10 Movies That DEMAND Your Attention Immediately

Has any sequel more aggressively one-upped itself more immediately than Terminator 2: Judgment Day?

James Cameron wrung a tremendous amount of production value out of the original Terminator's modest $6.4 million budget, but with roughly $100 million to play with this time, T2 is simply on a whole other level from its very first scene.

T2 opens with a brief, eerie montage of modern day Los Angeles - people driving to work, kids playing, representing the many great lives at risk by Skynet - before we flash forward to the future war of 2029.

Here the cars and playgrounds are now ashen remnants of Skynet's apocalypse, as Sarah Connor's (Linda Hamilton) narration details the billions of lives lost in the fires of Judgment Day.

And in moments, a human skull is crushed by the foot of a Terminator endoskeleton, as all-out war breaks out between the human resistance and the machines.

It's an exquisite example of blockbuster filmmaking craft, melding practical effects with cutting-edge VFX to produce a result that's still jaw-dropping 30 years later.

Amid the carnage, Sarah tees up the film's delicious premise, that two Terminators have been sent back in time to intercept John, one to kill, the other to save. As Sarah so succinctly puts it, "It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first."

Without even getting into how awesome those fiery opening titles are, within just four minutes T2 has laid out an extremely compelling justification for its own existence as a sequel, while confirming the mind-boggling leap in production quality.