All language subtitles for Classic.Movies.The.Story.Of.S01E06.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

SARAH CONNOR:
The survivors of the nuclear fire

called the war "Judgment Day".

They lived
only to face a new nightmare:

the war against the machines.

(STONE CRUNCHES)

(EXPLOSIVES WHISTLE)

(LASERS FIZZ)

In late 1989,
James Cameron was troubled.

Writing into the night,
running on coffee and ambition,

he was faced with a conundrum.

What would frighten a Terminator?

What would make the indomitable
Arnold Schwarzenegger

quake in his leather boots?

How do you turn
a cyborg assassin from the future

into the underdog?

(METALLIC SQUELCHING)

(GUN COCKS)

It took a while
for the second film to be made.

There were
a number of legal wrangles,

as well as James Cameron waiting

for the technology
to catch up with his ambition.

His scale of ambition was huge,

and a lot of
the things that he had in his head

simply couldn't be achieved.

So the time lapse - the waiting -

almost played into his hands

because, by the time
he was able to make the film,

he was able to do
the things that he wanted to do

because technology had caught up.

But that, of course,
did result in then

it being on a far grander scale in
every aspect, particularly budget,

and it was, at the time,
the most expensive film ever made.

Cameron knew in his bones

he couldn't simply repeat
the same routine.

The question was -
how do you outdo James Cameron?

With Terminator 2: Judgment Day,

he brilliantly chose
to invert the formula.

He made Schwarzenegger the good guy.

A new version of the monotone
T-800 fresh off the production line

is sent back in time,
like his predecessor.

Only this model
has been reprogrammed

to protect the young boy
who will one day save the future.

He is a machine hero,

the Tin Man with a heart.

Come with me, if you want to live.

It's OK, Mom.
He's here to help. It's OK.

(ANXIOUS PANTING)

(APPROACHING FOOTSTEPS)

(THEME MUSIC)

ARNIE: I want to thank
each and every one of you...

(WOMAN SCREAMS)
..for coming here today...

(WHOOPING)
MAN: We love you!

..because the first Terminator
was such a tremendous success

in the movies
and video and cable and network

and all the different areas

because of great fans like you.

(CHEERING AND WOLF-WHISTLING)

But I also told you,

I'll be back.

(WHOOPING AND CHEERING)

The man...

The main man is back!

(WHOOPING AND CHEERING)

When it first came
to crafting a sequel

to his smash-hit science-fiction
slasher movie, The Terminator,

Cameron imagined a film more epic
and dazzling in every way -

all the things
he could only dream of doing

when he made The Terminator.

James Cameron
wanted to create something

which was going to surprise
audiences

and outdo the original.

And he was able to do so

with the help of
a production company called Carolco,

who were very cash rich
at that time.

They were an American independent,

but they had realised
fairly early on

that they made most of
their money from action flicks.

So, in 1982, they had
a lot of success with First Blood

and then in 1985
with the Rambo sequel.

So they were very much in the market

for sequels of high-concept
sci-fi action and thriller movies.

So they managed,
with some difficulties,

to extract
the rights to The Terminator

because they were owned
by another production company

and also co-owned
by James Cameron's ex-wife,

who was a co-producer
and co-writer on the first film.

So they managed to extract
the rights to that franchise,

and then they managed
to get James Cameron on board

by offering him $6 million

- the whole budget
of his last film -

simply as his salary for this film.

And so that's when the wheels
started turning for Cameron

to really look at
what else he could do

with
that much larger scope and budget.

James Cameron had, in effect,
given away so much of The Terminator

that I don't think he'd really
thought about doing a sequel.

It wasn't something
that was part of his project.

But once Carolco
came through with the money

and, as he said,
had his full attention,

he initially just scribbled down
on a yellow legal pad:

The Terminator and John Connor

as a friendship -

and he realised that the idea
would be to bring them together.

Now, the original Terminator
had essentially been

within the genre
of almost a slasher flick.

