terminator

Director James Cameron had just stumbled out of “Piranha: Part II – The Spawning” when he finally
managed to scrape together enough interested parties to film his science fiction thriller, “The
Terminator.”

Actor and bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger had just stumbled out of “Conan the Destroyer”
when he was hired to play a ruthless killing machine in the science fiction epic, “The Terminator.”

In other words, “The Terminator” came along at just the right time for both of them.

This revolutionary 1980s science fiction extravaganza chronicles the visceral story of a woman who
is suddenly attacked by a muscular dude trying to kill her with all manner of ordinance. Before she
even has time to think, a young man intercepts her and puts himself in harm’s way to keep her safe.

Actress Linda Hamilton quickly discovers from her protector, Michael Biehn, that this murdering
tower of muscle is an android sent back in time to kill her because she is the future mother of the
leader of the resistance, John Connor, who is destined to lead humanity against Skynet, a
supercomputer that attained sentience and started a nuclear war in the near future.

With “flashbacks” to the future, where the humans hold a thin line against the armies of terminators
and a nonstop suspense-fest in the present time setting, “The Terminator” is one of the few films
that honestly keeps the viewer on the edge of the seat. Biehn and Hamilton sell this movie, despite
its implausible premise, and that’s always what a great science fiction movie has required, actors
who believe in what they are doing.

Biehn’s fear of Schwarzenegger’s robotic persona is authentically driven. He really sells it with an
immediacy that is palpable. Camerson manages to make the human protagonists feel 100 percent
vulnerable. There is never the impression that they are luckier than the average bystander or
more powerful simply because they are the main characters. In the world of the Terminator,
everyone is on equal footing and everyone is all too easily expendable and that’s what makes this
movie so powerful.

I could talk about special effects, but what’s the point? What matters is story and “The Terminator”
has that in spades. Filmed at the cusp of the computer revolution, the film asks the hard question:
"Will humanity's obsession with technology be its very downfall?"

Although the future sequels prove to be very good films in their own right, they never were able to
wholly recapture the raw, gritty and all-too-real sense of threat and danger created by the original
film, trading up the seriousness and hauntingly callous violence for some lighter laughs and comic-
style action thrown into the mix.

The original Terminator is forever the biggest threat and the best of the series.