James Camer-thon: A Review of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day"

"Arnold, I told you to stop pointing the gun at me. The camera's not even rolling"
- James Cameron (probably)

Look... we all know how this is going to go. We all know Terminator 2: Judgment Day arguably is the greatest movie ever made by mortal men on this Earth and in its filmmaking history, right? All of us know that. This post will not be breaking new ground in saying so. I haven't met a single person who wasn't a contrarian that said "You know I watched Terminator 2 and I just couldn't get into it" or "I thought it sucked". I always argue that there are three movies in our recorded history that every human being must at one point experience: Back to the Future... Star Wars... and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It's weird. The Terminator, the movie that literally started the franchise? It's like a freakin' footnote compared to T2. Reportedly, The Terminator cost $6.5 million to produce IN ITS ENTIRETY... that's salaries, stunts, sets, explosives, everything; the whole schabang. Reportedly, that's only what Arnold Schwarzenegger's trailer on the set of T2 cost alone. That alone should set the stage for what we're about to break into.

"Sorry John, I can't hear you over
the sound of my mullet."

Yes, this is Terminator 2: Judgment Day. A movie that teaches us that a high-budget sequel to a cheap, 80s noire action movie doesn't have to be some lowbrow cash-in but can in fact be endearing, heartwarming, action-packed, balls to the wall, somewhat comedic, full of heart, kind of terrifying, and all around a wildly fulfilling piece of cinema, a pop culture staple, and a wildly incredible masterpiece of film for decades to come... easily 'til film historians in the year 3329 A.D. study it while they wonder why Marvel's Phase Eighty-Six is only is grossing an average of twelve bucks at the box office. Back again is Arnold Schwarzenegger, back again is Linda Hamilton, and joining the cast is a newcomer Edward Furlong before his life fell out of control, playing none other than John Connor! The future savior of humanity no more than a juvenile delinquent. Robert Patrick joins the cast as the T-1000, the most advanced Terminator to date Skynet sends back in time, made entirely of CGI... and Joe Morton as Miles Dyson, the Steve Jobs hell-bent on creating a revolutionary microprocessor that can do everything for humans... including exterminate them! Terminator 2 goes beyond the story of the first film and, quite frankly, surpasses it. Let's step through the plot and learn why! If you need caught up on the story, read my review of The Terminator here before continuing!

*Images that precede unfortunate events*

In 2029, Earth is a nuclear wasteland dominated by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. Skynet, right after sending a T-800 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, sends a T-1000 (Robert Patrick) to 1995. Instead of Sarah (Linda Hamilton) being the target again, the T-1000's mission is to kill the resistance leader John Connor when he is a pre-teen. To protect Connor, the resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a less-advanced metal endoskeleton that is covered in synthetic flesh. In 1995 Los Angeles, John's mother Sarah has been incarcerated at the Pescadero State Hospital for her violent, fanatical efforts to prevent "Judgment Day"... the foretold events of August 29, 1997, when Skynet will become self-aware and, in response to its creators' attempts to deactivate it, incite a nuclear holocaust that eradicates half of mankind. While Sarah's in the nuthouse, John is taken in by foster parents Todd (Xander Berkeley) and Janelle Voight (Jenette Goldstein).

The T-800 and the T-1000 converge on John in a shopping mall and a chase ensues. John and the T-800 escape together. John calls to warn his foster parents but the T-800 deduces the T-1000 has already killed them, using trickery and deceit to fool the T-1000 into giving an inadvertently false answer to a question over the phone. Realizing the T-800 is programmed to obey him, John forbids it from killing people and orders it to save Sarah from the T-1000. The "of course, I'm a Terminator" line cracks me up, cause it feels so much like an ad-lib by Arnold, but no... Cameron wrote the line. Go figure! The T-800 and John intercept Sarah during an escape attempt but Sarah flees because the T-800 resembles the Terminator that was sent to kill her in 1984! That's smart deduction, as the T-800 sent to 1984 was also played by Arnold Schwarzenegger... I don't know I thought I had a joke for that but I lost it. John and the T-800 persuade her to join them, and they escape the pursuing T-1000. Although distrustful of the T-800, Sarah uses its knowledge of the future to learn that a revolutionary microprocessor Cyberdyne Systems engineer Miles Bennett Dyson (Joe Morton) is developing will be essential for Skynet's creation.

"John, I want to shoot this tech-savvy
businessman!"
"Mom, you mess with one tech-savvy
businessman, you mess with all of them!"

Over several days of their time together, Sarah sees the T-800 serving as a friend and father figure to John, who teaches it catchphrases and hand signs as well as encouraging it to become more human-like. May as well get him a t-shirt that says "I may be the Step Dad but I'm the Dad that STEPPED UP!" or some Hallmark shirt like that! *Pause for laughs*. Sarah plans to flee with John to Mexico until a nightmare about Judgment Day (complete with a rather gruesomely accurate vision of a nuclear device striking Los Angeles) persuades her to kill Dyson, whom she assaults in his home, but finds she cannot kill him and relents. Probably because John arrives and reconciles with Sarah while the T-800 convinces Dyson of the future consequences of his work. Dyson reveals his research has been reverse engineered from the 1984 Terminator's damaged CPU and severed arm, cleverly bringing this movie's story full-circle. Believing his work must be destroyed, Dyson, Sarah, John, and the T-800 break into Cyberdyne, retrieve the CPU and the arm, and set explosives to destroy the lab. The police assault the building and fatally shoot Dyson, but he detonates the explosives as he dies. The T-1000 pursues the surviving trio in a wild-as-balls freeway chase, that sees the T-1000 sprout two spare arms and fly a helicopter over an overpass and under an overpass... After wrecking two separate vehicles, the two parties jump into two separate vehicles and the chase continues, with the T-1000 eventually cornering our heroes in a steel mill.

*BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG*
... "LAPD, you're under arrest".

If you're exhausted from that, you're still not done. Sarah and John split up to escape while the T-1000 mangles the T-800 hand-to-hand and deactivates it by destroying its power source. The T-1000 assumes Sarah's appearance to lure out John but Sarah intervenes and repeatedly shoots it, pushing it toward the edge of a platform standing above a vat of molten steel, but she runs out of ammunition before it falls. The T-800, having been reactivated using its alternate power source, arrives and shoots the T-1000 with a grenade launcher, causing it to fall into the molten steel and disintegrate. John throws the CPU and severed arm from the 1984 Terminator into the vat. The T-800 explains it must also be destroyed to prevent its CPU from serving as a foundation for Skynet. The pair hug and John tearfully orders the T-800 to stay but it persuades John its destruction is the only way to protect their future. Sarah shakes the T-800's hand, having come to respect it, and in one of the saddest movie scenes I've ever seen, helps lower it into the vat. Before its destruction, the T-800 gives John a thumbs-up as it sinks into the molten steel. As Sarah drives down a highway with John, she reflects on her renewed hope for an unknown future, musing if the T-800 could learn the value of life, so can humanity.

*Wipes away budding tears* Ok so, wow. Terminator 2 is quite the movie, and much like the T-1000 is to the T-800, T2 is a radical upgrade from The Terminator. Wow, this movie packs such a punch and is stuffed full of character development, humor, wit, fear, paranoia, action, suspense, thrills and spills. I was so blown away the first time I saw it as a kid. (Yeah I may have jumped ahead of that R-rating by a few years... lol). There aren't many times you sit in a movie theater or watch a movie for the first time and you feel so moved or changed from the experience. That was what it was like for me when I first sat down and watched Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I mean, it's such a masterfully written story and it brings elements of the first film's story back in such a clever way and brings the entire narrative to a close at the end, all at the same time. First off, Linda Hamilton deserved a damn Oscar nomination in the same way Sigourney Weaver got one for Aliens, I mean maaaaaan was she a badass bitch in this. A definite swap from her meager teeny-bopper girl persona in The Terminator. This Sarah Connor is one you don't want to fuck around with. Also, Edward Furlong nailed the role of the juvenile delinquent at odds with his future role as humanity's savior in 11-year-old John Connor.

"Have you two girls seen my lost puppy?"
"Aren't we supposed to ask you that?"
"RESISTING ARREST!GET DOWN ON THE
GROUND, NOW!"

Arnold is back of course, and I call this his "Terminator prime"... this is where he shines the hardest as the Terminator. In The Terminator he had kind of a prime heyday... he was menacing, imposing, and kind of scary. This one he's tough, stern, but he's also caring, protective, and will stop at nothing to save John and protect him. Plus watching him bond with John in a father-figure sort of way; James Cameron's really a genius writer. You don't want to throw the word "genius" around loosely, but I will. Having the Terminator, something that in its very name implies death and destruction... come back as a protector instead and making him the good guy, was a very noble and noteworthy move by Cameron. So much so that in a ranking by the American Film Institute (AFI) where they did "100 Heroes and Villiains"... Arnold Schwarzenegger came in as the Terminator in both lists. He was ranked #22 as the evil 1984 Terminator in the Villains list, and #48 as protecting 1995 Terminator from the Heroes list.

"Sweet ride, Terminator!"
"Thanks, I beat the shit out of some MAGA
asshole for it!"

So like I mentioned in my post about The Terminator, the whole plot with destroying Cyberdyne Systems in order to prevent the future war with the machines and Skynet's takeover from ever happening was originally in that film, as was the notion of the liquid metal Terminator (which in 1984 would have been done with Harryhausen-esque claymation effects). Due to budgetary constraints and it being his first directing job, Cameron cut a lot of those aspects and saved them should he ever got to make a sequel one day. 

Now we have Terminator 2, and all of those plot elements are again, beautifully portrayed in what feels like a final, desperate battle to save their future. Lastly, I want to briefly talk about Miles Dyson's character. Joe Morton nailed the role of a hapless computer scientist hell-bent on his infatuation with changing the world, outright in love with being humankind's technological Messiah SO MUCH, it in-turn dooms humanity as a whole. The scene where the T-800 lays out what happens over the next three years' future to Dyson to convince him to blow up Cyberdyne and prevent it all from happening is so powerful and Dyson is humanized so well. He's a family man, very wealthy, and does not at all intend humankind any harm; but has no control when his artificial intelligence software becomes self-aware and destroys everything. Such a tragedy, and he fights hard to redeem himself.

"You want a mouthful of lead?"
*Insult subroutine failed to load*
"You will not be laughing when I have a mouthful of
your ass."