A lot of the camera angles,
a lot of the storytelling

is very similar to, say,

well, not quite a Friday The 13th,

but maybe A Nightmare On Elm Street,
quite a sophisticated slasher flick.

So we have a relentless killer,
who cannot be stopped,

coming after a girl
and someone trying to save her.

The idea of a nuclear apocalypse
is very much backdropped.

It's just the situation
that is happening in the future

that brings around
our slasher flick today.

And Arnold Schwarzenegger,
this Panzer tank of a man,

crashing through contemporary
Los Angeles in his search to kill -

that's your plot, really.

With Terminator 2,
it's a complete flip.

Arnold Schwarzenegger
had become a huge star

with the first Terminator film,

having made a couple of
Conan movies before that.

He'd understood that

Cameron already sort of
got the wind under his sails

with The Abyss and Aliens,

and so he was...

They sort of came together.
There was a confluence of ideas that

at some stage
when special effects were improving

that Cameron
would actually make the sequel.

After the success
of The Terminator and Aliens,

at the end of the '80s,
this young Canadian,

veteran of
Roger Corman's B-movie studio,

was the leading
genre filmmaker in Hollywood,

but he championed
a brand of science-fiction realism.

However many cyborg assassins
or alien infestations,

his films never felt far-fetched.

Cameron had a gift for
centring his films in human terms,

real people confronting
future technology that is plausible.

Over the years,
it was Arnold Schwarzenegger

who kept the idea
of a Terminator sequel alive,

pushing his old friend to make

another action movie
in the same mould.

After all, it was the role
that made him a superstar.

The villainous machine
with a mixture

of a bodybuilder's balletic grace

and the actor's
blackly comic delivery

had become a cult favourite.

Irony now ruled the box office.

But he was taken aback
when Cameron suggested

he was now the good guy,

while remaining
the icy-cool killing machine,

This science-fiction sequel
can lay claim to being

the most revolutionary film since
The Jazz Singer introduced sound.

It transformed an industry,

for Cameron chose to create
his liquid-metal Terminator

using computer-generated imagery.

(CRACKLING)

(METALLIC SQUELCHING)

(THUD REVERBERATES)

DENNIS MUREN: ILM had been around

for 15 years or so, doing
some really cutting-edge effects.

Jim had already done
about 52 storyboards

for what he wanted to do
with this character.

I'd never seen
anything like it in a film.

If we could make
this guy that didn't exist,

this character out of chrome,

that could be phenomenal.

Hi, I'm here with John Rowe
at Buckinghamshire New University,

and we're here to talk about
Terminater 2: Judgment Day

and the revolution in
special effects that came with it.

So, John, tell me a little bit about

the scale
that James Cameron had in mind

for this sequel to The Terminator.

Did they know
they were going to get there?

I mean, in terms of processing power

and what it required
at Industrial Light and Magic,

it must have been
a sort of step into the unknown.

Yeah, it's totally revolutionary.

I don't think...
I mean, that's the great...

That attitude and that mindset
still persists to this day.

I think if... When anybody
comes up with a story idea,

no matter how fantastical,

if it is something
that cannot be filmed physically,

then there are
obvious places that you go to look.

You can either ask
the art department,

you can ask the cinematographer

or you can ask
the visual-effects people.

They tend to be
the main three places

that you look for solutions
to your story problems, if you like.

And the moment it's no longer
art department and cinematography

and it can't actually be filmed,

then you have to talk
to a visual-effects supervisor

or a specialist to say:

can I actually do this?

And those were the conversations
that James Cameron had

with Dennis Muren to go,

"OK, what's the limit
that I can go to here?"

bearing in mind a lot of this
hadn't been done before.

And using the skills he had
and his amazing perception, he said,

"Well, you can go this far,
but no more."

And what's interesting is
James Cameron accepted that

and then said,
"Well, let's go to there."

There's a story about
Dennis Muren picking up the phone

and James Cameron
explaining what he wanted.

And he's like,
"Can you do it, Dennis?"

And Dennis was like: sure.
Put the phone down and went,

"Right, what do we do, everybody?"

