James Camer-thon: A Review of "The Terminator"

"First, I'm going to shoot up this entire police station and kill every last person in here. Then... I'm going to Disneyland."

Happy Friday! Let's get 2023's slate of posts started off right, I got a mind to dissect and review one of my favorite movies of all time from my all-time favorite director. James Camer-thon awaits no man, or woman... or child! Or sentient robot developed and built by a software AI originally designed to protect us and sent back in time to assassinate the mother of the savior of humankind!... and no, I'm not talking about Tom Brady's mother...

"Sarah, I need you sit ever so still for the next 5-10
seconds while I aim what is very obviously a gun at you."

There's this fear that prevails that humanity, especially with the invention of the smartphone, is becoming too reliant on technology. From the things that make us food to the things that operate our cars, to the things that control our homes, our TVs; a lot of "smart" software is out there now. Everything interconnects with everything else these days. Your phone can stream to your TV, your music player blasts your tunes wirelessly over a Bluetooth stream to headphones... and I'm sure we're only mere years away from your toilet being able to digitally remove the content of your bowels. Back in 1983/84, none of this technology existed... or if it did, it was in the hands of some military power you didn't want it to be in. James Cameron's directorial debut, The Terminator is a tale of humanity's overreliance on technology coming back to bite it in the ass. It tells the story of Skynet... an artificial intelligence born from a missile defense system designed to protect us that instead decided to destroy us, after becoming self-aware and seeing us as the threat. However... by the year 2029, its dominance over the planet failed, as the "Human Resistance" of freedom fighters rose up to destroy it and... as a last ditch effort before it's destruction, Skynet sends an assassin cyborg covered in living tissue... a "Terminator" (see? Ha)... back in time to 1984, to kill the mother of the leader of the human resistance before he's even conceived, thus temporally erasing its own loss. To protect their win in 2029, the resistance sends a soldier back in time to 1984 to protect her.

That's the gist of the backstory, let's step through the actual plot and see why this is one of the greatest movies ever made. 

"Sarah, I love you so much!"
"Kyle, this is 1984... men don't share
their feelings. Man up, buttercup."

The movie opens with shots of this future war. Aerial, automated war machines blast the landscape with their laser blasts. Text comes over the screen: "The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire, their war to exterminate mankind had raged for centuries... but the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here, in our present... tonight". After the opening titles, we then see two men arrive separately in 1984 Los Angeles, having time traveled from 2029. One is a cybernetic assassin known as the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger... before he was the box-office kingpin), programmed to hunt and kill a woman named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). The other is a human soldier named Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), intent on stopping it. They both steal guns and clothing. The Terminator systematically kills women bearing its target's name, having found their addresses in a telephone directory. It tracks the last Sarah Connor, its actual target, to a nightclub, but Reese rescues her. The pair steal a car and escape, with the Terminator pursuing them in a stolen police car. As they hide in a parking lot, Reese explains to Sarah that an artificially intelligent defense network known as Skynet, created by Cyberdyne Systems, will become self-aware in the near future and trigger a global nuclear war to exterminate the human species. Sarah's future son John Connor will rally the survivors into a human resistance and lead a successful attack against Skynet and its army of machines. On the verge of the resistance's victory in 2029, Skynet sent the Terminator back in time to kill Sarah and prevent John from being born. The Terminator is an efficient and relentless killing machine with perfect voice-mimicking ability (despite it having an Austrian accent... hehe) and a robust metal endoskeleton covered by living tissue that disguises it as a human, making it completely undetectable and nearly indestructible in 1984.

Right away you're introduced to all the action and lore of the story, something Cameron is very good at doing in his films. Cameron doesn't just direct movies, he builds stories and storyboards out his own lore before he even undertakes the script itself... and the dialogue shows that. Reese filling Sarah in on the future war and how her life impacts 2029 doesn't feel vague or cliché, even with minimal explanation... you can picture in your head exactly what happens from 1984 to 2029 and then how their meddling in 1984 is changing how things are going to go... a very valuable plot point that is the central focus of the sequel. There was a deleted detail from the movie where Sarah Connor would have had an old figure skating injury, two pins in her leg, that the Terminator would then slice open the legs of the first two Sarah Connors it kills to sort of "guess and check" itself. That would have been a neat thing to include, I don't know why they took it out. There's even minor details about the plot still in the movie that go unnoticed to the casual viewer... like how Reese has to shoot the Terminator's arm in the nightclub to save Sarah, because it's the only place the blast would knock the gun away since it's a machine. Shoot it anywhere else, the arm would've stayed still and shot and killed Sarah. Maybe I'll dedicate a whole post to the Terminator lore in the future (perhaps 2029 eh?)... but for now, continuing on.

