The Terminator

The Terminator franchise has had a very rocky history that (much like many other well regarded filming franchises) hasn’t managed to evolve much past its original few entries. Although the peak of the franchise is still considered the second film, Judgement Day, released in 1991 and is even regarded as one of the best action films ever made, this often leads a lot of people recognizing the sequel before its predecessor. With every new instalment under the Terminator brand failing to please audiences with diminishing returns with each passing sequel, it calls into question how strong of a ”franchise” can this be with only two solid films under its belt. With this in mind, the one that started it all in 1984 introduced a concept and character so infamous to pop culture that he’s still being referenced today, and while the film is definitely superior to many of its sequels and deserves credit for what it did right back then, it’s understandable why its barely remembered against its vastly improved second model. In 1984, a young woman named Sarah Connor (played by Linda Hamilton) finds that she is being hunted down by a humanoid cyborg from the future known as a Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), who is going around slaughtering anyone named Sarah Connor. As people around her start to drop like flies, a soldier named Reese (played by Michael Biehn) is also sent from the future by Sarah’s future son to save her. Learning that her son is the leader of a resistance against the robots and their creators, an A.I defense network named Skynet (who were the ones were sent the Terminator in order to eliminate a future threat), Sarah quickly has to evolve from typical waitress to mother of the savior for humanity whilst being hunted by an inorganic being who will stop at nothing to end her life. For the origins of one of the most popular action faces of all time, this opening act is a bit muddled. It was able to exceed its extremely minuscule budget of $6 million to that of $78.3 million and launched several careers including James Cameron and even Arnold Schwarzenegger. The film creates a thrilling presence and features enough competence behind and in front of the camera to produce a solid movie with enough action clichés and cool visuals to warrant a watch, but it also comes across as overly simple, confused and slightly dull compared to most action movies of the time, or even typical sci-fi movies overall. It revolutionized the way some sci-fi products are treated in mainstream media, but it needs to wait for the sequel for things to get good.

Despite the concept for this film feeling a little by-the-numbers for sci-fi by today’s standards, it wasn’t as traditional as it would be nowadays and the unknown factor involving a omnipresent artificial intelligence that doomed the planet along with a humanoid robot coming from the future to kill someone does have a primitive but still effective hook that would’ve been pretty cool for the time. Although you would think that the premise and plot behind this film involving time travel and present/future warfare could be quite complicated and hard to follow, its nothing of the sort, which ironic forms its own issues. The actual story for this film is a bit too simplistic and vague on its future setting and intricacies surrounding their plot and purpose, and while that can work in part from a cryptic threat level, the constant explaining about the situation matched with little context results in being too condensed and uninteresting. The threat is apparent in the film, as the thought of being chased down by a 8-foot behemoth of death is a scary situation and the movie is able to hold the audience enough with just that one premise, but unlike other sci-fi films that have something to provide or unique elements to explore, this film isn’t really like that. The script for this film written by director James Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd (with additional dialogue credit going to William Wisher Jr)  doesn’t divulge from the main threat and fails to expand much upon its world, characters, and themes outside of the basics, which results in an empty story outside of something as simple as a horror movie. It strongly feels like a slasher movie but with guns instead of knives; where its focus is solely on the cool visual factor, and not on making something interesting or really even that deep. While its bare-bones and uninteresting, it’s not a mindless movie, it does still try to take time out for characters to breath and communicate with each other, it’s merely done in a way that doesn’t invite intrigue or uniqueness. Even as a corny 80s action movie goes, the film lacks that strong sense of personality and charm that most at the time did outside of a few iconic lines and action set pieces, there’s no sense of identity in this film that isn’t already a typical sci-fi trope and it’s not really given enough fleshing out to be more interesting. James Cameron can do action films that are a touch mindless, but his style does at least involve some form of visual spectacle and while the climax does have some big effects and a memorable conclusion, it doesn’t really extent beyond what’s already been seen from him (although it was one of his first movies, so he needed to break into himself). Even if the plot is very basic and not that interesting, it still functions as a competently made film with decent pacing and serviceable directing, so it did start off on a place that could be improved upon later.

