The hair-raising scene James Cameron would never repeat: “You either did it right or you were dead”
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest action movies ever made, and with good reason. From its iconic motorcycle and truck chase to Linda Hamilton’s incredible transformation to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career-defining quips, James Cameron’s wild ride is heart-pounding from start to end and just as good as when it burst into cinemas in 1991.
As well as state-of-the-art visual effects – picture Robert Patrick’s T-1000 reconstituting after being shattered into tiny pieces – Terminator 2 also comes jam-packed with breath-taking physical work. $1million of the movie’s budget was allocated to stunt work, one of the largest sums of money devoted to the craft up to that point. The result is spectacular. A film that excels on both a technical and practical level. However, even its creator admits that there is one part he would do differently now.
Cameron called the scene where the T-800 climbs onto the back of a tow truck with a gun as “the most dangerous stunt I’ve ever been involved with” in conversation with Female. “That would’ve been a digital double today, for sure, for safety reasons,” explaining that Peter Kent, Schwarzenegger’s stunt and photo double, had to be absolutely perfect whilst attempting the scene, otherwise things could have ended very badly.
“You either did it right or you were dead,” Cameron ominously proclaimed. “And I would not do that today, but we had no other way to do it then. We talked about things like wire rigs and everybody’s consensus with the technology available at the time was, it was more complicated and more dangerous if we tried to rig it. It was actually safer just to have Peter run. Because he could bail out if it didn’t go right.”
Luckily, Kent nailed the tricky feat without serious injury. He was an experienced stuntman, having already doubled for Arnie in Predator and Total Recall and going on to stand in for him on films like True Lies, Last Action Hero, and his most dangerous project, Jingle All the Way. He also served as the stunt coordinator for a number of TV shows after stepping away from active stunt work following an accident on the set of Eraser. He was almost killed when a massive shipping container hit him whilst he was 100ft in the air standing in for the future Governor of California.
“There was a transition moment where he jumped from one truck to the other, and there was no forgiveness,” Cameron recalled, making reference to other big action movies with similarly perilous moments. When talking about digital effects versus practical work, the director concluded that there needed to be a middle ground. “I don’t think anybody should ever get killed or injured for a movie given what we can do today,” he asserted. “And it doesn’t take away work from the stuntmen, somebody’s still got to do the stunt, it’s just going to be done in a safer way.”
Stunt performers have often felt like the great unsung heroes in film, their work being enjoyed by many, but their names often kept in the dark. With the release of The Fall Guy in 2024, a movie in which Ryan Gosling plays a movie stuntman, there was renewed interest in the long-running debate over a stunt category at the Oscars. Whilst the Academy has yet to announce anything regarding the move, fingers crossed that these brave and talented individuals one day get the recognition they deserve.