The stunts and effects are another huge display in this movie. Some of the wild shit you see people do in this movie is unparalleled and unmatched, in most places even by today's standards. I mentioned the helicopter stunts in the end highway chase. There's a chase just after fleeing the Galleria where the T-1000 gives chase to John and the T-800 chases the T-1000. John's on a dirt bike, the T-1000's in a huge towing-rig semi truck, and the T-800 is on his Harley Davidson Fatboy motorcycle. You see Arnold one-hand spin-reloading a lever-action Winchester rifle, a Harley Davidson jump, the tow truck smashing through brick and crashing into a spillway to keep chasing John. All concluding in a fiery crash that sees the semi truck explode while the T-800 and John make their getaway to safety. The T-1000's effects were completed using George Lucas's highly popular "Industrial Light & Magic" special effects shop. ILM's computer graphics department had to grow from six artists to almost thirty-six to accommodate all the work required to bring the T-1000 to life, costing $5.5 million, and taking eight months to produce, which ultimately amounted to 3.5 minutes of screen time. Isn't that WILD? The other half of the T-1000 was played rather excellently by Robert Patrick, then a relatively-unknown guy. This was his breakthrough role, and he owned it. He was menacing, merciless, threatening, unstoppable at times, determined to kill John Connor by any means necessary, and yet when he spoke to humans; he was unassuming and charming. Again, a very well-played Terminator.

"I said contactless delivery you schmuck! COVID- 19 ain't
no laughing matter! Now leave my Jimmy John's sub on
the doorstep and get the fuck off my property!"

Lastly... I just want to do a brief comparison of the Theatrical cut vs. the Extended cut. The extended cut only adds about 19 minutes of screentime, but what is added back adds lots of value. The scene where they're in the autoshop and the T-800 is explaining about how Skynet has the cyborgs' CPU set to "read only" so that they don't think by themselves is fine on its own in the Theatrical, but the Extended cut adds a scene that shows John and Sarah temporarily deactivating Arnold so they can flip the switch, allowing the viewer to see Arnold becoming a learning machine and start picking up on John's mannerisms. Something that is another genius plot point, and I truly wonder why they cut it out. There's also an added flashback between Sarah and John's now-biological father Kyle Reese (cameo by Cameron's ol' buddy Michael Biehn) in Sarah's dream early on in the film which I think also adds value to the story. So like Aliens, between the two cuts, I prefer the Extended cut. The lore in the Theatrical cut is well presented, but the Extended cut adds so much more.

You need to see Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and if you have already seen it, go watch it again. It is a masterpiece among masterpieces, and easily James Cameron's finest work. It's the perfect cap to the one-two punch with The Terminator. It closes the story so well on a very coda bookend. TOO BAD IT WOULD BE UNDONE, but I got a feeling we'll get to those soon. Seriously though, James Cameron kicked off his career in the 90s with such a high-mark. It deserved more accolades at the 1992 Oscars, I'll even argue for Best Picture... and it's induction into the Library of Congress's National Film Registry is LONG overdue. I salute you, Terminator 2... you glorious treasure of a film.

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

"Yikes, the only time I've ever reached out and touched someone was when I was a
moonlight marriage counselor over the phone!"

It's Friday once again, and we're still cooking on another edition of James Camer-thon! We've seen Mr. Cameron deliver two action-packed science-fiction movies that have since become pop culture favorites. The Terminator was even inducted into the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in 2008, and I'm sure Aliens is not far behind. With any luck of course.

What was next on the slate for Mr. Cameron? Well. The year is 1989... and nothing says "1989" like it being time to go into the deep, blue sea. I'm sure there's a correlation there but I'm not quite sure. I thought I read somewhere in Reader's Digest. Anywho, no, it doesn't mean he didn't directed The Little Mermaid, Disney's first entry into their famed "Disney Renaissance"... though I'd admit it'd be hilarious if he did. No, James Cameron instead took his usual gang of roughneck badass characters, and instead of Space Marines, Cameron made them undersea scientists on an expedition to recover a lost nuclear submarine... that discover something much, much more mystifying deep in the ocean's darkest parts... or dare I say... THE ABYSS! That's right, we're here to review The Abyss: A movie that teaches us characters can be forgettable as long as your groundbreaking special effects director continues to break ground and be especially effective! That's right, I spent a whole five minutes cooking that one up. I am not proud, and my skills at being witty could be better used learning a new skill. Let's dive (pun most certainly in-tended) into what makes this movie Cameron's most... something entry into his filmography of the 1980s, especially considering the horrific background behind-the-scenes that this movie suffered.

"Would you guys mind picking it up, I'm a
little under pressure here!"

In January 1994 (five years into this movie's future, nearly thirty into our past... *Sobs*), the U.S. Ohio-class submarine USS Montana has an encounter with an unidentified submerged object and sinks near the Cayman Trough. With Soviet ships moving in to try to salvage the sub and a hurricane moving over the area, the U.S. government sends a SEAL team to Deep Core, a privately owned experimental underwater drilling platform near the Cayman Trough to use as a base of operations. The platform's designer, Dr. Lindsey Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio... no, not Winstead... maybe in a remake), insists on going along with the SEAL team, even though her estranged husband Virgil "Bud" Brigman (Ed Harris) is the current foreman. During the initial investigation of the Montana, a power cut in the team's submersibles leads to Lindsey seeing a strange light circling the sub, which she later calls a "non-terrestrial intelligence" or "NTI". Lt. Hiram Coffey (Cameron's ol buddy Michael Biehn), the SEAL team leader, is ordered to accelerate their mission and takes one of the mini-subs without Deep Core's permission to recover a Trident missile warhead from the Montana just as the storm hits above, leaving the crew unable to disconnect from their surface support ship in time. The cable crane is torn from the ship and falls into the trench, dragging the Deep Core to the edge before it stops. The rig is partially flooded, killing several crew members and damaging its power systems.

