FUN FRIDAY: Terminator 2 Judgment Day

TOPICS:

Hasta la vista, baby. A few weeks ago I ran into this longform article over at VFXBlog (a blog surprisingly light on effects itself) that discusses the groundbreaking effects used in the 1991 classic Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The article was written in 2017, but it still holds up, much like the film does.

Really quite good work for 1991

This film may look dated in a lot of ways starting with Edward Furlong’s hair and going through to the computer facility that eventually gets destroyed, but the effects for the most part hold up very well. There were only about 50 computer-generated effects shots in this film and certainly they’re nowhere as good as what can be done today but it’s really surprising how good they look today.

The article goes into deep detail with interviews from the people who created the effects and leaves you with surprising details of those memorable shots such as the time when the terminator rises from the linoleum floor.

Back in the 1990s, computer graphics wasn’t the cutthroat business it is today. It was much more time consuming and expensive. It was carefully considered, while today I think it’s cranked out too quickly. That’s not an indictment of the hard-working people who do CGI today. Rather, it’s just that no one is giving them the time or the budget to do anything extraordinary anymore.

Yes I saw it in the theater

I know that I’m marked as an “OG” for saying this. I guess I don’t care. The thing is, I remember seeing the film in the theaters. Not only that I remember thinking how revolutionary it was at the time. It wasn’t just a good action film. The period of the 80s and 90s were known for those but it was so interesting visually. It was like Star Wars and Blade Runner (saw both in the theater too.) It led to me (and a lot of other people) watching it over and over on VHS just to say, “did I really see what I thought I saw?”

Remember this was a year before Jurassic Park and 8 years before The Matrix. Today, CGI is commonplace and nearly perfect in so many ways, but back then, it was something you just hadn’t seen before anywhere, certainly not in such a realistic context. Keep in mind that this film came out only about 7 years after we saw some of the very first long CGI shots in The Last Starfighter and if you look at that film today it looks like a cell phone game or worse. This was a totally believable android who was capable of taking any shape. The camera didn’t pan away… you saw it happen.

And now, it’s over years later and some of those shots still work. That my friends is impressive. I dare say that nothing on this blog will age that well after that much time. That’s why I give this well-deserved tip of the hat to those artists back in the 1990s.

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.