Film #5: The Terminator
I have realized I'm hogging too much on these threads and listing all of the best scenes and best quotes instead of just giving 1 or 2 of my favorites. Going to try and make this more interactive going forwards.
Released: October 26, 1984
Original trailer:
Streaming on: Free: MGM+, Amazon Prime, YouTube TV. It's also on TV somewhere every 12 hours or so.
My history with this film
The Terminator is the first of a few films on this list that I like to call The LaFargue Series.
So named because I saw these films while much too young to see them solely because my best friend growing up, Trey LaFargue (RIP), was the son of divorced parents.
When his dad would come get him for the weekend twice a month, he would often take Trey to see a hype new film, and eventually I started getting the invite as well.
With the exception of the time we saw "Krull" at the theater, I lied to my mom about what we were going to see because every one of them was rated R or was a movie she would not approve of. Thus, over the course of several years, I saw the likes of "Terminator", "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "Aliens" "Robocop", and "Predator" in the theater despite being 10-13 years old at the time.
Pouring one out for Trey, who also manipulated his parents' divorce into getting the Lion version of Voltron, Transformers Wheeljack, Mirage, and Soundwave, and when we got older, a blowgun, Ninja stars, and a crossbow that you could shoot a bolt through a phone book with.
As mentioned in the Real Rewatchables, The Terminator at its core is a thrilling horror movie where instead of being Freddy or Jason or Michael Myers, you have an unstoppable cyborg killing machine. This movie is dark and sinister and edgy and paints a very accurate picture of the worries of the future - notably the emergence of AI, drones, and the fear that we're dehumanizing the world too much, too quickly.
I thought this was the coolest non-Star Wars movie I had ever seen at the time, and remember the audience clapping when Arnold goes down in the truck fire as we all assumed he was dead.
When he starts standing up as just the metal cyborg, someone in the crowd yelled " OH MY GOD, LOOK OUT!" It was pretty fantastic. This of course set up the greatest sequel of all-time, Terminator 2, which I was about 7 months too young to see legally, but went to see all the same, in a story for another day. Let's get to the categories.
Roger Ebert's Review (Holy Crap!)
In perhaps the most shocking thing I've ever heard, Roger Ebert didn't see the original film in the theater, so here is one by Janet Maslin of the New York Times from October 26, 1984.
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER is about as well suited to movie acting as he would be to ballet, but his presence in ''The Terminator'' is not a deterrent. This is a monster movie, and the monster's role fits Mr. Schwarzenegger just fine. He plays the computerized automaton of the title, sent from the year 2029 back to 1984 to assassinate a young waitress named Sarah Connor. Even if the movie had nothing else to recommend it, the sheer unlikeliness of this mission, and the teasing gradualness with which its meaning is revealed, would be enough to hold an audience's attention.
''The Terminator,'' which opens today at Loews State and other theaters, is a B-movie with flair. Much of it, as directed by James Cameron (''Piranha II''), has suspense and personality, and only the obligatory mayhem becomes dull. There is far too much of the latter, in the form of car chases, messy shootouts and Mr. Schwarzenegger's slamming brutally into anything that gets in his way. Far better are the scenes that follow Sarah (Linda Hamilton) from cheerful obliviousness to the grim knowledge that someone horrible is on her trail.
The denouement is convoluted, to say the very least. But it is set forth engrossingly by Miss Hamilton and by Michael Biehn as another 21st-century warrior, this one actually on Sarah's side. Both he and Mr. Schwarzenegger's Terminator arrive in Los Angeles stark naked, and they must somehow find clothes, weapons and Sarah before they can begin to fight. Mr. Biehn is seen stealing pants from a drunk and shoplifting a combat jacket, which make him a most inferior fashion plate compared with the star. Almost everything Mr. Schwarzenegger commandeers, from his jackboots to his fingerless gloves, is made of dark studded leather.
Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen have some good moments as a police inspector and his assistant, but they don't last long; hardly anyone in the film does, when pitted against the behemoth of the title. Mr. Schwarzenegger eventually shows signs of wear and tear, losing an eye and part of one forearm before being incinerated down to his gleaming, metallic skeleton. Even in that condition he keeps on marching. The special effects are good enough to allow this skeleton a distinctively lumbering gait that matches Mr. Schwarzenegger's own.
Box office: Made for $6.4 million. Box office: $78.3 million. A return on investment of 1,234%. The equivalent of making a $20 million movie in 2024 and that movie earning $236 million.
The Categories
Most Rewatchable Scene:
My favorite:
You're terminated, ****er!
The Terminator without its skin is the stuff of sheer nightmares, the kind I had after watching Jason and the Argonauts as a kid when the skeletons came to life. Finally putting him down for good is cathartic.
Best Quote:
My two favorites:
Both have made it into every subsequent franchise entry I think.
The Tony Barone Overacting Award: I really can't stand Sarah's roommate Ginger (Bess Motta). She's got to be on amphetamines or something. Nobody is that excited all the time.
The One-Night Stand Award (hottest chick): Considering LInda Hamilton has a one-night stand with Kyle Reese, this is an easy choice. I'd like to think there's some A-hole version of Reese who was going around telling everyone the day before the movie started, "Hey, guess what? John's sending me back through time to bone his mom!"
