate and becomes fully aware. At that point, in a panic, the US government tries to pull the plug, but Skynet fights back and it launches its missiles against targets in Russia, knowing full well that the Russians will counterattack and eliminate enemies over here in the US. So basically, Skynet realizes what to do. I mean, it's in an unemotional way. It causes the destruction of much of humanity by launching a nuclear war. So hearing all this and believing that the Terminator in a sense would make a better father than she was a mother, Sarah sets off on the mission. We don't quite know what she's going to do, but it would seem like she wants to somehow prevent this bleak, dark future.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And the hope that I talked about comes up in this next scene. After his mom quickly and mysteriously leaves, as you said, John notices the word she carved on the table. "No fate" is what she carved in the table. It's an abbreviated version of something we learn in these scenes. John's father, Kyle Reese, says John told him in the future... So let's just take a deep breath. That's a lot of moving around, right? It's something that John's father says John told him in the future. And John's father, for those of you who remember the first Terminator movie in 1985, is the protector, the human protector, who came back from the future to try to save Sarah from the Terminator who was unleashed on her in the first movie. So what are the words that are written in that table, that are carved in that table? And what does that say about us in the future and how it can relate to Beyond the Crucible?
Warwick Fairfax:
So John sees these words carved in the picnic table, "The future is not set. There is no fate except what we make for ourselves." John learns that his future self said this. I mean, mind-blowing. So it's easy in the aftermath of a crucible to feel that our fate is set. We might feel that we are irretrievably and irrevocably broken. We might feel like what we've done is unforgivable. No one should associate with us because we're just awful human beings. And it is easy to feel that we are irredeemable, but the truth is that we are redeemable and that we can change the direction of our lives.
There is always hope. We don't have to be a prisoner of our own mistakes or the misdeeds of others. We can indeed chart a better future, one of promise that does not lead to some dark, dystopian future. There is hope. The idea that the future is not set and there is no fate except what we make for ourselves, it really gives us hope. We might feel like today is our worst day. We might feel we're in the pit of despair, but we have to realize we can take charge of our life. We can shape our future, and our future doesn't have to be irredeemable, nor do we need to feel that we are broken without any hope.
Gary Schneeberger:
See, folks, that's why we do movies because out of movies come really great tidbits like that for how we navigate beyond our own crucibles.
Back to the movie. We then learn where Sarah ran off to was to kill Dyson to prevent Skynet from being built and from Judgment Day occurring. And Dyson's reaction, Warwick, to learning what the future may hold leads him to try to help prevent it from happening, doesn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It really does. Sarah's gone out to kill Dyson. She wants to prevent the future and everything that Dyson's going to create, and she almost succeeds. She has this long rifle, and she shoots Dyson while he's at a computer working, and Dyson ducks at the last moment when his son comes in and he's playing with a toy. John realizes meanwhile that his mother's going after Dyson, and so both the Terminator and John go after Sarah. Now, the Terminator, here's this unemotional machine, says the T-1000 will also anticipate the move that Sarah's going to make. And John does not want his mother to kill Dyson, although the Terminator basically says, "Well, that's not a bad idea because killing Dyson might prevent a future war."
Gary Schneeberger:
Right, right. Logic.
Warwick Fairfax:
Terminator's looking at it very logically. You know?
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
But John is like, "Yeah, but this is my mother." So John wonders why the Terminator hasn't figured out that the Terminator can't kill people. It's like, "Doesn't he get it yet?" And so the Terminator and John, they arrive at Dyson's house where Sarah is, and we see that Dyson is bleeding. Sarah's injured him. And at this point, the Terminator, he cuts his arm open to reveal that he's a machine. You see this skeletal metal arm. The Terminator explains everything to Dyson, Skynet, Judgment Day, and the history of things to come.
Now, Dyson, seeing the Terminator and this skeletal arm, he puts it all together because he's working on all this technology. He gets it. It hits him like a thunderbolt. And so Dyson says, "It's not every day that you find out that you're responsible for three billion deaths." This wasn't some evil genius. He wasn't trying to hurt anybody. And to imagine a moment where you see your future, it's really unimaginable, and somehow... You're trying to help people and working for science, and somehow you're responsible for three billion deaths. I mean, it's just staggering. And Dyson says that they were judging him on things that he hasn't done yet. He feels like, "Well, that's a little unfair," and he asks, "How are we supposed to know?" So Sarah shoots back sarcastically. "Men like you built the hydrogen bomb." She's not very charitable.
Gary Schneeberger:
No.
