Terminator: Salvation gives us the story we’ve all been waiting for - the war against the machines! But, is it all flash and no character? Let’s see how we got here by taking a look back at where we’ve been.
The following Moviepocalypse Lesson has been reviewed for All Readers by the Dragon of Omnipotency.
This lesson has been rated:
NB - No Bull - Content saves time, money and prevents emotional distress
It contains common sense, asterisked bad words and good intentions
What’s up good movie lovers? Welcome to another lesson of Moviepocalypse 101. Today, in honor of the recent release of Terminator: Salvation, I wanted to start a little ‘full-length review’ series here of the first three Terminator films. Today, we’ll be taking a look at the first one.from 1984, the one that made Arnold Schwarzenegger the most popular movie star in the planet, launched James Cameron’s career, redefined action science fiction and challenged everyone in the movie industry to do better stories and special effects. Nevertheless, story’s based in character which, supposedly, according to the many reviews for Terminator: Salvation - I haven’t seen it yet; shame on me because I am a huge Terminator 1 and 2 fan - the knock against it is that this fourth installment is all special effects and no character.
So, let’s take a look at this first movie and then we’ll look at Terminator 2. A couple of movies that set the standard or put the challenge down for all science fiction movies - or, really, just all movies in general - should follow this rule: No matter what the genre, you base it in character first, then emotions and finally story. After all that, then you worry about all the decorations and the special effects.
If you’ve read my Transformers 9 Parter review, you would understand the format of this current review except that, this time, there won’t be any breaks. No fragments; just straight forward in one shot, so it’s going to be really long post. Bear with me as it will be worth your time, I promise.
Currently, I still have my Terminator 2 Deluxe Edition on VHS. Yes, Video Home System; a freaking video cassette. lol 2 VHS tapes, in fact. The first tape is the movie and the second one has all the trailers, cut out footage, deleted scenes; all that kind of special features. It was kinda neat, but my Terminator Trilogy: Deluxe Edition DVD still tops the cake.
So, with that, let’s begin the first of the three ultimate reviews of the Terminator series.
Terminator: The Full Length Review
James Cameron got his start in the late 70s or early 80s, probably most famous for getting a start with Roger Corman; he did some effects for one of his movies of which I don’t know the exact title of. James then had his directing debut with Piranha 2, of which, I think, its predecessor, Piranha 1, H-wood is remaking. They’re gonna make it in 3-D. 
Flying piranhas everywhere, so it just shows how far they are stretching for new ideas. James had actually got fired off the set of Piranha 2. But then, he met LanceHendrickson, made some good contacts on that and was able to get some funding. He worked with a woman by the name of Gale Anne Hurd, who later became his wife, I think. She was a producer and funded Terminator.
So, at about 1 minute into the film, we arrive at a scene that just blows you away. It’s very reminiscent, like the opening of Star Wars which obviously redefined science fiction storytelling. But here, it just gets you into the story. I remember watching this when I was probably 10 or 11 in my living room at about '96 or '97. I couldn’t have became conscious enough to remember anything before '96 when I was 6 years of age, so it must have been that. Obviously, it was filled with the bad editing and cutting out the ‘Rated R’ kind of moments and the voice-overs (just getting rid of any vulgarities). Regardless, this moment is just awesome. You have all these human skulls on the ground among these huge machines and laser blasts.
In '84, it was probably still pretty impressive; in '86 even because people really only just had Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi which kinda set up the standards for special effects. Even at that point, with those three movies out, no one really stepped up to the plate to challenge those films in terms of the scope of the story and, obviously, the effects, especially with the little models being used. Of course, if Bay had showed up back then, we know what would had happened.
This opening sequence here is about a minute long but it just totally sets the mood. I remember being really disappointed when that scroll came up and it’s like, “The battle will be fought here in our time,” I was like, “No! Stay over there! I want to see these machines and people fighting them.” As I’ve mentioned in my T4 review, I think that, for anyone who’s a Terminator fan who loves the movies, Terminator: Salvation is really this kind of culmination we have been waiting for. It’s 2009 right now, so it took 25 years for the old fans to see that opening shot of the very first footage of the Terminator franchise. We finally get to live in that world for an entire movie. So, I’ll wait to see the movie to kinda give some opinion about that. I hope that they didn’t mess it up,thatMcG and company didn’t ruin the franchise. It’s just like a volleyball being set hurling perfectly for a spike, and it’s like how can you mess it up?
Let’s talk briefly about the title sequence after the opening scene - and the music. The more I watch movies, the more I listen to soundtracks. Music plays such a huge part in terms of whether the movie is gonna be a success or not. Think about your favorite movies. More than likely, all of them have soundtracks that are memorable, probably scored byJamesHorner , John Williams or someone. A lot of great movies have great scores. This opening sequence has just these big letters, you never see the whole title till the very end. It’s almost like a little metaphor, kind of just a setup for Schwarzenegger who’s this huge force that’s coming to get ya.
Just the music itself is setting the pace very well. It has a very Jaws kind of quality. Dum-dum, dum-dum, dum. And here, in Terminator, it’s like du-du du-du du-du. I really think that it kinda sounds like a Terminator’s heartbeat - obviously, he doesn’t have one - but it’s very much like this robotic kind of a life force, churning out this foreboding noise. You could almost say it’s kinda like thisJasonVoorhees kind of breathing; the chu-chu-chu, kah-kah-kah in kinda another style. A lot of people compared or said that Terminator, in a way, is kinda like a Sci-fi horror film, where you have the Micheal Myer or Freddy Kruger. At this point, I think for Freddy, he just might have come out in theaters and become part of our consciousness.
Next, we have this awesome introduction of the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, with the camera going low angled. In a lot of horror movies or just any movie in general, if you want to have someone be intimidating, you go for low angled shots so that he’s kinda like hovering over us. Schwarzenegger’s only like, I don’t know, 5"7’ or something. He’s not a super tall guy and, in this film, he’s come off as like being 6"5’ or something.
