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It's been a while since I've seen this movie so I won't take a stab at a plot summary until I can rent the tape and watch it again.

However, I do remember a few nits from this movie! For instance, in the first movie, we see a flash forward as Kyle tells Sarah about the type of terminator that is after her. We see this hulking terminator coming into a huddle hole for the human. A dog starts barking and the fun begins. Note that this terminator looks nothing like our favorite cyborg Aahnold. This would make sense. Why design a line of robots to infiltrate the humans and kill them and make them all look the same? Wouldn't that make them easier to spot? Isn't the whole point of covering them with flesh to make them look human? Yet, in T2 we see another T-800 (I think that was Aahnold's designation) and he looks just like the one from the first movie! (Probably the machines only made two the same and we just happened to get to see both of them.)

Also, at the end of the movie, the liquid metal guy tortures Sarah so that she will cry out and bring her son to the rescue. That's odd. I could have sworn throughout the entire preceding movie that the metal guy always KILLED his victims and then just took their form and mimicked their voice!

Reflections from the Guild

[Note from Phil: I have not verified these but they sounded good to me!]

Alan Franzman of Valinda, CA: "In the time travel arrival sequence for Terminator series T-800 model 101, the accompanying sphere of "electrical disturbance" disintegrates part of a pair of dual wheels (and their tires) on a semi-trailer. There are two problems here: First, there should have been a loud BANG! noise as each tire's pressurized air was released. Second, even though nearly half of each tire is gone, they continue to support the wheels and axle of the trailer! Even if that trailer is empty as it appears to be the suspension on these rigs is flexible enough that the tires should be squished at the bottom like any flat tire.

"When the cyborg played by Arnold Schwarzanegger goes to the biker bar to obtain clothing and transportation, a fight ensues and one of the bikers is thrown onto the cook top of the stove. The 'smoke' in this scene comes not from the burners or center griddle area but clearly issues from jets near the front and back of the stove.

"According to Reese in 'The Terminator,' the Time Displacement Equipment only works on living beings or objects encased in living tissue. How does the T-1000 get transported through time? It is supposed to be made almost entirely of Mimetic Polyalloy of 'liquid metal.' It contains no living tissue at all! However, when it arrives in 1991, it is in the form of a nude man. Does this mean that the time travel apparatus only works on things that look like naked people? (Note from Phil: I suspect a future Hugh Hefner had something to do with this design. 'Come on baby, the machine won't work unless you take your clothes off.')

"At least someone figured out the motto of the L.A.P.D.; 'To Protect and to Serve' is emblazoned on the police car the T-1000 uses to visit John's foster parents. (See review of 'The Terminator.')

"At Cyberdyne Systems, Miles Dyson walks through an area where all the workers are wearing protective clothing and surgical masks, but he's in his street clothes and the guard he meets is in a normal uniform. Are they immune to whatever hazard the other workers need protection from? Or, if this is a clean room, did they just contaminate the whole production area?

"Watch the windshields of the truck that the T-1000 chases John's dirt bike with. When it crashes from the bridge into the flood control channel, the windshields both fall out. In the next shot, the windshields are cracked but in place. Subsequently, the driver's side glass is see to be partly collapsed inward at the upper corner near the middle of the truck. Finally, just before the truck's top is removed, the windshields are both back in place again.

"That truck, by the way, is a 'big rig' tow truck, which is built on the same frame used for tractors of the 'big rig' tractor-trailer variety. It also uses the same type of diesel engine that semi's do. The huge fireball it make when it crashes into the bridge support is completely unrealistic because diesel fuel is far less volatile than gasoline and extremely unlikely to explode. It only works as a motor fuel because of the very high compression attained in diesel engines.

"This is not a nit, merely an observation. The T-1000, in the form of John's foster mother, stabs Todd Voight through a carton of Lady Lee brand milk. Immediately after this film's release, the design and color scheme of Lady Lee milk cartons were changed.

"It's quite convenient that the T-100 played by Robert Patrick prefers the form of an ambidextrous person. His holster is worn on the left side, and in the first part of the movie, he always fires his pistol left-handed. But when he walks through and around the bards of the Pescadero State Mental Facility, he's carrying the gun in his right hand when it gets caught by the bars. He then fires it right-handed as he chases out heroes into the elevator. (Why should this advanced Terminator prefer any one particular form anyway? Wouldn't his intended target be kept off guard if he never re-used any given form?)