Warwick Fairfax:
She basically says that he doesn't know how to create life and all he knows is how to create death. She has seen the future in a sense and she does not have much sympathy for Dyson. What he's going to be doing is going to create death. Is that really fair? I don't know, but I get her perspective. Well, Dyson is willing to quit Cyberdyne. Sarah and the Terminator say, "That's not enough. No one must follow your work, and everything at the lab must be destroyed, including the computer chip from the first Terminator," and they must do this that night. So Dyson agrees, and they all charge off, Dyson, the Terminator, Sarah, and John to the lab, and they start setting explosive charges to blow everything up. And they retrieve the computer chip and a robotic arm from a safe because everything must be destroyed so that the future will not unfold as it's going to.
But unfortunately, a security guard sets off the alarm, and the building is surrounded by police, a gunfight ensues just as they're trying to set off the charges. Now, in this gunfight, Dyson is wounded, turns out mortally wounded. So Dyson stays back with the trigger for the explosives while the rest of the group flees. And it's one of those triggers where if you let go of the trigger, then everything explodes. We see that Dyson is running out of strength. And as the police surround him, they basically see that he's in trouble, and he says, "Look, I don't know how much longer I can hold the trigger." At that point, they get it, the police flee, and we see the lab exploding just as we see Dyson dies and can't hold the trigger anymore. Meanwhile, the T-1000 arrives and goes after the Terminator, Sarah, and John as they're fleeing the scene, fleeing this lab that's now just exploded.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. So it would seem at this juncture of the film, in this moment, that Judgment Day has been avoided, but there's still the matter of the T-1000. You mentioned he shows up, he starts to chase them, and it's mission to kill John, and the Terminator and its mission to protect him, and of course, lots of dazzling special effects, battles to be fought. But Warwick, there's a platinum principle in what we've discovered at Beyond the Crucible that's at work as the two Terminators do final battle. It's what we say all the time. If we learn the lessons of our crucibles and apply them moving forward, we will find a life of significance. And that happens in the end for the Terminator, doesn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. So after this chase scene, they're leaving this lab that's now destroyed. We see the T-1000, the Terminator, and Sarah, and John end up in some kind of blast furnace factory. There's this vat of molten metal. There's sort of sparks going all over the place. And the T-1000, it hasn't changed its mission. It's to kill John Connor. And they still have the computer chip and the metal arm with them. Those haven't been destroyed yet. So the Terminator is doing everything it can to protect John and eliminate the T-1000, but it's not easy. This T-1000, it's a newer model than the Terminator. It's in some ways more powerful, more capable. It has this liquid metal. It can change shapes. It can send out this metal spear to kill people or the Terminator. It's pretty scary.
So, eventually, the T-1000 falls into the vat of molten metal. This is after repeated firing bullets at it and doing everything they can. Eventually, it falls off this sort of metal ledge into this vat of molten metal, and somehow this is maybe one of the few ways this could be killed. And we see this liquid metal is being mixed with all the other molten metal, and so it's now finished. John then throws the computer chip and the robots skeletal arm into the molten metal. So at this point, we think, "Okay, it's over," but the Terminator says, "There is one more computer chip," and that's in him. Remember from the first movie, while the Terminator in the first movie was killed, the computer chip survived, and that's what was going to cause all this dystopian, terrible future. This Terminator realizes this, and he says that he can't self-terminate. It's not in his programming. So Sarah lowers the Terminator into the molten metal.
Before this happens, the Terminator says he's sorry, basically sorry because he knows, in effect, killing himself is not what John wants. It's amazing he's showing some degree of emotion. John begs him not to do this. The Terminator says he must go away and said, "It has to end here." So John hugs the Terminator, and the Terminator gives his hand to Sarah, saying goodbye. And as the Terminator dissolves in this vat of molten metal, we see an abstract hand with a thumbs up sign. John hugs his mom, and they drive off.
Gary Schneeberger:
I want to just stop you right here because something occurred to me about the way the T-1000 died and the way that you just described the Terminator died. The T-1000 dies in this roiling, horrible... All the faces of the people he took on are popping up out of this molten... It seems like in addition to being a terrible death, just because you're dying in molten metal, it's emotionally terrible. And yet what you just described about the Terminator dying, he gives the thumbs up. That says a little something about those who do good and those who do evil. It's pretty much a morality play here at that point in this movie, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's such a great point. When the T-1000 dies, it's obviously struggling for life. It's in agony. All of these past people that it's taken on, you see them, you just see sort of agony and screams, if you will, whereas the Terminator is at peace. It's about to die for a greater cause, and most immediately it wants to protect John. So the thumbs up, to die with the thumbs up of saying he's at peace, "I'm doing this willingly. I'm doing this because it has to be done for your sake and for the future of humanity," it's pretty amazing, as you rightly point out the contrast between the two deaths of the T-1000 and the Terminator.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. All right. So I cut you off as you were going to land the plane on the plot here. You said that John hugs his mom and they drive off. What happens after that?