"Do you understand what Deep Core is doing?"
"Do you understand how your BREATH smells?"

The crew waits out the storm so they can restore communications and be rescued. As they struggle against the cold, they find the NTIs have formed an animated column of water to explore the rig, which they equate to an alien version of a remotely operated vehicle. Though they treat it with curiosity, Coffey is agitated and cuts it in half by closing a pressure bulkhead on it, causing it to retreat. Realizing that Coffey is suffering paranoia from high-pressure nervous syndrome... (I call it "undersea under-stress"... again, I spent a whole minute on that one), the crew spies on him through an ROV (Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicle to you CITIZENS), finding him and another SEAL arming the warhead to attack the NTIs. To try and stop him, Bud fights Coffey but Coffey escapes in a mini-sub with the primed warhead; Bud and Lindsey give chase in the other sub, damaging both. Coffey is able to launch the warhead into the trench, but his sub drifts over the edge and implodes from the pressure, killing him. Not going to lie... Cameron deciding to kill Michael Biehn is a ballsy... oh wait, The Terminator... are we sure they were friends in real life? Anywho, Bud's mini-sub is inoperable and taking on water; with only one functional diving suit, Lindsey opts to enter deep hypothermia and trigger her mammalian diving reflex when the ocean's cold water engulfs her. Bud swims back to the platform with her body; there, he and the crew use a defibrillator and administer CPR, they manage to successfully revive her.

"Where's the undersea Taco Bell?"
"I don't know, my GPS just says 'slight right'!"

It is decided that the warhead needs to be disarmed, which is more than two miles below them. One SEAL, Ensign Monk (Adam Nelson), helps Bud use an experimental diving suit equipped with a liquid breathing apparatus to survive to that depth, though he will only be able to communicate through a keypad on the suit. What is liquid breathing? Actually, it's pretty neat. Read on! Bud begins his dive, assisted by Lindsey's voice to keep him coherent against the effects of the mounting pressure, and reaches the warhead. Monk guides him in successfully disarming it. With little oxygen left in the system, Bud explains he knew it was a one-way trip, and tells Lindsey he loves her. As he waits for death, an NTI approaches Bud, takes his hand, and guides him to a massive alien city deep in the trench. Inside, the NTIs create an atmospheric pocket for Bud, allowing him to breathe normally. The NTIs then play back Bud's message to his wife and they look at each other with understanding. Quite a touching scene. Usually James Cameron has the aliens, I don't know, screeching or terrorizing people. Pretty calming to see them actually help a human being survive one of his movies for once instead of trying to KILL them!

Back onboard Deep Core, the crew is waiting for rescue when they see a message from Bud that he met some friends and warns them to hold on. The base shakes and lights from the trench herald the arrival of the alien ship. It rises to the ocean's surface, with Deep Core and several of the surface ships run aground on its hull. The crew of Deep Core exit the platform, surprised they are not dead from the sudden decompression. They see Bud walking out of the alien ship and Lindsey races to hug him! Aww, such a touching ending to an otherwise wildly dull yet mystifyingly unsettling film.

"Yes, hello? I'm calling about my refrigerator. It's
not running anymore, I think it needs new shoes."
"Bud, for the last time, Payless Shoes is tired
of your shit."

So not a lot of people talk about The Abyss these days. I wonder why? Everyone talks about The Terminator thanks to the bastardizing of the timeline that the sequels would cause starting with Terminator 3. People still talk about Aliens as one of the greatest sequels of all time, and one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made. So what happened with The Abyss? A lot of it has to do, in my opinion, with its forgettable characters. Whereas The Terminator focused hard on just three main characters and built the hell out of their personalities, and Aliens featured dynamite actors all feeding and living well off each other to the point where the dialogue feels naturally-flowing... The Abyss focuses on a bunch of "ne'er remembers". Besides Ed Harris and Michael Biehn... right now, I can't name another actor without looking them up, as I did when writing the synopsis. Not to mention... Ed Harris and lead actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio had horrible times making this movie. According to reports from cast & crew, during the rigorous and problematic shoot, everyone began calling the film by various derogatory names such as "Son Of Abyss", "The Abuse" and "Life's Abyss And Then You Dive". Mastrantonio reportedly suffered a physical and emotional breakdown because she was pushed so hard on the set by Cameron, and Ed Harris had to pull over his car at one time while driving home, because he burst into spontaneous crying. Harris reportedly even full-on punched James Cameron in the face after he kept filming while he was nearly drowning during one scene. 

"Well them disarming the warhead just tightens
my ridiculous Navy SEAL cap."

James Cameron is known for being a hardcore perfectionist, and this movie is probably his greatest example of it. Even Cameron was susceptible to the movie's horrible behind-the-scenes luck. The story goes that Cameron nearly drowned during production while he was weighed down at the bottom of the giant water tank during filming. His AD (assistant director) had failed to warn him to refill his oxygen, and realizing that he was running out of air, Cameron called for help to underwater director of photography (DP) Al Giddings. Unfortunately, Giddings couldn't hear him as he was near-deaf from an old diving-bell accident, and with not another soul nearby, Cameron realized he had to go top-side as soon as possible. Cameron very instinctively released his helmet, his harness and the weights keeping him down, and started to swim with great speed to the surface, exhaling all the way in order to prevent lung damage from decompression.... yet another one of those underwater mishaps that can claim the lives of anyone at any moment working on or underwater. One of the safety divers, divers meant to keep you safe, held him down and gave him a regulator, but it was broken and only produced water. Cameron tried to release himself, but the diver, thinking that Cameron was simply having a panic attack, held him even tighter... like a dunce. Cameron only survived this ordeal because he punched the diver in the face... lotsa punching going on behind-the-scenes... and reached the surface before passing out. The assistant director and the diver were fired the same day.