The characters are very similarly cardboard cut-outs of standard horror movie characters; the overwhelmed victim, the more experienced tag-alone, the doubting people that are only there to get slaughtered, and the brutal killer who will stop at nothing to get its prey. With such bland cut-outs matched up with this story that could have been something more, it’s a shame to see how little was put into trying to flesh out some of these figures into three-dimensional characters, probably because it wasn’t built as something that would be explored beyond this one film (made very apparent come the eventual forced sequels). The only two that seem to stand out enough that they could be reused later in an effective way are, as it should be, the hero and the villain. Sarah Connor is not the most interesting character, and she seems to be placed in the ‘’female lead that the villain chases’’ package, but it is cool to see her develop into a colder more hardcore heroine by the end of the movie, and she would later become a much more interesting character in later movies. Linda Hamilton is one of the few actors in the movie that gets most of her delivery right and gives the most consistent performance out of everyone, even if she does have a few dud reads. The Terminator uses its lack of personality and cold unfeeling nature to pose a serious threat in the film as well as establishing that there’s no sympathizing with it. Arnold is a perfect choice for this role, it feels like it was structured completely around his likeness and what he could feasibly even offer as a performer outside of blowing stuff up; his blank expression and inhuman speech pattern feels a lot more authentic here, as well as his need to spew one-liners and blast out into needless action constantly, while it’s technically not a great performance, it works wonderfully in this film. Some of the other actors can range from forgettable to pretty obnoxious. Michael Biehn is really annoying as Sarah’s transport; with his overly aggressive tone coming off as more pathetically childish than frantic, his constant teeth showing is a slight distraction to an overall average performance at best, and his way of going about the movie in how he handles meeting and saving her is purely cinema as there is no reason to like this guy outside of that the script says so.

The action in this movie is surprisingly standard for the time and nothing truly spectacular to go back to. Again, Cameron would evolve to become someone who could handle really solid action set pieces in a large-scale fashion that was unique and memorable (especially in the film’s own sequel), but whether it was through the limited budget or just from the concept not really allowing a tone of variety with the kind of premise it had, there isn’t a lot that really stands out as that impressive. The second movie would have some of the best action scenes filmed on screen, yet here it’s largely predictable and mainly just a bunch of shoot-outs which isn’t very interesting. Anytime the action involves a car, its handles well enough and even the climax allows for some creative ways of killing off the threat and at least provides a unique location. The physical effects for the time hold up pretty well, with most of the miniatures and prosthetic being handled by Stan Winston and Gene Warren Jr. Its especially effective whenever it shows the inner workings of the terminator underneath the fake skin, it looks pretty brutal.  Where it doesn’t hold up is in some of the CG effects, which was still very new at the time. While its commendable that they tried something different and wanted to push themselves further than what they were arguably able to do, it made Schwarzenegger look like a Ken doll instead of a terrifying robot anytime they show his robotic eye. You can give it some slack for the time period, but it is a noticeable element. During the climax where the robot is obviously stop-motion, it looks much better even if it’s obvious that they don’t occupy the same space and can look a little silly and fake in its own right.

Terminator is a famous character from a famous franchise, but this movie doesn’t feel like it would have made it so popular. As a structured movie besides from its boring world, it would work perfectly fine for its time when action movies didn’t require thinking. Even today, while nothing strong, it can be viewed, and someone would be able to take some good things out of it. The main lead is a good actress, the villain is a very iconic figure, some of the action is okay, and even if the story it tells isn’t the most interesting, it is told in a serviceable way that makes it watchable. Watching the film doesn’t really add that much to the overall franchise, but to be fair it seems like most of the others don’t either, so it’s probably best to stick to the second film. A perfectly fine movie, but nothing outlandish. A start off point without much of a punch, see how this mindless killing machine found himself a way to keep coming back.