Again, the music is great. It really sets up immediately what the T-800 is like because you see him with that kind of metallic heartbeat ‘chu-chu-chu-chu’ Jason Voorhees kind of sound that goes, dah-dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah-dah. It makes you nervous. It’s a great example of soundtrack enhancing a scene. The soundtrack should just be there to give us cues; it shouldn’t overpower us and control our emotions. The soundtrack really is kinda like a direct route into our feelings. Movies that we really connect with probably have really great soundtracks.
The following scene after this features Bill Paxton, who would later, two years after this, be in Aliens as Hudson, one of my favorite movie characters in general. In this movie, he’s the leader of a group of punks in bad '80s fashion. Looking back now, it’s very laughable. Other than that, most of this movie holds up. It’s a little dated but it just has this quality, this techno Sci-fi horror kind of feel, which to me, still feels a lot creepier than what H-wood could offer nowadays. To note an example, there’s John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, where you get this desolate city and it could be the future, it could be the past; kind of like this ‘nowhere zone.’ Pay attention to Schwarzenegger in this scene here; he just stands up powerful with no emotions.
Then, we get the introduction for the human side of the opposition. One great thing about this movie is that, we’re 6 minutes into the film (excluding the logo and stuff) and we have barely any dialogue, aside from the “Give me your clothes” and the “F U, a-h***” with the punks. So, WALL-E wasn’t the first to engineer this aspect into a movie; it merely blew it up into proportion - but in a very beautiful way. Anyway, as I was saying, everything is visual and that’s really the strength of the movie.
In such a movie with little dialogues, we have to be active participants in the movie to understand anything. Dialogue is the least important thing in a movie. If you go back to when cinema first started at the late 20s with the Jazz singers, there was no sound on-screen, so there had to be a skill of communicating story and information to the audience and they, in turn, had to learn how to watch moving pictures which, when combined, make a story. There are little side-dialogues here and there but there’s really no overall story dialogues going on in terms of telling us about these people’s identities and that’s a great thing about this movie so far, about 8 minutes into the movie, you don’t know what’s really going on. Okay, there’s some dude who just showed up, came through some kindofteleportation device, don’t really talk a lot, and he just punched through the chest, with his fist being at the other side - which is another great visual cue of how strong this thing, Schwarzenegger’s character whose robotic nature we were unaware of at first, is. Maybe he’s just some enhanced human or something. But, he was able to take on these three punks like it was nothing. In 1984, not many movies had any kind of visual like that, which is another challenge of all movies.
A great moment after that with Kyle Reese asking, “What’s the date?” This is a significant point Transformers lacked a lot of; the characters in the moment behaving as they should. They have an objective, they want something. Whenever they talk, everything should be related to getting that objective. In Kyle’s case, he needs to make sure that he has come back to the right time. Now, we didn’t know the whole story about him being sent back from the future and all these yet, but just by asking this question, we get a little piece of the puzzle.
If you watch something like Lost, Fringe (which happen to be both J.J. Abrams show), X-Files, Twilight Zone or just any kind of mystery shows on TV, you don’t get all the pieces right away. It’s very much like you’re making a story puzzle with your mind. You just have to pay attention to how the characters act, what they say and you’ll slowly start to see overall picture. That’s the fun in going to the movies. The best movies make you an active participant. You wouldn’t want to just sit back and have everything spoonfed to you.
10 minutes into the film and we know that both these guys came in from the future naked (even though we don’t know they’re from the future yet). One didn’t say anything (or not much) and didn’t appear to be hurt by the teleportation process, unlike Kyle Reese who came through with sores due to his vulnerability. Hence, you knew that there’s a difference here and gradually, we’re gonna find out that one’s human and the other one’s not.
In terms of pure visuals, you get the sense of power of each of these two characters and that’s just great filmmaking. Visuals are not all about explosions or excellent CGI action; it’s more than that. You don’t need to say anything, you just bring us to that world and you let us pick up on these cues; just visual information. It’s just like what psychologists say, that 90% of communication between humans is non-verbal. Like when someone walks into a room, how does everyone react? That kind of stuff. That’s the power of filmmaking.
Next, we have a nice quick action sequence, nothing too outrageous. Reese comes out with a shotgun, he’s dressed and on the street. We didn’t know if he’s the bad guy yet. He didn’t seem like it. A sense that we are getting from the visuals is that he’s not. The other guy - Arnold - just went up to some people and kill them. This guy, however, just asks the Police officer about the current year and just runs away even though he could had shot him.
Then we have a great little visual setup. Pay attention to each scene, they really moves into the next one, kind of a ‘setup and payoff’ relationship occurring, which is a key of filmmaking where we have to pay attention scene by scene. There’s always a moment when you’re watching a movie where you would stop paying attention and be drawn out of it. Thus, a movie’s job is to keep the pace moving, keep the audience interested and get rid of the attention their brain has for the four walls around them and the people sitting next to them, and thus, make them feel like they are in the movie as if they are sitting there, invisibly, next to the characters.
Finally, we are introduced to the third major character of the film, Sarah Connor. Notice how the music plays out in a fairy tale kind of feeling; a piece of nice and innocent music, while in the meantime, we have the suspenseful rhythm going on at the same time, so it’s a great contrast. So, she punches into work, and in the next scene, the suspenseful music kicks back.
Again, we got the low angled shot, which just visually creates that kind of intimidation. In terms of our ears, with the audio, we were attacked with this kind of foreboding, scary kind of music. Once more, Arnold is just not talking at all and is just looking through the window and you knew there’s something obviously not right about this guy. Of course, in '84, people saw the posters and the previews for this and they knew he’s the robot guy, so that’s not necessarily a big surprise. As I’ve wrote before in my Transformers 9Parter review, setting a story in motion is kinda like setting off horses at a racetrack, once the guns go off, once you set everybody in motion, introducing characters and such, you want to keep track where every horses or characters and every story element that was let loose is at.
So, the movie’s introduced the Terminator, the protector - Kyle Reese - and finally, it have introduced their objective; the mother of the savior of the future of the human race. Hence, the movie naturally cuts back and forth between these characters and it continues on to establish, in us, the perception of these characters.