It's like they were inventing
as they went.Very much so.

(GLASS FRAGMENTS TINKLE)

(BRAKES SCREECH)

(FIRE CRACKLES)

(TYRES SQUEAL)

(MOTORCYCLE REVS)

It was shortly before Christmas 1989
when James Cameron's phone rang.

Mario Kassar was on the other end,

flamboyant head
of Hollywood independent Carolco.

The producer had bought
the rights to The Terminator,

and wanted to know what it would
take for Cameron to direct a sequel.

The answer for that would ultimately
be a budget for $100 million,

at the time
the most expensive film ever made.

And he needed a villain that
would make Arnie look vulnerable -

not a bigger Terminator,

but the ultimate stealth machine

made of
intelligent mimetic liquid metal -

a new, virtually indestructible
killer assassin.

(FIRE CRACKLING)

(METALLIC HISS)

It was impossible for this work
to have been done two years before,

but actually it was even impossible

for this stuff
to have been done a week before

because
we were learning things that fast.

This shot is typical
of what's gonna come in this movie.

You're gonna see
shot after shot after shot

with no cutting, no tricks.
It's all there.

It's got the shot at the beginning
that you see something like fire.

Out of it comes
something you've never seen before,

which is
this chrome character walking,

reflecting all the fire around him.

No cut.

It's impossible.
You've never seen it.

So let's have a look
at some of the extraordinary moments

of visual effects in the film,
and maybe you can talk us through

exactly what has been achieved
with each of these shots.OK.

Well, this is a very iconic image
of T-1000 emerging from the flames.

And he's walking towards the camera,

the camera tracks with him
and he morphs into human form.

So the character is CG,
obviously when it's silver,

and the process they've gone through

is to composite
that three-dimensional image

into a live-action backplate.

The flames are real...

The CG character is not.

And what they've very cleverly done

is match the lighting of the flames
onto the CG character,

as it comes towards the camera.

So the tricky bits there are
the lighting and the movement again.

To my eye,
the transformation from silver man

into Robert Patrick the actor
is still seamless.

It does work very well.
You're right.

But I think, by modern standards,

it's a little bit crude now,
but at the time...

It hadn't been achieved before then.

So you can't knock it.
I mean, it's amazing.

What he's achieved
is absolutely incredible

with the technology
that was available at the time.

They had created
a new technique here to do this.

It's not something
that existed before.

I mean, that is problem-solving
taken to a ridiculous level.

I need a minute here.

You're telling me that this thing
can imitate anything it touches?

Anything it samples
by physical contact.

Get real.

Like, it can disguise itself
as a pack of cigarettes?

No, only an object of equal size.

Why wouldn't it become
a bomb or something to get me?

It can't form complex machines.

Guns and explosives
have chemicals, moving parts.

It doesn't work that way.

But it can form solid metal shapes.
Like what?

Knives and stabbing weapons.

His idea was to create a completely
different kind of Terminator -

an advance on the original T-800,
as played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And this, he came up with the idea
of a creature made of liquid metal,

a sort of mercury on legs -

absolutely extraordinary concept.

It was a challenge not just to

the actor
who would eventually play him,

but also
to the special-effects department,

including
both Industrial Light and Magic's

computer-generated imagery,

but also Stan Winston Studios

who were creating the puppets

and all the in-camera
special effects as well.

All of this had to be combined
into putting together

a being on the screen
that was utterly believable,

and that had never been done before.

It's sort of fascinating
that he started in a place

where most of us would say,

"Well, that's sort of a folly.
That's so ambitious."

The technology to do that,
basically early CGI,

was not necessarily totally there.

So there had to be
almost an R&D element,

and their team kind of grew from
about five people to about 25 people

because of the amount of work
it took to get this T-1000 right

and to make his sort of
translucent, quicksilver quality

of melting into things
and emerging out of things

and growing different limbs

feasible on screen.

(FOOTSTEPS SQUEAK)

Now, this is the famous scene where

the T-1000
rises up from the asylum floor.

Oh, yes. Another very iconic image.

