On Cinema In or Around The Cinema
Terminator 2 at 35
My decades-long obsession with seeing Cameron’s blockbuster on the big screen
James Cameron’s Terminator films have been a huge part of my movie-watching life.
My love of horror was awakened after sneaking downstairs as a kid late one night and catching the end of The Terminator, specifically from the final vehicular pursuit where the T-800’s petrol-laden ride cooks it in a great fireball. When the metal scrap has settled, when Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor are breathing a sigh of relief in front of a tarmac firepit, a shape rises from the debris.
The chrome endoskeleton of the T-800, the figure birthed from James Cameron’s fever dream, had risen from the dead, and I, with no context for what this film was, saw this hellish scene and froze in place, despite wanting to run back to bed. I had to know what would happen next.
And so, an obsession was born.
My father was (and still is) a huge Arnold Schwarzenegger fan, so I would later become more aware of the man whose gunmetal bones would haunt my dreams for years, and by the time Terminator 2 was getting its heavy pre-release promotion in the press and on TV, I got my first real yearning to see something on the big screen I had no chance of watching. Probably didn’t help that there was T2 merchandise for kids, including a hulking plastic figure of Arnold’s T-800 that doled out scratchy recordings of his T2 catchphrases.
Of course, I would eventually get to watch both films, and my vivid imagination about what transpired in between the parts I had seen didn’t match up. Instead, the reality was even better. The nightmarish nature of the first film only grew, and it’s fair to say The Terminator led me to my love of slasher movies with seemingly unstoppable killers.
But Terminator 2 blew me away, almost as if Arnie’s grenade launcher had been unloaded into me. I first watched this spectacular sci-fi action masterpiece on a 14-inch television via a long-play VHS tape recording, ad breaks and all. It still felt huge, like it would burst forth from my tiny screen in defiance of its pitiful cage.
But there are certain films you see on the small screen that you just know deserve to be seen on a ludicrously-large one, with booming sound. If there’s one regret of the modern age’s conveniences, it’s the effect it’s had on how movies look and feel. Sure, we still get movies that serve as a beautiful reminder of how enthralling a blockbuster cinema outing can be, but it’s undoubtedly a smaller pool despite the increase in films available.
Whatever you might say about Jim Cameron, there’s no denying he exclusively makes films that belong on the biggest screen possible. Sometimes to their detriment (hello to the Avatar series). As someone dragged to see Titanic at the cinema seven times, I can confirm that, even when you come to loathe a film after a while, it can still be a big old captivating fucker to watch play out in a cinema when it’s made right.
So I long dreamed of the chance to see the first two Terminator films on the big screen, especially T2, but life, uh, gets in the way, and I dropped off cinemagoing on the regular for a good while, and missed several opportunities to see both as anniversary and festival screenings happened within a mile or two of my house.
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The first time I actually got to see a Terminator film on the big screen was Terminator: Salvation, which would have been an underwhelming way to go about it if it didn’t happen to be the first date I had with my future wife. Terminator pops up all along my timeline!
I’ve embraced the cinematic life a lot more in the past decade, and, as of 2023, I’m back to going to the cinema quite regularly again, so imagine my luck when 2024 rolled around, and my local Odeon had limited screenings of both The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day in the same week.
A scheduling conflict on my part meant I’d have to see them in reverse order, though, which in hindsight feels a bit unfair to The Terminator, but T2 was the dream, and I would live it first.
And it was a dream. A big, beautiful dream of metal, fire, motorcycles, guns, explosions, and pointy things stabbing people. When that opening credits scene hits, and Brad Fiedel’s thunderous clanking title track plays, you better believe I got goosebumps.
And, of course, it didn’t stop there. I had childlike wonder in my eyes and a shit-eating grin on my lips as all the big set-pieces, shots, and one-liners played out. It wasn’t exactly like I’d claimed a childhood want, as it was a restored digital version of the film in a modern, unflashy cinema, but what mattered was I’d finally seen it on the big screen.
In 2025, I got a second chance to watch it at the cinema, and this time, it was a lot closer to watching it in its original form. Coming right at the end of a weekend genre festival, Grindfest, I saw a 35mm screening of T2 in an old Art Deco cinema. I was shattered after a marathon of genre movies and T2-themed ale, and those old theater seats are horribly unforgiving to sit on, but I was once again enraptured by James Cameron’s sci-fi action monster, and all pain and fatigue washed away for a couple of hours (the next few days, I definitely paid for it). I’m no snob about film presentation, but there is something quite satisfying about watching a blockbuster on celluloid. I wish it’d been my first cinematic showing of T2, but beggars can't be choosers.
That’ll do it, right? Job done, I’d seen T2 in its original form on the big screen. But 2026 is the 35th anniversary of the film, so it was inevitable it’d show up in cinemas again. I quite fancied taking my son this time as he’s old enough, but these screenings offered up a chance to see the film in yet another, different way: 3D.
I’d be sceptical of an old film being given a 3D makeover, even from 3D-obsessed Cameron, but after seeing Jaws in 3D (twice!), I had more trust in the likelihood that it would be done right.
And look, while it’s a bit strange in some places, the opening and its credits sequence were a great way to assure me it’d be a winner overall. Again, the thumping Fiedel score gave me goosebumps, but it was the way the 3D elevated the nuclear fire and cybernetic steel of those opening credits that raised them higher still.
After a while, like all good uses of 3D, it melted into the background whilst providing the depth that pulls you into the film. The grounding of a 90s California setting makes it a lot easier to feel a part of than Avatar’s Pandora, even if the 3D was understandably not up to the level it is in those films.
So now, after years of yearning, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is up there as one of my most watched films on the big screen (a field Cameron dominates), and I’ve seen it in a different way each time. My son may not have been quite as eager to see it on the big screen as I was all those years ago, but I was delighted he got the opportunity.
We live in an age where films are generally easier to watch, and new ones are abundant pretty much every damn day, but cinemas are largely beholden to what makes them money. As a result, beyond the usual modern suspects, we’ve had an uptick in screenings of older films in recent years that present an opportunity for more and more people to see their favourites of yesteryear as intended or discover a certified classic on the big screen.
As much as I like to go to the cinema every week and watch something new, the chance to see something older is nearly always there, and I try to embrace that as often as I can.
Beyond Arnie vehicles, in the last couple of years I’ve been able to see Die Hard, The Thing, Day of the Dead, Taxi Driver, Suspiria, Carrie, The Big Lebowski, American Psycho, and Akira among others for the first time in the comfy confines of the cinema.
I gained a fresh perspective on films like Taxi Driver and Akira after those screenings, and my love for established favourites grew as I felt I’d finally seen them properly. You may not realise quite how special your favourites are until you’ve seen them the way they began life, up there, larger than life, in the dark, in a room full of strangers.
