THE TERMINATOR (1984)
Director: James Cameron
Genre: SciFi/Action
THE MOVIE
The Terminator was only a modest hit when it was released in 1984 but it was one of a new generation of movies that found a second life on home video, where it was incredibly popular. Perhaps single handedly, the movie popularized the R-rated sci-fi action movie, taking a clever science fiction plot and wrapping it in the trappings of a violent action movie. The low budget works in the movie’s favor, giving it a grimy and realistic 1980’s feel, as does the oily synthesized score. Cameron’s script and direction give the movie his characteristic “heart” that makes it a richer experience than the lesser action pictures of the day. Let’s not forget that at its core, The Terminator is as much a love story as the director’s later Titanic. The Terminator and his next movie, Aliens, are Cameron's two masterpieces but Terminator gives us a leaner, more stripped-down, action movie.
Don't blame me, I'm not sewf a-wee-ah.
The intriguing premise of The Terminator is that in the future, machines rule a post-apocalyptic word. A defense computer called Skynet became self aware and decided that all humans were a threat to its existence and instigated a nuclear war. Upon Skynet’s defeat by human rebels, it used the same wonky logic to send a cyborg assassin back in time to kill the mother of John Connor, the man who would lead the human resistance. I’m a sucker for a good time travel story and the paradoxes that often occur in these types of tales (I’m one of the few enthusiastic fans of Back to the Future 2).
In The Terminator, you have a couple of good predestination paradoxes. First, John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to protect his mother. The two fall in love and end up conceiving John Connor. So it is Connor’s (presumably knowing) decision to send Reese back that results in his own conception. Could he have chosen to send someone else instead? Since Connor obviously was conceived, would events have had to work out so that Reese would have been sent back in time no matter what? A similar paradox occurs with the development of Skynet because of sending the Terminator back in time. Skynet, insured its own existence by providing the physical technology in the form of the Terminator, whose remains were then studied by scientists and reverse engineered to eventually develop the Skynet and Terminator architecture (this is confirmed in deleted scenes and later in T2).
People are generally left with such a strong perception of Sara Connor from T2 that they forget just how quirky and girly she is in the original movie, with her pink smock, feathered hair and pet lizard. This movie also features some other Cameron regulars. Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton (one of the punks in the beginning) would all go on to do Aliens. Genre and B-movie actor Brian Thomson (Cobra, The X-Files, Star Trek: Enterprise) also is featured as one of the punks dispatched by Arnie early in the movie.
Thematically, The Terminator explores the fertile tech noir science fiction territory of “Man vs. Machine,” much like The Matrix Trilogy and even the reimagined Battlestar Galactica TV series. It is interesting to compare the Terminator post-apocalyptic future with that depicted in The Matrix as both feature futures in which machines have taken over the world and enslaved humanity. Like many classic depictions of the future from the Twentieth Century, Cameron's future is very hardware oriented. The emphasis is on robots and machinery. By contrast, The Matrix was made at the very end of the century and the internet had already become widely used and computers were in a majority of homes in one form or another. The new depiction of the future was now software oriented. This is so true that the “terminators” of the Matrix movies, the Agents, are actually computer programs without physical manifestations in the “real” world and most of the story took place in a virtual reality. Terminator Salvation tried to present a more high tech facet of this future but the premise is still very rooted in the 20th Century.
Terminator, going commando.
Finally, the movie (and its sequel) works on a visceral level because they tap into the common fear of being pursued by an unstoppable force that means to do you harm. There’s something terrifying about the fact that even if you escape once, the thing will be out there waiting for you. Particularly scary is the limping endoskeleton that slowly and inexorably pursues Sara down in the factory at the end of the movie. And the damn thing is tough: it is shot at, blow up several times, run over by a truck, set on fire, blown up again and it still is chasing her down before it gets crushed.
THE MONSTER/EFFECTS
For anyone who doesn’t know, the most common form of Terminator and the one featured in this movie is basically a very robust robotic skeleton that is covered in flesh and blood and can pass for a large, muscular man. During the course of the movie’s many action scenes, the Terminator takes a lot of damage and increasingly reveals the metallic endoskeleton beneath. This degradation is first accomplished through make up appliances, which are more successful over the bony parts of the face and tend to move around on the fleshy parts. For the more extreme and demanding shots (such as when Arnie pulls his eye condom out), the movie uses an articulated dummy Schwarzenegger head which doesn’t work exactly but works more than you think it would because of Schwarzenegger’s appropriately bland performance. Once the flesh has burned off the robot, it is realized through stop motion and an articulated life-sized puppet. The stop motion is not perfect but it works well enough.
The Terminator, on the cover of Cigar Aficionado.
SEQUELS
Terminator 2: Judgment Day 1991
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines 2003
DVD AVAILABILITY
There a few different version available. I picked up a Terminator/Robocop double feature set at Target for $7.50 that has little in the way of special features (although it does have the original treatment, and two drafts of the screenplay).
Now I know why you bleed.
SEE ALSO
The Matrix 1999
THE TRAILER
Thoughts:
1. Love seeing the old Orion logo!
2. "In the 21st Century..." Ha ha.
3. Heavy on the future stuff...kinda misleading.
4. How you gonna show the endoskeleton like that in the trailer? That's like a trailer for Boogie Nights that gives you a nice long shot of Donny Wahlberg's wang.
5. Ahnold without eyebrows is really terrifying.
6. I can't believe they used the cop in the alley! That guy is the worst actor in the whole movie. At least they left out the part where Reese asks him the year and he's like, "Whaaaaaaaaaaa?"
7. The trailer is kinda long by modern standards. Nowadays its get in get the premise out and get the hell out. Do we really need to know Reese's serial number before we figure out if we want to see the movie or not?
8. Love that great shot of the camera slowly creeping up to Sarah as she is seated in the club while she fearfully looks up.
8. Makes me want to see Terminator again,
RIP OFFS?
The Terminator supposedly borrows some plot points from a couple of episodes of the old Outer Limits show (specifically “Demon with a Glass Hand” and “Soldier”) that were penned by famed science fiction writer Harlan Ellison. There was a law suit and now Mr. Ellison receives special credit on prints of the movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment