Over the last 30 years, very few action blockbusters have even come close to matching the quality of James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, so the following four installments in the sci-fi franchise never really stood a chance. One of the most spectacle-driven movies ever produced, it was as revolutionary as it was successful.
The boundary-pushing visual effects kicked the doors open for the CGI revolution, the $102 million budget made it the most expensive production in history at the time, Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s $15 million paycheck turned him into the highest-paid star in the industry, and a box office haul of $520.9 million saw Judgment Day become the biggest hit of 1991, and it reigned as the highest-grossing R-rated movie for a dozen years until The Matrix Reloaded came along.
That’s an awful lot of superlatives to throw around, but one thing T2 couldn’t do is stop Schwarzenegger’s daughter from marrying an actor, after the action icon admitted that he thought growing up around film sets would have sworn her off the idea for good.
“I’m really proud of my daughters. Katherine is a winner. I mean, I never, ever thought that my daughter is going to marry an actor. I said to myself, she would probably be sick and tired of me dragging them to sets, having them watch me blowing up buildings and killing people, all this stuff. My kids always enjoyed it, but Katherine, she was crying, always, the first few movies.”
Katherine Schwarzenegger married Chris Pratt last summer, turning the Guardians of the Galaxy star and the internet’s least favorite Chris into both Hollywood and Washington royalty after he was welcomed into the extended Schwarzenegger/Kennedy clan, and his father-in-law had some kind words to say about one of the newest members of his family.
“Maria would come out to the set when we were in the middle of shooting Terminator 2. And so she saw me when half of the face was gone and the eye was lighting up and all that. All this kind of weird makeup, so she started screaming and crying on the set because she didn’t understand why daddy looked like that, but anyway, now she married an actor and Chris is a fantastic guy. So easy to get along with, and so I am really happy because he has been such a really wonderful, wonderful husband to her and such a great son-in-law.”
Arnold’s son Patrick followed in his father’s footsteps and became an actor as well, but so far, the 27 year-old hasn’t come close to dipping his toes into the action genre that made his old man a global megastar. Clearly, though, spending so much time watching their dad putting himself through the physical wringer in movies like Terminator 2 wasn’t enough to put his kids off of the industry.
