Terminator 2: Judgment Day

T2 became massive, far outgrossing T1. It enabled Arnold Schwarzenegger's agent to hike his wages above everyone else's in Hollywood and gave Edward Furlong, a kid from Pasadena who was spotted hanging out at a boy's club, the chance to be a proper actor and go on to better things. Linda Hamilton, on the other hand, missed out. She wasn't put up for Demi Moore's $10million club and seemed to fade away.

Despite being a carbon copy of the original, with Arnie's Terminator playing the good robot instead of the bad, T2 is renowned for its special effects, which, even now, 10 years later, look awesome. As an action picture, it remains right up there in the sci-fi hall of fame.

The Terminator returns from the future to protect the life of a 10-year-old boy (Furlong), who will become the leader of the resistance in 20 years time after the Western world has been nuked flat and machine armies rule. Also, from the future comes a more advanced killer robot, the T1000 (Robert Patrick), to assassinate him.

The boy's mother (Hamilton) is locked in a high security loony bin. Somehow she has to escape, reinvent herself as an urban terrorist and bump off the techie science guy (Joe Morton) who is about to invent something that will make the decimation of half the world inevitable.

T1000 has an advantage over the Terminator. He is virtually indestructible. You could blow a hole through his head and he'll come back good as new. Bullets and knives don't bother him. Nothing does. He can do anything, from assuming the body of another person to being shattered into a thousand pieces. Resurrection is his party trick and if he had a sense of humour would enjoy doing it just to watch the expression on people's faces.

Talking of humour, there isn't any. Arnie's catch phrases, "I'll be back", and "Hasta la vista, baby" are pretty lame. The boy casts a few jokes in its direction, but robots aren't programmed to laugh. In fact, he attempts to teach it how to smile, with pitiful results.

The stunts are spectacular, the effects amazing and the entertainment value high. The Special Edition DVD has put back a number of scenes deleted from the original cinema version. Rather than hindering the pace of the film, as director James Cameron thought, they give it more depth and understanding.