The Terminator 30
The Terminator turns 30 today (26th October, 2014) and it is still as well oiled and relentless a film as the titular villain.
James Cameron has remained one of the best directors in blockbuster cinema ever since he made The Terminator in 1984, and you can see why. His eye for innovation and action were as sharp as anyone from the beginning.
The Terminator is a relentless movie that rarely gives you a moment to breathe, and when it does Cameron does some fantastic world building that I forget about until I watch the film again. It always surprises me how much of the movie is set in the future with Reese and while you can feel the restrictions of the budget and technology of the time, watching today, the sequences are super effective emotionally, setting up the dismal and dangerous future that awaits Sarah Connor and her son. Cameron also uses flashbacks wonderfully to build his world without having to resort to large chunks of exposition, instead building it into an action set piece. Cameron is a master at exposition through action, and even though Reese does have a couple of monologues wedged in there it’s almost always between/during shotgun blasts at the Terminator.
Cameron keeps the set pieces abundant here and does a fine job of mixing things up to keep us engaged. It’s not all shoot outs and car chases, though there is a lot of that, but Cameron is able to build tension in almost every scene with the ominous threat of the Terminator hanging over everything. That tension makes even the simplest of scenes feel like the chase is always on, and it mostly is. Linda Hamilton deserves a lot of credit for being a great audience proxy as the mayhem keeps ratcheting up around her. Cameron’s ability to also capture both the cat and the mouse in many of the action frames also goes a long way to grounding the set pieces, and he is already very good at that here in his first feature. Cameron’s effective ability to shoot action this way is almost jarring as very few filmmakers today are able to pull this off.
finale is also so effective dueto the incredible work by Stan Winston and his team. Sure, the stuff with the skeleton isn’t 100% perfect, but it is really damn close to being seamless. I am still impressed by a few of the
Another interesting observation watching The Terminator again after all these years is just how closely Cameron stuck to the formula when he made T2. You’ve got the shotguns, the dueling search for a Connor, semi-trucks, car chases, Terminator surgery, the Sarah/Reese “crazy” videos, the warehouse finale; it isn’t really a complaint as he makes things feel fresh in the sequel, but surprising how traditionally “sequel” it is all the same. “Give them the same thing, only more!”
Speaking of finales, Cameron does the unkillable villain as good as anyone, and the Terminator coming back over and over again still gets to me after many repeat viewings. The
shots wondering how the hell they got the robot to do a certain move here and there. Even the more aged looking work is still a marvel today, as the Terminator repairing himself looks pretty awesome even if it doesn’t meet todays visual effects standards.
We also can’t talk about The Terminator without talking about the great turn by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I feel like a lot of people like to qualify why he is so good here, “he doesn’t talk,” “he just has to be big,” but there is so much more to him here than that. Schwarzenegger has a presence that is undeniable and his face is terrifying when he goes into “kill crazy” mode. The way Schwarzenegger sells the Terminator getting shot and just powering through, hitting all of the comedy beats Cameron gives him. You can’t give him enough credit for the physicality he brings to the part throughout.
The Terminator had been a hardened classic by the time it’s sequel came out, but after 30 years it is impressive just how strongly it still holds up against most of the other blockbuster you throw up against it.
by Zac Oldenburg
