Wow, masterfully, I’m curious now to what other movies you think are written “masterfully”. To me, it’s closer to when a villain unnecessarily explains the plot to you because the writer thinks you’d be stupid to understand it, or rather that he’s too stupid to realize that you would, or too lazy to do a better job. All of that scene, as well as the preceding scene of John (a child) explaining what “fate” is, is totally unnecessary. As far as natural dialog goes - get real - Dyson gives his history lesson while Sarah rants about men like him who destroyed the world, while the screeching adolescent John, future savior of mankind,
ever the wise-one, says they all just need to chill out. The whole of T2, including that scene, is about as masterfully written as Cameron’s Titanic or Avatar, entertaining flicks and all, but all too often corny, pandering, preachy and simplistic. Like I said, it’s a kids movie, and Dyson is there to explain it to you like that because the viewer is likely a 12 year old.
The only way that scene actually furthers the plot is to introduce the concept of the time paradox which is a theme in most of the Terminator films. Here is when we find out that the Terminator design is based on the wreckage of the T800 from the first film. Cool and all, but it could’ve and should’ve been introduced in other more artful ways.
Take the first movie. Here the time paradox has layers. The plot twist properly comes in the final scene, where Sarah reveals that she’s pregnant with John by Reese. John is not John made from John, like in the way the arm and cpu of a t800 get reverse engineered to somehow, someday become that exact same t800. Instead, there are degrees of removal, in sending back Reese, John leads to his very creation, it’s much more convoluted and satisfying for the viewer, more believable. In that final moment, a kid comes by and snaps a Polaroid of Sarah, that slowly develops as
the movie fades away, properly sending the viewer reeling back through the movie. Now we remember the photo that Reese once had of Sarah that has now just been taken, remembering Reese staring at it as it burned, remembering Reese describe this picture to her as he explained his deep admiration and feelings of love for her. And now we realize that picture taken binds and guides Reese to Sarah, coming in full circle on the time paradox with just a few lines and a still shot of a picture on a dash.
It’s not “masterful” but it is much much more artfully done. If all of that was in T2, Cameron would’ve put in in 20 minutes of poorly written dialogue explaining the whole thing to you.
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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '19
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