I’ve watched Terminator 1 a long time ago and remember hating it, so I was never motivated to watch the second one. However, I must say that last class left me pleasantly surprised. I didn’t like the first one as I found that it has a lot of discrepancies upon gender roles. The female character of Sarah, had the possibilities to be a truly dynamic character, but instead, she ended up being completely co-dependent and submissive towards men. Her only actions in the movie are, escaping from the assassin and falling in love with the imposing male figure Kyle. She’s solely passive and always plays the victim until, maybe, towards the end. The only message that I got from the movie t was that one needs hyper-masculinity as a mean to survive the universe.
On the other hand, I felt like all these issues that I encountered in the first Terminator were, relatively, solved in Terminator 2. I truly felt that this sequel successfully avoided the gender traps that were found in the original Terminator. The female character in this one is true, organic, and non-stereotypical. She’s no longer two-dimensional, but a true human being. This is also true for the male characters in the story, which are no longer conventionally masculine, but multi-dimensional presentations of individuals. as a result, they felt very far away from pre-conceptual clichés. I actually cared about these characters, as they were profound and relatable unlike in the first Terminator, where characters were purely tools that were needed to serve the plot. The concept of hyper-masculinity is less obvious in Terminator 2, but more truthful and compelling.
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