The film’s title sequence begins with flames taking over the whole screen blazing fiercly then two metal bars shut together with the words “Terminator 2 Judgement day” engraved on them with the flames still burning through the metal. This could suggest that this movie will have a lot of fire and metal. As the music plays the words move towards us getting closer and closer, until eventually they go up in flames. These flames will appear a lot in the film: showing the utter disruption of the world and how it can be so easily destroyed.
As the text goes up in flames and the fire slowly moves out of site, we see a playground burning with horse rides up in flame and the music is still playing slowly in the background, showing us how everything is destroyed because of what has happened in the future. All we can see are flames and silhouettes of swings burning in the foreground, smoke is everywhere that’s all you can see. The music magnifies the disspair of the situation nicely. All this makes the viewer very aware of whats happened because we have immediately come into a distopian atmosphere that was established in the first movie.
The flames themselves serve a very important purpose because they are symbolising all the disruption and chaos and disspair around appearing through out this movie and through out all of the terminator movies. The horses and swings are shocking to the viewer because we associate them with fun, children and happiness, so when we see them aflame its unexpected and very strange to the viewer. The contrast between the child like structures and the flames signals the destruction that is to take place in the movie.
The slow drumming and orchestral music playing to the beginning sequence helps to suggest the gravity of the films theme and also evokes a more personal response which is an iconic signifier of the distopian atmosphere and melodrama which also becomes central to the films story. Whilst this music plays the title comes into focus very slowly all lit up in flame. However this doesn’t come until after the first 5 minutes of the opening sequence, at the beginning we see children playing on the swings enjoying themselves having fun as a different kind of score pays as if the destruction has already begun, it then cuts to complete destruction and we see everything has turned to ashes and soot. The first real image is of a skull sitting in a car shell as the camera slowly pans across the scene we realise that everything is reduced to ashes nothing is left of what was. This invites us to feel for the immense adventure that is about to begin. What we are meant to be feeling is utter shock at what has happened and as if that’s not bad enough a cyborg comes into frame crushing a persons skull to dust. However everything else now is completely silent all we can here is a slight wind blowing through this shell of a car. The complete contrast is un deniable as its gone from being full of life to being dead in a matter of seconds. Notice how the director doesn’t ease us into any comforting cenario he just gets straight to the point, everything was fine…now it isn’t. In this same scene we see a childrens playground full of skull heads lying on the floor. As we remember the childrens laughter playing in this same playground in that previous scene the audience feel a sense of sadness at this utter distopia and emptiness that’s so dark. As this is being shown the woman’s voice begins her story of why this is like it is, she speaks slowly and with a lot of pain almost as if the words are being forced from her soul.
As the camera continues to pan the cyborg comes into view and starts shooting at an object outside the screne and noise returns in the form of flame and gun fire the editing here is superb because we have just witnessed a terrible thing and now we have to get to grips with this cyborg that has just crushed a human skull with its metal foot. All these machines coming into view and people fighting for their lives.
Later on the swings we see in the first few seconds are engulfed in flame that has risen high above its structure. It’s hard to think that children had once played there harmlessly, the audience now are expected to feel sad at this because its meant to show that maybe the future of our childrens lives aren’t going to be so happy.
