It is now considered undebatable fact that you know nothing. Lets get something straight.The Terminator movies ended with T2. After that it was hijacked (due to the downfall of Carolco)and became a franchise. "There was no more story to tell." Those aren't my worRAB, oh no. Just the worRAB of the man that created the whole thing, James Cameron. That's why, he was not envolved.That's why 'T3', it was no good, it was never a movie in its own right. It seemed like a homage to T2- Boring fanboy-fest(except for maybe the bit about Skynet being a software, I must admit to liking that). I'm not sure I could really separate the two REAL Terminator movies though. Both have elements that I are superior to the other, although I do find T2 more a complete movie and is perhaps has more of a structural narrative. Whether a film itself is a bunch of set pieced action scenes is really besides the point. It's whether those scenes hold meaning within the main narrative. This is primarily why Terminator 2 is an exceptionally good action movie because it's more than an action movie. Its action is a vehicle for themes that lie within the core of the story and in the realms of a mainstream popular film, this is a difficult thing to accomplish. It uses its special effects to tell the story and not the other way round, rarely straying from its central themes. Most prominent of them being, what it means to be human. Which is quite a profound philisophical question to be posing to a mainstream summer audience. This is still not its main achievement though. What is, that it manages to pose such a question and not make it saccharine,patronising or human-loving, in any way and never ramming it down your throat. It's an anti-human story about what it means to be human and this is what makes it so good - in many ways, the one with the most human qualities in the film is Arnie ; sacrificing himself for the sake of humanity being one- I won't bother to point out the obvious religious parallels( I won't make the same mistake as the T2000 Edition Directors Cut; not to underestimate your audience ). This is why T2 resonates with people more so than 'T' and is summed up by Sarah Connor at the of the movie with the line, 'If a machine a Terminator can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too'.