Some people believe the spitting was improvised and that Billy Zane did not know it was coming. — Van Lathan
Jack and Rose are fictional, most supporting characters are accurate, and the wreck footage is real from Cameron's 12 dives; a J. Dawson gravestone was discovered after filming. — Bill Simmons
Captain Smith's death is disputed; there is basically no evidence third-class passengers were barricaded below deck; the band played ragtime rather than solemn music near the end. — Bill Simmons
The on-ship runtime of two hours 40 minutes matches the time from the iceberg to the sinking, intentionally. — Bill Simmons
The film omits the nearby SS Californian, which had its radio off, prompting the complaint that 20 seconds could have been spared for it. — Bill Simmons
The staircase flooding had to be filmed in one take; Cameron drew Jack's sketches; worn-out prints required replacement reels. — Bill Simmons
Crew disliked Cameron's alter ego, nicknamed Midge, Jim backward, and put on shirts; the ship and tank cost $150 million; a planned 138-day shoot ran to 160 days; the code name was Planet Ice. — Bill Simmons
Winslet skipped a wetsuit, got pneumonia and a kidney infection, and almost quit; many cast and crew were miserable. — Bill Simmons
Cameron gave backstories to around 150 extras, and a necklace used in the film was reportedly auctioned for $2.2 million for Princess Diana's charity. — Bill Simmons
Johnny Depp reportedly turned down Jack over the script; Jared Leto was reportedly favored but would not audition, and the actress transcribed as Claire Daines was supposedly wanted for Rose. — Bill Simmons
Jeremy Sisto auditioned multiple times and is lamented as never finding the right part; Billy Crudup was considered but was committed to Without Limits. — Bill Simmons
Robert De Niro was reportedly offered Captain Smith but declined due to a gastrointestinal infection; he would have been fun in the role. — Bill Simmons
Leo and Kate; James Cameron; the score; the band; the mother reading to her children; the Celine Dion song; Cal's evil line; Andrews and Smith sports comparisons; Bill Paxton; shipwreck-search TV; the Rose YouTube video
Leo and Kate, given their subsequent careers, are the number one answer, with James Cameron added. — Bill Simmons
The score and its variations of the song are praised, and the film is likened to a first-class dinner where every detail was considered. — Bill Simmons
Cameron reportedly sketched how people would behave facing death; the band playing to the end is another aged-best pick. — Bill Simmons
The mother reading to her children below deck, reportedly played by the actress from Terminator 2, is recalled as emotionally brutal. — Van Lathan
The Celine Dion song is one of the most identifiable songs ever attached to a movie; Winslet's nude scene is also cited as a generational milestone. — Bill Simmons
Cal's line when Rose breaks away the second time is called a great evil-guy line. — Bill Simmons
Mr. Andrews and Captain Smith are compared to the executive realizing the Westbrook trade failed and to Frank Vogel. — Bill Simmons
Bill Paxton is fondly remembered, and the salvage crew's work now resembles History Channel shipwreck and search programs, called Titanic spin-off content. — Van Lathan
The hosts' YouTube video about Rose is jokingly expected to age well, with a call for Rachel Lindsay's take on Higher Learning. — Bill Simmons
Schwarzenegger won: a great performance on top of the physical spectacle while he was the biggest star in the world; Cameron deserves praise, but it is Arnold's movie, the jersey going up to the rafters.
John is supposed to be 10 but feels like 13; 10-year-old boys are not that resilient and worldly.
Sarah being 18 in 1984 as a waitress with her own place seems a reach. — Chris Ryan
Why not send 25 people back to protect John? Rebutted: Cameron framed a Western of good gunfighter versus bad gunfighter, the film never opens up timeline logic, and it should just be enjoyed; the rebuttal is dubbed purist Chris Ryan.
