Terminator 2: Judgement Day – 1991 (WINNER)
There was no question that this movie was the right winner. The CGI effects were really spectacular, giving audiences visuals that they had never seen before. The morphing liquid metal effects of the T-1000 took the technique used so effectively in The Abyss and took it to a whole new level. Not only that, but it was a Schwarzenegger action movie, so as you might expect, there were lots of guns, lots of explosions, a car chase or two, and a number of cheesy catch phrases.
The pyrotechnic effects were all really good, as you might expect. The guns and people getting shot were standard issue, but still done well. The part where our heroes blow up the Cyberdyne building was pretty cool. I also liked the car chases, especially the one where the T-1000 takes a semi-truck and crashes it through a guard rail into a massive storm drain. But though that was a memorable effect, it was the liquid metal T-1000 that we all came to see, and it didn’t disappoint! We get to see it change and transform in a wide and clever variety of ways. We see the actor Robert Patrick morph into different people, turn his fingers and arms into sharp blades, and pour through small holes, only to re-form on the opposite side.
There was one time where he disguised himself as the floor. Once a person walked over him, allowing him to “sample” that person, he rose up, and killed him by extending a metal needle from his finger and through the poor man’s eye. Also, the sequence where he walked out of the burning wreckage of a truck in semi-liquid form and then morphed into Robert Patrick was awesome! And when he walked through the bars of a jail cell door was really cool.
The effect of when he was shot, blown up, bludgeoned, or generally disfigured was awesome. We could see the parts of him that still resembled a person, as well as the metal that looked like solidified mercury. It was amazing and perfectly executed! But there were three awesome effects in the climax that are worth mentioning. First was when the T-1000 was doused in liquid nitrogen, which super-froze him. He tried to walk, but froze to the floor. When he tried to take a step, his leg broke off. When he stopped moving, Arnold shot him and he shattered into a thousand pieces. Second was when Linda Hamilton shot him in the head and the camera panned around him so that we saw the actress through the hole she had created. And the last is when he was shot with an exploding bullet. His incredibly mangled body fell into a vat of molten steel, and as he was dissolved into oblivion, he rapidly cycled through the screaming forms of all the victims whose forms he had taken. Very cool villain death!
But the effects on Arnold, himself were also very cool, as he is beaten and nearly destroyed by the superior T-1000. There was only one shot that looked a little fake, and that was when he jumped off the crashing liquid nitrogen truck, but that was only a minor flaw in an otherwise incredible display of CGI visual effects. I think it really deserved its Oscar win!