(COIN JANGLES IN VENDING MACHINE)

(METALLIC SQUELCHING)

(STEAMING COFFEE HISSES)

Let's leave it there.

But of course the clever part
about it, story-wise,

is how you now realise that T-1000
can change shape into anything.

It is explained in the film

that it can't be tiny,
like a packet of cigarettes.

It has to be the same sort of size,

and he can't be something mechanical
with moving parts inside,

but he can turn himself
into sharp objects,

like a massive sword arm or a...
and so on.

But that original...
That start point for the shot,

where we see the tiled floor,

in hindsight, again,
if you look at it now, you go:

actually, that's very clever,
the way that they have chosen

to start
from that point on the floor

and then have the character
build up out of the floor.

Because if you think about it
mathematically,

inside the computer,
you start with a piece of geometry.

So, of course, that's well hidden
by the tiles on the floor.

And so,
they've created a piece of geometry

which changes shape,
to form a human shape,

and then superimposed it optically

over the piece of film
that they've shot in the corridor.

Fantastic.
You make it sound so easy now,

but I'm sure at the time it was...
It's still not very easy.

None of this stuff is easy...
(LAUGHS)

..but the thought process
for working out

the effective way of
using what is available at the time

and then covering it up, so that it
looks seamless or it looks natural,

I mean, it's very clever.

(FOOTSTEPS CLICKING)

Robert Patrick is critical
to the success of Terminator 2

for a number of reasons -
the first one being

it was not technically possible

to have an entirely
CGI-animated Terminator-1000,

because they barely had
the technology to do 42 shots.

They could not have made
the film without a real person.

But they also needed a real person
who was incredibly different

in their physicality
to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

They needed...
He wanted to set this person up

as being
the extreme opposite of the T-800 -

someone who was fluid,
who moved in a particular way,

who could...
This idea of the East versus West,

the different kind of energy
to the great hulking T-800.

But also he had to be a character

who was so amorphous
in his appearance that,

when he first arrives

on screen,
you have to believe he's a goodie.

He goes into
a police uniform and a police car

and, for a while,
when he's in the police car

and he's got to serve and protect
and he's in the police uniform,

you believe that he's the good guy.
He's there to be the hero.

He's very similar to Kyle Reese
in the first film.

But then, as soon as
you realise that he's the bad guy,

you notice there's just something
slightly off about his face.

It's almost like he has elfin ears

or he's slightly not quite human.

Now, that's phenomenal.

There's an actor there who can be,
on one hand, the hero,

and just as the scene changes,
you look at him again

and you suddenly see,
no, he's clearly bad.

It's an amazing performance.

So Robert Patrick, to me, is one
of the most unforgettable villains

of any film of this kind, certainly.

He just keeps coming, and of course

that's the terror of the entire...

of both
the first and the second film.

I think it can't be understated

how much Terminator 2
transformed the film industry,

particularly around technology
and special effects and CGI.

The head of Industrial
Light and Magic at the time said

that, without Terminator 2, there
would've been no Jurassic Park,

and without Jurassic Park
there wouldn't...

And you continue
all the way down the line

to things like Lord Of The Rings.

That whole... I guess all the R&D

that was involved in getting
to the point in Terminator 2

where you could have those...
you could achieve those effects

meant there was no going back.

People started to see
what was possible.

If you were going to pick
a group of people

who would be able to solve
these incredible problems,

then Dennis Muren and the team
at Industrial Light and Magic

were the people
to go to at the time,

having had great success
with The Abyss,

which was, as far as I'm aware,

really the first CG character
on the screen.

To go from that to then
creating the T-1000 character

with the mercury look

was a natural progression
in terms of CG,

but still had never been done
before.

It was absolutely incredible
what they achieved.

From a visual-effects person's
point of view,

to pick water in the first film

and shiny surfaces
in the second film was madness.

These are two of the hardest things
you can do.

So the scale of ambition was huge.

Get out.

Arghhh!

(PROPELLOR BLADES WHIRRING)

Come with me, if you want to live.

