James Cameron: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best
2. Terminator 2
It was a tough choice deciding which of James Cameron's two best films should rank second.
Terminator 2 took everything that Terminator set up and built on it to make one of the absolute best sequels ever made, from its breakneck, yet somehow also very patient pacing that draws out every action scene exactly as long as it needs to, to its brilliant mix of practical and computer generated effects.
But on top of that, it's still just a great time travel science fiction story. Unlike the Back To The Future series which dealt with linear time theory, where there is only one timeline that can be changed at will, T1 and 2 dealt with Bootstrap theory, where trying to change the future by traveling into the past will end up creating the future you want to change. Because you can't change history if you're part of it.
T2 takes this set up rule and proceeds to find any way it can throughout the narrative to break it. This ends up being revealed to be fruitless in the third movie, but we don't talk about the third movie.