Mario’s Musings (Anniversary Edition): Terminator
“Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”
That brief monologue by Kyle Reese solidified the terror that was the Terminator in the original movie by James Cameron, released on October 26th, 1984. I was six years old when my dad let me watch this with him, just so he could take me with him and his buddies to see Terminator 2: Judgment Day when it released in theaters later on that week. I was hooked on the franchise through the good and bad after that.
Michael Biehn doesn’t get enough credit. Ever.
An artificial intelligence system called Skynet is losing the war against the human resistance that has risen up against it. It’s last ditch effort is to send a T-800 model Terminator (Schwarzenegger) to the past to kill the mother of the leader of the human resistance, John Connor, before he’s born. To counter this, the resistance sends back Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) to protect John’s mother Sarah, played by Linda Hamilton. It’s the movie that put both Arnold Schwarzenegger and director James Cameron on the map.
Just look at that shirt…
…and that hair. He could have been in a Duran Duran video.
Terminator is amazing in more ways than one. For one, while it’s considered a science fiction film, it plays out so much like a horror movie in the vein of Halloween with Arnold’s T-800 being the unstoppable Michael Myers type. Second, the atmosphere is such a pure 80’s Duran Duran style that it’s almost hilarious when you compare it to the sequel. The shirt Arnold’s T-800 Terminator is wearing in the first half of the movie has to be seen to be believed. The musical score is synthesizers galore. To be perfectly honest, considering everything I’ve mentioned, if it wasn’t for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s captivating performance as the T-800 with Biehn and Hamilton’s reactions, this movie would have been just another dime a dozen 80’s sci-fi cheesy flick that would have been dust in the wind. The performances really enhanced the movie.
On a lighter note, the first Terminator movie is almost a mystery to the average viewer, as people are somewhat shocked to discover that Arnold played the bad guy in the first movie due to the pop culture popularity of the second movie. It’s similar to people not realizing Jason isn’t the killer in the first Friday the 13th movie and what characters are playable in the first Street Fighter game (Ryu and Ken… and that’s it). And while we’re talking Arnold’s performance as a bad guy, not enough credit is given to Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese. He’s almost maniacal in his desperation to protect Sarah at all costs, to the point where you could actually believe the cops when they tell Sarah that Reese is just some lunatic with delusions of grandeur.
All in all, give it a watch, it just celebrated it’s 35th birthday like a certain movie reviewer just did.