|
"TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY"
A Screenplay by James Cameron and William Wisher
Revised final shooting script
1 EXT. CITY STREET - DAY
Downtown L.A. Noon on a hot summer day. On an EXTREME LONG LENS the lunchtime crowd stacks up into a wall of humanity. In SLOW MOTION they move in herds among the glittering rows of cars jammed bumper to bumper. Heat ripples distort the torrent of faces. The image is surreal, dreamy... and like a dream it begins very slowly to
DISSOLVE TO:
2 EXT. CITY RUINS - NIGHT
Same spot as the last shot, but now it is a landscape in Hell. The cars are stopped in rusted rows, still bumper to bumper. The skyline of buildings beyond has been shattered by some unimaginable force like a row of kicked-down sandcastles. Wind blows through the desolation, keening with the sound of ten million dead souls. It scurries the ashes into drifts, stark white in the moonlight against the charred rubble. A TITLE CARD FADES IN:
LOS ANGELES, July 11, 2029
3 ANGLE ON a heap of fire-blackened human bones. Beyond the mound is a vast tundra of skulls and shattered concrete. The rush hour crowd burned down in their tracks.
4 WE DISSOLVE TO a playground... where intense heat has half-melted the jungle gym, the blast has warped the swing set, the merry-go-round has sagged in the firestorm. Small skulls look accusingly from the ash-drifts. WE HEAR the distant echo of children's voices... playing and laughing in the sun. A silly, sing-songy rhyme as WE TRACKS SLOWLY over seared asphalt where the faint hieroglyphs of hopscotch lines are still visible.
CAMERA comes to rest on a burnt and rusted tricycle... next to the tiny skull of its owner. HOLD ON THIS IMAGE as a female VOICE speaks:
VOICE: "3 billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare, the war against the Machines...
A metal foot crushes the skull like china. . . . . .
CONTINUE
|
