Terminator 2: A Special Movie to Xennials

Posted by TappyMauvendaise@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 85 comments

Terminator 2 was released on July 3, 1991. It was released at that magical time for us when we were 8-12 and couldn’t buy tickets to rated-R movies or rent them.

What makes this movie special to xennials?

-John Connor is supposed to be 10 years old. The 10 year old viewer feels like they could be John. Some of his experiences mirrored what we did in that era (arcades, malls, motorbikes).

-It was rated R, so you either went to the theater with dad, uncle, grandpa, or older cousin. Or, you snuck in to a theater. If any Xennial’s mom took them to this in the theater, I’d love to hear about it.

-The special effects were mind-blowing. Everyone was talking about them. Until Jurassic park two years later, T2 was the holy grail of special effects. It was like nothing else seen on the screen before

-The Arnold effect. We been seeing Arnold in lighter fare such as Twins (1988) and Kindergarten Cop (1990). T2 was a return to form. Arnold was an icon in the nineties.

-High likelihood the VHS was at sleepovers throughout the nineties.

-The father/son relationship between John and the T-800.

-if your family owned the VHS, high likelihood you watched it 40 times due to limited tv viewing options in the nineties.

-“Hasta la vista, baby," "I'll be back”

-The ideas in the movie were quite disturbing and frightening to a 10 year old. But what’s disturbing and frightening is often the most memorable and cool.

-T2 is one of the best movies ever made

-When Titanic came out (another Xennial milestone) we all wondered “from the same guy who directed Terminator 2?!”

-Movies were everything back in the early nineties and T2 was the perfect movie for Xennials.

-It was available to rent on November 28, 1991. It was available for purchase on August 5, 1992. Can you believe how long we used to wait to buy movies?

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Knight_thrasher@reddit

I paid for Problem Child 2, snuck into the auditorium for T2

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Allaplgy@reddit

I kinda had the opposite, much worse experience. Paid to see T2 and ended up watching Earnest Goes to Jail.

It was my friend's birthday, so his mom took us, and brought his little brother. Little bro got scared by the skulls in the first scene and started to cry, so mom took us all out of the theater. Ernest was the other option, and we already paid so..... 😞

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GutsAndBlackStufff@reddit

Ernest Goes to Jail was a decent consolation prize

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GovernmentBoth1306@reddit

classic move, way better than problem child 2 for sure

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Chickenbrik@reddit

I like how problem child 2 is probably a worse movie for kids than T2.

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OkGene2@reddit

gif

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Ozy_Flame@reddit

One could argue John Connor was the problem child in T2!

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nocapnonerf@reddit

Easy money!

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agentmkultra666@reddit

I was too young so my parents wouldn’t let me see it, and it sent me into a hyperfixation. I wrote a book about these “cool” teenagers that had beer parties, watched Terminator 2, and shot up the cops who tried to bust their party. The drawings are pretty incredible if I do say so myself😂

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mackattacknj83@reddit

My dad stayed home from work and took me when I was 7 haha

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Atillion@reddit

I asked on another subreddit for a list of movies A-Z to watch with my 14 year old. This was the T movie and we literally just watched it last night.

I've been asking him to rate each movie as soon as it's over and this was the highest ranked movie yet with a 9.5 out of 10. I don't think he'll ever rate a movie 10 so this is the highest honor.

I've seen the movie plenty of times but was watching it through the lens of him seeing it for the first time so I really paid attention with a renewed interest.

The first thing I noticed that I loved about this movie was how it just got right to the action and didn't really let up until the end. I give it a solid 10.

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit

My mother would just rent this movie willie nillie and just leave you in the room to watch it. Whether it was Terminator, Rambo, Robocop, Friday the 13th, there were just some R movies that essentially all children watched while not alarming their parents.

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eatsleepdive@reddit

I remember seeing this at a drive in theater.

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Trixie1143@reddit

I asked for Eddie Furlongs hair cut so many times. I have red hair. Never worked.