It's OK, Mom.
He's here to help. It's OK.

(ANXIOUS PANTING)

(APPROACHING FOOTSTEPS)

(FOOTSTEPS CLICK)

Now, this shot
is just extraordinary, isn't it?

The most remarkable shot
in the whole film.

(METALLIC GURGLING)

(METALLIC HISS)

DENNIS:
My favourite shot is the one where

the T-1000 walks through the bars.

When you shoot the background
for it, it's actually fairly simple.

We had Robert stand there,
walk up and do his performance,

and then had him walk away

and had the bars just by themselves,
and then took the bars away

and he walked in there and then
did the whole performance again -

walked and pretended they were there
and walked on through.

And with those three pieces of film

we could make
the computer graphic image

that you see in the film.

It turned into an amazing shot.

(METALLIC CLINK)

(GUN CLANKS)

Go.

The clanking of the gun,
to me, just sells the scene.

It's perfect storytelling.
Yeah.

Which is often the way with the most
successful visual-effects shots,

because of course sound is half of
everything that we do in filmmaking.

So, often, that is
the key to selling a VFX shot

is a sound effect that
kicks in just at the right moment

and really sells the idea
that what you're seeing is real.

And how would you describe

James Cameron's storytelling
in relation to special effects?

He has changed the way that stories
are told. There's no question.

I mean, the types of story
that he tries to tell

couldn't be told
without visual effects.

And he has taken it to a level
that nobody dreamed possible

with every single film that he's
done, every project that he's done.

In so many situations,
so many other movies over the years,

you can see
an advancement in technical process

where something
is tried for the first time,

is successful - and
everybody shares that information.

What I love about visual effects
is the fact that

people don't hang on to their ideas.
They're happy...

Visual-effects people
love showing off

and they like to show people
how they've done things.

And so
this becomes an accepted practice.

It becomes a norm. And so,

having seen
characters like this in liquid form

for the first time,
there have been many copies.

Give me a five.

SARAH CONNOR:
Watching John with the machine,

it was suddenly so clear.

The Terminator would never stop.

It would never leave him,

and it would never hurt him.

Never shout at him
or get drunk and hit him,

or say it was too busy
to spend time with him.

It would always be there

and it would "die" to protect him.

Of all the would-be fathers
who came and went over the years,

this thing - this "machine" -

was the only one who measured up.

In an insane world,
it was the sanest choice.

Cameron has become the most
successful director of all time

because his films
touch on universal themes.

He makes love stories.

This is the tale of a boy

and the Terminator guardian angel
he comes to love.

Their relationship
is funny, touching

and ultimately heartbreaking.

As they seek to escape the T-1000
and avert future catastrophe,

rescuing Sarah Connor
from an asylum,

a family unit is formed.

With Cameron, not only do you get

these extraordinary advances
in special-effects technology,

these kind of
leaps and bounds in storytelling,

you get
a very strong emotional core.

He once said that
all his films are love stories,

and I kind of understand that.
And in this case, it's a love story

between a boy and a Terminator
and the forming of a family.

Very much so. It is. It's the...

It's a broken family
being reunited and held

and brought back together again

and Arnold Schwarzenegger
playing that father figure,

the father he never had.

He's very dismissive
of his stepfather -

his foster father.
Yeah.

And so he now has somebody that,

because he has such high standards,
that he expects a man to be -

there is an example of somebody
he can actually look up to for once.

But also I think there's
that lovely moment where he realises

that the Terminator
has to do what he says,

and that is a beautiful moment.

Because then he goes,
"Great, don't kill anyone."(LAUGHS)

(ANXIOUS BREATHS)

Jesus, you were gonna kill that guy.

Of course, I'm a Terminator.

Listen to me very carefully, OK?

You're not a Terminator any more,
all right?

You got that?

You just can't
go around killing people.

Why?What do you mean - why?
Cos you can't.

Why?
Because you just can't, OK?

Trust me on this.

Cameron needed to find the perfect
12-year-old to play John Connor.

