Since Terminator: Genisys is coming out, I figured I'd do an analysis of the Terminator.
Story:
The Terminator is about a machine that wants to stop a mother from delivering a child that lives through a tough life where he fights a war vs machines and goes to their military base nearly destroying them, prior to the machines sending a lone cyborg back in time to kill his mother, the main character of the story.
It's a sci fi classic story.
*****/*****
Style
This was such an interesting classic. It's a little beat over your head with the tech noir neon sign, in addition to having a story that's basically spelled out for you, but Sarah Connor as the femme fatale was a good choice. It may even be a reverse police story as there's no detectives and the police are obstacles in this story, which I may get to.
It's part sci fi. It's part romance. It's part chase film, a la the Driver or Smokey and the Bandit.
Watching Nick of WeLiveFilm's analysis of Back to the Future, I
couldn't help but think of Terminator as well while watching it with
chase scenes and time travel of the 80s before he mentioned it as well.
*****/*****
Action:
It's a little cheap at how the Terminator can't die or react other than with special effects when he's shot, but it's different.
It sorta reminds me of Chappie now where they just kill everybody no selling everything shooting up entire places.
The scene where he just runs the car through the police station is epic.
Suspense should be added to these scenes as there's a bit of terror as Sarah runs from the robot, afraid of how to destroy it, in every scene. Great job by Linda Hamilton!
*****/*****
Themes:
There's a fear of things different in this film.
Xenophobia,
Mechaphobia
Corporatephobia.
Fears of Nazis, Japanese, Russians, Cubans and other people making nuclear bombs to destroy you.
The fact that the Japanese economy in addition to the German were developing better steel factories were indicative of how relevant the end scene of the film was where the Terminator gets destroyed by another machine.
The idea of a corporation making nukes to make money that can destroy the world. The fact that there's. This sets up a lot of Paul Verehoeven's superior original classic RoboCop.
*****/*****
The acting:
Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese really should've been associated with the greats such as Martin Scorsese's Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola's Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman in general. One of the best portrayals ever as the military paranoid Kyle Reese, who seems to be this scary unlikeable guy, who you don't know anything about in the film prior to seeing him shoot the other dude, who is later revealed to be a cyborg assassin. Side note on how no one has to explain how slow the Terminators fight or walk/run.
And Sarah Connor goes from this character that Cyberdyne makes just like a Terminator machine, fake bland and suburban white trash perfect to pulling off cool lines such as "You're terminated, Motherfucker!" That's just great.
There's regretably not a lot for the police officers to do, but they seem just as concerned for saving Sarah as Reese, albeit they just don't believe in this fantastical story about futuristic robots trying to kill everyone.
*****/*****
Casting:
Everyone was good.
And Arnold really broke out as the Terminator, doing whatever he could to look the part, not to mention the accent.
He seemed to be an action movie star because of this unique film, despite the great performances everyone overlooks by the rest of the cast.
*****/*****
Overall, a very unique film. It's not the most realistic where you have the existence of time travel, the improper use of time travel, as the machines can't pinpoint where to find Sarah Connor, or don't target a better place in the timeline to kill off her or the John Connor line, and a Terminator robot surviving truck explosions. And maybe there's something Rob Ager can tell me about Robot AI that's not accurate, which doesn't have to be in a movie.
*****/*****
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