The Terminator (1984)
The Terminator is a 1984 American science fiction action film directed by James Cameron. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, a cyborg assassin sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), whose unborn son will one day save mankind from extinction by Skynet, a hostile artificial intelligence in a post-apocalyptic future. Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) is a soldier sent back in time to protect Sarah. The screenplay is credited to Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd. Co-writer William Wisher Jr. received a credit for additional dialogue.
Filming, which took place mostly at night on location in Los Angeles, was delayed because of Schwarzenegger’s commitments to Conan the Destroyer (1984), during which Cameron found time to work on the scripts for Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and Aliens (1986). The film’s special effects, which included miniatures and stop-motion animation, were created by a team of artists led by Stan Winston and Gene Warren Jr. Defying low pre-release expectations, The Terminator topped the United States box office for two weeks, eventually grossing $78.3 million against a modest $6.4 million budget.
Plot.
Two beings arrive in 1984 Los Angeles, having time traveled from 2029. One is a cybernetic assassin known as the Terminator hunting a woman named Sarah Connor. The other is a human soldier named Kyle Reese intent on stopping it. The Terminator systematically kills women bearing its target’s name whose addresses it finds in a telephone directory. It tracks the last Sarah Connor, its actual target, to a nightclub, but Reese rescues her. The pair steal a car and escape with the Terminator pursuing them in a police car. As they hide in a parking lot, Reese explains to Sarah that an artificially intelligent defense network known as Skynet, created by Cyberdyne Systems, will become self-aware in the near future and trigger a global nuclear war in order to exterminate the human species. Sarah’s future son John will rally the survivors and lead a successful resistance movement against Skynet and its army of machines.
On the verge of the Resistance’s victory, Skynet sent the Terminator back in time to kill Sarah before John is born to forestall the Resistance’s formation. The Terminator is an efficient and relentless killing machine with perfect voice-mimicking ability and a powerful metal endoskeleton covered by living tissue that disguises it as human.
Reese and Sarah are apprehended by police after another encounter with the Terminator. The Terminator attacks the police station, killing all present while hunting Sarah. Reese and Sarah escape, steal another car and take refuge in a motel, where they assemble pipe bombs and plan their next move. Reese admits that he has adored Sarah since John gave him a photograph of her, and that he traveled through time not only to save her, but because he fell in love with her from the photograph.
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The Terminator locates Sarah by killing and impersonating her mother when Sarah, unaware of its voice-mimicking ability, calls her and divulges her location. Realizing this, she and Reese escape in a pickup truck while it chases them on a motorcycle. In the ensuing chase, Reese is wounded by gunfire while throwing pipe bombs at the Terminator. Sarah knocks the Terminator off its motorcycle but loses control of the truck, which flips over. The Terminator, now bloodied and badly damaged, hijacks a tank truck and attempts to run down Sarah, but Reese slides a pipe bomb onto the tanker’s exhaust pipe, causing an explosion that burns the flesh from the Terminator’s endoskeleton. It pursues them into a factory, where Reese activates machinery to confuse it. He jams his final pipe bomb into its midsection, blowing it apart at the cost of his life, as the explosion kills him and injures Sarah.
Filming.
Filming for The Terminator was set to begin in early 1983 in Toronto, but was halted when producer Dino De Laurentiis applied an option in Schwarzenegger’s contract that would make him unavailable for nine months while he was filming Conan the Destroyer. During the waiting period, Cameron was contracted to write the script for Rambo: First Blood Part II, refined the Terminator script, and met with producers David Giler and Walter Hill, There was limited interference from Orion Pictures. Two suggestions Orion put forward included the addition of a canine android for Reese, which Cameron refused, and to strengthen the love interest between Sarah and Reese, which Cameron accepted. To create the Terminator’s look, Winston and Cameron passed sketches back and forth, eventually deciding on a design nearly identical to Cameron’s original drawing in Rome.
