If you're reading the blog regularly you know that the Terminator films had quite a relationship with the fitness magazines thanks to, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The first film had as much coverage in the fitness magazines as it had in film/entertainment mags. Terminator 2: Judgment Day was, of course, featured in quite a few as well. Not only was Arnold Schwarzenegger the biggest movie star in the world at this point, but also the movie was a huge event - it was the most expensive movie of all time by that point.
As mentioned before, fitness magazines were very divided - some just slapped a quick filler article there just to fulfill the agreement, and some were as good, if not better, as science fiction or general movie magazines. Well, Musclemag Magazine from September 1991 falls into the category of "great".
The magazine gives T2 a full cover, but that was a norm at the time - few mags didn't. The entire issue is very Arnold heavy, and features an extensive article/interview with the actor which I'm not showing because it doesn't talk about the movie, but outside of that, dedicates four pages to Terminator 2: Judgment Day itself (I'm only showing two as the other two only contain text).
The article is fantastic for many reasons. It doesn't repeat what 80% of magazines at the time wrote, which was a summary of pages in the Press Kit (and there was nothing wrong with that, they all simply wrote articles based on the pages they got from Carolco and Tri Star, but it did get repetitive very fast), and it's written clearly by someone who is a diehard fan of the mythology. The article recounts everything about the world presented in the films and its history, and summarizes the events with an explanation here and there. At the time, most articles were written by staff writers who were simply given a topic and press info and wrote their assignments, and weren't really knowledgeable about the movies. Thus, most articles have some glaring misinformation or wrong facts. But the writer here, Greg Zulak, clearly knows his sci fi stuff.
The article begins with a great recap on how successful the first film was financially, and for audiences and critics alike. It lists all of its accomplishments: being in Time magazine's Top 10 list, Esquire's prediction of it being the most important film of the 80's, VHS's Double Platinum sales and topping rental charts for months.
There are few pics here and without color, but even here the magazine did not get lazy and threw in some shots rarely used
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