"When out heroes are preparing to leave their first temporary overnight hideout service station, Sarah has a bun in the back pocket of her sweat pants. She dons a leather jacked then sits in the station wagon. Wouldn't she be more comfortable if she moved the gun to one of the jacket's pockets?

"This is not a nit, merely another observation. The fence around Enrique's desert handout is decorated with the head of a mutant rattlesnake! In the establishing shot of the approaching station wagon, the camera comes to rest at a close-up of the nearest snake head, and you can see that it has one right and two left fangs in its upper jaw.

"When Sarah carves 'NO FATE' into the wooden table top, the knife jumps around to face the other direction when the shot changes from the close-up of the blade to the full vies of Sarah.

"When the group make their entry into the Cyberdyne Systems building and desk guard Carl Givens is discovered tied up in the men's room, the second guard leaves him there! (Must be punishment for all those times Carl left his post.)

"When 'Uncle Bob' shoots up all those police cars, etc., we see his point-of-view display showing '0.0 Human Casualties.' Exactly how does on calculate a tenth of a casualty? (Note from Phil: This may be using the military definition of a casualty where an injury is a casualty. Maybe 0.1 casualty would be a broken arm?!)

"The creators left themselves plenty of openings for T3. n the foundry at the end of this film 'Uncle Bob' lose most of his left forearm in the gigantic chain and sprocket. Our heroes never recover and destroy it. (The arm John throws into the molten metal is the right arm which protruded from the hydraulic press when the first Terminator was crushed.) Additionally, we never lean what happened to the rest of the crushed Terminator endoskeleton or the legs and left hand which were blown off by Reese's last pipe bomb in the final scenes of 'The Terminator.'"

Donald Carlson: "Regarding your nit about the difference in appearance between Ahhnold's Terminator and one seen in the original Terminator movie - Yes, the Terminator shown invading the humans hiding place looks different from Ahhnold, but that's because it is an earlier model. Remember Kyle tells about how earlier models (than those of Ahnolds series) looked human except for the hands? Ahhnold is of a more sophisticated design."

"The T1000 had been frozen and was experiencing system malfuctions. That is why he chose to capture Sarah and force her to call to John. In the longer, special edition of T2, the scenes showing these malfunctions (where-ever the T1000 touched a surface he blended in with it) were replaced, including a shot of him touching a railing, in which his hand and forearm take on the alternating black and yellow saftey strips of the railing, and later when John looks at the fake Sarah, he notices her feet are melting in to blend with the grated flooring."

"When Ahhnold's Terminator approaches the biker bar, his display identifies several vehicles parked outside, including a Ford LTD sedan. His ID software gets it wrong, identifying the car as MODEL 453GT PLYMOUTH SEDAN."

Jason Gaston: "When Sara, John, and Arnold are driving a cop car backwards to escape the T-1000, watch as the car does a 90 degree turn to go foreward. You can see in the back window the head of the guy who is REALLY driving the car!

"When The T-1000 is chasing the good guys with a helicopter, watch closely as he fires his weapon at them. He's sprouted an extra hand to pilot the chopper (I know, it's not really a nit, but it's pretty darn interesting!)"

Erin Hunt of High Point, NC: "There's a major space-time logic error at the end of T2. Since Skynet was supposedly prevented from ever occuring after the two Terminators are destroyed, there would have been no Armageddon, and therefore the events of 'The Terminator' and 'T2' would never have happened. When the Ahnold Terminator was destroyed, the timeline should have instantly changed to one in which John was never born (because his father would never have come back from the future) and Sarah didn't remember any of the events of the past several years. I suppose, though, that this could be the filmmakers way of leaving the door open for a sequel.

If you would like to add some comments, drop me a note at chief@nitcentral.com. Please put the name of the movie in the Subject line and include your real name, city and state (or province and county as the case may be) in the body of the e-mail so I can give you credit if you are the first person to bring up a particular nit. (Remember the legalese: Everything you submit becomes mine and you grant me the right to use your name in any future publication by me. I will do my best to give you credit if you are the first person to submit a particular nit but I make no guarantees. And finally, due to the volume of mail received at Nitpicker Central, your submission may or may not be acknowledged.)

Copyright 1996 by Phil Farrand. All Rights Reserved.