James Cameron's sequel to 1984's The Terminator is a sci-fi spectacular in almost every way. It departed from the horror-like tone of the original, turned Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor into one of the silver screen's most iconic leading figures and gave Arnold Schwarzenegger a career defining role as a reprogrammed T-800.
Before all that, however, came an opening look at the post-apocalyptic future awaiting humanity in the year 2029. Cameron's original film had done the same, but only briefly, and while Judgement Day's sequence barely lasts two minutes and thirty seconds, it was enough to conjure one of the most iconic dystopia's in sci-fi history.
It looks horrific, and Linda Hamilton's narration only hammers home the nightmare further.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