This movie really just blew Arnold up in terms of popularity. He’s actually 37 when this movie’s made, which is kinda late in terms of a star’s career taking the world by storm. In the late 70s or the early 80s, he starred in the Conan The Barbarian movies (I think there’s two of them) and then, either right before or after these, he was in Red Sonja, which seemingly ties in with the Conan movies somehow. Three of these movies and other ones didn’t get him a lot of attention. He actually also received a lot of criticisms for his heavy accent.
Now, there’s this part I love, when the shopowner says, “You can’t do that, pal,” Arnold just goes, “Wrong” and shoots him. Let’s talk about this real quick. In terms of quotes and memorable lines and dialogues, this really established the whole movement of 80s action becoming really… ‘packaged,’ I guess? This is '84, so action movie hadn’t been figured out totally yet. If you go before this, the most action kind of film are probably, other than Star Wars, you’ll have to go to the war or WWII related films, like The Dirty Dozen. This film really establishes bigger than life heroes and a villain and the very quotable action movie moments the occur when a character turns to the camera and says something that the audience’s gonna remember. But, the important thing, for me anyway, is that it doesn’t try to do with a ‘wink’ to the camera. It’s doing it because the characters are in the moment fighting for what they want and they’re unaware that people are watching them. In contrast to a live show or maybe a magic show, the show is done with the hosts under the knowledge that people are watching it, doing it like an exhibition. But if it’s happening in the moment and it seems true, with the characters acting like there isn’t anyone watching, then it’s something genuine and that’s the illusion movies bring us in comparison with the illusion of a magic act.
Soon, the T-800 comes to his first kill and he’s like, “Sarah Connor?” and it’s boom, kicks the door open, the music is back again, the nice little slow motion with the red dot. We don’t need to see any blood (though in today’s movies, her head would had probably exploded) - we know what happens, we know what it probably looks like. With that kill, we get more information that the Terminator is after Sarah Connor. He didn’t have to radio Skynet on his future walkie talkie or anything. “Skynet , I’m here. I’m looking for Sarah Connor.” No. There was no dialogue, we saw him looking through the phonebook and kill off the first Sarah Connor, and in turn, we get her emotional reaction, which is obviously an important thing. At this point, it’s not established that she should be worried because it’s just another Sarah Connor that was killed, being the first victim so far. But once the second one gets knocked off, then she’s obviously in trouble.
17 minutes in and the movie cuts back to Reese. who’s hotwiring a car so, again, we get to see his skills, which included lockpicking and the handling of firearm shown in previous scenes. He’s a very physical guy, giving us an impression that maybe he has some Navy or Army training. Great shot of the crane after he’s done hotwiring . I love just how the movie shows the image of the machine and its headlights which are gonna trigger something in Reese’s memory. Again, there’s no dialogue throughout this sequence. A second or so later, we see the track of the crane due to the camera panning down - such great filmmaking - and boom, we are into the dream sequence. Then, the music returns, which, again, sets the tone for this other timeframe.
There’s a thing I really hope for Terminator: Salvation to have is that the filmmakers would, at the least, remember that the reason these two movies worked so well is that we have the characters’ perspectives. If Reese wasn’t in this dream sequence, if the dream didn’t come from him, and we’re just seeing some random people running away from these Hunter Killers and all these machines, it’s cool-looking and all, but it’s more powerful on us if the memory is from a character we are getting involved with. 18 minutes into the movie and, again, not a lot of dialogue save those made by mainly Sarah Connor and her friend, and a couple of things said by the Terminator here and there. In 18 or 19 pages of the screenplay of The Terminator, almost everything is description; it’s amazing. The power of movies is always in the visuals. So, ask yourself as you’re watching T1 - or just any movie - are you allowed or are you being allowed to kinda be a co-creator of the story? Are you getting the images? Every scene is another piece of the puzzle, so ask what the Rorschach test is here, what it is coming together as.
The dream sequence action scenes here are really cool. Nice futuristic bombs and explosions - all done with miniatures; obviously, there’s no CGI back then. Despite that, the texture quality is quite decent. What was interesting was that when the female soldier was laser blasted, there was no guts flying out or anything - kind of a very dry sort of an explosion - but it’s all miniatures and the quality is great. Nevertheless, in terms of visuals, I had always liked the first three Star Wars better than the last three because the effects seemed too fake and artificial. Yoda has a good quality but his texture’s a little dull. Overall, this is just a fun little great action sequence, making you go, “I want to see more of this future! Make a movie that look like this!” And then, in the previews for Salvation, it doesn’t look like this, but I guess you can’t blame McG for wanting to create his own signature.
All these scenes here for the future are all set at night; you don’t get a scene of daylight in this movie’s depiction of the future. Obviously, if you’re independently making this movie, not financed by some big studio, you need to keep costs down. So, during the day, when you can see everything, you would need more props to fill the space because our vision is that much further. At night, everything is darker, so there isn’t so much of a need for many things to be made for the set.
When all things seemed to be doomed, Reese wakes up from his nightmare and the movies then cuts back to Sarah Connor. So, these are the three main horses of the movie - a three horse race at the beginning of Act 1 - and the characters are moving towards their objective. This kinda goes back when I was talking about the dawn of cinema in terms of the visuals, this is a classic scenario. It’s like in the old footage of some of the movies with the evil, bad cowboy guy with the whiskers tying the damsel in distress to the railroad tracks before the movie cuts to the evil, huge, metallic train about to run her over and coming down the tracks. Then, the camera cuts to the good cowboy dressed in white racing as fast as he can with his horse towards the girl and try and rescue her. Basically, we have the same scenario. This is one of the oldest setups of movie history here where we have Sarah Connor on the tracks, Reese is the cowboy trying to rescue her and the terminator, literally, is the metallic, evil monster train that’s gonna run her over.
This similar system is also going to be used in Terminator 2 and Part 3, probably in Part 4, too, because it seems to be a signature of the franchise. In the second one, the hero and the villain would be, thus, the T-800 and the T-1000, again, racing after John Connor, the, erm, damsel in distress. Ahem. Similarly, in T3, it has the female Terminator and the T-800, again, racing after John Connor, which is probably one of the reasons that movie doesn’t work - because it’s a little bit too similar to Terminator 2 and it’s not new and fresh enough - whereas Terminator 2 just totally took everything that was good about Part 1 and put a new spin on it, but that’s a discussion for a full-length review of Terminator 2.
