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Terminator opening quote4/13/2024 ![]() The same goes for most laser fire, really. ![]() It looks great, sure but I never thought it sounded powerful. It’s more like, pew, pew, pew, if anything. What about the laser fire? Naw, that’s not scary, either. The SCHWOOM of the lightsabers is super iconic, but is it scary? No, not really. I’ve watched a lot of sci-fi in my day (with some of my favorites coming from Paul Verhoeven movies like RoboCop, Starship Troopers, and Total Recall), and the one thing that always leaves an impression on me is the sound. It’s not just that sound that makes the intro super effective, a it’s also the rumbling of the explosions, and all of that laser fire. killing us all someday seems to be getting closer and closer by the second, and to hear that robot crush a human skull like a paper cup couldn’t be any more horrifying. I mentioned earlier how the crunching of that skull by the robot foot terrified me as a child, and you know what? It STILL terrifies me. (Image credit: Tri-Star Pictures) The Sound Effects Are Bone Rattling And Super Effective So, yeah, the other movies pull from this war against the machines, but none of them actually match this look at it. That’s why It’s a shame that, when ranking the Terminator movies, you see that none of them truly match the terror of this one scene, as not even the movie that features aspects of the war – Terminator Salvation – seems all that scary. gone completely amok, and in a lot of ways, I think the terrifying aspect that's at the heart of all of the Terminator movies is right there in those first three minutes of T2. That said, the first three minutes of T2 ARE horrific, and terrifying. ![]() The first is horror the sequel is action. This is actually kind of similar to Ridley Scott’s Alien juxtaposed with James Cameron’s Aliens, as I would definitely put Alien on the list of best horror movies of all time, but wouldn’t put Aliens there, since it's an action movie. You see, one reason why I prefer the first movie to the second is because the first movie is more of a horror movie, while the second is more of an action movie. They are also, unfortunately, where the horror aspects of the franchise seem to end. In a way, those first three minutes completely define the entire Terminator series (yes, even the first movie, retroactively, since we see WHY John Connor was so necessary to survive). (Image credit: Orion Pictures) It Is Scary As All Hell And Pretty Much Defines The Entire Series The fate of all humanity is right there in the first three minutes! ![]() Yes, there are definitely OTHER great opening scenes in movies, like The Lion King and Star Wars, but nothing that quite sets the stakes like Terminator 2: Judgment Day. To this day, I still don’t think I’ve ever seen ANY other movie set up stakes like that. Soon, we're actually shown the war against the machines itself, and, well, by this point, I was 100% engaged. That right there was NIGHTMARE FUEL for me in 1991. The camera pans up and we see one of these “machines,” and let me tell you. (Are they children’s skulls?!) Then there's narration from a woman (we’d later learn that it’s Sarah Connor) that “3 billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997” (To which I thought, "1997?!? That’s right around the corner!"), and that the survivors of the “nuclear fire” only lived to face “a new nightmare,” which was the “war against the machines.” And, then we hear a terrible crunching sound as a metal foot steps on a skull. We then get a shot of a playground (we’re to assume it’s the same one from before), and there are literal skulls littering the ground.
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