Entertainment
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Best Movie Is Now On Netflix
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated
Arnold Schwarzenegger quickly established himself as an unexpected sci-fi icon thanks to movies like The Running Man, Total Recall, and Predator. However, Terminator 2: Judgment Day remains his absolute best sci-fi blockbuster, one that has yet to be topped by any other genre film all these decades later. If you’re ready to time-travel back to the ‘90s (and hey, who isn’t?), you can now stream this high-caliber, R-rated masterpiece on Netflix.
The Day The AI Killed Us All
The premise of Terminator 2 is that humanity’s evil AI overlord, Skynet, sends a killer robot into the past in the hopes of killing the human Resistance leader when he’s just a teenager. But humanity sends their future commander an unexpected defender: the same model of murder machine that tried to kill his mother before he was even born. Now, our future savior must team up with his paranoid mom and a robotic father figure to fight a foe whose shapeshifting abilities have transformed him into the ultimate living weapon.
The cast of Terminator 2: Judgment Day is filled with apocalyptically awesome actors, including Linda Hamilton (best known outside this franchise for Dante’s Peak) as Sarah Connor, a former Final Girl transformed into a warrior ready to face the end of the world. Robert Patrick (best known outside this movie for The Faculty) is dead-eyed perfection as a shapeshifting robot out to commit some police brutality on John Connor, humanity’s only hope in fighting Skynet. John is protected by a Terminator played by Arnold Schwarzenegger (best known outside this franchise for Last Action Hero), a kinder carbon copy of the murderbot who hunted Sarah Connor in the previous film.
The Most Ambitious Director In Hollywood
All that onscreen talent was assembled by someone nearly as famous as Arnold himself: James Cameron. The first Terminator established Cameron as a bankable blockbuster director, a reputation he cemented by directing Aliens (still the best film in that franchise) only two years later. With Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the director tried to bring his action time-travel epic to a properly dramatic close, but the financial success of the film ironically ensured that it would get a bevy of increasingly bland sequels.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day was bigger and more ambitious than the first film, commanding a budget somewhere between $94-$102 million. Fortunately for both the studio and James Cameron, this sci-fi sequel brought in a correspondingly impressive box office of $520 million. This transformed Terminator into a bankable franchise, one that has since had a number of very middling sequels, though you can skip right to Dark Fate if you want a film that serves as a direct sequel to Judgment Day and reunites both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton to once again fight the future together.
Oscar-Winning Sci-Fi Perfection
When Terminator 2: Judgment Day came out, critics dubbed this a worthy, blockbuster sequel to James Cameron’s earlier sci-fi masterpiece. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a rating of 91 percent, with critics praising the movie for its jaw-dropping special effects and heart-pounding action sequences. In addition to the visual chills and the visceral thrills, critics also lauded the movie for the surprising depth of its characters (organic and otherwise).
Cameron’s movie ended up winning four Academy Awards, taking home the Oscars for Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Sound, Best Makeup, and Best Visual Effects. These prestigious awards help underscore how much James Cameron’s film resonated with critics, making its name as one of the most acclaimed blockbusters of all time. The movie also made Academy Awards history, as it was the first sequel to ever win an Oscar when its predecessor had not been nominated for any awards.
The Horror Film Marketed To Children
When I was younger, I thought that Terminator 2: Judgement Day was a nearly perfect film, and I was at the perfect age to become an absolutely shameless superfan of the franchise. After watching this sequel, I emptied my wallet of quarters to play the cool Terminator 2 arcade game, and I bought every Terminator comic I could find (thanks for keeping it weird, Dark Horse!) at my friendly neighborhood comic shop. I even collected the Kenner Toys, and my plastic cybernetic army had to regularly protect themselves from my equally embarrassing collection of Alien toys.
Obviously, I grew up in an age where this R-rated movie was marketed heavily towards children, and I gulped everything down as only a young consumer can. Therefore, part of me wondered if I wouldn’t like Terminator 2 as much when revisiting it as an adult. After all, kid me didn’t really focus on the plot or the acting so much as the epic action scenes that made me continuously emit Peter Griffin-like “this is freakin’ awesome!” exclamations every few minutes.
Rock’em Sock’em Robots
Having rewatched the movie now multiple times as an adult, I realized that “this is freakin’ awesome” applies to the acting, the writing, and the directing as much as it does to the balls-to-the-wall special effects. Despite being one of the greatest action movies ever made, Terminator 2: Judgement Day also tells a rich and complex story about everything from family relationships to individual destiny. In this way, this blockbuster about two robots slugging it out manages to be the most human film of them all.
Will you agree that Terminator 2: Judgment Day is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best film, or will this movie have you reaching for Jingle All the Way quicker than the Terminator can say “I’ll be back?” The only way to find out is to stream this Academy Award-winning sci-fi masterpiece on Netflix and decide for yourself. Remember, Sarah Connor’s wise words about fate also apply to your entertainment options: the future’s not set, and there’s no streaming queue but what we make for ourselves.