Another story area that was set in motion in The Terminator, when the camera is cutting back and forth from Sarah Connor, would involve the Police officers, thus the sequence becomes one of the four different quardrants of the story, in which this one also features Lance Hendrickson, who would soon become Bishop in Aliens - another great character from another awesome movie. So, the officers, alongside with Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese and the T-800 (of whom the latter two are off-screen for quite some time), are established in motion working towards their own objectives as well - which would be to pursue the culprit who murdered the Sarah Connors.
This brings us to another important part of filmmaking where you don’t need to see everythng on-screen… You establish the scenes where we know what the character needs at that moment and you cut away, giving us that setup of what they’re gonna be doing and where they are going while we cut to somewhere else. To put things in perspective, we know that Schwarzenegger, as the Terminator, is knocking off these people named Sarah Connor. So, as he kill one Sarah, you could easily assume that he’s going to the next Sarah Connor. Then, you have Reese searching for Sarah as well. Thus, with each scene where the camera cuts away from them, you can setup the next location they are going or where you expect them to go. Finally, when it cuts back to them, the setup is paid off. The most obvious place to see this is on TV, where you can really get a sense of it because you have to have a really strong setup before commercial break, keeping people there where you want them and when the show comes back, you are paying off the setup that held people away for two minutes of advertisements.
After the officers gained realization of the existence of a pattern serial killer, Sarah listens to her messages and thus, found out that her date was cancelled because some 80s dummy is too busy to hang out with her. So, Sarah heads to her scooter, and that ‘Terminator heartbeat’ soundtrack begins to play again, giving you a little bit of a hint. You don’t know which one of them is there - Reese or the Terminator - thus giving you that foreboding feel again. Another great example of music. Other horror movies have used music very efficiently, too, like Halloween with its slow, eerie score or A Nightmare On Elm Street with the high pitched piano score playing in the background, in which the latter score also could be compared to the Terminator score in that it is almost like Freddy Kruger’s footsteps. Scoring of a movie is so important, it really conveys the genre of the film and the tone of each scene.
So, we find out that Reese is the first to locate Sarah because he had an advantage, of which, later on in the movie, being her photograph we would find out more about. Then it cuts back to the Police once again, whose top priority at that moment changes into finding Sarah Connor, and then after a while, it cuts away from them again with some kind of setup that we expect to pay off for.
I love how they established the characters. Characterization in a movie is really important. Can we get a sense of who the character is without five minutes of exposition or a ‘here’s who I am and here’s what I do’ kind of reality show confessions? The latter, these ‘confessions,’ could also be called Window Character Moments or Audience Connection Moments especially when reality TV has pretty much taken over for these last 10 years. Those moments are important; we need to know what the characters are feeling, but what’s also important are the characters’ feelings about the occurrences around them. These opportunities shouldn’t be used to connect or share backstory information with the audience. Characters are who they are and if we pay close attention enough, we will realize what happened to them to their past by their current actions. A simple example is a man walking by a dog and wants to cross a street. He wants to avoid the dog, maybe because he was bit by a dog or because he just don’t like dogs. That action alone will get our story gears going in our mind and we would pay attention to that man’s actions, waiting for that payoff later where we would learn of the man’s reason for avoiding the dog. As I’ve wrote many times about visual mediums: Don’t tell a story; show us, let us put everything together.
I always had a question when I’m watching this.: Why didn’t they show the second woman getting killed by Schwarzenegger? It would had probably been another great visual moment, showing us the Terminator doing his job. The answer probably is that it wasn’t that different from the first murder, which only consisted of the door being kicked down, the victim being shot in the head and boom, terminated. He’s not gonna be creative with the killings later on, which is a good thing or it would ended up as, well, some magic show. He is not gonna do something for the audience’s pleasure; that’s not the objective he’s supposed to be pursuing. If this was made today, the Terminator would probably set up some kind of elaborate Rube Goldberg murder booby trap inspired by the Saw movies.
Today, producers and studios have to ask about the ideas that have been came up with before, the ideas that would be recognized by the audience and the ideas that would give audiences even more pleasure than the past ones that would lead to easy box office dollars. Doing something original is tough because there’s nothing that proves that original ideas work. There’s no marketing information or market research that can confirm audiences’ interest towards those original ideas. That’s why we are in a battle right now. If something’s original, it probably comes from a place of inspiration which doesn’t necessarily pays. H-wood would have to wait for audiences to respond positively, saying, “Wow, this was great because it is new, fresh and it’s something that we all were sensing and was in the air. We need to see this kind of story.” Once it succeeds and is proven of its worth, H-wood is obviously going to copy the idea, but until then, good luck trying to create something original. Some would then choose to go with what’s come before, hence all those remakes and adaptations. Nevertheless, that’s another unrelated rant. For right now, let’s go back to the movie.
Sarah Connor looks in the phonebook and sees that her name is next. We had the information earlier from the cops and Paul Winfield, who you’ll notice from other 80s movies, that they were gonna him The Phonebook Killer. By the way, that dude that stands by the phonebooth always cracks me up. She’s on the phone and he’s acting like this huge perv staring her up and down. But, that was efficient as it also provides further a little sense of confusion about the killer’s identity, even though it’s rather clear. But Sarah doesn’t know at that moment. She’s looking everywhere as if she’s in danger. So, this is an example of us having information that main character (or one of them) doesn’t, and thus, we feel that fear. It’s awesome, it’s really great filmmaking.
