This week I’ll look at how women are portrayed and interact with other characters in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the sequel to my favorite movie, sci fi thriller The Terminator, which I wrote about last week..
(Find out more about 3 tests I’ll use to guide the conversation in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.)
The Story
A powerful computer network sends a cyborg back from the future to kill John Connor, the leader of the humans who defeat it, when he’s a boy. The human resistance sends back its own cyborg to protect him. It’s a reprogrammed older model that tried to kill John’s mother before he was born.
I watched the “Extreme” edition, which has some extra footage.
Chasing Bechdel
(Does a (named) female character talk to another named female character about anything other than a man?)
Who’s Talking To Whom
As in Ex Machina and Terminator, I’ll refer to machines designed to look like a particular gender as being characters of that gender.
Women to Women:
Sarah Connor says one line to the wife of Miles Dyson (a computer programmer):
- Sarah tells her to get on the floor
No named female character talks to any other named female character.
Men To Men:
The good Terminator (which is how I’ll refer to the reprogrammed Terminator sent to protect John Connor) and John talk about many things, including:
- How the good Terminator works
- Its mission
- Following John’s instructions
- The evil Terminator
- Strategy
- John’s foster parents
- Sarah, including saving her
- Not shooting people
- Injuries to others
- What crying is
- How Terminator can blend in
- Human nature
- John’s childhood years learning to fight
- Other people thinking Sarah is crazy
- Emotions
- Fear of dying
- The mission
- Guys Sarah dated
- John’s real dad and the back story from The Terminator
- Time travel
John also talks one-on-one to many named and unnamed side characters, including a friend his age, Todd (his stepfather), unnamed guys who try to harass him, and Danny (Miles Dyson’s son), about:
- John’s foster parents
- Stealing cash from ATM
- Sarah and that she’s “psycho” and blew up computer factory
- Insults
- Where John’s not supposed to be
- Danny going to his room
The good Terminator talks to bikers in a bar and an unnamed security guard on different topics, including:
- Clothes, boots
- Taking a motorcycle
- Visiting hours
The evil Terminator, posing as Janelle (John’s foster mom) talks to John about:
- Where John is
- Dinner
- The dog
The evil Terminator also talks with a biker cop, a helicopter pilot, a truck driver, and John’s friend separately about:
- Getting out of the way
- Whether he’s all right
- Where John is
- A motorcycle
Miles Dyson, who is key to designing what will become Skynet, talks with an unnamed man, a security guard, and a police officer separately about:
- The Terminator arm (from last movie)
- Dyson’s wife and kids
- The detonator he’s holding
Women And Men:
Sarah talks to Dr. Silberman (the psychologist) about:
- Injuring him
- Sarah’s dream of children burning
- Seeing John
- When the world will end
- When she can be transferred to minimum security and have visitors
- Terminators
- Her diagnosis and “delusions”
Sarah talks to Kyle Reese from the first movie in a dream (he holds her while she weeps) about:
- John being a target
- Kyle will always be with her
John and Sarah talk one-on-one about:
- The good Terminator being there to help
- How John shouldn’t have come for her
- Sarah didn’t need John’s help
- Whether or not to “kill” the good Terminator
- John coming to Miles Dyson’s home to stop her
- Sarah loves John
Sarah, John, and the good Terminator talk together about:
- Ammunition
- The Terminator’s abilities, including to learn
- Whether John is okay
- Terminator’s knowledge of anatomy
- Terminator’s life span
- How Terminator works
- Miles Dyson
- Cyberdyne
- How the war starts
- Getting away from the evil Terminator
- Driving
- John urges Sarah, who is injured, to get up
- Whether the evil Terminator is dead
- Why the good Terminator has to be destroyed
The good Terminator and Sarah talk once one-on-one:
- Terminator says “Come with me if you want to live”
The evil Terminator talks once one-on-one to Sarah:
- Tells her to call out to John
Sarah also talks to Dougie (a male orderly), to male and female guards, to an unnamed male driver, and to male police officers (along with Dr. Silberman):
- Medication (she tries to refuse)
- Threatening Silberman
- Sarah’s escape
- Terminator spotted
- John
Miles Dyson and his wife talk about:
- His work
- Taking kids to amusement park
- The neural net processor he’s designing
- Their kids and marriage
Dyson’s wife and Danny (their son) talk about:
- Going to bed
Sarah and Miles talk one-on-one about:
- Skynet
- War in the future
Miles, the good Terminator, Miles’ wife, Danny, and John talk about:
- Whether Sarah is hurt
- Miles’ wound
- The war
- Terminators
- Sarah rants about men like Miles building the hydrogen bomb and knowing nothing about creating a life the way women do
- Changing the future
- Destroying Cyberdyne
Janelle (John’s foster mom) and Todd (foster dad) talk about:
- How difficult John is
Dr. Silberman talks with unnamed doctors and staff (men and women) about:
- Sarah’s diagnosis
- Her “delusion” about Terminators, Reese, the war, etc.
