Classic Movies: Terminator by T.E. Hodden Okay, let’s address the elephant in the room: After several sequels, two different reboots, a television series, comics, action figures, and a computer game crossover with Robocop, there is nothing new to be said about the Terminator. I could possibly put the movie in the context of the influence it would have on the industry, how James Cameron’s efficient and exciting direction, and his relationships with cast and crew, would lead to many of them reuniting for the seminal Aliens (and how those two films basically shaped what Sci-fi movies would look like for decades). Or I could talk at length about how the story structure was influenced by the Outer Limits episodes Soldier and Demon With a Glass Hand, both by Harlan Ellison. I could certainly talk about how the film made Arnold Schwarzenegger a household name, and the icon of eighties action movies. I could talk about how it landed at the perfect time to ride on the wave of home video, and became one of the absolute mainstays of VHS culture.
pressure are pure thriller. Brilliantly, the information we are given is just enough to make us do some of the work ourselves.
It’s even the movie that sets Bill Paxton on his way to being the man killed by more of Hollywood’s coolest monsters than anybody else (a mantle I hope he wears with pride!)
Pieces are laid out, clue by clue, point by point, often with sparse dialogue, showing rather than telling.
But I don’t want to do the film a disservice, because, although there is a lot to be said to why the Terminator became a surprisingly important and influential movie in the history of cinema, it often easy to forget that it is also a really good movie in its own right.
Arnie steps out of his lightning-ball and moves with a cold and ruthless efficiency, which in hindsight is obviously because he’s a machine, but… there’s also a ruthlessness to Michael Biehn’s arrival, his stealing a tramp’s trousers, and the cat and mouse game he plays with the Police. Biehn’s humanity is given in a few clues: the few seconds of bewilderment, when he arrives, wide eyed at the city, and the scars visible on his back.
For a start, it’s a wonderful piece of story-telling. Those iconic, opening glimpses of the warravaged future, and the on screen text about the future’s final battle being fought in the present establish the movie’s sci-fi credentials, but the slow boil pacing, and the gradually building
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