Cameron does not succeed, at least not in avoiding heavy cheese. Recall the premise he settles on for T2: that Skynet once again uses its (apparently not all that limited) time-travel device, this time to send a far more advanced liquid metal T-1000 Terminator back to 1990s L.A., this time to kill the ten-year-old John Connor (played by the extremely annoying Edward Furlong,13 whose voice keeps cracking pubescently and who’s just clearly older than ten), and but that the intrepid human Resistance has somehow captured, subdued, and “reprogrammed” an old Schwarzenegger-model Terminator — resetting its CPU’s switch from TERMINATE to PROTECT, apparently14—and then has somehow once again gotten one-time access to Skynet’s time-travel technology15 and sent the Schwarzenegger Terminator back to protect young J.C. from the T-1000’s infanticidal advances.16
Cameron’s premise is financially canny and artistically dismaclass="underline" it permits Terminator 2’s narrative to clank along on the rails of all manner of mass-market formulae. There is, for example, no quicker or easier ingress to the audience’s heart than to present an innocent child in danger, and of course protecting an innocent child from danger is Heroism at its most generic. Cameron’s premise also permits the emotional center of T2 to consist of the child and the Terminator “bonding,” which in turn allows for all manner of familiar and reliable devices. Thus it is that T2 offers us cliché explorations of stuff like the conflicts between Emotion and Logic (territory already mined to exhaustion by Star Trek) and between Human and Machine (turf that’s been worked in everything from Lost in Space to Blade Runner to RoboCop), as well as exploiting the good old Alien-or-Robot-Learns-About-Human-Customs-and-Psychology-from-Sarcastic-and/or-Precocious-but-Basically-Goodhearted-Human-with-Whom-It-Bonds formula (q.q.v. here My Favorite Martian and E.T. and Starman and The Brother from Another Planet and Harry and the Hendersons and ALF and ad almost infinitum). Thus it is that the 85 percent of T2 that is not mind-blowing digital F/X sequences subjects us to dialogue like: “Vhy do you cry?” and “Cool! My own Terminator!” and “Can you not be such a dork all the time?” and “This is intense!” and “Haven’t you learned that you can’t just go around killing people?” and “It’s OK, Mom, he’s here to help” and “I know now vhy you cry, but it’s somesing I can never do”; plus to that hideous ending where Schwarzenegger gives John a cyborgian hug and then voluntarily immerses himself in molten steel to protect humanity from his neural net CPU, raising that Fonziesque thumb as he sinks below the surface,17 and the two Connors hug and grieve, and then poor old Linda Hamilton — whose role in T2 requires her not only to look like she’s been doing nothing but Nautilus for the last several years but also to keep snarling and baring her teeth and saying stuff like “Don’t fuck with me!” and “Men like you know nothing about really creating something!” and acting half-crazed with paramilitary stress, stretching Hamilton way beyond her thespian capacities and resulting in what seems more than anything like a parody of Faye Dunaway in Mommy Dearest—has to give us that gooey “I face the future with hope, because if a Terminator can learn the value of human life, maybe we can, too” voiceover at the very end.
The point is that head-clutchingly insipid stuff like this puts an even heavier burden of importance on T2’s digital effects, which now must be stunning enough to distract us from the formulaic void at the story’s center, which in turn means that even more money and directorial attention must be lavished on the film’s F/X. This sort of cycle is symptomatic of the insidious three-part loop that characterizes Special Effects Porn—
(1)Astounding digital dinosaur/ tornado/ volcano/ Terminator effects that consume almost all the director’s creative attention and require massive financial commitment on the part of the studio;
(2) A consequent need for guaranteed megabuck ROI, which entails the formulaic elements and easy sentiment that will assure mass appeal (plus will translate easily into other languages and cultures, for those important foreign sales…);
(3) A director — often one who’s shown great talent in earlier, less expensive films — who is now so consumed with realizing his spectacular digital visions, and so dependent on the studio’s money to bring the F/X off, that he has neither the leverage nor the energy to fight for more interesting or original plots/ themes/ characters.
— and thus yields the two most important corollary formulations of the Inverse Cost and Quality Law:
(ICQL(a)) The more lavish and spectacular a movie’s special effects, the shittier that movie is going to be in all non-F/X respects. For obvious supporting examples of ICQL(a), see lines 1–2 of this article and/or also Jurassic Park, Independence Day, Forrest Gump, etc.
(ICQL(b)) There is no quicker or more efficient way to kill what is interesting and original about an interesting, original young director than to give that director a huge budget and lavish F/X resources. The number of supporting examples of ICQL(b) is sobering. Have a look, e.g., at the differences between Rodriguez’s El Mariachi and his From Dusk till Dawn, between de Bont’s Speed and Twister, between Gilliam’s Brazil and Twelve Monkeys, between Bigelow’s Near Dark and Strange Days. Or chart Cameron’s industry rise and artistic decline from T1 and Aliens through T2 and The Abyss to — dear Lord—True Lies. Popular entertainment media report that Cameron’s new Titanic, currently in post-production, is (once again) the most expensive and technically ambitious film of all time. A nation is even now pricing trenchcoats and lubricants in anticipation of its release.