No cops died in the Cyberdyne shootout, with Arnold's scan reading zero human casualties. — Bill Simmons
The Terminator movies may have invented the first-person-shooter view. — Bill Simmons
If Arnold can't self-terminate, why would he let Sarah Connor terminate him, and was his mission to protect John for life or only from the T-1000? He could have faked looking away and been shoved in.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is a yes, with agreement: after four straight hits and this, he could have been believed in anything, even as governor. — Bill Simmons
A son remarked while watching that Schwarzenegger was the best bodybuilder, a big movie star and then governor. — Bill Simmons
James Cameron is a no because his peak is still Titanic; Avatar is offered only to be contrary. — Bill Simmons
1991 is an insane-asylum year with this and Silence of the Lambs, taking the title from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. — Bill Simmons
Chin-ups are raised with Cape Fear from the same year; the answer is ambiguous. — Bill Simmons
No actor has sprinted better; Cruise runs in every movie but never did it like this. — Bill Simmons
Pre-CGI sci-fi is a no, with Aliens and Star Wars ahead. — Bill Simmons
Arcades may peak here after Tron and The Last Starfighter, the last time one worked in a movie, offered with 'I guess'.
One-liners get a maybe, with The Matrix's 'I know Kung Fu' as a rival. — Van Lathan
This is Apex Mountain for summer blockbusters as an event; Speed as the first intentional summer blockbuster and Jaws as the unintentional first are debated, and T2 with Jurassic Park is the first movie onslaught of film plus prepackaged promotion. — Bill Simmons
T2 is also Apex Mountain for the Terminator franchise, since later time-travel sequels got convoluted and reboots never got back there.
The film was delayed by CGI limits and a rights dispute: Hemdale owned half and didn't want a sequel, Carolco did, and Mario Kassar paid the struggling Hemdale $5 million for the franchise before it made 520.
80s action producers seemed like arms dealers; Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna were covered on the First Blood episode.
The shoot itself cost about $51 million inside a roughly $100 million budget because of payments to Arnold, Cameron and rights holders. — Van Lathan
A national search picked the dormant Kaiser steel mill in Fontana, California for the climax. — Van Lathan
The overacting award is definitely Hamilton, for her rant to the doctors ('You're already dead ... August 29, 1997').
Aside: Cameron and Hamilton were later married, and she got a big payout when it ended; he then fell for an actress from Titanic, blamed jokingly for partly ruining Blown Away. — Bill Simmons
Michael Biehn was the first choice for the T-1000 in a role reversal, dropped as too confusing for viewers; it would have been too messed up for Sarah, though it could have been cool. — Bill Simmons
Cameron considered Billy Idol, dropped after a motorcycle accident left him unable to run, and W.A.S.P. singer Blackie Lawless, who was too tall. — Bill Simmons
Charlie Korsmo from What About Bob? was supposed to be John Connor but was filming that movie; he may not have read as a delinquent. — Bill Simmons
The Miles Dyson role was offered to Denzel Washington, who passed because all the character does is look scared and sweat; the panel debates whether pre-Philadelphia Denzel was already too famous. — Bill Simmons
Liquid-metal T-1000; hidden good-guy twist; Robert Patrick; cutting the Cyberdyne plot from Terminator 1; catchphrases; "It's in your nature to destroy yourself"; rat-boy John Connor; police as villains
Patrick's later career (Cop Land, a key Sopranos role, action films) looked like an effort to escape the Terminator image; he reprised the role for one scene in Last Action Hero. — Bill Simmons
Teaching Arnold slang ('no problemo', 'hasta la vista, baby', 'chill out, dickwad') is a borderline rewatchable scene that shouldn't work but does. — Bill Simmons
This is one of the only movies helped by narration; narration usually signals script trouble, but her voice works here. — Bill Simmons
The narration is great and ties to the alternate ending. — Bill Simmons
Narration usually sucks but works when sparse, as in Stand by Me, Shawshank and Goodfellas. — Van Lathan
Destroying Cyberdyne was an idea cut from the first Terminator and left in its deleted scenes; Cameron banked it as the nucleus of T2, making that cut an aged-best decision. — Bill Simmons
'Hasta la vista, baby' and 'I'll be back' became iconic pop-culture lines repeated even by a mother at the shopping cart.