It was a tall order. As he put it:

This punk kid becomes the Julius
Caesar of a dystopian future.

Arguably, he is the protagonist.

They finally found Edward Furlong at
a Boys and Girls Club in Pasadena.

He had a twitchy intensity

and his cocky assurance was
a front for a troubled background.

He was raw, certainly,
never having acted before,

but he had real chemistry
with Schwarzenegger on screen.

I think
Edward Furlong is great in the movie

because
he has to go through, in a way...

The journeys of
each of the three main leads

are very, very different, but
they follow a similar kind of arc

in different directions.
It's an exploration of humanity

and an exploration of family love.

So, at the beginning, John Connor
is absolutely uncontrollable.

He's a wild kid.

And he has to,
in his interaction with the machine,

in his attempt to teach
the machine to be more human,

he gradually understands
how HE can be more human.

So he loses the hard shell

and becomes the kid who says,
"Stop killing people.

You can't kill. Be good."

Being human
is about forgiving, letting go,

and that's how he learns himself
to forgive and let go,

and that's how he learns, finally,
to appreciate his mother.

Look, I'm gonna go get my mom,

and I order you to help me.

Cameron was determined
he couldn't do the sequel

without Linda Hamilton
as Sarah Connor.

But the actress had one condition
before she would accept.

"I want to be crazy," she told him.

It made logical sense.

Sarah Connor knows
the world is going to end,

and no-one believes her.

The actress
got into incredible shape.

Hamilton would push
to do her own stunts,

learn to pick her handcuffs

and strip an automatic rifle
while blindfolded.

Linda Hamilton
in the first Terminator film

is very much a victim.

She is a waitress who is on the run
from the implacable Terminator.

In order to reprise her role

in Terminator 2,
she said, "I'll definitely do it,

but I want
the character to be crazy."

It was as if
she was suffering from PTSD.

She had been incarcerated.

She'd had the terrible experience

of having to deal and see off
the Terminator in the original film.

She had built herself up into

this sort of
basically survivalist commando.

When it comes to Terminator 2,
she has spent years

preparing for the apocalypse.
She knows it's coming

because she's met the apocalypse
in the form of the Terminator.

And she's been training.

She's been trying to convince people
that doom is coming.

And of course no-one believes her.
They think she's crazy.

So she's physically superb.
She's trained.

And indeed, Linda Hamilton trained
and trained and trained and trained,

but also in the film,

she's seen as completely mad
and is in an asylum, essentially,

where she's still
working on her training

and has to be busted out
to come to her son's aid.

So she is logically
where you'd expect

someone who's had that
sort of experience to be.

Her mind was almost broken
by what happened in the past.

Now, in the future, all
of her nightmares are coming true.

(FAINT OPERATIC SINGING)

(CHILD SQUEALS)

(MOUTHS)

Mama!

(MOUTHS)

(METAL MESH RATTLES)

Hey, let's do this one.

(FENCE RATTLES)

Whee!

There we go!

(RATTLING INTENSIFIES)

(CHUCKLES)

(SPEECH MUTED)
(HARSH RATTLING)

(CHILD SCREAMS)
Argh!

James Cameron
definitely gives the impression

of somebody that was sort of
haunted by nuclear anxiety.

And he said that he was writing
the first Terminator film,

and he was listening to Sting

and listening to Sting lyrics
about the Russians.

So, there's definitely that kind
of miasma of, like, nuclear anxiety

throughout his writing.

But with Terminator 2,

he again takes a step
into the very ambitious.

And for a scene
which only lasts a few moments

completely recreates the image
of a nightmare of a nuclear blast,

which is really terrifying,
you know,

and
it's in Sarah Connor's nightmares.

But he went out of his way
to do that.

Probably a lot of people
will have said,

"Is that necessary?"
And I'm sure it was very expensive.

But it was clearly
something that preoccupied him

and something that
he wanted to put upon the audience

as the stakes
that the future of humanity

and the future of mankind
are dependent on what happens

with this mother-son
father-surrogate-son dynamic.

