Terminator 2: Judgement Day Was Released 30 Years Ago Today

The Fourth of July weekend has always been a highly lucrative time for summer blockbusters and exactly 30 years ago today one of the greatest big budget popcorn movies ever made exploded into theaters when James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day arrived.

Seven years on from the classic 1984 original, Cameron reunited with stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton for a second installment that was fifteen times more expensive than its predecessor. It was the costliest production in the history of the industry at the time and was the first to come armed with a budget in excess of $100 million.

As there typically is whenever Cameron puts a new project together, there were doubts that Terminator 2‘s extravagant costs, which included $15 million and a private jet for Schwarzenegger as part of his contract, were setting him up for a fall. Needless to say, any naysayers were forced to eat their words when it hauled in $519 million at the box office to become the highest-grossing R-rated title ever. It’s still the biggest commercial hit of the leading man’s entire career.

Somehow, the sci-fi actioner is 30 years old, and as befitting its status, a lot of fans have been revisiting Judgement Day to mark the occasion, as you can see from the reactions below.

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We’ve seen another four installments in the franchise since Terminator 2: Judgement Day was released, and none of them have come anywhere close to matching the success of what’s long since gone down in the history books as one of the most significant studio projects of the modern era, reinventing the game with its cutting-edge visual effects and barnstorming succession of epic action sequences on the sort of canvas only James Cameron paints on.