Warwick Fairfax:
So the last scene in the movie is Sarah and John are driving off, and in a voiceover, we hear Sarah saying this, "The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope, because the machine, the Terminator, learned the value of human life, maybe we can too." I mean, just amazing. She's learning something from this machine. This machine is giving her hope. So we see that in this movie. The Terminator, it seems to grow beyond its original programming. Its original mission was to protect John. That's it. But yet, it ends up protecting Sarah, it sacrifices its life both to try to kill the T-1000 and have itself terminated so as it can protect the future of humanity. This does not seem to be typical programming. It seems to learn some degree of human emotions, a level of care for John and Sarah and the future of the human race.
Meanwhile, John grows from being a misfit kid who was angry and committing petty crimes to being somebody that wants to save his mother, who he now admires. He realizes she doesn't deserve to be in a psychiatric hospital. And he wants to protect the Terminator and save humanity. I mean, he has care for a machine, this unemotional machine. I mean, just remarkable. Sarah, meanwhile, she grows from being this angry woman who's committed to a psychiatric hospital, she wants to just hurt everybody around her, she's so angry, and now she wants to not just protect her son. She wants to or is willing to give her life to protect him and the future of humanity. So there's this tremendous growth.
We all face a choice. Are we going to follow the path of the T-1000, of destruction, of not caring about others, just merely following our programming? Maybe that was programmed at birth from bad upbringing or things that happened to us. Are we just going to follow our programming and not care for others, say, "It's all about me"? Or are we going to follow the path of the Terminator and Sarah who are willing to give their lives in service of others? Now, that's really an incredible way of living life in which it's not about us. It's about serving a greater cause, serving humanity.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Again, this is one of the things that makes this film series stuff that we do so much so enjoyable, because, again, would you have pulled that out and applied it to Beyond the Crucible if we weren't doing-
Warwick Fairfax:
No.
Gary Schneeberger:
... this series? No, I wouldn't have either.
Warwick Fairfax:
No.
Gary Schneeberger:
So you've extracted something that can really help the folks who are listening and watching. Speaking of helping the folks who are listening and watching at work, let's end here. How do the crucibles, the characters in Terminator 2, offer us insight? How do the crucibles that they face offer us insight to move beyond our own crucibles, especially in the face of challenging, dare I say, overwhelming circumstances?
Warwick Fairfax:
So what this movie shows and really the growth in the Terminator, Sarah, and John is that we all face choices in life. Are we going to be defined by our worst day, our crucible? We can be this angry person, like Sarah, who is unfairly locked away in a psychiatric hospital. We can be angry and a troublesome kid, like John, who felt abandoned by his crazy mother as he though she was and had to be in the care of foster parents. Or we can choose a different path. We may not like our past and where we're headed, but we can change our present. In fact, we can change our future to a more life-affirming path where we devote our lives to something beyond ourselves, where we are focused on caring for others. That kind of vision does indeed lead to a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others.
Few of us will receive almost a gift in which we see, if we keep on going along a certain path, this bleak dystopian future that John and Sarah Connor get to see. We may not always see that, but we don't have to see the future to know. If we keep going on this self-serving, destructive path, we may not know where that ends, but we know it won't end well. So we have to make a choice. Do we want to be a prison of our past, of what was done to us? Are we going to set a new course, a more life-affirming course which will be better for us, will make us happy and more fulfilled, and will also benefit others, maybe not humanity, but maybe out of the whole version or out the whole world of humanity in our town and in our state community?
Every day, we have a choice. Are we going to be defined by our worst day, or are we going to choose a different path, a more life-affirming? But every day, we get to make that choice.
Gary Schneeberger:
Including today, folks. The house lights are back on. It's time to collect your popcorn buckets and head for the exits and ponder the question that Warwick just asked until the next time we're together. When we get to Episode 4 of our summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. And next week, we will be talking about...
Here it comes. Scott, give it to me. Wait, slow. Start slow. Start a little quiet, and then blow it up. Blow it up, blow it out. There we go.
Next week, we're going to talk about.... We're going to examine Back to the Future. So until next time, folks. We'll see you next week, and we'll save you a seat.
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