Title: The
Terminator
Director: James
Cameron
Released: 1984
Starring: Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, Paul Winfield, Lance
Henriksen, Earl Boen, Bess Motta, Rick Rossovich, Dick Miller, Franco
Columbu, Bill Paxton
Plot: A cyborg
assassin known as a Terminator (Schwarzenegger) travels back in
time to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Hamilton) the future mother of the
human resistance in 2029 before he is born. At the same time Kyle
Reese (Biehn) a solider from the future has also travelled back in
time to protect her.
Review: Who’d have
thought that the director of “Piranha 2: The Spawning” would go
on to be the director of some of the most iconic and visually
inventive cinema of all time. A graduate of the Roger Corman film
school were he started as a miniature model maker before briefly
being given the Piranha 2 gig taking over from original director
Miller Drake before he too was fired topping off what had proven to
be a nightmare debut for Cameron who topped off the experience by
getting food poisoning.
It was while
battling this illness that Cameron had a nightmare about an
invincible robot assassin sent to kill him from the future which
formed the basis for this film while also drawing inspiration from
“The Outer Limits” episodes “Soldier” and “Demon With A
Glass Hand”. Cameron also traded recordings with his friend Bill
Wisher who helped him turn his draft into a finished script. This
original script featured two Terminators and also introduced the idea
of the liquid metal Terminator which had to be scrapped when he
realised that the technology at the time wouldn’t realise his ideas
leaving it for the sequel were he would introduce the now iconic
T-1000.
With this film
Cameron gives us two distinctive worlds as he opens in the
post-apocalyptic Los Angeles of 2029 were humans have been driven to
brink of extinction by the robot uprising brought about by the AI
defence network Skynet. Its an iconic world vision of the future that
Cameron gives us as towering machines rumble over fields of human
skulls. Even though this vision of the future is limited it’s still
unquestionably effective and perfectly establishes this alternative
future. From here we are taken back to 1984 Los Angeles which though
Cameron’s lens is shown in a grimy and neon lit style which makes
for the perfect battleground for this game of cat and mouse to unfold
on.
Returning to this
film as an older film watcher it was now that I could finally
appreciate this film beyond its set pieces, which certainly helped
keep its sequel in heavy rotation during my film watching youth. This
original film is a much difference beast than its action orientated
sequels as here Cameron’s focus is purely on building atmosphere
and tension to create a film which is as equal parts a cat and mouse
thriller as it is a slasher only this time the killer is a seemingly
unstoppable killing machine.
The casting is another key aspect of why this film works despite the fact that
Schwarzenegger was to be cast as Kyle Reese only to talk himself into
the Terminator role following a lunch meeting with Cameron, though
the Terminator role could easily have gone to both Lance Henriksen or
OJ Simpson who were both in the running for the role with the latter
being dismissed as they felt no one would buy him as a killer. No
doubt neither of them wouldn’t have made the role as iconic as it
was in Schwarzenegger’s hands which itself is largely down to the
amount of work he put into developing the character to truly sell the
idea of him being an unstoppable killing machine and its hard to say
if it was this role or Conan which was the bigger star making role
for him.
Schwarzenegger as
the Terminator is such a dominating presence throughout though
Cameron does for the most part keep his personality cold and
calculating its never to the point here that he stands out by giving
machine like responses as he is shown talking with Dick Miller’s
pawn shop clerk whose lack of response for why he’s buying such a
shopping list of guns is more questionable than the responses that
Schwarzenegger is giving. Even his iconic “I’ll be back” is a
perfectly acceptable response to what he is being told by the police
station clerk, only here its added to by the fact that its followed
up by the Terminator driving a car through the front of the police
station.
Unquestionably its a
gritty sci-fi thriller that Cameron crafts here with both the
Terminator and Kyle being introduced as they land nude in the present
day before having to find the resources with the Terminator coldly
killing a group of Punks while Kyle is shown having to break into a
clothing store while evading the police in a wonderfully tense
sequence and Cameron really doesn’t establish the motivation of
Kyle’s character until his first confrontation with the Terminator
during the now iconic tech-noir club sequence, until this point he is
just shown running around the city with a modified shotgun while the
Terminator works his way (or should that be kills his way) through
the Sarah Connors in the phone book which is such a great touch that
the machines only have a name and a location rather than an actual
idea of what she looks like.
The relationship
between Sarah and Kyle is an interesting one as for the most part she
is unsure if Kyle is who he says he is and not just some delusional
nutcase as everyone keeps telling her. The reasons for them getting
together however are slightly convoluted and even now the idea of the
Sarah’s future son giving Kyle her picture and essentially match
making his own parents just never sat right with me even though its
kind of an essential aspect to the story. This aside having a human
soldier as the sole defence against the Terminator really adds a
tense aspect to the plot, especially when we see the Terminator
easily despatching everyone he comes into contact with. Its equally a
ballsy move on Cameron’s part to *spoiler
alert* kill off Kyle and
leave Sarah to have the final showdown. Obviously for Sarah it
perfectly sets up her character evolution from
being the damsel in distress
as we get to see
in the next film even though having a Terminator take on the
protector role does remove some of the edge that the human
vulnerability of Kyle brings to the film.
The
action scenes throughout are still fantastic to watch even after
multiple viewings be it the police station massacre of Kyle and Sarah
being chased by the Terminator, Cameron really knows how to hold the
audiences attention and really craft genuinely exciting action
scenes. Of course the appearance of the exo-skeleton Terminator at
the finale does loose some of its effectiveness due to being such an
iconic image for the franchise while its movements Stan Winston has
quite nailed in this film. That being said it still makes for a
fantastic finale and a wonderful creation.
While
this film might be overshadowed by its sequel, the subtle charm of
this film and slow build tension makes it none the less of an
essential watch while also
the film which marked Cameron out as talent to watch as he would
unquestionably prove with the films which followed in its wake.
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