20 Greatest Summer Blockbusters Ever Made

4. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

RottenTomatoes Score: 93% (8.4/10)

Box Office: $519.8 million

Why It's Awesome: Trust James Cameron to once again deliver a sequel that took the more modest thrills of the original movie and turned them up to 11. In this case, it was of course Cameron's own pet project, the unexpectedly successful The Terminator, and with this follow-up, he crafted one of the best movie sequels in history.

The plotting is razor-sharp, the dialogue punchy and witty, and the moments of comic relief both dark and perfectly-placed (as is less than can be said for the sequels that followed). Then there's the scintillating action, driven by some incredible visual effects which have aged insanely well over the years.

Performance-wise, everyone's on their A-game here: Arnold Schwarzenegger cements himself as one of cinema's all-time screen bada**es with his heroic turn here, while Edward Furlong is hilarious and believable as the young boy thrown into all the mayhem, and Linda Hamilton completely reinvents herself as a lean, hard-nosed, classic Cameron femme fatale.

As if all that wasn't enough, the villain, Robert Patrick's T-1000, is incredible, and the ending is unexpectedly emotional. With a thoughtful message about humanity, superlative effects and an overall perfect production, T2 sets an almost impossible standard for movie sequels.