It's great reading all the trips down memory lane as to how people first experienced these movies. Back in '91 I was 17 and on a kick to never watch trailers for movies I was really looking forward to after I had seen Die Hard in the theater totally cold. I literally had not seen one solitary second of footage, I just saw a poster of Bruce Willis holding a gun with the title "Die Hard" and assumed it would be some average shoot 'em up with the guy from Moonlighting so I went with my dad to a late night showing in the middle of the week.
I didn't know there would be a building involved, "terrorists," nothing. And it was amazing! Trailers so often just give you the flow of the whole movie and which "money shots" to anticipate when you finally watch the film. I'd never seen a theatrical movie 100% cold until Die Hard so I tried hard whenever possible to replicate that experience.
Well getting back to Terminator 2 I almost pulled it off. I did see the "assembly line" teaser which gave nothing away and then the first trailer with the semi crashing down into the canal. It showed some action and some shape shifting metal guy entering a helicopter but I still assumed that Arnold was the bad guy. This was further established when I saw a quick TV spot (before frantically changing the channel) that featured Reese telling Sarah "You've got to save our son." I could only assume that the new shapeshifting Terminator came back as her former lover! I was fully expecting Reese to be fighting the Terminator again.
So fast forward to opening night in the theater and the T-800 is seemingly killing the bikers in the bar just like when he needed clothes in the first movie but something happened as the two terminators approached John in the mall. Something about that good guy "Reese" Terminator that seemed slightly off, even sinister. And then Arnold busted through the doors with the roses and he started slowly cocking his gun and I literally remember sitting in the theater thinking, "wait a minute, he's gonna tell John to get down" and my mouth damn near hit the floor when he actually did!
I was so reeling for the next 120 minutes that my entire perspective of the movie had been so radically turned upside down. I had no idea where the story was going and was thrilled to see, in the same moment as John Connor, that Arnold was there to kick ass for good. The rest of the movie became one giant "Han Solo shoots at Vader's TIE Fighter" moment. And it just kept delivering and delivering and delivering.
I've ripped on the movie quite a bit for sanitizing the terminator and weakening the narrative set forth in T1 and having a "cute kid" and all that but it remains to this day one of the most profound cinematic experiences of my life.