The That Guy Award for the actor in the movie that you've seen a bunch of places but you don't know who they are:
Really fantastic actors in small roles here, including Bill Paxton as one of the punks that see Arnold first, Paul Winfield as Traxler and Lance Henriksen, but there's also a pre-Top Gun Rick Rossovich (Slider) as Ginger's boyfriend Matt. And let's give Matt credit, he goes right at Arnold and makes that fight interesting for like 10 seconds.
Half-Assed Internet Research:
What Happened the Next Day?
The LA Police Department started working on a plausible coverup so they didn't lose funding.
Cyberdyne stock rose 87 points.
Unanswerable Questions:
1. What are the last thoughts in the heads of all the cops that mocked Reese for hours and then got gunned down by the unstoppable futuristic cyborg?
2. At what age do you mention to your son that he's the future leader of the Resistance?
Did his encounter with the Terminator inspire Slider to join the Navy and fight the mchines?
3. If this took place in 2024, would the other two Sarah Connors' families try to sue our Sarah Connor for wrongful death?
Who Won the Movie? This movie made Arnold a superstar and everything he touched turned to gold for a really long time. You could also argue James Cameron. This came out late in the year after Conan the Destroyer. His run then went: Red Sonja, Commando, Raw Deal, Predator, The Running Man, Red Heat, Twins, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Terminator 2, The Last Action Hero (I'm not a fan), and True Lies. Cameron went from this to Aliens to The Abyss, T2, True Lies, Titanic, Avatar, and the Avatar sequels. Gotta give it to Arnold because he was so immediate and so dominant for so many years. Cameron is fascinating in his scheduling - at least 2 years between films and gaps of 12 years between Titanic and Avatar and 13 years between Avatar and its sequel.
Previous Entries
#1 Big Trouble in Little China
#2 Army of Darkness
#3 Field of Dreams
#4 The Rock
I have realized I'm hogging too much on these threads and listing all of the best scenes and best quotes instead of just giving 1 or 2 of my favorites. Going to try and make this more interactive going forwards.
Released: October 26, 1984
Original trailer:
Streaming on: Free: MGM+, Amazon Prime, YouTube TV. It's also on TV somewhere every 12 hours or so.
My history with this film
The Terminator is the first of a few films on this list that I like to call The LaFargue Series.
So named because I saw these films while much too young to see them solely because my best friend growing up, Trey LaFargue (RIP), was the son of divorced parents.
When his dad would come get him for the weekend twice a month, he would often take Trey to see a hype new film, and eventually I started getting the invite as well.
With the exception of the time we saw "Krull" at the theater, I lied to my mom about what we were going to see because every one of them was rated R or was a movie she would not approve of. Thus, over the course of several years, I saw the likes of "Terminator", "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "Aliens" "Robocop", and "Predator" in the theater despite being 10-13 years old at the time.
Pouring one out for Trey, who also manipulated his parents' divorce into getting the Lion version of Voltron, Transformers Wheeljack, Mirage, and Soundwave, and when we got older, a blowgun, Ninja stars, and a crossbow that you could shoot a bolt through a phone book with.
As mentioned in the Real Rewatchables, The Terminator at its core is a thrilling horror movie where instead of being Freddy or Jason or Michael Myers, you have an unstoppable cyborg killing machine. This movie is dark and sinister and edgy and paints a very accurate picture of the worries of the future - notably the emergence of AI, drones, and the fear that we're dehumanizing the world too much, too quickly.
I thought this was the coolest non-Star Wars movie I had ever seen at the time, and remember the audience clapping when Arnold goes down in the truck fire as we all assumed he was dead.
When he starts standing up as just the metal cyborg, someone in the crowd yelled " OH MY GOD, LOOK OUT!" It was pretty fantastic. This of course set up the greatest sequel of all-time, Terminator 2, which I was about 7 months too young to see legally, but went to see all the same, in a story for another day. Let's get to the categories.
Roger Ebert's Review (Holy Crap!)
In perhaps the most shocking thing I've ever heard, Roger Ebert didn't see the original film in the theater, so here is one by Janet Maslin of the New York Times from October 26, 1984.
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER is about as well suited to movie acting as he would be to ballet, but his presence in ''The Terminator'' is not a deterrent. This is a monster movie, and the monster's role fits Mr. Schwarzenegger just fine. He plays the computerized automaton of the title, sent from the year 2029 back to 1984 to assassinate a young waitress named Sarah Connor. Even if the movie had nothing else to recommend it, the sheer unlikeliness of this mission, and the teasing gradualness with which its meaning is revealed, would be enough to hold an audience's attention.
''The Terminator,'' which opens today at Loews State and other theaters, is a B-movie with flair. Much of it, as directed by James Cameron (''Piranha II''), has suspense and personality, and only the obligatory mayhem becomes dull. There is far too much of the latter, in the form of car chases, messy shootouts and Mr. Schwarzenegger's slamming brutally into anything that gets in his way. Far better are the scenes that follow Sarah (Linda Hamilton) from cheerful obliviousness to the grim knowledge that someone horrible is on her trail.