It is also very confident filmmaking that isn’t afraid that the audience is going to get restless. That’s one great thing about older movies, even though they don’t look as crisped and look faded or dated. Those were the days before the Twitter Internet instant communication, ‘press a button and boom, information sent’ that kind of thing, before there’s this notion that you can’t sit in a theater and appreciate a movie that slowly unfolds because nowadays, it has to get to the action right away, especially so for action movies because everyone’s got ADD. Now there’s like a ‘myth (which is just a bunch of crap to me really)’ going on, everyone’s like “Oh, everyone’s got ADD, we can’t pay attention, we need everything right away.” No, go and sit down, watch an old movie and you’ll find that, “Hey, I don’t have ADD. I could just watch this and slowly be brought into the film.” Just like when I meet someone and I want to date or just hang out with this new friend, I’ll still have to learn about her (her name, age, religion, interests, etc.) slowly through a process. A movie’s very much like the same sort of experience. You go and watch it, meet the characters, you experience them in their world and, in terms of the screenplay and movie structure, usually between 15 to 30 minutes, there’s some sort of adventure that’s gonna kick start. There will be an inciting incident or a cause of event where the main character now has to fight, pursue or battle for something.
29 minutes into the movie and Sarah has entered the club where the first battle would take place. The Terminator train and the good guy on the horse gonna meet and, as we know, the good guy’s gonna rescue her from the train tracks. But, this train is not confined to the tracks; the Terminator’s gonna be after her non-stop and that’s the great part of the movie in that we feel that they’re never safe.
So, I just wish films are a little bit more confident and not so afraid of taking their time to let us get to know the characters, get to know people. I think that’s really one of the reasons that a lot of movies today don’t stick with us, they don’t really deal with real characters. They don’t go on journeys, we don’t discover who they are; we just want them getting in the jetstream, just taking off and speeding towards the end. It’s a fun ride, but it’s like taking a cross-country road trip with a stranger or taking a road trip on a bus or a plane and you never talk to anybody there. You’re just sitting there looking out the window. The scenery’s great but it could be a little bit more interesting if you talk to people and go through a journey of your own.
Soon, the music kicks back, Sarah makes a phone call and Schwarzenegger… Kept calling him Schwarzenegger. 
Well, he’s the Terminator in '84 anyway. For 4 or 5 years, until pretty much every movie he was in, from 1984 till 1989, he had to say the line, “I’ll be back.” If you look at Commando, The Running Man and Raw Deal, he’s always saying this line. It’s like it became his tagline. It wasn’t a natural part of the stories he’s in but part of his celebrity style. If he’s in a film, he has to say “I’ll be back.” In some movies, it worked, like The Running Man, but as it goes on, it becomes comedic, this self parodying and the line become a joke. I think it was only in maybe Total Recall at 1990 - another great Sci-Fi movie in general - that he did not say the line.
Then, we have Arnold (I think I’m just gonna call him by his character’s name from now), or the T-800 in a fight with the boyfriend (Matt Buchanan, played by Rick Rossovich) of Sarah’s roomate friend (Ginger Ventura, played by Bess Motta) and, naturally, machine versus man, there’s no chance of winning for the man. While this is going on, the movie cuts back and forth between him and his girlfriend who’s listening to this dated 80s phone on headphones - the original iPod - which were such a big deal when it came out in the late 70s and early 80s. The music playing here in this scene matches the film’s slow motion speed as the T-800 walks his way towards Sarah’s roomate, which is kinda neat. Also, we are given another set of low angled shots here, making the Terminator seems like he’s 7 feet tall again. If you have paid attention, you would notice that all of his shorts till this point were low angled closeups, going from the ground back up to his head, giving us an impression of this intimidating force. Also, no gore was shown; it’s not important, we want the effects. Instead, we see her arm twitching and a close up of her lifeless face, which is a lot more disturbing than a bunch of holes and blood.
The Terminator then turned towards the answering machine, which brings us to a scene that opens up into another payoff of a setup. Initially, when he was going to take out Sarah Connor at her house, we had thought that since he doesn’t know who Sarah was and we do, Sarah would be safe when he killed off the roommate instead because he’s just gonna skip to the next Sarah. Then, boom, Sarah calls into the answering machine, reveals her location and that comfort zone is removed. A nice shot after that as the T-800 crushes the headphones, showing his sheer weight as a robot underneath. It’s just a great non-verbal way to convey this information. The T-800 sees a picture of her, the cameras cuts away to the club and boom, we see that it is the Sarah he was looking for. It cuts to the Police for a while and the race is on once again.
So, now, she has her own little objective here. Before the reports of the second Sarah Connor murder, she was really just going about her life. Now, she has an objective - to become safe. Every character needs to be motivated in each scene and have his own personal objective and growth. We are all people. I love Lost because it respects every character, forcing everyone of them to become real for us the audience. They all have their backstory, they are all flesh and blood people, they are not just props. I love the background of this scene at the club; I love the dances. So, the Terminator comes in and he just crunches the fist of the guy who tried to stop him because he didn’t pay, which is a really great scene here because it is another visual message reminding us of his power. The Terminator doesn’t give a crap and just go on his search in the club while this 80s song is going on. Notice that the ceiling seems to be so low that it gave us that sense of intimidation from the T-800 again, especially with the constant close ups. As the T-800 was just about to pass by her, she ducks down and he coincidentally misses her.
I love how there’s this dynamic going on right at this moment. We the audience that Kyle’s the good guy, but Sarah doesn’t. Just rewatch this movie again, scene by scene and see how that information get the puzzle pieces into our brains. As the Terminator moves through the crowd, everyone’s just dancing away, swinging their arms everywhere in his path. Notice how after Kyle shot the T-800, the environment sound goes out, the intense score comes out, and the focus is on the Terminator or, rather, on Sarah who’s darting away from danger; she wasn’t expecting this guy. Love how the action goes down here, it’s right on her head. It’s so simple, yet it gets your heart pumping, though the neck movement for the Terminator is kinda weird here. Soon, the objective, Sarah Connor, gets trapped and we have the hero and villain fighting over here. It’s a great journey for her, she is but this weak, soft flower and yet, now she has to fight for her life.
Then, one of the most quotable lines in the franchise first appears here, “Come with me if you want to live,” said by Kyle Reese, which is the second line he has said after 36 minutes of this movie. First, he asked the cop what year it was and now, he said that all so famous line. It became popular because of the moment, because it just came off as cool. If this was made today, Reese would probaby look at the camera, position a cool pose and says the line like it’s from some corny parody of Dity Harry. It would be as if he’s trying to be cool - we don’t want that. This scene also marks the first time we get to see through the red tracking vision of the Terminator, thus getting to know the way he sees the world. A couple of years later, this similar process would be used in Predator - another great Schwarzenegger film - where we would see the heat vision. But, here in this movie, we get a vision that reflects more of the robotic aspect of the Terminator’s technology and I can’t really remember a movie before this one that uses this kind of effect. In Star Wars with C-3PO or R2-D2, they never let us see into their vision. So, this is another great way to connect us with the Terminator.
This is a really solid action sequence. What’s really great, in my point of view, is that it’s very real, there’s no green screen or wires used here, of which the latter is used in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and erased from the screen with computers. Many things in The Terminator is really being done, which is something you cannot find a lot of times in movies nowadays. In those old movies, stuntmen put their lives in danger and their bodies in harm’s way just to give us a little bit of entertainment. Harold Lloyd from the '20s or '30s, he was a silent film actor, kind of like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. You have probably seen a Harold Lloyd image where he’s hanging from a clock high above the building. He actually lost one of his fingers doing something with explosives in one of his films. These people put their lives on the line for our entertaining.
After the abovementioned famous line has been said, Kyle is finally going to start talking a lot. Despite that, notice that the character only speaks when he wants something or has an objective. After 40 minutes into the movie, we finally get the information about Kyle’s objective and understand it much clearer than before, when we only had hints about Kyle’s objective. “You’ve been targeted for termination” is just confirming what we already know; that the Terminator is after her for some reason. Another reminder of a key element of filmmaking is given in this sequence where the backstory information is given but while they are in conflict. In any genre of movie, whether horror, Sci-Fi or action, characters are fighting for what they want, not just there to talk about their favorite sports team or the condition of the weather. To sum up the current objectives in the sequence, Kyle wants Sarah to believe him that he is there to protect her; Sarah just wants to get out of that place, not knowing what’s going on and, apparently from later scenes, not believing what he’s saying. This is a little device that The Terminator tend to use - characters in tension while information is processed - though I believe the third installment might have used it as well.
How do you get the audience’s attention while providing information then? As seen in this sequence, you should do it through dramatic moments with characters fighting for what they want or, otherwise, with characters on the move, not sitting down and being too comfortable. You’ll notice in T2 when John Connor’s on the bike with the T-800, that’s when the T-800 tells him about the T-1000’s liquid metal nature, providing all the information. Here in The Terminator in this chase scene, they are in a race, so it keeps the pace up as well and thus, keep us hooked and paying attention. TV does this a lot. 24’s probably the best example. Any kind of TV show that would use cellphones to communicate most information would be the most boring show ever, but here in 24, they did it with Jack running around with him on the phone. The X-Files also did that with Mulder and Scully in the late 90s when cellphones became popular.
And finally, the vehicle comes to a stop after Kyle Reese loses the Police. The great thing about this moment is that we really want to hear everything he’s got to say because the whole movie has been so quiet and all visual. At this moment, the audience is right at the edge of their seat, listening carefully to his every word and believing him because we know it’s real; we saw him teleported through. Another great thing is that we were with Sarah on this journey from skepticism to belief. Sarah then bites Kyle, yet he expressed little emotions of pain even if he claimed to feel it. He’s been through war, so he doesn’t flinch like most of us would. “Terminators don’t feel pain; I do.” That’s another character-based ‘in the moment’ line.
In terms of a horror movie or any movie with a strong opponent, you make them look stronger by obviously showing us what they do, but when you just start talking about how powerful or scary they are off-screen, it increases the level of fear that we have whenever this opponent’s back on screen.
After this little conversation, the Terminator returns on screen and he seems more robotic than he did before. Just look at the make-up on his face, the texture, it’s very plastic at this moment, not to mention his movements, which seem to reveal his robotic nature more than ever than earlier in the movie and that is alright because now we already have the information that he’s a killer from the future instead of being confused about his human appearance, he doesn’t stop or feel remorse. Hence, in our minds, we connect these descriptions with the how the T-800 acts in the next few scenes. You can imaging Cameron was like, “Okay, Arnold, start making your movements more robotic from now on.”
A little more convincing and Sarah then started trusting Kyle a little bit and believing his story. If anyone really changes in this movie, it’s really both these characters really. Kyle hasn’t been able to experience this kind of peace that still exists in the past. He protects Sarah not just because it’s his job, but also because he has feelings for her, and he would, later on, really fall in love with her. As for Sarah, she started out as a weak, average girl just living her boring life as usual and then becomes a real warrior mother or and life-giver of someone who would save humanity. Even though she believes him now, I love the little twist later on that have Dr. Silberman logically convincing her into believing that Kyle’s crazy.
Any movie in general, the work in creating the characters for each respective universe should be just as thorough as it is in a novel. I kept using Lost as an example, but in just any kind of series that tells a long story, you can tell if a series that didn’t know where it is going before it even started from one that has a clear goal at the beginning, in which the latter, each episode and moment has a purpose. Back then, there were probably some series that were just greenlit once it has a great premise, thus exists from season to season without much of a purpose or goal and the creators kinda make it up as it goes along. If you are doing a story about the Terminator universe, you need to know about Skynet, how it got created and trace all the characters who are involved. So, if you’re an aspiring filmmaker or storyteller, treat every character with respect, figure out the tapestry, the web of relationships and how everyone is involved.
Kyle makes a reference here about the concentration camps that, later, we are gonna see in Terminator: Salvation when he gets kidnapped and taken there where they are making the T-800s. The inspiration here is that the robots are basically like the Nazis in World War II, who were rounding up humans and exterminating them, since the past can actually inspire the future. At this point, it’s roughly about the middle of the movie, about 48 minutes, leaving about another hour to go. By this point, we know what his overall mission is, we know what’s at stake and thanks to his explanation, we get a bigger picture of this universe, something that’s explored through the next three films, whether successfully or not. I really hope that Salvation is up to it. I don’t think anyone here could be expecting a lot more from the movie than me because there are so many significant points that should be explored in this fourth film.
