The Terminator

  

The Terminator

 

The Terminator is a 1984 American science fiction action film directed by James Cameron. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as the Terminator, a cyborg assassin brought back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), whose unborn son will one day save humanity from extinction by Skynet, a hostile artificial intelligence in a post-apocalyptic future. Kyle Reese (Michael Bean) is a soldier sent back in time to protect Sarah. The screenplay is credited to Cameron and producer Jill Ann heard, while co-writer William Wisher Jr. received "additional dialogue"credit

Ameron created the film's premise from a fever dream he had while releasing his first film, Piranha II: spawning (1982), in Rome, and developed the concept in collaboration with wisher. He sold the rights to the project to fellow New World Pictures alumna heard on the condition that she produce the film only if he would direct it; heard eventually secured a distribution deal with Orion Pictures, while executive producers John Daly and Derek Gibson of Hemdale films were instrumental in setting up the film's financing and production. Originally approached by Orion for the role of Reese, Schwarzenegger agreed to play the title character after befriending Cameron. Filming, which took place mostly at night on location in Los Angeles, was delayed due to Schwarzenegger's obligations to Conan the destroyer (1984), as Cameron found time to work on the scripts for Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and aliens (1986). The special effects for the film, which included miniatures and stop-motion animation, were created by a team of artists led by Stan Winston and Gene Warren Jr

Defying low pre-release expectations, Terminator topped the US box office for two weeks, eventually grossing 78.3 million dollars against a modest budget of 6.4 million. He is credited with launching Cameron's film career and cementing Schwarzenegger's position as a leading man. The success of the film led to a franchise consisting of several sequels, a television series, comic books, novels and video games. In 2008, Terminator was selected by the library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry

Terminator was not based on a novel, surely? I hear you protesting. You're right, he wasn't, so what is Terminator doing in this monthly literary film review? Well, for example, because there are notable literary precedents for James Cameron's 1984 science fiction film, even if these are not direct influences in themselves

One such precedent is Vernor Vinge, whose fiction often refers to an event that Vinge (pronounced 'Vinge gay') calls 'singularity', when machines become 'intelligent' and reach a level of intelligence far exceeding the humans who made them. (Feng's 1981 novel real names, published three years earlier by William Gibson's the most famous Neuromancer, has been called the first novel to explore the idea of 'cyberspace', although Feng's novel does not use that term.) Another is Fred saperhagen, who, starting in the 1960s, wrote a series of Berserk novels about robots that are out to destroy humanity. The Terminator was by no means a new concept, but it took the basic idea of the killing machine and raised it to a completely new level of storytelling

The Terminator-not to be confused with the Terminator, a rather frivolous vigilante film about a veterinarian in Vietnam that was released four years earlier, in 1980 – received a short abridgment from Christopher Booker in his extensive study of the plot, the seven essential plots: why we tell stories. Booker very much prefers a sequel in terms of satisfaction from the plot. I can't agree. As much as I appreciate the 1991 sequel, The Terminator has something deeper, darker and less obvious, I think. And the central setting is even more powerful in the first film, simply because it pits man against machine, Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor against the Terminator. The second pits the Terminator against the Terminator, and although here Arnie may be the underdog, this Cyborg-on-Cyborg fight still spoils the delightful little central premise

One of the things that makes the original 1984 Terminator such a rewarding movie to re-watch is the depth of characterization. Take a relatively minor character like Lieutenant Traxler (Paul Winfield), one of the disbelieving policemen who ends up being shot by a leather-wrapped Arnie at their police station while they are holding Reese and protecting (or trying to protect) Sarah Connor. It is clear from Traxler's limited screen time (something that is made more clearly clear in an excerpt scene from the final version of the film) that he is not quite as dismissive of Kyle Reese's story as his fellow boys in blue. Reese had question after question fired at him by the police and the psychiatrist, Dr Silberman, and he came back with a detailed and perfectly reasonable answer for each one, and he did it without hesitation. Even 'Loons' (Silberman's word for rice) can't manage that. It's the subtleties that take the basic setting-the police dismiss the far-fetched but real story of the hero as a distraction from the maniac, and the cropper comes when the hero is proved to be right-and adds another layer to it. It shows how Cameron felt about the story he was telling, rather than just thinking of it as a series of logical steps