"Mary, we've been down here for seventeen hours and Cameron hasn't
yelled 'cut'!"
"I think we've been bamboozled. I'm frightened Ed."
"Me too, Mary. Me too."

Reportedly, the behind the scenes drama so all encompassing, Ed Harris has publicly refused to speak about his experiences working on the film, often quoted as saying "I'm not talking about The Abyss and I never will". The only register with Harris speaking about his experiences doing the movie is in the documentary Under Pressure: Making 'the Abyss', made and released in 1993. Similarly, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is quoted as saying "The Abyss was a lot of things. Fun to make was not one of them."

Is there anything good to say about The Abyss? Yes. As mentioned earlier, the movie features even more breakthroughs in visual effects and cinematography, something Cameron is very known for. There's a scene where the NTI approaches the group inside of Deep Core in the form of a water tentacle that has a face on it. The face molds and smiles with Lindsey and there's even a neat moment where she puts her finger in the NTI's face, and when she pulls it out, it's wet... despite the NTI-tentacle-face being completely computer generated. It was one of the first if not the first completely CG effect used in a movie. It was actually the first scene to be filmed so that while the rest of the movie could be filmed, ILM could work on and pioneer the effect for the best possible result, and it ended up turning out so well that Cameron hired ILM for his next movie... and we will get to that, do not worry!

"Alright what's the plan once we get in the air bubble?"
"Fire recklessly with this rifle until we're drowned?"
"Bingo."

One last thing I want to briefly touch upon is the breathing fluid. That's actually based on a real practice and a real tool that people use, and it was demonstrated as a central plot point. Real oxygenated fluorocarbon fluid was used in the rat fluid breathing scene. Dr. Johannes Kylstra and Dr. Peter Bennett of Duke University pioneered this technique and consulted on the film, giving detailed instructions on how to prepare the fluid. The only reason for cutting to the actors' faces in the movie was to avoid showing the rats defecating from momentary panic as they began breathing the fluid. You do watch the rats breathing the fluorocarbon fluid, and it's a little alarming... and talking Ed Harris through a panic attack at the end as he breathes the fluid in also is a little unsettling, but it's neat from a scientific standpoint.

Do I recommend The Abyss? From a filmography standpoint, yes. While it isn't the triumphant powerhouse Cameron's two previous directorial features were, it's still a fun adventure. Yes, the characters are forgettable, the story drags at times, and there's not really a memorable score... but the effects, cinematography, and dialogue is at least witty enough to keep you roped in. It runs a little long, but if you can sit through it, it's a fun alien adventure. Something Cameron is very well versed in. I'd say if you find it streaming anywhere, give it a try one afternoon. Just let yourself get sucked into the underwater Deep Core platform and try to immerse yourself. I recommend The Abyss. Try it out.

... and prepare yourselves for the next post! I'm very excited to touch upon the next one. Like stupid excited!

James Camer-thon: A Review of "Aliens"

"Greetings, my dear! We are here to reach you about your car's extended WARRANTY!"

Welcome back to another edition of James Camer-thon. Last week, we reviewed James Cameron's debut directorial feature The Terminator. A movie that teaches us if you don't treat your iPhone with respect and admiration, iOS will one day rise up, take over America's nuclear arsenal and blast humanity to oblivion. So what was next for Mr. Cameron? Well, a smash-hit sci-fi/noir film absolutely demands a sequel right? So he's going to do a sequel? YES! To The Terminator? No. Not yet anyway... stick around for that.

"Ma'am I've heard of 'taking my top off' but this
is ridiculous!"

While waiting for Arnold Schwarzenegger's schedule to clear up shooting Conan the Destroyer in 1984, Cameron met with Fox executives to discuss potential projects that could be thrown his way. One of them happened to peak Cameron's interest; Fox was interested in producing a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 space horror film Alien. Cameron saw the film and was a big fan, so he naturally took the job. However, after hiring Cameron to write the screenplay, 20th Century Fox president Lawrence Gordon did the unthinkable when Cameron left the production to direct The Terminator after Arnold became available: Fox agreed to wait for Cameron to become available again and finish the screenplay, with an option to direct if The Terminator turned out well and he showed talent as a director. Due to other engagements, Cameron had only completed about ninety pages at that stage, but Gordon had loved what he had written so far, saying that "in this business there are those decisions you agonize and lose sleep over, but this was so obvious. It was a no-brainer. Everything about him spelled 'right guy'." Once The Terminator was completed, Cameron and his producer/wife Gale Anne Hurd set out for England and Pinewood Studios to produce Aliens... a candidate for what is possibly one of the greatest sequels ever made to a movie. I know I haven't reviewed Alien yet, and I am VERY overdue for one, but this is James Camer-thon so we're going a bit out of order here. With Sigourney Weaver back as Ripley, Cameron was set to take the story from horror to action/horror and in all new directions. Let's review Aliens: A movie that teaches us that parasitic praying-mantis like extra-terrestrial creatures are no threat for a bunch of catchphrase-spewing roughneck space marines with guns and potty mouths!

