Every Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Ranked Worst To Best
2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the apex of Arnold as an actor and as a star, the culmination of a decade of genre dominance that subverted his mainstream debut and yielded Schwarzenegger's most heartfelt and emotional performance to date. Undoubtedly one of the greatest action movies. sci-fi movies and sequels ever made, James Cameron's Terminator follow-up recalibrated an eighties cinema icon, turning one of the decade's greatest villains into the next one's hero.
And while T2 is filmed to the brim with immaculate players - including a career-best Linda Hamilton, who marshals her own on-screen transformation just as shockingly and believably as Schwarzenegger - Arnold is its beating mechanical heart and soul, a death-robot who is taught to love and live by a troubled boy whose shoulders the weight of the world has been placed. Cameron orchestrates the character's reintroduction and development perfectly, first playing with the expectation of the T-800's previous appearance and the arrival of Robert Patrick's cop-dressed T-1000, before slowly developing the emotional connection between the machine and John Connor - in and amongst some of the best action sequences of the decade.
Slowly but surely, the Terminator becomes a reflection of humanity's best features, showing mercy, cracking jokes, and cementing an emotional bond with his protectee. Cameron builds this to a fittingly devastating conclusion which in turn delivers the most affecting moments of screentime in Schwarzenegger's filmography, as the T-800 lays itself to rest, and parts way with his surrogate family.
Out of tragedy springs hope, but the Terminator's loss is one of cinema's most profound - so well-oiled is Cameron's direction, and committed Schwarzenegger's performance.