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its_raining_scotch@reddit

You could have gotten his buddy’s red mullet though.

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Trixie1143@reddit

I have the same aversion to telling the truth to a cop. Shoulda went for it.

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detourne@reddit

I had the haircut, but it wasn't quite perfect. The conservative kids I grew up around called me caveman for having long hair.

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Trixie1143@reddit

Lucky it wasn't the f word.

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detourne@reddit

Oh I had plenty of that word, got in quite a few fights over the years and lots of different slurs thrown around.

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TheLastBoat@reddit

Still my favorite movie of all time. It’s the reason I have/will never use certain technology. As wild as it sounds, it’s no longer outside the realm of possibility that one day you and I are gonna have to go to war against the robots.

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its_raining_scotch@reddit

Dude, fellow Xennials watched this movie too and grew up to create the current psycho technology that’s coming out now and were directly inspired by T2.

It’s weird how some people watch a movie and see the bad guy as the hero they want to be like.

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Amazing_Economics_63@reddit

My friends and I couldn’t get in to see the movie Kuffs (PG-13) we must of been 12 I guess. So we ended up going to the arcade in the mall and beat the Terminator 2 Arcade Game! We took turns shooting and getting quarters. And the Ending of the game was just like the movie with the “thumbs up in the lava” scene. Honestly one of my favorite memories.

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Hekate_153@reddit

Don't forget the kickassness of Linda Hamilton / Sarah Connor.

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its_raining_scotch@reddit

I remember how her being all ripped was so groundbreaking back then.

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VinylHighway@reddit

Saw it age 12? 13? at summer camp with a bunch of guys my age having never seen the original. It was...AWESOME.

Also the first DVD I ever purchased.

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Cinderhazed15@reddit

I just saw it on TV the other day and was talking to my wife about it. I STILL haven’t seen the first one, but I’ve seen the second one and everything after…

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buck_angel_food@reddit

First one is more of a HORROR SLASHER

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Cinderhazed15@reddit

I have some vague memory of family saying that the first one was ‘too scary’ or something, and just never thought of it to revisit it…

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its_raining_scotch@reddit

Really? It’s not scary, it’s one of the best sci-fi stories ever told and actually one of the most epic love stories ever told.

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buck_angel_food@reddit

It’s more gritty

You owe it to your self to watch it

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buck_angel_food@reddit

The first one is awesome too!

It was made on like a 6 million dollar budget!

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Cinderhazed15@reddit

I saw a behind the scenes about the practical effect of the terminator head melting, that was pretty amazing!

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VinylHighway@reddit

You should check it out

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chadork@reddit

First BluRay I ever purchased! Then Batman Forever. Both sequels. Huh.

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Akiranar@reddit

First screenplay I ever read. Huge fan of the Terminator franchise.

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Smokeythemagickamodo@reddit

One of the greatest films ever for sure

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Roland-Of-Eld-19@reddit

I remember being young enough that GNR were definitely in mortal danger when Terminator was approaching them on stage during You Could Be Mine music vid haha

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Azuras_Star8@reddit

This is exactly what made me enjoy GNR.

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TappyMauvendaise@reddit (OP)

Yes! How could I forget to mention Guns’N’Roses. They were the biggest band on earth in 1991. Biggest band in biggest movie.

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JeanEtrineaux@reddit

My first R rated movie. I wasn’t allowed to watch them yet but my dad came home with the rented video like “Kid, you gotta see this shit”

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BalrogRuthenburg11@reddit

My parents took me and my best friend to see this when I was nine. As soon as the terminator crushes that skull in the beginning I knew this movie was going to be awesome. It was so loud in that Dolby stereo THX format!

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hamburgler26@reddit

We were at lunch and the canal chase scene was on TV. My 4 year old was absolutely sucked in and it took everything we had to get him to come back to the table and sit down. Reminded me just how incredible the movie is all the way through. Even just a little slice you just have to stop and watch.