- Escape attempts, Sarah stabbing him
The evil Terminator talks to Todd and Janelle, to two girls, and to two women at the mental health facility about:
- Finding John and/or Sarah
An unnamed man and woman at mental health facility talk about:
- Coffee
Sarah and Enrique (a revolutionary) talk about:
- He should get out of country
- His truck
Enrique, Jolanda (his wife or partner), the good Terminator, John, and Sarah talk about:
- Cops looking for Sarah
- Things Sarah left with Enrique
(Sarah and Jolanda hug but don’t say anything audible to one another.)
Miles, Sarah, John, the good Terminator, and others at Cyberdyne (including Carl Gibbons, a security guard) talk about:
- Excuses to get in
- Alarms triggered
- Getting to the chip
- Gas masks
- Police
- The detonator
Sarah Voiceover
Sarah does several voiceovers, talking about:
- The war against machines
- Terminators sent back in time to try to strike at Sarah and John
- Someone sent to protect John
- Good Terminator was best “would be” father because it would always be there
- It would die to protect John
- Summary of what the good Terminator told Miles
- The unknown future
- The value of human life
Conclusion
Not only do no named female character talk to each other about anything other than a man, none talk to each other at all. I counted only one line spoken from a woman to another woman, when Sarah tells Miles Dyson’s wife, whose name I never heard, to get down.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day fails the Bechdel Test.
Women v. Sexy Lamps
(can a female character be replaced by a sexy lamp without affecting the plot?)
John drives the first part of the story, as he orders the Terminator to help him rescue Sarah from a prison/mental ward.
But Sarah moves the plot forward once she’s freed. The team relies on her stored weapons and provisions. She hones in on Miles Dyson, who is working on what will become Skynet. Sarah takes off on her own to deal with him and is key to every plot development afterwards.
Conclusion
Sarah, the only significant female character, cannot be replaced with a sexy lamp. Terminator 2: Judgment Day passes.
Mako Mori
(does a female character have her own narrative arc that does not support a man’s story line?)
Sarah’s story is entwined with John’s because he’s the one the evil Terminator is trying to kill and he’s the future leader of the resistance. But she does have a narrative arc about saving the world.
She gets a lot of help from John and the good Terminator. You could argue that she is helping them, not the other way around, but she does enough that I think she has her own arc.
Sarah also experiences some limited character growth. In the beginning she expresses nothing but anger at John for risking himself and concern about his value to the world. At the end, she expresses her feelings of love for him.
Conclusion
Terminator 2: Judgment Day passes the Mako Mori Test.
Quick Results
Bechdel: Fails
Sexy Lamp: Passes
Mako Mori: Passes
Did I Like It
Terminator 2: Judgment Day has never worked as well for me as the original movie.
In The Terminator I loved seeing Sarah grow from a somewhat inept waitress who is frightened and disbelieving into a woman who, though she has no special skills, fights with every ounce of strength she has.
If you love action heroes, though, you might well like T2 better. Sarah’s buff, she fights more, she handles weapons well. Setting The Terminator aside, she’s more active than women in almost all movies of the time period.
But she has little in the way of character growth. And though she drives part of the story, she literally (in one scene) and figuratively takes a back seat to John and the good Terminator.
Also, I loved The Terminator in part because it was so tightly plotted.
In contrast (as I note in Super Simple Story Structure), who the protagonist of the movie is becomes a bit muddled. It potentially could be John or the good Terminator or Sarah.
Also, that so many men talk to one another and so many male walk on characters get names (such as Dougie, the orderly; Gibbons, the security guard; and Danny, Miles’ son) while no named woman character talks to another named woman character even once bugs me. There’s no reason I can think of that the same attention to detail couldn’t have gone into the women characters. That it didn’t distracted me as I watched and rewatched.
Finally, Terminator 2: Judgment Day shows Sarah as so hardened by incarceration and her struggles that she has little compassion left for her son as a person. Yes, we see her distraught at dreams of children, including him, burning.
But when she interacts with him she seems cold and almost irrational despite that we know her fears are real. The only reason I still empathized with her was that I loved her in the first movie.
Coming Soon
Avengers: Infinity War. I’ve never seen it, and I’m really looking forward to it.
You might also like:
The Terminator: Men Talk, A Woman Fights (Women, Men, and Movies No. 5)
Ex Machina: If An A.I. Were A Woman (Women & Men in the Movies No. 3)