The Terminator

The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction-action film which became the break-through role for former body-builder Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Directed by James Cameron, the premise of the movie is that a Terminator (a humanoid robot), played by Schwarzenegger, has been transported back in time from 2029 to May 12, 1984 to assassinate a woman named Sarah Connor (played by Linda Hamilton). At the same time a man, Kyle Reese (played by Michael Biehn), is sent back to protect Connor from the cyborg. Issues raised by the film include time travel, causal loops, and artificial intelligence.

The sequels to the movie, Judgment Day and Rise of the Machines, further developed the story line and explored the ethical implications of machine intelligence as well as what it means to be truly human.

The property has also been adapted into video games and comic books, including some in which the characters are paired with (or against) characters from other movie-licensed properties, including Predator, Robocop and Aliens.

Cast

Arnold Schwarzenegger - The Terminator
Michael Biehn - Kyle Reese
Linda Hamilton - Sarah Connor
Paul Winfield - Lieutenant Ed Traxler
Lance Henriksen - Detective Vukovich
Earl Boen - Dr Peter Silberman
Rick Rossovich - Matt Buchanan
Dick Miller - Gun shop Clerk
Franco Columbu - Future War Terminator
Bill Paxton - Punk Leader
Brian Thompson - Punk

Plot summary

A young woman, Sarah Connor, inexplicably finds herself hunted by a relentless killer. She is eventually approached by Kyle Reese, who explains that in the future, an artificial intelligence called "Skynet" will be created by military software developers to make strategic decisions. The program becomes self-aware; in a panic, the humans attempt to destroy Skynet. In the interest of self preservation, Skynet seizes control of most of the world's military hardware (including various highly advanced robots), and launches an all-out thermonuclear attack on humanity. However, a man named John Connor eventually leads the human resistance to victory, only to discover that in a last-ditch effort, Skynet had discovered time travel and sent a robotic killer back in time in the 1980s to kill John Connor's mother before he can be born. John Connor is Sarah's future son, and so he sends back a trusted assistant (Reese) to protect his mother at all costs. The key difficulty in Reese's mission is that the Terminator, variably known as a cyborg or robot, is of an extremely durable construction that can sustain a considerable amount of damage. Since the time travel mechanism precludes the traveler from carrying non-living matter outside the being's body, Reese was forced to arrive naked and unarmed, and the small arms of the 1980s are barely powerful enough to affect the Terminator. Furthermore, a Terminator's organic covering, when intact, makes it indistinguishable from an average person. This makes the task of convincing anyone of that time that this assailant is actually an extremely advanced machine - without being written off as crazy - almost impossible.

As it ultimately turns out, Reese, of all humans, was sent back in time for a special reason — he volunteered because he was in love with Sarah (having been given a picture of her in the future) and is in fact destined to be John's father, a fact that John knows but Reese does not.

In 1984, the Terminator quickly obtains clothes and an arsenal of weaponry, and sets out on its mission. It systematically murders the first two 'Sarah Connors' in the Los Angeles telephone directory before killing Sarah's flatmate Ginger and Ginger's boyfriend Matt while trying to find Sarah at her home. It then discovers that Sarah is in a nightclub called Tech Noir where she is waiting for the police. The Terminator attempts to kill Sarah in the nightclub but is stopped by Reese. Following a brief chase, Reese and Sarah escape, but the Terminator violently commandeers a police car and follows them.

While hiding in a multi-story car park, Reese explains everything to a skeptical, frightened Sarah. However, the Terminator arrives again and a pitched gun battle between the two moving vehicles results in the Terminator crashing its car and Reese being arrested by the pursuing cops. At the police station, Sarah is looked after by Lieutenant Traxler (Paul Winfield) and Sergeant Vukovich (Lance Henriksen) while Reese is interrogated by a fascinated criminal psychologist, Dr Silberman, who concludes that Reese's "delusions" are astoundingly intricate, and are constructed in such a manner that they require no proof and are thus safe from refutation. While this is going on, the Terminator retreats to a hotel room and performs maintenance on its damaged cyborg arm and eye socket before re-arming itself and heading for the police precinct.