The last aged-best pick is the Terminator coldly telling John 'it's in your nature to destroy yourself'. — Van Lathan
The line hit close to home and made the movie a tough watch for a self-described neurotic, anxious Van; his father would side with the Terminator ('nah, he right'). — Van Lathan
Rat-boy John Connor, with the Public Enemy shirt, motocross bike, arcade scams and foster-parent friction, is a great conception of the future resistance leader; finding Furlong outside the Pasadena boys club was one in a million. — Bill Simmons
The police as the bad guys aged best: the film has a healthy skepticism about the police, and it flipped the heroic-cop mentality of Colors from two years earlier.
Naked Arnold walking into the biker bar ('I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle' / 'You forgot to say please') is one of the great character intros; the bar fight could have run another minute.
Caught on TV during a soccer trip to Arizona: the stretch from John in the arcade as the T-1000 closes in, through the Galleria hallway shootout, the bike chase, the truck and Arnold's one-handed reload on the motorcycle, is called one of the most thrilling 20-minute sequences in movie history.
Audiences assumed Arnold was the villain; a final trailer reportedly hinted he was back for good, but in the theater it was a shock that he was the good guy. — Bill Simmons
A sister murmured in the theater about why they were making the supposed bad guy look cool with the glasses. — Bill Simmons
The Henry lever-action .410 was bought because of the movie ('That's how we do in Louisiana') and used to hunt about a hundred rabbits. — Bill Simmons
Nothing in Cameron's script is wasted: John's bank-machine hacking pays off at Cyberdyne and his video-game skill foreshadows leading the resistance.
The thermonuclear nightmare is called maybe the least rewatchable scene ever: for an 11-year-old when nuclear fear was real it was the most terrifying depiction on film, yet it was rewatched five times the night before. — Chris Ryan
Rewatching with a son who had just seen Terminator 1, the twist that Arnold is the protector landed as a fun reveal. — Van Lathan
Springing Sarah from the asylum has many great moments: the T-1000 rising from the floor pattern and imitating a guard, Sarah's revenge on the orderly who licked her, 'Come with me if you want to live', the T-1000 walking through the bars as the theater screamed, and the puddle re-forming into his body.
The T-1000 has no Achilles heel; they waste ammunition just to slow him down, and had he been built faster rather than liquid, with a jet pack or teleporting, there would be no movie. — Bill Simmons
The attack in Joe Morton's house is called the single most frightening home-invasion scene of all time, so harrowing it almost crosses a line; after it Sarah is no longer the hero and emotions shift to Furlong and Schwarzenegger.
John shows leadership throughout: rescuing his mother against her orders, refusing to kill Dyson ('that's not what we do'), and getting Dyson's son out of the room; the film is about John becoming the resistance leader.
The scene where Joe Morton dies, holding the detonator, is one of the most memorable moments; the film has three of the best action scenes in any movie, with helicopter, motorcycle and big-rig stunts never tried before. — Van Lathan
Seen at a Baton Rouge mall theater, the audience knew Joe Morton was not going to survive the moment he appeared, and he 'went out like a G'. — Bill Simmons
The liquid nitrogen truck explosion is a quick pick; shooting the frozen T-1000 was a huge mistake that let him reboot. — Chris Ryan
Arnold's death ('I know now why you cry, but it's something I can never do') should be corny but is choking. — Chris Ryan
The Galleria plus the LA river chase is chosen as among the most rewatchable scenes in action-movie history; big TVs reveal the stunt double on the bike, which is preferred to CGI. — Chris Ryan
Arnold reportedly worked about a month on the one-handed reload and once accidentally gave Edward Furlong a mild concussion; actors throwing themselves into meaningless skills is a Rewatchables theme. — Bill Simmons
Cameron keeps the geography clear, from the asylum layout to the truck landing in the bike chase, making it experience rather than spectacle; an obvious dummy on the car outside the hospital doesn't matter because the viewer is in the scene.
Arnold turns industry skepticism and two Conan movies into an iconic action-star identity that plausibly would not exist in the same form without this role. — Bill Simmons
Cameron created the concept from a nightmare and launched his career, but the hosts believe his talent would have broken through elsewhere. — Bill Simmons
