I cannot believe that they cut this from the movie. This lends such an awesome Paul Verhoven vibe to the film that I cannot begin to express my joy. What were they thinking!
Yeah, should have left it in. If they'd dubbed over Arnie's lines, and even not, it would have been a memorable moment. It has a great Robocop vibe, and really personalizes the Terminator.
It pretty much is. For all the self-awareness they might as well have just made the entire movie 2 hours of nerds sitting on a couch debating time travel possibilities and why Skynet didn't just cover a nuclear bomb in skin to send back with a terminator.