It's not just the rubber Arnie head scenes guys. Nearly every visual in T1 is extremely dated, especially the clothes the actors are wearing and Linda's state fair hair.
Doooooode, where WERE YOU in the mid-1980's?
Let me tell you where I was. I was working in the latest techno-clubs, which were being frequented by many women that looked a lot like Linda Hamilton in T1, ESPECIALLY the perm-hair and the shoulder pads.
You might not like it, certainly I had a lot of laughs back in the day. But that is what women were wearing in that period, and the hairstyles they sported. I like it because it portrays Sarah Connor as a young innocent party-girl with a boring restaurant job, who ends up being like the Madonna of the future. Yes, her transformation for T-II is amazing, and yet perfectly within character.
In films, visuals absolutely do count because, the only thing you are doing is watching it... in games it doesn't matter because you are playing them. I thought that would be extremely obvious to everyone. Also understand that it's less of a dated vfx thing, and more of a bad vfx thing. There are makeup effects from the 30's and 40's that still hold up, because they were done well. These weren't.
If you're going to compare, do it against really old sci-fi flicks rather than dramas like Casablanca.
It's not just the visuals either, it's the plot that is a bit dated as well. The first film is actually framed and paced more like a slasher film than scifi...a bad slasher film. There's far more suspense and a sense of danger in T2. The entire movie is a chase scene because the villain is literally unstoppable. If they hadn't stumbled upon that steel mill they would have been dead meat.
Did you not notice that Arnie-bot chose the right freeway exit to get to the steel mill? Bit of planning there, not just random.
Plot was basically the same, they just added a bad-guy twist and some more character development/depth.
I have respect for the first film for creating the franchise, but that's about it. It's kind of like Evil Dead... that's a good flick but why the hell would you bother to watch it instead of just skipping to Evil Dead 2?
I suggest that you go and see "Night of the Living Dead" then compare it with modern zombie flicks. What I like about the original (but they lost in re-makes) is that the original "hero" was a black dude. He survived the night. But when the white dude cops turned up to rescue people, they shot him anyway.
Also for the record, don't lump Alien in with T1. Alien is a great film and it holds up well, mostly because they had more than 14 dollars to do the vfx.
T_I, T-II and Aliens were James Cameron. But Cameron didn't do the original Alien (that was Ridley Scott).