3 weeks ago
14
Annabel Ross
February 23, 2026 — 5:00am
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in a career-defining role, James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day is memorable for many reasons – the gripping plot, the performances, ranging from campy to gravely sincere, the unexpected humour, the hair-raising action sequences, the CGI effects that hold up remarkably well decades later.
Just as unforgettable is the film’s famous score, a haunting, emotive fusion of orchestral and industrial elements that perfectly complemented the story of a cyborg sent back in time to protect John Connor from a more advanced Terminator intent on killing the child before he matures into a future resistance leader. Today, as ChatGPT use soars around the world, the parable about artificial intelligence gone awry feels more eerily prescient than ever.
Over the next month, an enterprising team of artists will dare to replace the music originally composed by Brad Fiedel with a new live score and laser accompaniment at special Terminator 2 screenings in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra.
Belgian producer Peter Van Hoesen will lead musicians from Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio (MESS) in bringing his original compositions to life via vintage synthesisers, while Melbourne audiovisual guru Robin Fox will amp up the drama with complementary beams of light. It’s one of the most beloved movie sequels of all time, as you’ve never seen or heard it before.
“It’s been a long time coming,” says Haydn Green, founder and director of Hear My Eyes, the cinema event production company behind the project.
Hear My Eyes has given other cult films the live score treatment, including Hellraiser, Chopper and Suspiria, but it took six years for Green to secure the Terminator 2 rights from major distributor StudioCanal.
“It’s such a high-profile film, and obviously James Cameron and Arnie have such an incredible legacy,” says Green, who has wanted to score a more mainstream movie for a while. “I love sci-fi films, and there are a lot of good Arnie ones out there, like Total Recall, but I think [Terminator 2] is the pinnacle for me.”
The combination of the film’s popularity and its revered score has raised eyebrows among those unfamiliar with Green’s concept, or affronted by the idea of a different soundtrack. The concern is “fair enough”, says Green.
“There are so many things in life that are not sacred any more and people are very protective over the things they love, especially the art they love,” he says.
Audiences are, Green notes, more amenable to other art forms such as music or theatre being remixed or recontextualised, but typically less receptive to the idea of films getting a similar treatment. “I can understand the knee-jerk reaction that might consider this an insult or a challenge, but we’re not out to compete with the original score, which will be there forever,” he says. “This is designed as an artistic experiment where we create something ephemeral and communal.”
As a fan of the movie, it was “not very hard for me to be extremely enthusiastic”, says Van Hoesen of being approached to do the score. Given his background as a techno producer and composer of richly textured futuristic music, he wasn’t entirely surprised either.
“I don’t want to have this come over as arrogant, but it kind of felt logical to me,” he says. He’s the first to admit that “you can’t top” Fiedel’s score, but his early attempts at new music “resembled a classic film score, and even had some sort of melodic reference to the original score,” he says. His only option was to start again.
“I had to realise that I was asked to do this not because they wanted another classical film score but because I’m an abstract electronic music producer,” he says. The synthesisers from MESS he elected to work with were chosen for their reliability on stage and also because a “virtual counterpart” existed so that he could compose from Ho Chi Minh city, where he is based.
“I knew that if I programmed a sound in the software version, it could be translated into the hardware version without too many issues,” he says.
Robin Fox doesn’t usually accept projects where his laser and sound design is not integrated, but having worked with Hear My Eyes previously (co-writing the new score to Suspiria with Chicago producer Hieroglyphic Being), he trusted Green and thought Van Hoesen was “a really great choice.”
He’s still involved with the sound in a not insignificant way – as the founding director of MESS, he oversees the musicians and machines used to bring Van Hoesen’s score to life, “quite a beautiful and cranky process”.
Meanwhile, designing the lasers that will accompany the film live requires far more restraint than his typical projects. “The aesthetic problem is really how much not to do because essentially, you don’t want to mess with the experience of seeing the film,” he says. The suitability of lasers in some scenes, such as the battle sequences, is obvious, but it becomes less clear in the film’s quieter passages. “It’s an interesting question, how do you be poignant with lasers?” Fox ponders. “It’s kind of an oxymoronic proposition, but it’s been about trying to find these moments.”
To the naysayers, Green says the key is to come in with an open mind. He cites an email from a huge fan of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth who attended the Hear My Eyes rework with much apprehension. This person was overwhelmed with emotion in the film’s final scenes, saying it was the first time the movie had brought them to tears. By changing “one thing, this musical element, they experienced so many elements of the movie anew and were more engaged with their emotions,” says Green. He hopes that Hear My Eyes’ T2 reinterpretation will surprise audiences in similar ways.
“This is just an opportunity to find a new entry point into a film that you know and love and experience it afresh.”