The relentless shoot ran for months,

moving between
hundreds of Los Angeles locations,

like a vast military operation
led by a single-minded general.

Cameron
was an unstoppable visionary,

demanding everything and more
from his cast and crew.

To his view, filmmaking
had to be a heroic struggle,

a contest against Olympian odds.

Because Cameron - and he's not
given enough credit for this -

is such
a personal instinctual filmmaker.

In his youth,
he grew up near Niagara Falls,

and he would hear
the falls and the water

and he would run wild in the woods

over
these enormous limestone gorges.

And right across his films,
there's his childhood

being played out in these
extraordinary ways, these visions.

He says
he dreams a lot of his images up.

Well, this was a dream.

The whole concept
for this film started,

as far as I understand, as a dream,

and it was then,
when he started developing the idea,

the whole story came out.

But he must have been eating cheese.
(LAUGHS)

It was a fever dream, he said.
It was a fever dream. Exactly.

That came out of his head.
I don't know where that comes from.

(MAN AND WOMAN
CRYING AND WHIMPERING)

Oh, my God.

Now, listen to me very carefully.

Unleashed into hungry cinemas,
Terminator 2 fulfilled its destiny

and became
the biggest film of all time -

something that would become
a habit for Cameron.

But it wasn't just about

the sensationalism
of blockbuster making.

Cameron has
the uncanny Hitchcock-like gift

for anticipating
the audience reaction.

(GUNSHOT)

(METALLIC CLINKING)

(GUN COCKS)

(RATTLING)

I love that shot.

It's a witty
piece of special effects.

It's lovely, isn't it?
I mean, the subtlety

is what that's all about,
without question.

And of course
it helps you understand

more about the character
and about what this...

The poly...
The poly-mimetic alloy.

The poly-mimetic alloy.
(LAUGHS)

I love that. The poly-mimetic alloy

is intelligent
and it goes and finds itself.

But what I find fascinating
about people like James Cameron

is that they really understand
what the world looks like.

And so they have
this ability to translate that

into very interesting storytelling

or fascinating
or fantastical storytelling.

And again that very much goes with

where visual effects
fit into the storytelling process

and how people go about
realising these amazing effects.

Because you really have
to understand what things look like,

because what we're talking about
is an emulation process.

You are mimicking real life,

and you have to make things
look like they are real.

So if you don't know what
things look like in the first place,

it's quite a hard thing to do.

But in Cameron's case, he is
particularly driven by realism.

Even though
his films are science fiction,

and in many ways
they're very far-fetched,

the way they're made and the way
the story is told is realistic.

Very much so. Yes.

And there's
a whole load of themes going on,

which, again, watching it back
after so many years,

there's many themes within that
which really drive home

the time and the place
where the film was made.

Vital to the ethos of Terminator 2

is the iconography of Los Angeles:

familiar locations,

but transformed into a shimmering
mythic rendition of the famous city.

It is a look
Cameron christened "tech noir",

this atmospheric blue veil

that turned the city by night
into a dream scape.

The city of Los Angeles has a number
of roles in the film Terminator 2.

For a start, it is shot,

in fact, ironically,
in a way to save money,

it is shot at night
using natural street lights.

So the feel that you get

for what James Cameron
later termed "tech noir"...

The idea of Los Angeles
is a very well-established noir city

from way back in the 1940s.

A lot of noir films were shot there.

It's important to have
those references to noir film

for James Cameron
and to shoot it in the same way,

in many ways, with that sort of
same look and that same feel,

so that the connection between

the different schools of noir
were clear.

The other crucial thing
in Los Angeles

is that you have to have
a city which has the capability

to deliver huge chases on freeways,

but also believably contain
a state-of-the-art defence system.

Now, as it happens,
of course Los Angeles DOES have

a strong connection
with the defence industry.

It does have all of these things.

If you wanted to invent
the perfect city for Terminator 2,

you would invent a city which
was very much like Los Angeles.

And he didn't have to -
he lived there.

