Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #18 - The Terminator

The cyborgs are taking over! Judgment Day is inevitable!
The future isn't written. There's no fate, but what we make for ourselves!
Oh wait, those are from all the sequels...

The Terminator is a low-budget 1984 science-fiction film written & directed by then newcomer James Cameron. Cameron hired Austrian bodybuilder-turned-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger to star as the villainous cyborg sent from the future to kill the mother of the savior of mankind. Michael Biehn stars as Kyle Reese, the future soldier of war sent back through time to protect her. The mother of the savior of mankind? Linda Hamilton, as Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor.

The movie starts at an observatory. The Terminator appears in a time bubble and kills three street gang members, stealing their clothes in the process. At that same moment, Kyle Reese arrives in downtown LA 1984, stealing clothes from a hobo and shoes from a nearby department store. He then seemlessly sneaks into society as he and the Terminator race to locate Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor, the savior from the future who destroys Skynet and restores mankind's dominance in the world.

The Terminator stops and steals guns from a gun store owner. Kyle steals a shotgun from a police squad car. The Terminator strikes first, killing a Sarah Connor out of the LA phonebook. Off screen a little while later, he kills another Sarah Connor, this time Sarah L Connor. Sarah loses her plans to go out on a double date with her roommate Ginger and Ginger's boyfriend Matt that night, so she decides to go see a movie. She stops at a pizza joint, and sees the broadcast of the two Sarah Connors' deaths. She then leaves and goes walking down the street, but Kyle is close behind. Believing Kyle to be a stalker or a potential threat, she sneaks into a club called "Tech Noir" where she calls Lt. Traxler (Paul Winfield) and Sgt. Vukovich (Lance Henrikson). They tell her to stay put and they send a squad car out to her. Meanwhile, the Terminator breaks into Ginger and Sarah's apartment, kills Ginger and Matt, and overhears Sarah's voicemail to them stating where she is, giving the Terminator a location to come find her. It arrives at the club looking for her and picks her out of a crowd, but Kyle pumps shotgun rounds into the Terminator, takes Sarah and flees.

The Terminator chases them throughout the streets of LA. They hide in a parking garage, where Kyle tells Sarah about the horrors of the future. Kyle tells her that she's been targeted for termination because her future son, John Connor, rallied the remnants of mankind against Skynet, the automated self-aware super computer that initiated a nuclear holocaust against mankind. He tells Sarah that the Terminator is an efficient killing machine that "can't be bargained with, can't be reasoned with", and that it "doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, ever" until she is dead. Sarah decides to trust Kyle, due to his faith in his story. The two are later captured by the LAPD after they once again escape the Terminator in a car chase. They're taking to LAPD headquarters where Sarah is informed of Ginger's death and Kyle is interrogated by Dr. Peter Silberman. He tells Silberman the same thing about the Terminator, and how it'll wade through them all like they are nothing and kill Sarah. Silberman, Traxler and Vukovich try to convince Sarah that Kyle's a liar, but she still persists in believing in Kyle.

The Terminator, after a self-repair session in its hideout, attacks the police station where Sarah's being kept. The Terminator starts shooting threw cops and blasting up the police station in search of Sarah. Kyle breaks free from his custody and moves to find Sarah too. Kyle gets to her first as Traxler and Vukovich are gunned down by the Terminator. Kyle and Sarah escape from the police station and spend the night under a bridge. The next day they get a motel room to stay covered. Kyle purchases some bomb building materials and that night they make dynamite sticks for when the Terminator finds her again. Kyle later then confesses that he came across time for Sarah because he loves her, and the two make love that night.

The Terminator arrives and shoots up the motel but Kyle and Sarah escape in a truck. The Terminator shoots Kyle during the chase, mortally wounding him, but Sarah uses the truck to crash the Terminator and damage it. The damaged Terminator then hijacks a semi and chases Kyle and Sarah, who are on foot. Kyle sticks a lit dynamite stick into the truck's exhaust pipe, blowing it up. Kyle and Sarah embrace, believing they've killed it, but the Terminator rises out of the flaming wreckage, now just a metal endoskeleton since the flesh burnt off. The chase resumes on foot through a computer factory. Kyle sticks dynamite in the Terminator's abdomen, blowing it into two pieces, but the shockwave of the blast kills Kyle. Sarah is left to fend for herself when the Terminator's torso reactivates and starts chasing her again. Sarah finally corners the Terminator in a hydraulic press, tells it "you're terminated, fucker" and crushes it, killing it for good.

Nine months later, the a very pregnant Sarah is recording tapes for her future son to listen to. She stops at a gas station in Mexico, where a young boy takes the polaroid picture of Sarah that John gives to Kyle that Kyle falls in love with. The older store owner tells Sarah that there's "a storm coming", to which Sarah responds "I know..."

The Terminator is a science-fiction noir masterpiece. James Cameron catapulted both himself and Austrian best-buddy Arnold Schwarzenegger into super stardom following this movie's success. They would go on to reunite for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, often called the greatest motion picture sequel of all time. Arnold would come back twelve years after that for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which would be Arnold's last starring role before his term as governor of California. The movies may have gotten worse and worse with each new entry after T2, but with news of James Cameron coming back to executive produce a new trilogy of Terminator films, we should expect nothing but great things on the horizon. Never forget though, this is the classic that started it all.