10 Best Scenes When Evil Movie Characters Turned Good
3. T-800 - Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Though Arnold Schwarzenegger has played various models of Terminator throughout the franchise, his characters are more-or-less the same monolithic entity in the eyes of most viewers.
And so, it was a major surprise for anyone sitting down to watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991 to see Arnie return for the sequel with the total opposite allegiance.
In the original 1984 movie, Schwarzenegger of course played the murderous T-800 programmed to murder Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), but in T2, he played a T-800 captured by the human resistance, re-programmed, and sent back through time to protect Sarah's young son John (Edward Furlong).
The marquee moment where the big twist is revealed - as the T-800 and the T-1000 (Robert Patrick) both converge upon John in a mall hallway - is an expertly executed rug-pull, even if many viewers likely knew what the deal was beforehand due to spoilerific marketing.
Even if you cry foul that Arnie is playing two different characters in these movies, considering that T2's T-800 was first captured by the resistance, it's safe to assume this model had the blood of many humans on its hands already.