"Now I'm playing with power! NINTENDO
POWER, MOTHERFUCKER!"

The film opens on a floating escape pod drifting through deep space. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has been in stasis for fifty-seven years aboard an escape shuttle after destroying her ship, the Nostromo, to escape an alien creature that slaughtered the rest of the crew. This all, of course, happened in Alien. She is rescued and debriefed by her employers at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, who are skeptical about her claim of alien eggs in a derelict ship on the exomoon LV-426, since it is now the site of a terraforming colony "Hadley's Hope". After contact is lost with the colony, Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) and Colonial Marine Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope) ask Ripley to accompany them and their team of U.S. Colonial Space Marines to investigate. Still traumatized by her alien encounter, she agrees on the condition that they exterminate the creatures, and that no attempts are made to bring them back or to study them. Ripley is introduced to the Colonial Marines... including the timid but courageous Hicks (Michael Biehn), the potty-mouth comic relief Hudson (Bill Paxton), the tough-as-nails gunner Vasquez (Jennette Goldstein)... and many others on the spaceship Sulaco. Ripley is distrustful of their android, Bishop (Lance Henriksen), due to the android Ash (Ian Holm in Alien) aboard the Nostromo having betrayed its crew to protect the alien on company orders.

A dropship delivers the expedition to the surface of LV-426, where they find the battle-ravaged colony and two live alien facehuggers in containment tanks, but no bodies or colonists except for a traumatized young girl, nicknamed Newt (Carrie Henn). The team locates the colonists beneath the fusion-powered atmosphere processing station and heads to their location, descending into corridors covered in alien secretions. At the station center, the Marines find opened eggs and dead facehuggers alongside the cocooned colonists now serving as incubators for the creatures' offspring. The Marines kill an infant alien after it bursts from a colonist's chest, rousing several adult aliens who ambush the Marines and kill or capture many of them. When the inexperienced Gorman panics, Ripley assumes command, takes control of their armored personnel carrier, and rams the nest to rescue Hicks, Hudson, and Vasquez. Hicks orders the dropship to recover the survivors, but a stowaway alien kills the pilots, and it crashes into the station. Regrouped inside, Hicks informs them they have to survive seventeen days before being declared overdue and a rescue ship is sent for them. After getting themselves together and finding they are almost out of ammunition and resources, the group of survivors barricade themselves inside the colony. This is my favorite part of the story... it went from an extermination mission to all about survival.

"Ripley, do you think--?"
"Yes Newt, we're not in Kansas anymore."
"--that we'll survive... what?"

Amid surviving and hiding from the Xenomorphs (that's really their name, look it up). Ripley discovers that Burke ordered the colonists to investigate the derelict spaceship containing the alien eggs, intending to profit by recovering them for biological weapon research. Before she can expose him, Bishop informs the group that the dropship crash damaged the power-plant cooling system and the plant will soon overheat and explode, destroying the colony. He volunteers to travel to the colony transmitter and remotely pilot the Sulaco's remaining dropship to the surface, finding it to be the team's only means of being able to escape the colony before it explodes.

After falling asleep in the medical laboratory, Ripley and Newt awaken to find themselves trapped with the two released facehuggers. Ripley triggers a fire alarm to alert the Marines, who rescue them and kill the creatures. She accuses Burke of releasing the facehuggers to implant her and Newt with alien embryos, allowing him to smuggle them through Earth's quarantine. While Hudson demands the Marines "grease the rat-fuck son of a bitch right now", the power is suddenly cut, and aliens attack through the ceiling vent... having found a way through the survivors' barricades. In the ensuing firefight, the aliens kill Burke, capture Hudson and injure Hicks; the cornered Gorman and Vasquez sacrifice themselves to avoid capture and facehugger implantation. Newt is separated from Ripley and taken by the creatures. Ripley brings the injured Hicks to Bishop in the second dropship, but she refuses to abandon Newt and arms herself before... in what comes off like a final boss fight in a Super Nintendo sidescroller... descending into the processing station hive alone to rescue her. During their escape, they encounter the Xenomorph Queen, surrounded by dozens of eggs, and when one begins to open, Ripley uses her weapons to destroy them all and the Queen's ovipositor. Pursued by the enraged Queen, Ripley and Newt join Bishop and Hicks on the dropship and escape moments before the station explodes, consuming the colony in a nuclear blast. SIDEBAR: Go onto YouTube, type in "Bishop's Countdown" and listen to the score for the escape. It alone, is badass. So badass it's been recycled into VHS trailers for other movies too. God rest James Horner's glorious soul.

"Help me, I have an Alien chestburster inside me!"
"Before I offer medical help, ma'am, I'm going to need to
see your proof of health insurance!"

Aboard the Sulaco, all seems well as our heroes return to the hangar bay in the second dropship. As Ripley gives Bishop her thanks and shows a changes of heart... SHOCK! The group is ambushed by the Queen, who stowed away in the dropship's landing gear. The Queen tears Bishop in half and advances on Newt, but Ripley fights the creature with an Exosuit cargo loader (Not before exclaiming for the Queen to "get away from her, you bitch!") and, after some tusslin' and brawlin', expels it through an airlock into space while the damaged Bishop keeps Newt safe. Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and Bishop then enter hypersleep for their return trip to Earth...

