The Terminator
WITH the latest attempt to reanimate the action hero career of Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator Genisys opening at cinemas this weekend, it feels like the time is right for a look back at the very first instalment in that lucrative sci-fi franchise.
The Terminator was a genuine game changer when it appeared in 1984. Directed by a young and hungry James Cameron, before bloated budgets and sunken ships diverted his creative attention, it was a cheap and cheerful production buzzing with bright ideas. Low budget but high concept, it remains a wildly entertaining experience to this day. So much so in fact that Terminator Genisys director Alan Taylor seems to spend that entire film doffing a cap to it.
The original story traces the tale of a lively robotic organism (the Terminator itself, played with a charmingly wooden veneer throughout by future governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger) who is disguised as a human and sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill the woman who will become the mother of the leader of the human resistance in the future battle at the end of the world.
That ordinary woman is Sarah Connor (played brilliantly by Linda Hamilton). Her humdrum existence is changed forever when she encounters the cold-eyed killer from the future but, thankfully for her, Kyle Reese (played by Michael Biehn) has also been sent back in time as her protector. He reveals that Skynet is coming, an artificial intelligence system that will spark off a nuclear holocaust, and that they want her dead as they know her unborn son will lead the fight against them in that future battle.
Together Reese and Sarah must battle the robot because if Sarah dies the human race effectively dies with her. Cameron takes this basic sci-fi premise and runs with it, making a tense and shockingly original science-fiction fable in the process.
Watching it today the special effects may seem painfully basic – the money involved wouldn't cover the morning coffee bill for the supporting cast on Genisys, I imagine – and the visuals may lean closer to 80s video quality than full widescreen glory but it's wildly inventive stuff and it continues to repay repeat viewings. Not something you can say about every low-budget movie from 1984.
Co-written and co-produced by Gale Anne Hurd, it's a genuinely exciting thrill ride of a movie delivered with style and bravado. It's so sharp you won't even find yourself asking how the "machines" have actually risen from the ashes of a future war or wonder just how anyone actually invented time travel in the first place. Well not much anyway.
If Cameron's direction suggests a future blockbuster film-maker, his script also deserves praise. Taut and rammed with neat one-liners, he cranks up the tension in the situation that faces Sarah and Kyle as they try, with increasing desperation, to see off the ruthless Terminator.
It is, rightly, remembered as the film that gave the muscle-bound Arnie his most iconic screen role but it's also a film that changed science fiction movies forever.
