h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day' - the Film - A87883032
Author: Bluebottle - U43530

He's back...

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Excellent

I had a few questions as I read through:

"playground burning in apocalyptic flames, filled with skills" - skills?

Footnote 1 should be on "T-800 Model CSM101" rather than "conceived"

"John orders the Terminator to help him rescue her" - I wasn't sure about this sentence, because both Ts are Terminators, but I presume "The" Terminator is the one sent to protect him...

"Skynet's creation " - this is the T-1000?

"James 'Jim' Cameron." - Is he not more well known as James Cameron?

ILM - is that Industrial Light and Magic? Ah, you say so later... Perhaps you could include mention of their other work in the later section?

"That said, the park overlooking the city was fake and was really a landfill site transformed into a park." - that reads oddly to me given that I live near a landfill site transformed into a park. Are you saying that it wasn't able to be a park but they made it look like it was?

The Special Edition section needs tweaking, I think - there are a few words missing (it's got that Russian flavour again!) and you might see how you can clarify the descriptions too, as I didn't fully follow it on first reading.

" a policeman investigates the T-1000's appearance." - A policeman investigates because the T-1000 has just appeared, or is there something suspicious about how it looks?

Thanks for the thorough read-through

"playground burning in apocalyptic flames, filled with skills" - skills?
Ah yes – getting a playground to catch fire during a nuclear apocalypse really is a skilful job and isn't as easy as you'd think…

I've moved the footnote. It was a sentence in itself and then I thought it wasn't important enough to be a sentence in the main text, but you're right that I should have moved it back a bit to where it would be more relevant.

I've added a new footnote to explain that 'The Terminator' refers to Arnie and 'T-1000' refers to the baddy.

"James 'Jim' Cameron." - Is he not more well known as James Cameron?
Although I'd agree that to most of us who have never met him he is definitely better known as 'James', in the interviews, commentaries etc involving people who know him well, including behind-the-scenes people and actors such as Arnie and Linda Hamilton (who he later married), he is prefominently referred to as 'Jim', so I included both names. I don't mind deleting 'Jim'

I briefly mentioned some of ILM's other work made before and around the same time as T2.

With regard the park – Cameron wanted to film a sequence involving children playing in a park which had a great view of the city skyline behind it, so that it would look dramatic when the nuclear explosion was added. The best site they found with this view was a landfill site, which they temporarily grassed a bit over and added some playground equipment to make it look like a park – and then used their skills to burn it. After filming finished it went back to being a landfill site.

I've tweaked the Special Edition bit again. I suspect I know what you mean by my having 'German' or 'Russian' sentences. Normally the entries wot I wrote are written normally, but often when doing film entries I write notes when watching a film, normally short sentences or a few words to record an idea. I later type up and use these short note sentences, tweaking them to form sentences. 'Cos I wrote these notes when watchin' the film quickly and was rushin' ideas down on paper, you like to call these sentences 'Russian'.

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This was on TV last night, so I watched a few minutes of it including the young John and the Terminator getting shot at and confirming, "I'll be back."

Did I tell you the story of when I watched 'Terminator 2' at home once?

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I don't think you have mentioned that, but even if you have I would be interested to hear it

Back in the 1990s I was watching 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day' at my house and it got to the canal chase sequence. There were bangs, crashes, explosions – very dramatic – and then all of a sudden there was an almighty BANG! and I almost felt the house shaking. I thought, 'Wow! These effects are very realistic!' only to discover shortly after that a car had crashed into the wall in the front of our house.

That was when we lived opposite Sandown's police station, so the very drunk driver didn't get very far…

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Wow - unexpected 4D cinema experience! Thankfully my watching of it was not so dramatic - I do hear gunshots occasionally as there is some sort of game reserve in the area (my parents often host pheasants in their garden!) but not when Arnold Terminator was getting damaged in the film...

Just reading this again and I wondered if the 'previous Terminator' with the CPU chip is Arnie or the T1000...

There's repetition of Special Edition - am I right in presuming the extended special edition is the same as the 16 minute longer special edition...

What is 'they' that are referred to in a later scene in T2?

Was Judgement Day commemorated in a similar way to how Back to the Future Day was?

Thanks for your comments there. I've added a footnote to explain that 'previous Terminator' means the Terminator in the film 'The Terminator' and also reworded the opening paragraph of the Special Edition section, and the 'they' is the words but I've changed 'they' to 'the quote' so that should make sense.

It's a good question about Judgement Day's celebration. 29 August 1997 was before I had the internet so I can't remember anything personally. I did a Google search for '29 August 1997 celebration' but it came up with a news story that Angelina Jolie took her kids to Disneyland for a 9th birthday celebration, but without any explanation as to how that is actually news. There was a massacre in Algeria that day. Interestingly there seem to be a lot of rumours that it may have inspired Radiohead's album 'OK Computer' that was released in August 1997, but I've not found anything definite enough to convince me to quote that in the entry.

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Ah, yes the internet does make a difference for such things - 1997 was pre-internet for me, too, so I wasn't aware of anything personally.

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