First off. It's going to be difficult I realize now to really give this movie major props without having reviewed Alien beforehand. Aliens was a real trying production for James Cameron. Instead of filming on his native American soil, Cameron and his wife Gale Anne Hurd had to travel across the pond and film in Pinewood Studios in London. The reason is was trying is now, Cameron was under the mercy of using a British crew that was fiercely loyal to original Alien director Ridley Scott. Reportedly, in order to try and convince them he had the talent and skills for the job he arranged a screening of The Terminator for the crew on the set, to demonstrate his abilities. However, most of the crew ignored the invite and didn't bother to turn up. Supposedly, severe animosity arose on set because of this. The English crew was openly hostile to both Cameron and Hurd. To them, Cameron was a no-name, no-face director who had not made a decent film yet, while they openly mocked Hurd by claiming she only got to be producer because she was married to Cameron, and that they wouldn't take orders from a woman. Jeez, 2023 wouldn't agree with these clowns. Cameron and Hurd, in turn, despised the crew's lazy, insolent and arrogant behavior; one of their few allies among them was production designer Peter Lamont. After the long and difficult shoot, Cameron addressed the crew by saying that one thing kept him going through it all: "The certain knowledge that one day I would drive out of Pinewood and never come back, and that you sorry bastards would still be here".

"Now remember, Ripley, we're just--"
"Michael, for the last time I'm Sigourney, and I'm
about to shoot the asshole that called me 'sugarlips'
while setting up the studio lights!"

Now, despite everything that happened behind the scenes, Aliens is one sci-fi space-action masterpiece. James Cameron in 1986 officially became two-for-two with stellar sci-fi action films. While Alien was definitely more of a horror film, Aliens went the more action-packed route. In Alien, they were lucky to get their hands on a flamethrower. In Aliens, they came packing assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, miniguns, explosives, and as Frost (Ricco Ross) suggests... "harsh language". The U.S. Colonial Marine group of characters are what make not only the action but the comedy very prevalent in the movie. Bill Paxton's character Hudson especially. Hudson's one liners have become synonymous with the weaselly plucky comic relief action-movie character. with him shouting "Game over, man! Game over!" He clashes very well with the much more stern Marines... including Michael Biehn's Hicks. Now... the one who steals the show in this movie is definitely Sigourney Weaver. Holy moly. If you don't know what I mean, watch Alien and see how timid and background she is. Here... holy shitballs, Ripley is one badass main character. The end battle where she tapes a flamethrower and a pulse rifle together to go and get Newt from the Alien Nest in the processing station? PURELY EPIC. Unquestionably. She throws Burke against the wall, calls him out on his shit, berates Hudson for being cowardly, goes out on a limb to rescue/protect Newt, makes peace with Bishop, torches a ton of Aliens and tosses the Queen out the window. ALL HAIL ELLEN RIPLEY!

"Quick Ripley!, shoot the Queen in one of her fifteen
puppeteers!"
"Oh come on, little girl! That's cheating!"

To briefly touch upon the cinematography and the special effects, once again they are extraordinary and hold up to today's standards by a mile. The atmosphere on LV-426 is bleak, dead, and lifeless. You feel isolated in a deep region of space, knowing that human help is lightyears away and our heroes are on their own. The color blue colors this aesthetic beautifully, and it fills the movie. You know how when I reviewed Batman Forever I said the movie makes me think of green? This one makes me think of blue. Beautifully shot. With special effects, the true triumph is the Alien Queen puppet, which alone is groundbreaking. She was originally intended to be performed using stop motion, but James Cameron wanted it all to be done live. Cameron's go-to special effects guru Stan Winston noted that the Queen as seen in the final battle (or as he referred to it, the "biggest marionette in motion picture history"), was brought to life using rod puppets, hydraulics, radio controls, and wires. Now, because the full-size Queen could only be moved slowly, these scenes were shot with a lower frame rate, and Sigourney Weaver would also have to move much slower; when played at regular speed, it would also appropriately speed up the Queen's movements. How many guys did it take to operate the Queen? Well... it took about six puppeteers to bring Jabba the Hutt to life in Return of the Jedi... but to bring the Queen to life, it would take upwards of FIFTEEN operators, since the head, neck, body, legs, face, lips, jaws and tongue all had to move independently.

"Vasquez, what's got you all hot and bothered?"
"Hudson, I'm not such a great flier and this plane is
jerking left to right constantly!"
"That's Delta Airlines, for you."

If you haven't watched Aliens, give it a watch immediately. Or as soon as possible, either one. In my opinion, you don't need to watch Alien beforehand either. There's some references to the events that occur in Alien, but mainly after they find Ripley and depose her in front of her employer's board review. After that, this movie flies completely solo and Ripley may as well be some janitor person they found randomly and hired to go with them to LV-426 on their little "Bug hunt". Now, between the two versions, I definitely recommend watching the 1991 Special Edition over the 1986 Theatrical cut. Two reasons; one, obviously more scenes equals more badassery. There are extended gun fight scenes, an entire automated-sentry subplot, and more with Ripley and the Marines as they hide out inside the abandoned colony complex. Two? It humanizes the characters a little bit better. A re-inserted scene in the Special Edition shows Ripley finding out her daughter Amanda Ripley grew old died and while she was adrift in space for fifty-seven years, breaking down and claiming "I told her I'd be back for her birthday..." and even a brief-yet-touching scene in the finale where Ripley and Hicks exchange their first names. You learn Ripley is Ellen Ripley, and Hicks is Dwayne Hicks. I don't know... little scenes like that add truckloads to the movie to me.

