The Terminator
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THE TERMINATOR - film review
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James Cameron talks about making The TerminatorBack in 1984, James Cameron was not the hugely successful Writer-Director-Producer that he is today, but he definitely exhibited the sense of self-belief in his work.
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Cameron’s screenplay for THE TERMINATOR draws from many different sources, but its central motif (that of an unstoppable machine emerging from the flames) came to the Director whilst visiting Italy, trying to rescue his first feature film (PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING). Having succumbed to stress, Cameron took ill and, while trying to sleep-off the effects of his sickness, dreamed of the robot surrounded by fire. What developed was a time-travel story of a cyborg sent back from a nuclear-devastated future to kill the mother of the man who would save humanity from their machine oppressors. To prevent the woman’s death, the humans also send a man back through time to thwart the cyborg’s murderous mission. Throughout THE TERMINATOR's pre-production process, various actors were slated for different roles in the movie, including both O.J. Simpson and Lance Henriksen in the Terminator role. Eventually, Cameron cast Schwarzenegger in the title role, Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese (the human sent back in time) and Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, the Terminator’s target. The trio combined to deliver solid acting and outstanding physical performances that sold the reality of the threat posed by Schwarzenegger’s T-800 killing machine.
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THE TERMINATOR features some outstanding set-pieces. Cameron’s ability to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear is on display throughout and he uses his locations to maximum effect. The mid-section of the movie is sensational, as the Terminator locates Sarah Connor in a downtown LA nightclub, leading Reese to reveal himself as her protector. Reese’s subsequent arrest allows the T-800 to reacquire his target, as Sarah is put under protective custody by Paul Winfield’s Lieutenant Traxler, making her the proverbial sitting duck. The police building shoot-out sequence, at the time, was cited for its hyper-violence with scores of police officers gunned down by the Terminator. Beyond that however, was Schwarzenegger’s famous “I’ll be back” line, as the T-800 goes in search of a vehicle to smash through the entry of the heavily fortified police building. The line has entered the lexicon of pop culture since it was first uttered in 1984. Cameron also manages to create one of the most convincing war-ravaged futures ever put on screen up to that time, using Reese’s dreams as a means to show audiences the devastation caused by the sentient machines that had taken control of Earth. (His next feature film, ALIENS, made even better use of the style on display in THE TERMINATOR, as a team of intergalactic Marines go on a search and rescue mission only to be confronted by the equally hard-to-stop Xenomorph aliens!)
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Gales Anne Hurd talks about The TerminatorGale Anne Hurd was an important part of bringing the original Terminator movie to the screen. Like James Cameron, Hurd had been a part of Roger Corman's New World Pictures, working as Corman's executive assistant. Like so many who worked for Corman, Hurd received a crash-course on how to make movies on a budget while working at New World. Hurd started her Pacific Western Productions company in order to get Cameron's script turned into a feature film.
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By the time THE TERMINATOR reaches its climax the viewer is already aware that they have seen something that is different and exciting. The finale ramps up the tension as Sarah and Reese play a deadly game of cat and mouse with the Terminator, now stripped down to just its endoskeleton, as one mishap after another has steadily peeled off its skin. Cameron wisely chose to confine the last minutes of the film to a factory setting and provides the protagonists a plausible opportunity to disorientate the pursuing cyborg and give themselves the chance to destroy it. There are some obvious budget limitations in evidence, as the full-scale Terminator endoskeleton is not that convincing as a piece of stop-motion animation. Fortunately, Cameron was able to use all of the film-making tricks he had learned to that point to de-emphasize the stop-motion and create a sequence that relies on edits and the Terminator’s point-of-view to capture the action. It’s fitting that Sarah fulfils her part of the mythology Cameron had created for the story and defeats the Terminator, setting her up as a plausible figure relative to the back-story as the mother who would teach the future leader of the human who would find a way to destroy the out-of-control machines.
The legacy of THE TERMINATOR is not to be under-estimated. The film launched the career of both Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron, whose contribution to movie-making over the last thirty years has only been surpassed by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (Cameron’s; not Schwarzenegger’s…). Had it not been successful, it can be argued that Cameron’s path to success may have been very different and his contributions to the science fiction and action film genres may not have been as substantial as they have been. Other behind-the-scenes technicians may have had a different path as well. The late Stan Winston gained great recognition for his work and he remained in demand for most of the next two-and-a-half decades up until his untimely death in 2008. Other specialists in their field, such as Cinematographer Adam Greenberg & Editor Mark Goldblatt, worked with Cameron on subsequent projects and earned individual acclaim for their work on many films, including TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, GHOST, TRUE LIES and RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. The appeal of the THE TERMINATOR is varied, but most agree that it’s influence has been great and continues to be regarded to this day as a classic film of the 1980s and of the science fiction genre.
The Terminator - lobby cards
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The Terminator - production images
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