"I have risen from the ashes of the latest Roger Corman
picture to very shakily chase you down!"

Police apprehend Reese and Sarah after another encounter with the Terminator. During the interrogation, Kyle proclaims that the Terminator will not stop until Sarah is dead, and the police all dismiss him as a looney. Meanwhile, The Terminator arrives after assessing its battle damage from the previous chase. After being denied the right to "see" Sarah... The Terminator leans in and says "I'll be back", and leaves. That's right... it's The Terminator where Arnold's famous catchphrase was born. The Terminator crashes a car through the police station lobby and attacks the back offices, killing police officers while hunting for Sarah. After killing Trexler (Paul Winfield) and Vukovich (Lance Henriksen), as well as fifteen other cops, the Terminator fails to acquire Reese and Sarah until it is too late. They escape, steal another car, and take refuge in a motel, where they assemble pipe bombs and plan their next move. That night while on watch, Reese admits that her son John gave him a photo of Sarah in 2029, but that he has adored Sarah since he saw her in said photograph and that he traveled through time out of love for her. Reciprocating his feelings, Sarah kisses him, and they have sex, conceiving John. So... Kyle Reese, a soldier from 2029, is in fact the biological father of John Connor, who by 2029 is his commanding officer and leader of the Human Resistance. This creates a paradox which will become more fleshed out as we talk about the sequel(s). Maybe I'll save this one for the future "lore" post as well. Just shove that one in your back pocket too. Moving on!

"This American healthcare is bupkis! I am going to sit here
in this dingy, dive motel and operate on myself, thank you
very much!"

The Terminator locates Sarah by intercepting a call intended for her mother (it is heavily implied the Terminator killed her mother and that's how it learned to impersonate her voice). She and Reese escape the motel in a pickup truck while it pursues them on a motorcycle. In the ensuing chase (which has a kick-ass score number), Reese is wounded by gunfire while throwing pipe bombs at the Terminator. Sarah knocks the Terminator off its motorcycle but loses control of the truck, which flips over. The Terminator, now bloodied and badly damaged, hijacks a tank truck and attempts to run down Sarah, but Reese slides a pipe bomb into the tanker's hose tube, causing an explosion that burns the flesh from the Terminator's endoskeleton. It then, in all it's stop-motion, puppetry, rear-projection, 1980s special effects glory, pursues them into a nearby factory, where Reese activates the factory machinery to disorient and confuse its scanners. The Terminator eventually finds them hiding. Reese and it confront each other in a brief brawl and after being knocked on his ass, he jams his final pipe bomb into its midsection, blowing it apart at the cost of his life. Its still-functional torso grabs Sarah and chases her, but she breaks free and lures it into a hydraulic press, crushing and finally destroying it.

In the epilogue, Sarah is now very pregnant with John as she travels through Mexico, recording audio tapes to pass on to him. At a gas station, a boy takes a polaroid of her, and she buys it. It is the exact photograph that John will one day give to Reese. The boy says something in Spanish, which Sarah asks the gas station attendant to translate. He tells her the boy said "There's a storm coming", referring to the approaching thunderstorm... but Sarah, still aware of the coming nuclear holocaust, simply replies "I know" and drives off...

"Come on, Kyle! We have to get out of--" "Not now, Sarah!
LOOK! A Burger King!" "Kyle we don't have time for--"
"You try getting a whopper in 2029, Sarah... then we'll talk!"

...and that's The Terminator. First off, let's talk about the characters. Linda Hamilton does a great job as the reluctant heroine forced into a situation she doesn't want to be in by being chased by a machine sent back to terminate her for something she hasn't even done yet. The scene where she and Reese are under the bridge, you can just feel the anger and unfairness in her voice, like "why me? why am I the mother of the leader of the future?!" because when we meet her, she's an awkward klutzy waitress at a burger joint. Michael Biehn's Kyle Reese, I got to say, is determined and callous, but caring when his guard is down. You have no idea initially he has any sort of feelings for Sarah in the beginning because he's all business, even going so far as to drop his "Tech-Com" number on her which means absolutely nothing in 1984. You see fear in him when he's giving his monologue to Sarah about how Skynet triggers the nuclear war and talks about his time hiding from the machines before joining John Connor's human resistance. Like I said, you also feel genuine sadness and care for him when he breaks down and admits his feelings for Sarah. By the end of the movie, he's a completely different person than he was when we first met him. It makes his death that much more tragic and depressing. Makes sense though, can you imagine being a Tech-Com soldier from 2029, and then you accomplish your mission by destroying the Terminator? What do you do from there? Become a pizza delivery guy? Get into a dead-end advertising job? I'd rather keep fighting Terminators.