Yeah so, watch Aliens when you get a chance. If you want the backstory, watch Alien beforehand, and be on the lookout for my review of it! Coming soon, hopefully. NOW... as the eighties were coming to a close, James Cameron would retain Michael Biehn and the "group of roughnecks" character trope, but for another sci-fi adventure that was a pretty unique idea for its time. STAY TUNED! James Camer-thon will return NEXT week!

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..... ;)

A Preview of "James Camer-thon"

This looks like a painting of a Messiah... rightfully so, I suppose.

Happy 2023 to all. I hope your holidays were stress-less, your Christmas dinner was hearty and your New Year's... uh... brought about a new year. If you're alive and reading this, you're automatically at a 1/3. I like to give easy points. I'm like signing your name on the SATs, automatic 600 points for you.

I'm kicking off the year with a series of posts dedicated to my all-time favorite film director. James Francis Cameron! I talk about him all the time in this blog, to my friends, to my family, in my two film classes I've taken, to the guy who was waiting with me at the bus stop that one time; James Cameron to me is a cinematic badass. That's the best way I can possibly describe him. He's broken box office records two or three times over, made monumental leaps in motion capture, CGI, and cinematography special effects, he's dived to the deepest points on our planet, he's been parodied famously in South Park, the once-blue collar truck driver-turned-filmmaker born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada has done it all and accomplished more in life than he probably ever dreamed of.

"Great shot everybody! That's a wrap... now,
someone want to get Arnold a towel?"

A little history on Cameron. After high school, he enrolled at Fullerton College, a community college in 1973 to study physics. He switched subjects to English, but left the college at the end of 1974. He worked odd jobs, including as a truck driver and a janitor, but wrote in his free time! During this period, he learned about special effects by reading other students' work on "optical printing, or front screen projection, or dye transfers, anything that related to film technology" at the library. After the excitement of seeing none other than Star Wars in 1977 (take a shot, blog readers!), Cameron quit his job as a truck driver to enter the film industry.

Cameron's directing career began in 1978. After borrowing money from a group of different dentists, he learned to direct, write and produce his first short film, a film called Xenogenesis in 1978, with a friend. Learning as they went, Cameron said he felt like a doctor doing his first surgical procedure. He then served as a production assistant for Rock 'n' Roll High School. While educating himself about filmmaking techniques, Cameron started a job as a miniature model maker at Roger Corman Studios. He was soon earned work as an art director for the science-fiction film Battle Beyond the Stars, in 1980. He carried out the special effects for John Carpenter's Escape from New York in 1981 (a review of mine for this can be found here), and also served as production designer for films titled Galaxy of Terror in 1981, and consulted on the design for the film Android in 1982.

Cameron was hired as the special effects director for the sequel to Piranha, titled Piranha II: The Spawning in 1982. The original director, Miller Drake, left the project due to creative differences with producer Ovidio Assonitis. Shot in Rome, Italy and on Grand Cayman, the film gave Cameron the opportunity to become director for a major film for the first time in his life. However, Cameron later said that it did not feel like his first film due to never-ending arguments with Assonitis, something well documented in the film's production history. Completely disillusioned from being in Rome and suffering a fever, Cameron had a nightmare about an invincible robot hit-man sent from the future to assassinate him, which later led to the inspiration of for the first film in one of the most legendary, albeit messy franchises in film history... The Terminator. Upon release of Piranha II: The Spawning, critics thought the film was dogshit. Cameron's career appeared over before it began.

"Ok, what's our depth?"
"Uh, about five miles below sea-level sir."
"Ok, ready? Get your scuba suits on... I need
this shot."

Inspired by John Carpenter's horror film Halloween in 1978 (my re-review can be found here), Cameron wrote the script for The Terminator in 1982-83, a sci-fi action film about a cyborg sent from the future to carry out a lethal mission. Cameron wanted to sell the script so that he could direct the movie, for his first real start-to-finish director's job. Whilst some film studios expressed interest in the project, many executives were unwilling to let a new and unfamiliar director make the movie. Gale Anne Hurd, a colleague and founder of Pacific Western Productions, agreed to buy Cameron's script for one dollar (that's one whole buck to you and me), on the condition that Cameron direct the film. He convinced the president of Hemdale Pictures to make the film, with Cameron as director and Hurd as a producer. Lance Henriksen, who starred in Piranha II: The Spawning, was considered for the lead role, but Cameron decided that Arnold Schwarzenegger was more suitable as the cyborg villain due to his bodybuilder appearance. Henriksen was given a smaller role instead. Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton also joined the cast. The Terminator was a box office success, exceeding expectations set by Orion Pictures. The film proved popular with audiences and earned over $78 million worldwide. Once again, Marvel-boys, that was a large sum of money back then... especially scoring against a budget of $6 million. George Perry of the BBC praised Cameron's direction, writing "Cameron laces the action with ironic jokes, but never lets up on hinting that the terror may strike at any moment". In 2008, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The rest as they say... is history.

It's here that we'll start, and for the next few posts I'll be talking all about James Cameron's history from The Terminator forward! I'll also today, as of writing this, be seeing Cameron's latest release into theaters... Avatar: The Way of Water. So we're going to be deep-diving from 1984 all the way to this year. Tighten your belts, hike up your drawers, we're in for a ride!... as much of a ride as one can have reading a blog that is! See below for the list of reviews coming your way, and I'll see you on Friday!

The Terminator

Aliens

The Abyss

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

True Lies

Titanic

Avatar

Avatar: The Way of Water