The denouement is convoluted, to say the very least. But it is set forth engrossingly by Miss Hamilton and by Michael Biehn as another 21st-century warrior, this one actually on Sarah's side. Both he and Mr. Schwarzenegger's Terminator arrive in Los Angeles stark naked, and they must somehow find clothes, weapons and Sarah before they can begin to fight. Mr. Biehn is seen stealing pants from a drunk and shoplifting a combat jacket, which make him a most inferior fashion plate compared with the star. Almost everything Mr. Schwarzenegger commandeers, from his jackboots to his fingerless gloves, is made of dark studded leather.
Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen have some good moments as a police inspector and his assistant, but they don't last long; hardly anyone in the film does, when pitted against the behemoth of the title. Mr. Schwarzenegger eventually shows signs of wear and tear, losing an eye and part of one forearm before being incinerated down to his gleaming, metallic skeleton. Even in that condition he keeps on marching. The special effects are good enough to allow this skeleton a distinctively lumbering gait that matches Mr. Schwarzenegger's own.
Box office: Made for $6.4 million. Box office: $78.3 million. A return on investment of 1,234%. The equivalent of making a $20 million movie in 2024 and that movie earning $236 million.
The Categories
Most Rewatchable Scene:
My favorite:
You're terminated, ****er!
The Terminator without its skin is the stuff of sheer nightmares, the kind I had after watching Jason and the Argonauts as a kid when the skeletons came to life. Finally putting him down for good is cathartic.
Best Quote:
My two favorites:
Both have made it into every subsequent franchise entry I think.
The Tony Barone Overacting Award: I really can't stand Sarah's roommate Ginger (Bess Motta). She's got to be on amphetamines or something. Nobody is that excited all the time.
The One-Night Stand Award (hottest chick): Considering LInda Hamilton has a one-night stand with Kyle Reese, this is an easy choice. I'd like to think there's some A-hole version of Reese who was going around telling everyone the day before the movie started, "Hey, guess what? John's sending me back through time to bone his mom!"
The That Guy Award for the actor in the movie that you've seen a bunch of places but you don't know who they are:
Really fantastic actors in small roles here, including Bill Paxton as one of the punks that see Arnold first, Paul Winfield as Traxler and Lance Henriksen, but there's also a pre-Top Gun Rick Rossovich (Slider) as Ginger's boyfriend Matt. And let's give Matt credit, he goes right at Arnold and makes that fight interesting for like 10 seconds.
Half-Assed Internet Research:
- Cameron shot a lot of things illegally without a permit and would have everyone basically run for it before the cops got there.
- Arnold was saluted by Soldier of Fortune magazine for his realistic handling of guns on camera after spending a month learning how to field strip, load, and fire everything without looking or blinking. He also learned how to shoot ambidextrously and did the stripping and reassemlbly of the guns blindfolded so he could do them automatically "like a machine."
- It's James Cameron's voice on Sarah's answering machine breaking the date.
- Arnold has 14 lines. He had 24 lines in Conan the Barbarian.
- James Cameron originally wanted Arnold as Reese and OJ Simpson as the T-800.
- There were originally going to be 2 Terminators, the second one a shape shifter that became Robert Patrick's character in the sequel.
- Kyle and Sarah make all the pipe bombs because of a deleted subplot involving destroying the building of the company that will eventually become Cyberdyne / Skynet.
- Biehn and Arnold are in the same frame only once the entire film.
- The teaser trailer is narrated by Peter "Optimus Prime" Cullen
- In Poland, the movie is called "The Electronic Murderer"
- Paramount wanted to do the film, but their stipulation was that James Cameron could not direct it. Their consolation was getting Terminator: Genisys, which was seen by 12 people.
What Happened the Next Day?
The LA Police Department started working on a plausible coverup so they didn't lose funding.
Cyberdyne stock rose 87 points.
Unanswerable Questions:
1. What are the last thoughts in the heads of all the cops that mocked Reese for hours and then got gunned down by the unstoppable futuristic cyborg?
2. At what age do you mention to your son that he's the future leader of the Resistance?
Did his encounter with the Terminator inspire Slider to join the Navy and fight the mchines?
3. If this took place in 2024, would the other two Sarah Connors' families try to sue our Sarah Connor for wrongful death?
Who Won the Movie? This movie made Arnold a superstar and everything he touched turned to gold for a really long time. You could also argue James Cameron. This came out late in the year after Conan the Destroyer. His run then went: Red Sonja, Commando, Raw Deal, Predator, The Running Man, Red Heat, Twins, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Terminator 2, The Last Action Hero (I'm not a fan), and True Lies. Cameron went from this to Aliens to The Abyss, T2, True Lies, Titanic, Avatar, and the Avatar sequels. Gotta give it to Arnold because he was so immediate and so dominant for so many years. Cameron is fascinating in his scheduling - at least 2 years between films and gaps of 12 years between Titanic and Avatar and 13 years between Avatar and its sequel.
Previous Entries
#1 Big Trouble in Little China
#2 Army of Darkness
#3 Field of Dreams
#4 The Rock