The Terminator arrives at the precinct only to be told by the desk sergeant that he can't see Sarah. After uttering his famous catch phrase "I'll be back.", he drives a car through the glass panel doors of the building, crushing the desk sergeant. He then proceeds to storm the precinct, shooting his way through, even after the policemen manage to arm themselves with assault rifles. Reese meanwhile manages to break free from the interrogation room and rescues Sarah before the Terminator can get to her.

While Reese is hiding that night, we see his past, our future, in a flashback. In this post-nuclear world, we see that he once had a polaroid photograph of Sarah. The photo is burned during an attack by a terminator on a human base.

The next day, Reese and Sarah take refuge in a motel, where Reese makes explosives and then confesses that he has become attached to Sarah. At first, Reese thinks he has made a fool of himself, but Sarah kisses him tenderly, and they have sex. Later that night, the Terminator tracks them down and pursues them along a motorway, shooting Reese and wounding him. An increasingly resourceful Sarah manages to knock it off its motorcycle, but crashes her truck. The Terminator commandeers a large tanker truck and drives it towards the pair's wrecked pickup truck. Sarah and a badly-wounded Reese escape just in time and Reese destroys the tanker with one of his few remaining bombs. The Terminator is shown collapsing in a burnt heap in the remains of the tanker.

Just when they think the Terminator has been destroyed, its metal endoskeleton emerges from the flames, and pursues them into an automated factory. Reese jams a pipe bomb into its hip joint, but is killed in the ensuing explosion and the Terminator's legs are severed from its torso. Just as Sarah finds Reese's body, the Terminator's mangled torso revives and pursues her, but she crushes it in a hydraulic press when it follows her.

The end of the film sees a pregnant Sarah in Mexico. She records audio tapes which she intends to play to the child - clearly the soon-to-be-born John - at some point in his life. Her monologues reveal that Reese is the father, and that John was conceived during their one night together at the motel. While Sarah's tank is being filled at a gas station, a young Mexican boy takes a photo of her using his polaroid camera, and talks her into buying it for a few dollars. We see that it is the same photo Reese has in the future. The boy then mentions that there is a storm coming, to which Sarah chillingly replies "I know." Calm but determined, Sarah drives off into an ominous future.

Inspirations

Some aspects of the story were sufficiently similar to two episodes of the TV series The Outer Limits — both episodes written by Harlan Ellison — that Ellison pursued legal action against Cameron. Cameron settled out of court and acknowledged Ellison's work in the film's credits. However, some time later, the credits were mysteriously taken out (rumored to have been removed by Cameron himself). Another lawsuit was filed until the credit was reinserted.

The episodes in question were called "Soldier" (which involves a specially-trained man accidentally sent back in time) and "Demon with a Glass Hand" (concerning a time traveler who suffers memory loss and relies on a computer chip implanted in his artificial hand to give him information about his mission while assassins sent from the future attempt to kill him). There is also some similarity between the concept of Skynet and the evil intelligence featured in Ellison's short story, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream".

Despite settling out of court, Cameron still maintains to this day that the Terminator was his original concept. He claims that the concept of the Terminator came to him in a dream; furthermore, he states that in his original vision, the Terminator was a small, unremarkable man (as opposed to the large, muscular visage of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger). This would allow the Terminator even greater ability to conceal itself among the human population. Only when Schwarzenegger, who had originally auditioned for the role of Reese, was cast as the Terminator instead did this concept begin to change.

The story also bears strong resemblance to two short stories by Philip K. Dick: Second Variety (1953) and Jon's World (1954). These stories feature a post apocalyptic world where robots (originally designed to fight on behalf of one human faction against another) develop newer models which disguise themselves as humans to infiltrate human bunkers belonging to both factions.

