THE TERMINATOR [1984] review
April 23, 2009 · Print This Article
“Come with me if you want to live.” ”You must survive, or I will never exist.” ”It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with.” It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.” Iconic movies have iconic quotes. Those are just a few from THE TERMINATOR. Aya and I are rewatching T1 and T2, and maybe even T3 in preparation for the upcoming TERMINATOR SALVATION.
T1 has that gritty look that 1980s thriller/sci-fi movies have. BLADE RUNNER perhaps started that look. I often feel current movies are too polished looking. Action and sci-fi movies are especially guilty of this, falling into video game realms. The action in T1 is all very believable, assuming you are on board with the premise of course of a cyborg and a man coming from the future to kill/protect a woman in the present. What I mean is that none of the set pieces are over the top. Everything makes sense and is not gratuitous, the one thing that was not totally necessary was the Terminator driving a huge fuel truck into a car Sarah Connor was trapped in. He could have just walked over.
The simpleness and deliberateness of the Terminator’s pursuit of Sarah Connor is what makes film great. It creates a great sense of fear and dread. Normally, being in the middle of a police station one would be in the safest place around. The thought that something can get at you in such a safe place is what makes the menace of the Terminator so effective.
Then all iconic movies must have an iconic score, but I realized the theme we associate with the Terminator franchise was not so developed in T1, and that weird sound effect when a Terminator enters a room to your surprise is totally absent in T1. Also, the glowing blue ball of light signaling the arrival of someone from the future is not in T1, all you see is a few lightning bolts and the Terminator/person arrives off camera.
I love how T1 ends in a sad, poetic note, but with a glint of hope.
It is truly a perfect analog action/sci-fi/thriller movie, and no better film has ever been made to watch on a Friday night.
RELATED POSTS:- ROMANCING THE STONE [1984] review
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- TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY [1991] review
- QUANTUM OF SOLACE [2008] review
- THE ENFORCER [1976] review
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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[...] THE TERMINATOR is a sci-fi masterpiece. So incredibly simple and focused, and entirely gimmick free. I now think that anytime you introduce a kid into a movie franchise, that is the point of its failure, or at the very least, its fall into gimmick. For comparison, T1 had ZERO one-liners (at least no lame ones Arnold), while T2 was chuck full of them and lines I perhaps thought were badass when I was 17, I know cringed at. [...]