The transformation effects are spectacular, in part because there’s real magic to them, a sense of technological wonder. His arms instantly convert into three-foot-long stilettos, and when he’s shot in the head, his exploded ‘flesh’ simply welds itself back together. He’s a kind of mutating mercury globule who can bleed through bars, pour through windows, and take on the physical characteristics of any object he touches, from a person to a floor.

Where Arnold has a metal skeleton under his synthetic skin, the evil terminator, one of the advanced T-1000 series, is made entirely of liquid metal. This time, though, Cameron adds a special-effects coup.

For most of his screen time he skulks around in a policeman’s uniform, pursuing his prey as relentlessly as Arnold did in the first picture. He suggests a stoic, emaciated James Dean - he’s like Dean as a troop leader of the Hitler Youth. “This new terminator (Robert Patrick) is boyishly handsome but with pursed lips and cold, dead eyes. Now another terminator has been dispatched to alter history by killing him. Her son, now a punky preteen (Edward Furlong), is destined to become the rebel leader in the coming war against the machines. The first movie, you may recall, ended with Sarah becoming pregnant. “In the enjoyably overwrought TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, director-cowriter James Cameron pulls a smart switch: This time, Arnold’s terminator isn’t a menacing villain but a good guy, a father protector who is sent from the future to guard the son of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton).

Friday, January 31 - Saturday, February 1, 2020

Judgment day terminator