"You can't see Sarah Connor right now."
"Very well, I will return momentarily.
Please let me know when she'll be
available to see as soon as possible!"
*CUT*

...and speaking of Terminators, the star of the movie, famous for his grunting, snarling role as Conan the Barbarian just two years prior pretty much gets to have his landmark performance in this movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He became a household name after the release of The Terminator, and like I mentioned... this movie spawned his most famous catchphrase: "I'll be back". FUN FACT: Schwarzenegger tried to say it as "I will be back" like a machine would say, but Cameron told him it was a farce to do so. When Arnold tried to argue, Cameron said "Look I don't correct your acting, don't correct my writing. Just say the line." and the rest is living film history. Schwarzenegger initially met Cameron to discuss playing Reese, as Cameron originally wanted someone unassuming to play the Terminator. After meeting with Arnold, Cameron deduced that the way he was talking meant Arnold should instead play the Terminator, something both parties agreed to adamantly. Arnold practiced with guns so vigorously behind-the-scenes to make sure his gun loading, reloading, and firing would look autonomous. The first two weeks of filming he practiced weapons stripping and reassembly blindfolded until the motions were automatic, like a machine. He spent hours at the shooting range and practicing with different weapons without blinking or looking at them when reloading or cocking. He also had to be ambidextrous. He practiced different moves up to 50 times. He wound up garnering a compliment in "Soldier of Fortune" magazine for his realistic handling of the guns on camera (whereas the magazine usually lampoons movies for their inaccurate depictions of weapons use).

As for the cinematography and score, the movie does indeed feel very... 80s noire. Not that that's a bad thing, but it does "date" it, so to speak. It isn't as crisp and polished as the sequel (we will get to that)... and there are shots where there appears to be slight hazes coating the dark streets of LA. Sure, the movie was made on a shoestring budget... some $6.5 million as I mentioned. HOWEVER... I think the noire look and sound of the movie only helps it. The Terminator theme is one of my personal favorites in film scores, naturally, because of not only how it sounds but of the tone and meaning behind the story when you hear the music. The score by Brad Fiedel (readily available for streaming on YouTube or Spotify or any other music service) is phenomenal, and the main title music perfectly captures the struggle for humanity's survival as Kyle battles an unstoppable T-800 Terminator to protect the mother of the future savior of mankind. "The Tunnel Chase" is also one of my favorite tracks, I can vividly picture Arnold in the semi-truck running Kyle and Sarah down on the highway when I hear it.

"Kyle, Sarah... I have something to tell you--"
"Is it the quickest way to get out of the police station?"
"No, it's that I was two days from retirement!"

The film's budget heavily impacted how it was shot, too. Acquiring permits to shoot in LA isn't cheap or easy, I would imagine. Because of this... James Cameron often resorted to what he called "guerilla filmmaking" as a way of getting around these pesky financially demanding requirements to film certain scenes. Sometimes it would involve the production crew and actors quickly arriving at a specified location, shooting the scene and leaving before the police arrived. It's crazy to think this means some of the people seen in a few shots are actual everyday citizens completely unaware they're in a movie, and not only a movie but one of the greatest movies of the 1980s. Sometimes Cameron would even call and wake Arnold Schwarzenegger a three o'clock in the morning, dead-ass even before dawn, to meet him at a location already in full costume to quickly re-shoot a scene. Cameron also used this tactic to film the very last scene where Sarah drives off into the desert. This almost backfired, however, when the police came sniffing around.

Any way you slice it, The Terminator is a masterpiece of 1980s sci-fi cinema. The action scenes are incredible, the three main characters all work off each other in the narrative drama of the chase. Arnold's always lurking in the shadows while Kyle and Sarah plan their every move. Even as they build pipe bombs, the Terminator is on a motorcycle chasing them down. Perfectly illustrating the hysteria in Kyle's line of "He'll find her... that's what he does... that's all he does!" and it just goes to show what point Cameron was trying to get across; humanity's overreliance on technology could ultimately be our undoing. What I love most a lot about The Terminator is just how it looks/feels. Sure, with effects back then you can see what's stop-motion, what's a puppet, and what's rear-projection... but with The Terminator it doesn't really seem to bother you as the viewer. Arnold's battle-damage make-up where half his face is peeled off looks really good even today, and that's a credit to just how much of a master Stan Winston was at his special effects craft. The action... the look... the characters... the story... it's all masterfully woven together, and a lot of that is a credit to James Cameron. Someone who by 1984 had no name and no face for himself. If you haven't watched The Terminator, hit the brakes on your car, pull over to the nearest rest stop on the interstate and stream it for a couple hours. It's a sci-fi love story staple you don't want to miss out on.

See you next week as instead of directing the sequel right away... James Cameron instead directed somebody else's sequel..... ;)