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therealkeeper@reddit

I just remember how revolutionary all of the effects were compared to anything else at the time. The molten metal type stuff was like nothing we had ever seen before.

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greaterwhiterwookiee@reddit

I saw this when I was 9 I think. It was on VHS and we were having a New Year’s party. The kids were watching something in the dining room on a small tv and the adults had this playing on the big screen but only a couple people were actually watching. I was glued to the screen.

Then I got sent to party with the other kids and we watched The Sandlot.

The 90s were great.

Took my mom and wife to see it for the 30th anniversary re-release in theaters. So worth it. And I’ll go again if they re-re-release.

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Chickenbrik@reddit

I wanted to see this in theaters but my mom wouldn’t let me. Well a year later my dad gets the replica knife and it so happened to come with T2, and that’s how I got to see it. I actually had a double feature first rated R movies that sleep over night with Alien and T2.

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GoodOlSpence@reddit

These younguns will never understand what a big fucking deal this movie was.

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vidvicious@reddit

My dad took me to see it on my tenth birthday. I remember him telling all my friends to crowd around my little brother so the theater wouldn’t kick us out.

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BlackRainbow0@reddit

My dad, who just got divorced for the second time, took me to see it at 9 years old. It was my first R-rated movie. In retrospect, he probably didn’t have anyone else to go with.

There was enough popcorn-chomping action that I didn’t think it was much different than other movies, even though I wouldn’t show it to my own kid at that age.

After that, the T2 arcade game became a favorite of ours. Whenever I’d see him, we’d feed the machine $20 in quarters, grab the imitation machine guns, and usually end up beating it.

Now when Species came out and he took me to see that … to my great dismay, he made me leave the theater early.

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Miz_momo82@reddit

I was allowed to watch it only because a classmate was an extra in the movie

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ObligationSlight8771@reddit

Your foster parents are dead

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Ok-Energy5358@reddit

Yep, the playground scene gave us all a more than healthy fear of nuclear bombs. We definitely all watched this too young, lol.

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Allaplgy@reddit

Almost watched it in the theater at I think 9yo. But my friend's brother got scared so his mom made us all watch Ernest goes to jail instead.

But then my dad let me rent it a while after it hit video. First R movie he ever OK'd. Was probably still too young, but it was the most epic movie I'd ever seen by far. Had that burning skeleton etched in my brain.

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Brashear99@reddit

Watched the original a few days ago for the first time in probably 30 years. Better than I remembered.

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justpassingby_thanks@reddit

I saw it in the theater. Because my dad could only go out to the movies alone if it was also watching one of the kids. We did this for robocop movies and the original Terminator as well. So t2 wasn't something I expected much of but as a young kid, the vfx blew me away, liquid metal, impersonation, rules like stabbing only, this was a trip and a half into understanding what good action could be. I had seen alien movies on VHS, so blood guts and gore was nothing, and I wasn't there to watch Linda Hamilton be her bad ass self. I just pictured myself as a few years younger than John Connor the punk who really isn't even a full teen in this movie, his voice was cracking and everything.

A couple years later surround sound was being sold and t2 on laser disc was the go to for salesmen selling people like my dad on it in their little sound proof room.

The audio and vfx quality of this movie changed cinema forever.

I will die on this hill.

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matagin@reddit

Definitely snuck into T2 with my best friend who loved movies like me. It was incredible! When we came out of the theater we were hyped up so we yelled at some older guys driving and they slammed on their brakes, parked their car and started chasing us. We took off running and hid behind the theater. When they gave up we called my mom on the pay phone in the theater to pick us up. Great night I’ll never forget!

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VB_Creampie@reddit

🔥 👍

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Devium44@reddit

This was my first rated R movie. I went with a friend and his mom and thought we were going to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2. I was pretty confused for about the first 30 minutes. We were both 8. Yeah, he didn’t have very responsible parents.