Let’s take this sequence in the carpark here and analyze it a little. We have an action sequence that leads into it and an action sequence that leads out of it. What happened in the middle? What we had there is that sort of ‘reality television confession’ moment filled with character development. We the audience got to know more about Reese, and then Sarah in terms of what she’s gonna do, and we also got a bit more of a connection between the characters. It almost seems like if this movie was made today, that scene would have been cut in half because it was a little bit of an overcranker (it’s a film terminology for slow sequences, though it’s more often used for slow motion effects) and thus, the scene would be undercranked, speeding the scene up. Regardless, even though it might have a slow pace, we need this moment. Movies today don’t bother to do this. You could almost imaging this movie being screened in front of filmmakers today, they come to that scene and go, "It’s moving too slow, cut that scene where Kyle is talking to Sarah about the future in half. Get these basic stuff out and just get on with the car chase. The reason the Terminator is now more imposing is that Kyle explained what this thing is capable of, so the scene is rather necessary.
This is one of the major problems of H-wood right now. Again, it’s like there’s a thought occurring there that everyone has ADD and that they, the audience, can’t sit through this kind of moment when the truth is that those are the moments we all look forward to, those are the moments we need. When we care about the characters, we become more afraid of the opponent. In this case, the Terminator’s more scary to us after the explanatory scene and we start to explore our own humanity. You can’t help but wonder in this kind of movies about, "Oh, what would happen if I was in this kind of situation? What if this actually happens?
The next sequence at the Police station here is a great battle for sanity where Sarah kinda struggles to believe what Reese said while Doctor Silberman is totally sure that he is absolutely crazy. Then, the movie cuts away from the doctor’s interview with Sarah and moves on to the T-800. A question that could be raised here is, “Why wasn’t the interview shown?” Because the interview wasn’t that important. For one, we just got that information. Silberman is just going to get the same information Kyle gave Sarah in the car, so we don’t need to see it twice. You never need to have the same info presented twice in a movie. What we need, however, is a new perspective through Sarah’s point of view, which is what the movie has already done here with the doctor taking the story we have all just heard and telling her that it’s all just nonsense. If we haven’t seen the whole movie before, then a part of us would have probably bought that, that Kyle is crazy and his story was just nonsense.
As I mentioned, the movie cuts away to the Terminator for a while so that we could get an idea of his current activity, so that we know he didn’t just disappear and is just sitting around somewhere, relaxing. Here, the T-800 have to put on a pair of shades because his eyeball has been damaged, thus probably causing his vision to blur out or something. Hence, this leads up to the use of sunglasses in the following installments. Always, right at the beginning of the two follow up films, the T-800 always have to get a pair of sunglasses. Here in this movie, however, the sunglasses become part of the movie because it’s a natural part of the story. They are really important because they help to conceal the damage that have been done to the eye, to make him seem more human. In the second movie, however, it moves towards parody. It’s a whole genre life cycle, really.
Step 1: An inspiring, original movie comes out.
Step 2: Everyone copies it.
Step 3: The franchise fades out because everyone’s not interested in it anymore, they’ve seen all these copies.
Step 4: Either the genre/that type of story dies or it reinvents itself, usually through parody that makes fun of itself.
Terminator 2, which came out in 1991 after 7 years of action movies since the first installment, in a lot of ways, takes itself seriously but also plays on a lot of expectations of others towards the Terminator franchise, especially with Arnold Schwarzenegger being this bigger than life action hero with these catchphrases. He kinda gets the glasses right away at the beginning of the film, so if you are to go into the story, you would ask why someone would program T-800s to grab glasses. It’s almost like James told Arnold, “In the first movie, you have sunglasses, so in the second movie, other than human clothes, you must also have sunglasses.” Hence, there are really no practical reasons to do that other than to give a nod to the first film. But, more on that in the next review.
When you first watched The Terminator, you didn’t know what the exoskeleton looks like, so, piece by piece, we slowly saw how the Terminator looks so that in the end, it’s a huge payoff; we learned this big secret. In the second movie, it’s the T-1000 being liquid metal of which its nature is slowly revealed to us. That’s probably why T3 doesn’t really work because the T-X (I just like to call her the T-Hotty) isn’t that different, especially when she has powers similar to the T-800 and the T-1000. We have seen so many Terminator robots by then, we were expecting to be blown away even more. So, part of the problem with Terminator: Salvation might be that they are using robots with new and fresh designs to get us interested and drag us into the theater, not with character development.
As I was writing before I digress, the Terminator repairs himself and there are some quite gory but nice close ups here that just looks amazing; obviously the great work of Stan Winston who’s doing the effects for the movie. That shot just gets your imagination going, making you wonder about what the rest of the Terminator would look like under those pieces of flesh and skin. Notice again that the movie cuts back to Sarah and Kyle again, keeping all the horses in motion, so you know that, even though this scene is going on, the Terminator has continued his pursuit on Sarah, even if it’s off-screen. The T-800 might be the ultimate example for filmmakers to follow, in terms of him not being able to stop and consistently pursuing its objective. The best description of a movie I’ve ever heard might be that it should be a simple story with complex characters. In terms of The Terminator, the story here is quite simple, if you think about it: One woman who’s gonna give birth to the savior of humanity is targeted for termination by a robot while a human is sent to protect her. It’s a classic scenario - villain chasing after girl who’s protected by good guy hero.
I really love the interrogation moment because the doctor has his own clear objective, which involves proving Kyle to be insane, and just his tone and actions expresses a cocky attitude behind him. Every question he asks Kyle could almost be accompanied with the remark, “You’re crazy, you know that?” You could understand why he’s doing what he’s doing but you really hate him because we the audience know what Kyle said is true. There’s just this awesome dynamic going on where we, the audience, know what is really going on and see the characters growing and learning information. We know more than they do and part of us are, thus, kinda frustrated and desire for them to figure it out fast. Just to see the process of them getting to where we’re at is great, but, on the other hand, there’s also information we don’t have.
