The Terminator is James Cameron’s first film, made a star of Arnold Schwarzenegger, is celebrating its 40th anniversary – there’s a 4K restoration out in cinemas – and I’ve never seen it. I’m not wholly ignorant of 1980s action films, it may surprise you to hear. I’ve seen Diehard. I know a single fella in a vest can see off an entire army. But Terminator passed me by and now I’m glad to have rectified that. It’s engrossing, suspenseful, has a personality all of its own and absolutely stands the test of time. That last scene with the crawling, whirring, clanking arm? Best scene ever.
Cameron, who would go on to make Aliens, Titanic and Avatar, was reportedly living out of his car when he sold the script to producer Gale Anne Hurd for $1. He made the sale on the condition that whoever financed it hired him to direct, as unproven as he was. (That said I now realise he had Piranha II: The Spawning under his belt.) She eventually raised $6 million and, as the film went on to make $78 million at the box office, I’m guessing it’s the best dollar she ever spent.
The plot, in a nutshell, is this: a killer cyborg, our Terminator (Schwarzenegger), is sent back in time from a future run by machines ‘that got smart’ and have turned Earth into a devastated nuclear landscape. (Always a devastated nuclear landscape, never lavender fields.) But there is still a pocket of human resistance and his job is to assassinate a young waitress, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton with a Suzi Quatro hairdo), because the machines know that her unborn son will one day lead the fight against them. (What they don’t consider is the fact that if she is eliminated there’d be no need to eliminate her – look up the Hitler murder paradox – but the film takes the prudent course of simply ignoring all that.)
It opens with great flair. It’s night-time in LA and the scene is a deserted school yard. Electricity crackles, a cat yowls, windows rattle and suddenly a naked man materialises. He is a remarkable physical specimen. Each of his pecs is bigger than my head. This is our Arnie. He has maybe only ten lines, but somehow owns the entire film. He is mostly required to brutally slam into anything that gets in his way. But he carries himself with a central stillness and has a look in his eyes that is depthless. It’s the kind of charisma that would later be less apparent in, say, Jingle All The Way. Elsewhere, another naked man lands. This is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), who is also from the future but is a human soldier who has been dispatched to protect Sarah. How this time portal works and who gets to use it remains a mystery, as does Arnie’s acquisition of munitions, jackboots and an entire wardrobe of studded leather gear. But let’s not be pedantic.
Sarah is, of course, initially oblivious, and part of the fun is following her to the grim realisation that something horrible is on her trail. Eventually, she goes on the run with Kyle while Schwarzenegger relentlessly pursues them, despite losing an eye and having his forearm incinerated down to his metallic skeleton. It’s a standard monster movie when it comes down to it, but brilliantly done.
There are, perhaps, too many car chases and shoot-outs and aside from Schwarzenegger, the acting can be ropey – but it’s still the brisk, raw, adrenaline-fuelled story-telling you don’t often get any more. Unlike most narratives today it tells it straight and isn’t weighed down by flashbacks (so lazy). It has old school special effects, true, but it also has old-school firepower. The final scene is one of cinema’s finest and they should have left it there. The umpteen sequels are pointless, I’m led to believe. Never mind. I may try RoboCop next.
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