Arnold was so perfect as the embodiment of the birth of a dangerous, unrefined new force, and Robert Patrick was the perfect turn for the next generation. While

Arnold was so perfect as the embodiment of the birth of a dangerous, unrefined new force, and Robert Patrick was the perfect turn for the next generation. While Arnold's terminator had unbelievable levels of the familiar properties of strength and durability, handling the bikers exactly the same way the bikers would have handled a 90 pound weakling, the next-gen terminator had a bizarre new capability that we had never encountered. Arnold was frightening because we could imagine exactly how he would pursue us and how our efforts to escape or defend would fail against him. With the Robert Patrick terminator, we were confronted with something much stranger, even alien. Our culture had not yet worked out the consequences of what he could do. In the few moments we had to react, our imaginations could only scratch the surface of what he was capable of. In broad daylight, we were in the dark. It verges on cosmic horror, where you realize that your imagination, which is fully stocked with you culture's complete menagerie of horrors and abominations, may be utterly inadequate to imagine what is about to happen to you. (The plot didn't quite deliver on that, since the new terminator was just faster and more unstoppable that the old one, but the fear was there.)