CHRISTINA: Tech noir is
a good way to put it, and in a way

it encapsulates again the...

not contradiction as such,

but the two sides
of Cameron's approach,

which is quite tactile
old-school storytelling

with emotional realism, with
a sense of the past of filmmaking,

with a sense of
how a narrative should move.

Quite traditional in that sense,

with a much more
radical series of ideas

that are challenging about
technology, about our humanity,

the philosophical questions
about the future

and the dangers
inherent in technology,

in AI, which is of course
fascinating in its own way

because this is James Cameron
we're talking about.

The kind of technology
that he's been involved in

over the past 30, 40 years

has been intrinsic to how
cinema has changed in many ways.

What's extraordinary is,
considering it was created

as a fictional piece of work

and it was created
with all kinds of things -

scientists researching
in atomic energy authorities

in nuclear facilities who said,

this is without doubt
the most realistic depiction

of a nuclear explosion they've
ever seen in a fictional film.

Terminator 2 is more than just
a great science-fiction epic.

It is a genuine... It offers
a genuine emotional experience,

for all the reasons
that we've spoken about.

The fact is
that it has a human heart,

that it is basically
about relationships.

The thriller element,
the science-fiction,

the dystopian element,
is sort of the framework of it.

It's the context of it.

But what you have at heart
is a very human story.

OK, one of those central figures
isn't actually human,

but he's sort of
moving towards humanity

or moving towards
some kind of emotion

that he didn't have to begin with.

Storytelling has always
battled with the idea of describing

something which we have never seen
or which we cannot see,

and telling a story through it
and trying to make that convincing.

Now, whether
that's just reading out a book

or whether
you start to get into stage plays

and you start to get into the way
the Victorians would try to create

a ghost through Pepper's ghost or
try to get early monsters on films,

which would essentially be
someone in a rug with a claw.

This ability to convey
the unimaginable or the long dead

- all of these things
that we can't see -

has been something that storytellers
have been obsessed with.

And then
James Cameron comes along and says,

"Actually, look.
Look what I did. I've done it.

Only through 42 shots maybe,

but
this computer can make anything."

And Hollywood descended on it.

I would imagine in my head,
I'd like to think that

the following morning,
after the film broke,

there was a queue of directors
outside the offices

of Industrial Light and Magic with
their scripts. "Can you do this?"

The one that really stands out
for me is Jurassic Park,

because
there's a moment in Jurassic Park

where Laura Dern
looks at the dinosaurs.

And she is seeing, as a
palaeontologist, for the first time,

all of the things that she's spent
her whole life imagining.

And she's us at that point.

She is us looking at CGI and saying,

all of these things
that we've read about in books

and we've imagined in our heads,

we can just put them
on the screen now

and we can see them
as if they're real.

And that's what changed.

Of course, the building of a film,

the construction
of action sequences,

required
a whole new level of thinking.

Very much so,
and this is where you realise

that the VFX artists
are a combination

of an artist and an engineer,

and it's bringing
those two things together.

It's art and science
working together

in solving problems, if you like,

technical problem solving,

that allows that thinking
to become a reality.

And of course, James Cameron's
father was an engineer

and his mother was an artist.
He often says

he's the perfect combination
of those things as a filmmaker.

He IS the perfect combination.

And that is actually
what makes it interesting

to teach visual effects
as a subject, because, of course

often it's the people
who have interests in both areas

who make the very good
visual-effects artists.

It's not unusual to find people

who have a pure physics background

working in visual effects

because you have
to understand the physical world.

In the same way,
it's not uncommon

to find mathematicians
working in visual effects

because it's all computer based.
It's all maths.

But if there was such a thing,

the ideal VFX artist would be

a combination
of art, maths, physics.

We've really enjoyed being here.
My thanks to you, John,

for taking us through the film
in such incredible detail.

It was great fun. Thank you.

We should never forget
that this film

is a superb piece
of movie engineering,

gripping storytelling
told at a thunderous pace

in which we never lose touch
with the characters.

Hasta la vista, baby.

(GUNSHOT)

(FRAGMENTS TINKLE)

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