Last Saturday, young John Connor met the original Terminator and realized it was here to protect him. He then rescued his mother Sarah from a mental institution.

I have mixed emotions about the scene that follows. After she is saved from her predicament, Sarah, rather than being grateful, shows anger at John for putting himself at risk. She even tells him that she didn’t need his help.

Why is Sarah angry?

This scene both does and doesn’t make sense. On the one hand, Sarah wouldn’t want him putting himself at risk for her because he is the future hope for humanity. But on the other hand, she seems more angry about the fact that he saved her than about the fact that he put himself at risk. The line that hung me up was the phrase, “I can take care of myself.” That’s a very odd thing for a mother to say to her child. I can understand Sarah telling him that he is too important to endanger himself for her, but to declare that’s she’s strong and independent to a kid just felt weird.

Personally, I think the writers were trying to insert a girl power message into the script. But it doesn’t work here because Sarah has already shown herself to be more than competent, and again, asserting her independence to her own child is just odd. If they wanted to fit this line into their script, there are dozens of better places in the story.

True, it does make sense for Sarah to be hard on her son. But this line makes it seem like she’s not training to become a soldier so she can protect her son; she’s training to prove all the boys wrong. The line makes her motives clash. It’s important to bring these little details up because I believe that one of the hallmarks of social commentary or even propaganda is when a film makes a random departure from the continuity in the script or from the motivations of the characters to score a message point.

Throughout the sequel, Sarah has been obsessed with trying to get back to John. She sees herself as his protector. He needs her. Reuniting with her son accomplishes her chief goal. She might be angry that he risked his life for her, but her impulse should be to take charge and start making decisions to keep him safe. Then the two could bicker back and forth until John finds some moment to prove that he really is the leader she’s always told him he could be.

Sulking…

Instead, Sarah yells at her son and spends most of the following scenes sulking. This makes it seem like she’s angry because her pride is wounded. Now, this could’ve worked too. The writers could’ve explained at some point in the movie that the fact that John had to help her out of the institution made her feel like she’d failed as a mother, like she was supposed to protect him, but instead he was looking out for her. This could’ve made her feel like she was not just failing her son but failing Kyle. However, the writers never really explore why Sarah behaves the way she does for the next few scenes. Rather than making her look strong, they made her look rather weak. Thankfully, this doesn’t last long.

War with SkyNet

Sarah eventually asks the Terminator who created the technology that enabled SkyNet to begin the mass extinction of humanity. The Terminator tells her that the man responsible is named Miles Dyson. Sarah asks for all the man’s information, and the Terminator gives it to her. Then she takes John and the Terminator to a friend of hers, who has been hiding an armory she’d put together in preparation for the war with SkyNet. On the way, John sees the kids playing with the guns, which I mentioned in a previous review. He and the Terminator talk about the doomed nature of humanity. Since I’ve already discussed the scene, I won’t repeat my thoughts here, but this moment is another example of a random departure from the story to insert a brief sermon.

Once they reach Sarah’s friend’s home, the plan is to leave the area and wait for the inevitable war. But Sarah has a particularly vivid dream, and when she wakes up, she finds that she’s carved the words “No Fate” into the table.

These words are a throwback to something Kyle had said to her during the first movie — a statement future John wished to give his mother when she and Kyle finally met. The words give Sarah an idea, and without telling anyone what she’s planning, she drives off.

Sarah goes off on a secret mission

John sees his mother leave and finds the words carved into the table. He recalls Kyle’s statement, then remembers that she’d been asking the Terminator about Dyson. He realizes that she plans to kill the man before he can create the technology that will all but destroy humanity. Knowing where she’s heading, he and the Terminator rush off to keep Sarah from committing murder.

Sarah reaches Dyson’s house first and tries to kill him; however, she realizes what she’s about to do and steps away from Dyson as she’s holding a gun on him inside his home.

John and the Terminator show up a few seconds later, and the robot explains the situation to Dyson. He is, of course, shocked and grieved by this. He can’t really argue because the Terminator shows him his robotic hand, which is identical to the robotic hand he and his company have been studying since they recovered it from the factory where Sarah had destroyed the first Terminator.

However, poor Dyson receives no sympathy from Sarah. She goes into a diatribe about men and their vile desire to create weapons, or some such nonsense. Then she uses nuclear bombs as an example of men’s destructive impulses. She’s not using the word “man” to mean mankind in general. She’s complaining about the male sex, which is idiotic and ironic because poor Sarah doesn’t even know her history. If she did, she would’ve known that Lise Meitner, a woman, helped discover nuclear fusion. Without her scientific research, nuclear weapons never would’ve been invented. She’s literally been called the Mother of the Atomic Bomb.

Anyway, Dyson takes his scolding like a champ and decides to help the trio destroy his own research, which is being kept in a lab. We’ll cover the conclusion of Terminator 2 next Saturday.

Here are the three earlier parts of my review, in order from previous Saturdays:

A good movie that hates itself Why do the screenwriters appear to want to avoid creating fear of the mechanical monster? The film seems to want to parody its predecessor while also appealing to kids. That’s why John Connor is an inventive young teenager during the story.

Terminator 2: The Terminator becomes the Protector. The transition is uneven and there are hints that James Cameron was subtly mocking his 1984 film. Some plot development choices may have been driven by a sense of the need to tone down the violence a bit.

and

Terminator 2, Part 3: John meets the robots. At this point, John is on his own because his mother has been placed in a mental institution. The film shows John teaching the Terminator to become more human via the tactic of mimicry, which works as long as it doesn’t go too far.