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rifunseeker@reddit

The CGI or whatever they used for the T-1000 holds up so well. Was watching it the other night and it still looks better than a lot of movies made in the past 10 years.

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madisonianite@reddit

It also coincided with the release of GNR Use Your Illusion didn’t it? They were at their peak after Appetite for Destruction and the album was highly anticipated. I remember being amped up from the music video. Also, Terminator was an amazing movie. The special effects in T2 were mind blowing at the time.

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chadork@reddit

The toys were boss.

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detourne@reddit

Favorite movie of all time

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RylosAU@reddit

My brother took me to see this at the cinemas with his friends. There's a 10 year gap between us, so we didn't really hang out a lot, but this is one of those awesome memories from my early teenage years that sticks with me. This and the first TMNT movie is another one, for the same reason.

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small___potatoes@reddit

My favorite movie. I saw it in the theater with my dad. I have watched it so many times, I just love thinking about time travel movies.

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SomewhereOk3996@reddit

I had a bootleg VHS in 1991 and watched it and rewatched it a million times!

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brokenman82@reddit

Saw it in the theater. 9 years old. Momma raised me right

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eamesaarinen@reddit

i told my parents i was going to driving miss daisy.

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xander6981@reddit

I was 10 when this hit VHS and my Dad rented it. He let me watch it with him. I had never seen the original film and it didn't really matter as the film does a great job filling the viewer in on what they need to know. The movie definitely blew my mind and I loved it.

I also think it's funny that this movie had a line of toys, despite the R-rating.

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nobot4321@reddit

I still say hasta la vista, baby when I want to shine someone on.

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Waughwaughwaugh@reddit

I had THE biggest crush on Eddie Furlong because of this movie. Bought every copy of Tiger Beat, Bop, Teen Beat so I could cut out his picture and put it on my wall.

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Illustrious-Lead-960@reddit

Yes, my dad took me to the theater to see it—but there isn’t much of a story to tell there.

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xdementia@reddit

Where I learned not to talk to cops.

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ALT3NPFL3G3R@reddit

It's the goat of terminator movie's, untouched

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Nadathug@reddit

I was 11 when it came out. Me and my friend rode our bikes to see it at the mall (we bought tickets for Robin Hood and snuck in). John Connor was that effortlessly cool kid everyone wanted to be like, and was rocking that iconic Public Enemy shirt. Plus “You Could Be Mine” was in heavy rotation on MTV 24 hours a day. “Hasta La Vista”, “I’ll Be Back” and other quotes from the movie were repeated non stop at our school. It was a huge event if you were a pre teen kid trying to be into music and be cool.

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_psykovsky_@reddit

I had this poster in my room and agree with everything

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Overall_Falcon_8526@reddit

Definitely helped to perpetuate my fear of nuclear annihilation. Great flick, too. Peak Ahnuld.

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Gwendolyn-NB@reddit

First r rated move i got to see as a kid when I was 12.

Still have the special edition VHS with the extra scenes/version where they open his head up and pull the processor out of his head.

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I_am_Forklift@reddit

Was this written by AI??

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TappyMauvendaise@reddit (OP)

I wrote it with no help from AI. Just born in 1982 and writing my memories. What makes you think it’s AI? Genuinely curious.

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OkGene2@reddit

I wrote what I believed was a thoughtful performance review for a coworker, and my manager said it looked like it was from AI. She also admitted she uses AI to write her own performance reviews.

Lesson is to be more shitty in your writing

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HackManDan@reddit

Born in ‘82. My mom was sooo angry when she caught my dad and I watching it on VHS! What an a groundbreaking film

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Sodamyte@reddit

The movie theatre I saw it at didn't care about age restrictions I was 13.

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CatsEqualLife@reddit

We rented it over Christmas of that year while family was visiting and put it on our sweet new tv. My parents didn’t try to stop me from watching, and I wasn’t really interested, but watching my aunt freaking out a couple of times when I was walking through the room remains a core memory for sure.

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