Terminator: The Sci-Fi Classic Forty Years On

The best thing about this first movie is that it adheres to the classic view of futuristic robots, cold, callous machines that are bent on one objective

One of the franchises that has suffered in the modern media meat grinder is the Terminator series. In honor of the forty-year anniversary of this classic movie, which debuted on October 26, 1984, I’m going to review the franchise.

The quality of the first film has stood the test of time, comfortably launching more movies and spin-off series than the Alien Franchise. It provides a point of comparison when evaluating the garbage audiences have been forced to watch in recent years. It also gives us a very sensible perspective on AI.

The best thing about this first movie is that it adheres to the classic view of futuristic robots, cold, callous machines that are bent on one objective. And they’ll do anything to achieve that objective, no matter how horrific. There’s none of this nonsense about the machines secretly housing feelings inside their synthetic shells. There are no robots like David from the Alien franchise, who does things for no other reason beyond bitterness towards his creators, which is something he shouldn’t feel in the first place.

Things are kept simple. The machine has orders. It carries out the orders. This is why robots are terrifying and why The Terminator is considered both a sci-fi and a horror classic.

I also want to point out that The Terminator is short compared to movies today. Longer is not always better. If anything, a shorter run time implies a more concise story, which is precisely what it provides.

After the future war

The movie opens with a futuristic war. Machines are running over skulls, implying that humanity has been all but wiped out. We’re told via a brief caption that robots and humans have been at war and that the final battle of this war will not be fought in the past but the present. In this case, that’s 1984.

After this grotesque image of the future, the movie rewinds the clock to a random worker, who sees flashes of lightning around him and flees. The Terminator is revealed.

The Terminator stands up and goes to find some clothes, which he quickly gathers by attacking some of the local riff raff. RIP Bill Paxton.

Next, the audience is shown a homeless man, who also sees a random barrage of lightning, and Kyle Reese appears. He does not enter the present with as much grace as the Terminator and is quickly chased by the police. He eventually escapes from his pursuers, but not before grabbing one of their shotguns. Both the Terminator and Kyle go in search of a phone booth—remember those?—and look up the name Sarah Connor. They rip the page with the names from the phone book and begin their pursuit.

When Sarah Connor enters the story, she’s working as a waitress.

When the audience first sees her, she is having a bad day. One of the waitresses tries to cheer her up by asking who’s gonna care in a hundred years? — a little bit of irony to kick us off. Sarah sees on the local news that another woman, also named Sarah Connor, has been killed. She doesn’t think much about this until later on.

Sarah returns to her apartment, where the audience is introduced to her roommate, Ginger. She decides to go to the movies while Ginger stays home with her boyfriend, Matt. Stopping at a local bar, Sarah finds out that a second woman named Sarah Connor has been murdered. She then puts two and two together. She tries to use the bar’s phone to call Ginger, but it’s broken, so she leaves. While on the sidewalk, she notices a man following her (it’s Kyle) and she rushes into a nightclub to hide.

The details that make a difference

Here is a small moment in the film that works especially well: Even though it’s hard to notice, the camera shows Kyle looking into the club as he passes Sarah, who is staring at him through the glass, which implies he knew she was there.

I point this out because modern films would just have Kyle show up randomly later, hoping to build suspense, and leave the audience to wonder how he knew where Sarah was. It’s little details like this that make many of the older movies much better than what audiences are forced to watch today.

Sarah, believing she’s given Kyle the slip, goes to the club’s phone and calls Ginger, but unfortunately, Ginger has already been killed by the Terminator. Here’s another little thing I want to compliment about the film. Matt, Ginger’s boyfriend, actually has a pretty decent fight with the Terminator. He jumps out of bed in his speedo—oh, the eighties—and gives the robot a good show. Of course, he doesn’t win, but I was still rooting for him.

Sarah leaves a message on the answering machine—again, remember those—and foolishly says what club she’s hiding in. The Terminator hears the message and races off to find her. Meanwhile, Sarah calls the cops, who tell her to stay put, so she finds a seat and waits.

The Terminator obviously reaches the club first and begins looking for her. It doesn’t take him long to spot Sarah sitting at a table. He points a gun, the laser aimed at her forehead, and is about to fire when Kyle appears and blows the robot away with a shotgun.

The robot gets up and begins to shoot at Kyle, while Sarah runs for the door. The robot is almost able to catch her, but Kyle again blasts it with the shotgun. This time, Sarah sees the machine get up and is horrified. Kyle then says the famous line, “Come with me if you want to live,” and makes Sarah climb into a car with him.

What follows is a car chase, and Kyle eventually hides his vehicle in a parking garage. Throughout the chase and while inside the parking garage, he slowly tells her what’s going on. This was another clever screenwriting choice. It doesn’t explain the backstory all in one dump but breaks it up between two scenes and multiple action sequences. We’ll discuss what he tells Sarah next time.