The Terminator
The Terminator (1984)
Image From IMDB
The Terminator is one of my absolute favourite movies, and it just gets better with each watch. As modern cinema continues its downwards trajectory movies like these only raise higher in stature. A top Director putting his heart and soul into his creation. A star at the height of his power. So many things came together to make this masterpiece, and I wonder whether we’ll ever get it this good again.
The Terminator really does have everything I want from a movie. I love the night time setting and gritty cinematographer. The score is perfect. The sets like Technoir and the presentation of the city just add so many different textures. The performances are top notch, and the camera and story telling doesn’t stop. James Cameron was on a mission with this film, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn were in perfect sync with that vision.
I often wonder what makes Terminator stand out from the other insane B-Movieques concepts of the time, and my conclusion is always the same, it has to have been the production. The top director and star. The amazing Stan Winston effects. The Brad Fiedel score. In lesser hands maybe one of the greatest movie franchise simply wouldn’t have been. It would have gone the way of other great ideas from the era, but everything came together.
It still amazes me how carefully the Terminator and Kyle Reese are introduced. Their powers and weakness instantly exposed without us even knowing who… or what… they are yet. The pace is perfect. The danger and relentless hopelessness ramps up continuously without us thinking for a second that everything is going to be ok. The Terminator is fucking unstoppable and we know it. The characters know it. But still, we hope. Storytelling at its best.
As mentioned, the three leads are great. Arnie is the physical embodiment of unstoppable, and Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton constantly sell the desperation. We want them to be together, We want them to survive. We want them to stop the Terminator… but how?
A lot of people’s first experience with the Terminator is T2, Judgement Day, and I’ll get to that in my next review, but for me, despite my love of the sequel, Terminator One has always been the superior film. The film making itself makes it so, but so does the tone. It’s just more my kind of movie. I could write books about this film, I’m sure of it.
If you’ve never watched the original, I highly suggest you do. There’s one or two wonky effects, but mostly that side of things still stands up. But the film making itself is fantastic. Pure artistry from start to finish, while never having a dull moment. The movie is paced incredibly, and each set piece tops the last with the police station shootout being the best action outside of Hong Kong at the time.
The Terminator is a classic and deserves its rightful place in history. Often overlooked by its fantastic sequel, this movie is where it started, and all the stuff you love in T2 comes from the first film. Like I said, it’s my favourite in the franchise, but also one of my favourite films. I’ll never have enough good things to say about The Terminator.