The digging of his eye was… disgusting at best. I still get the chills down my back as I watch this scene, it’s just totally creepy, yet, it’s also such a memorable moment. It comes off so naturally because it’s part of the story, because of who the Terminator is and what he needs to do - to look human and blend in but, at the same time, repair himself as well - so it’s not just a CGI light show done to just amaze us with these money shots. Early '80s were a big time when horror movies have a large usage of gore; you have A Nightmare On Elm Street with Freddy slashing and tearing everyone’s heart out and all and My Bloody Valentine with the miner. These movies just really push the boundaries of the amount of blood and gore the audience was expecting. Nevertheless, his skin still looks really fake in today’s times, the whole Terminator torso looks very rubbery. On the one hand, you could say it helps him to look more like a robot, but on the other, we already know that he is a robot from the scenes here. Regardless, the whole aspect for me is very endearing. The machine guns under the bed are awesome, though, of course, since he’s a Terminator, he’s not gonna sleep even during night times, so his assassination continues. He’ll find her; that’s what he does, that’s all he does.
Then, we return to the Police station, where we see the interrogation from where it ended just now, but now on a recorded video shown to the officers and Sarah. The doctor’s fascinated by Kyle and we get his point of view here. “I could make a career out of this guy.” Here, the movie takes itself very seriously instead of having all that self-referential jokes. The whole '90s Generation X sort of movement with the referencing of other movies and media-related items hasn’t happened yet at this point. One of the reasons this is so is because The Terminator is a very new idea, but maybe not the newest of ideas.
If you look at the credits, you’ll see there’s credit being paid to Harlan Ellison, who actually sued James Cameron (or whoever that is that owns the rights to the Terminator movies in the late '90s or early 2000) due to certain copyrights issues. James said that the Terminator idea was inspired by some of The Outer Limits episodes which Harlan Ellison had written, which are amazing episodes, they are really great. One is about a soldier from a future that comes back, trying to kill someone. I haven’t seen it in a bunch of years, so I don’t really remember the exact story. But, I think it’s like these two soldiers who are from the future fighting each other (I think they are both human, not sure if one of them is a robot), and then they kinda learn their lessons later on. It’s kind of goofy because they go into some kind of Leave It to Beaver house and then they kinda fight amongst the families. Then, there’s another episode called “Demon with a Glass Hand” about this guy from the future who is the savior of the human race. See those two episodes of The Outer Limits, “Demon with a Glass Hand” especially. So, as you can see, this movie could be easily considered as an inspiration from Harlan Ellison. Maybe the later installments didn’t credit him or something.
Finally, the classic dialogue moment of the movie arrives. Schwarzenegger says, “I’ll be back.” I guess the original line was “I’ll be right back.” “I’ll BRB!” This line was not done for show and to make us turn to each other in the theater and say, “Oh my god! That’s the line I’m gonna remember!” It just organically happened, having him said it simply because he’s gonna come back. Despite that, as soon as that was said, everyone’s saying “I’ll be back” for everything. Just as a movie could be created by inspiration and out of the occurrences around people, this line came out of an organic process. The character is a robot, so he’s gonna say lines that are very straightforward and not look like they were intended for the audience. However, one could argue about the reason the Terminator talks like he’s from Austria. So, if you’re writing out there, please, just please, don’t pay attention to us, the audience, give us the complete world; let us choose the lines and dialogues that are going to be remembered.
So, before the Terminator stormed the station, what happened? Kyle told the good doctor that the Terminator’s gonna come back, waste everyone in here and, eventually, get her. Hence, this is a payoff of that setup, not to mention that Reese had been talking about his power throughout a lot of scenes before this sequence, thus building up the tension that would all lead to this big payoff. So, if you want to create a villain that’s powerful, create one that will always be talked about in the movie; Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader, the Wicked Witch of the West, all of whom have been talked about while they are off-screen. This sequence is like the ultimate test for the Terminator to show us how strong this guy is; he takes the whole Police station without being significantly damaged. He is unstoppable. How does one protect Sarah if the whole station, even with their machines guns and body armor, could not do the job? Again, you got the great music playing here, the great usage of low angled shots and also the leather jacket, which is such a great outfit for the Terminator.
There was this movie with Orson Welles called The Third Man, probably created in the late '40s or '50s. He plays a character named Harry Lime and, in the entire movie (I don’t want to give away anything but), this Harry Lime character was talked about for like an hour and a half. So, if you want to create memorable or a larger than life character, have everyone talk about him for the entire movie and have him only be in a few scenes.
As Kyle helps Sarah escapes, there’s this kind of a synthesizer-new wave type of music (just born from the disco and punk age of music) playing here, which is kinda symbolic and doesn’t seem dated, but instead having that whole Skynet futuristic feel. It’s so well put together because it incorporates this modern day kind of tone, yet it also has this future robotic gears kind of feel, so this music really works.
After both characters escape and after another intense action sequence has ended, the movie has another window character, reality TV confession moment that would connect to the audience. Here, we learn about Kyle’s feelings about the future, about Sarah, what John told him about her, etc. In return, she’s in the process of imagining this future because she’s a complete believer now, absolutely believing that this future, as told to her by Kyle, could actually happen and that she’s the mother of this savior.
I know I’m jumping on a lot of different areas here and there but, hopefully, in this conversation, ideas are kept track of. Just like the characters, I cut away from one topic, making a setup that I’m gonna pay off when I come back. If, at the end of this, I missed talking about something, please post it in this thread and maybe I could talk about them in my Terminator 2 review.
Just to finish up talking about Schwarzenegger. This movie totally catapults him into superstardom and establishes his Hollywood legend. The original idea, however, was not for Arnold to be the Terminator. Kyle Reese was played by Michael Biehn, a great, awesome actor who I kinda wish that had a bigger career than he has. He just plays his characters very well, whether it’s in Aliens or The Abyss, of which both were directed by, you guess it, James Cameron. And Cameron had initially wanted to have Kyle as the Terminator as the idea was that Skynet wouldn’t make their (I can’t believe I’m using this phrase, but…) ‘robots in disguise’ stand out.
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