Another potential inspiration is the well-regarded 1962 French film, La Jetée, a short black and white film by director Chris Marker. Told entirely in still images and narration, the film concerns a man in an underground post-nuclear future sent back into the pre-apocalyptic past to obtain resources necessary to continue humanity. The man is selected for his mission because his fixation on a memory from that period, in which he sees a beautiful woman and a man dying. The film concludes, as The Terminator does, with a predestination paradox; while in the past, the man falls in love with a woman who bears a striking resemblence to the woman in his memory, and then fulfils his own destiny by becoming the very man he witnessed dying, thus enabling him to travel back into the past. La Jetée is an acknowled inspiration for Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys.

A similar plot of a killer machine sent back in time to change history was seen in a fairly obscure film from 1966 entitled Cyborg 2087.

Production

This low-budget movie (at roughly $6.5 million) was a surprise box-office hit, earning $38,371,200, a respectable amount in 1984. The film went on to gross more than 78 million dollars world-wide.^* A pair of documentaries about the film, which appear on the DVD version, have a number of explanations of various issues about the movie. All Terminator films take place in Los Angeles, which is also where the films are shot.

Casting

For the key role of the Terminator, Cameron originally wanted a typical-looking guy of average size, who could easily infiltrate human society. As a result, Cameron's first choice to play the Terminator was Lance Henriksen - who eventually took the role of Lt. Vukovich. Both Cameron and co-writer William Wisher claim that originally Schwarzenegger was going to be offered the part of Reese, the hero. However, as a result of a lunch meeting, both he and Cameron independently realized that he would be better suited to play the part of the title character. Gale Ann Hurd, meanwhile, claims that Arnold was never considered for Reese's part. ^* Once Schwarzenegger was cast, the film had to be placed on hold for a year after Dino DeLaurentis chose to option Schwarzenegger to film Conan the Destroyer. The film was originally scheduled to be shot in Spring, 1983 in Toronto, and filming eventually began in March of 1984 in Los Angeles. Several date inconsistencies in the film are explained by this change of scheduling.

Legacy

The "first" feature film for director Cameron (he had been replaced on the unsuccessful The Spawning), this low-budget movie established Cameron as a talented action director. He would then go on to produce a string of successful action movies, continuing with Aliens in 1986, and the sequel Judgment Day (then the most expensive film that was produced at the time).

Schwarzenegger had already starred in the hit film Conan the Barbarian and its successor, Conan the Destroyer, but The Terminator solidified his position as a movie star. Reprised in two sequels, it is still considered to be one of his best roles.

Deleted scenes

Several scenes deleted from the theatrical release have been made available on DVD and other media. The most significant of these in the context of later films are a pair of scenes relating to Cyberdyne Systems. In one deleted scene ("Sarah fights back"), between the scenes in the underpass and the scenes in the motel, Sarah takes to heart John Connor's message to her relayed by Reese ("The future is not set."), and convinces Reese to find Cyberdyne Systems (the creators of Skynet) and destroy it. The counterpart sequence to this occurs after the factory fight scenes, when one of the factory workers finds the Terminator's CPU and gives it to another worker, saying he'll bring it to R&D. As Sarah is taken away by paramedics, the camera pulls out to show the factory sign: Cyberdyne Systems.

Philosophy

The movie contains an example of a predestination paradox. The Terminator's mission, as described by Skynet, was to go back in time and kill Sarah Connor, thereby preventing John Connor from being the leader of the resistance forces that would destroy Skynet. However, had the Terminator not attacked the police station in its attempt to fulfill its programming, Kyle Reese would have been kept separate from Sarah Connor and John Connor (Skynet's real objective) would not have been born. This paradox can also been seen generally, in that if the machines had not tried to stop John's birth, he never would have been born (as Kyle Reese would never have had cause to go back in time).