Winston had a team of seven artists work for six months to create a Terminator puppet; it was first molded in clay, then plaster reinforced with steel ribbing. These pieces were then sanded, painted and then chrome-plated. Winston sculpted reproduction of Schwarzenegger’s face in several poses out of silicone, clay and plaster.
The sequences set in 2029 and the stop-motion scenes were developed by Fantasy II, a special effects company headed by Gene Warren Jr. A stop-motion model is used in several scenes in the film involving the Terminator’s skeletal frame. Cameron wanted to convince the audience that the model of the structure was capable of doing what they saw Schwarzenegger doing. To allow this, a scene was filmed of Schwarzenegger injured and limping away; this limp made it easier for the model to imitate Schwarzenegger.
One of the guns seen in the film and on the film’s poster was an AMT Longslide pistol modified by Ed Reynolds from SureFire to include a laser sight. Both non-functioning and functioning versions of the prop were created. At the time the movie was made, diode lasers were not available; because of the high power requirement, the helium–neon laser in the sight used an external power supply that Schwarzenegger had to activate manually. Reynolds states that his only compensation for the project was promotional material for the film.
In March 1984, the film began production in Los Angeles. Cameron felt that with Schwarzenegger on the set, the style of the film changed,
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explaining that “the movie took on a larger-than-life sheen. I just found myself on the set doing things I didn’t think I would do – scenes that were just purely horrific that just couldn’t be, because now they were too flamboyant.” Most of The Terminator’s action scenes were filmed at night, which led to tight filming schedules before sunrise. A week before filming started, Linda Hamilton sprained her ankle, leading to a production change whereby the scenes in which Hamilton needed to run occurred as late as the filming schedule allowed. Hamilton’s ankle was taped every day and she spent most of the film production in pain.
Home media.
The Terminator was released on VHS and Betamax in 1985. The film performed well financially on its initial release. The Terminator premiered at number 35 on the top video cassette rentals and number 20 on top video cassette sales charts. In its second week, The Terminator reached number 4 on the top video cassette rentals and number 12 on top video cassette sales charts. In March 1995, The Terminator was released as a letterboxed edition on Laserdisc. The film premiered through Image Entertainment on DVD, on September 3, 1997. IGN referred to this DVD as “pretty bare-bones … released with just a mono soundtrack and a kind of poor transfer.” Through their acquisition of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment’s pre-1996 film library catalogue, MGM Home Entertainment released a
special edition of the film on October 2, 2001, which included documentaries, the script, and advertisements for the film. On January 23, 2001, a Hong Kong VCD edition was released online. On June 20, 2006, the film was released on Blu-ray by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in the United States, becoming the first film from the 1980s on the format. In 2013, the film was re-released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on Blu-ray, with a new digitally remastered transfer from a 4K restoration by Lowry Digital and supervised by James Cameron, which features improved picture quality, as well as minimal special features, such as deleted scenes and a making-of feature. These are the exact same special features that have been carried over from previous Blu-ray releases.
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Release.
Orion Pictures did not have faith in The Terminator performing well at the box office and feared a negative critical reception. At an early screening of the film, the actors’ agents insisted to the producers that the film should be screened for critics. Orion only held one press screening for the film. The film premiered on October 26, 1984. On its opening week, The Terminator played at 1,005 theaters and grossed $4.0 million making it number one in the box office. The film remained at number one in its second week. It lost its number one spot in the third week to Oh, God! You Devil. Cameron noted that The Terminator was a hit “relative to its market, which is between the summer and the Christmas blockbusters. But it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than the other way around.” The Terminator grossed $38.3 million in United States and Canada and $40 million in other territories for a total worldwide of $78.3 million.Cast:
- Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator
- Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese.
- Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor
- Paul Winfield as Ed Traxler
- Lance Henriksen as Vukovich
- Bess Motta as Ginger
- Rick Rossovich as Matt
- Earl Boen as Dr. Silberman, a criminal psychologist.