As is known, Schwarzenegger-fresh from playing the Cimmerian Robert E. Howard the great Conan in two fantasy films-was not the original choice to play the honorary Terminator. Instead, he was hired to play Kyle Reese: the (quite reasonable) logic was that if SkyNet brought back a cyborg to kill Sarah Connor, it would be better for the human resistance to send a muscular giant of a man who could withstand a little strength against the steel power of the Terminator. With that in mind, Lance Henriksen, who ended up playing Traxler's cop partner at the station, was cast as the Terminator: an ordinary-looking man who could easily merge with the Los Angeles World of 1980 without attracting too much unwanted attention. (Other actors considered for the role of Terminator include, of all people, O. J. Simpson; Cameron famously turned down the role, on the grounds that he thought Simpson would be unconvincing as a killer...)

In the end, of course, the Terminator was the role that Arnold Schwarzenegger was born to play. Everyone says this, but this is true not only because of the broad shoulders and the slow, lumbering and massive movement of the powerful trunk arms. The Austrian accent helped - as James Cameron later said, it was as if SkyNet hadn't quite been able to get the voice exactly right in its human organs yet as did Schwarzenegger's head movements, calculated, methodical, and relentless

Terminator is a science fiction film, crossed with a thriller. It was initially expected to be a little better than sci-fi movie B, but ended up opening a new little genre: tech noir, named after the nightclub where Sarah Connor first encountered the killing machine and began her date by fate. It's an apt label for a film that is dark almost from start to finish (literally and thematically) and that raises troubling and increasingly relevant questions about our relationship with technology

Terminator has a 100% approval rating based on 67 professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 8.8/10. Its critical consensus reads: "with impressive action sequences, a taut economic direction, and a relentlessly fast pace, it's clear why Terminator continues to sway sci-fi and action flicks."Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned Terminator a score of 84 out of 100 based on 21 critics, indicating"universal acclaim"

The Terminator won three Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Makeup and Best Writing.The film also received recognition from the American Film Institute, which ranked 42nd in 100 years... 100 thrillers, a list of the most heartwarming American films.The Terminator character was chosen as the 22nd greatest movie villain on the Avi 100 years... 100 heroes and villains. Schwarzenegger's line "I'll be back" became a catchphrase and was voted the 37th best movie quote by Avi

In 2005, Total Film named it the 72nd best film of all time.Schwarzenegger biographer Lawrence Lemmer wrote that the Terminator was " an influential film that influences an entire generation of dark-hued science fiction, and was one of Arnold's best performances."In 2008, Empire Magazine selected the Terminator as one of the 500 Greatest Films of all time.Empire also placed T800 14th on their list of the 100 Greatest Movie Characters. In 2008, The Terminator was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 2010, the independent film and Television Alliance selected the film as one of the 30 most important independent films of the last 30 years.In in 2015, Terminator was among the films included in the book 1001 Movies You must watch before you die

In 2019, Hugh Fullerton Radio Times rated it the second best film out of the six in the franchise, saying "Terminator was a really great, visceral and scary original movie when it was released in 1984, and no matter how poorly the visual effects aged, it never lost its impact."In 2021, Dallin Rowell of /film rated it the fourth best film of Cameron's career, saying" while its pacing and story structure isn't as tight as the film's sequel, The Terminator remains one of the most famous pieces of pop culture ever created.Phil Perriello of Syfy ranked it seventh in the" 25 scariest sci-fi movies ever made", noting " Cameron forever changed both the genre and Schwarzenegger's career with a Terminator, iconic, tension-filled flick that blends sci-fi, action , and some horror movie elements into one of the best things to ever come out of a well-structured Hollywood script Cameron is pure polish, with zero fat and an excess of riveting tension that helps make him the timeless classic he is today

Orion Pictures did not have confidence that the Terminator performed well at the box office and feared a negative critical reception. At an early screening of the film, the actors ' agents insisted to the producers that the film should be shown to critics.Orion conducted one press screening of the film.The film premiered on October 26, 1984. In its opening week, Terminator played in 1005 theaters and grossed 4.0 million dollars making it number one at the box office. The film remained at number one in its second week. She lost her number one spot in the third week to Oh, God! You devil.Cameron noted that the Terminator was a huge success " for its market, which falls between summer and Christmas films. But it's better to be a big fish in a small pond than vice versa."The Terminator grossed 38.3 million dollars in the United States and Canada and 40 million dollars in other regions for a total worldwide of 78.3 million dollars