The "paradox" is not structural, but causal. There is no contradiction in the story's logic, only major question marks about how such a set of events could have come to exist. An analogy would be that of a bridge that will stand perfectly well if all the elements are in place (engineers are not surprised that it holds together given the relationships of its components), but cannot be assembled piece by piece (they cannot work out how it could ever have been built in the first place).

Reese stated to Sarah that he came from "one possible future." This suggests parallel universes, where every action that has more than one outcome will create unique and separate universes that co-exist with one another. Thus, the events that occurred in the film and subsequent sequels may have only affected the universe that Sarah lived in, and not Reese's. If this is true, there would be no paradox as Reese's "possible future" universe would have remained unchanged.

Although the film is commonly perceived as technophobic, Cameron considers technology neutral: capable of being used for both good and evil. In the film, despite the numerous machines that cause all the bad things to happen (the answering machine, the personal tape player, Sarah's mother's telephone, etc.), it is also a machine, the hydraulic press, that eventually destroys the Terminator. The name of the bar in which Sarah initially encounters the Terminator, Tech Noir, may sum it up: The Terminator - a technological film noir - shows the dark side of technology, as well as the human ability to overcome it eventually.

Trivia

James Cameron provided the voice breaking his date with Sarah Conner on her message machine.
The two songs playing in the Tech Noir club are "Photoplay" and "Burnin' in the Third Degree", both performed by Tahnee Cain and Tryanglz. The group also performed the song "You Can't Do That", which is the song playing on Ginger's walkman when she and Sarah are preparing for their Friday night dates. "You can't do that" is exactly what the Pawn Shop Owner says to The Terminator right before he blasts him with the shotgun.
Many of the "Photoplay" song lyrics parallel what happens in the film. For example, the lyrics "after shot, I'm forced to come undone" and "exposed to the first degree" parallels when Reese shoots The Terminator, as its masquerade as a human is foiled. Furthermore, the title "Burnin' in the Third Degree", foreshadows The Terminator's flesh being seared away in the tanker explosion.
Although never spoken on screen, the script gives Vukovich's first name as "Hal."
The life-size Terminator model was actually made of steel, a production goof which complicated shooting. The model was so heavy that it required four people to hold it and move it during close-ups.
The scene where Reese breaks the ignition lock on a Cadillac Eldorado with the end of a shotgun is a factual error. Pre-1978 GM vehicles had a spring clip which retained the lock cylinder to the steering column. In real life, this film led to the rise of GM and AMC (particularly Jeep) vehicles being stolen the following year.
In the movie the Terminator used a gun with laser sighting to decrease the chances of missing his target, however this may have been a possible blooper, because everything the Terminator saw was red and the laser for the gun was red, and it was impossible for the Terminator to see the laser at all. Though it is possible that he was able to detect the laser since the machine's vision is based on infared heat. Furthermore, since The Terminator is a machine to begin with, it is unlikey that he would need the laser beam to determine a bullet's impact point on a target.
In 2003, The American Film Institute released its list of the 100 greatest screen heroes and villains of all time. The Terminator appeared as number 22 on the list of villains. He also appeared at number 48 on the list of heroes.
Three actors that appear in The Terminator (Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton) also appear in the movie Aliens, also directed by Cameron.
Schwarzenegger is one of only two actors to appear in all three of the 'Terminator' films. The other is Earl Boen, who portrayed the character of Dr Peter Silberman in all three films.
His famous line "I'll be back", which originated from The Terminator (1984), was originally written as "I'll come back".
The Terminator kills apx. 32 people (assuming he kills all three punks, as well as others we see being killed) in addition to the 17 policemen killed in the police-station shootout.
Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen are the only two actors to be killed by a Terminator, an Alien, and a Predator. Paxton was killed in The Terminator, Aliens, and Predator 2, while Henriksen was killed in The Terminator, Aliens, and Alien vs. Predator.

External links

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