The Terminator (1984)

So to end off this month I decided to watch a favourite of mine. But I haven’t seen “The Terminator” in a long time, at least 5 years. And I am filled with memories of awesome action, great effects and a thrilling story. Though I do slightly fear that watching this movie now, I might be disappointed. I fear the action might be tacky, effects will not hold up and the story be as predictable as a straight line. More details after you click "Read more".
If you don’t know the story of Terminator, you probably haven’t seen it, and if you haven’t seen it, you should stop reading this and get your hands on this movie and watch it. But if you are still here and reading, let me quickly wrap up the story. Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is being chased by two people from the future. One’s a cybernetic organism whose sole goal is to have Sarah dead, and the other is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) whose sole goal is to keep Sarah alive.

T100 is preforming surgery on himself.

Let me start with the special effects. Even though this was made back in the 80’s, it sort of holds up. I mean, it isn’t hard to spot out the real Arnold from the fake one when he pulls out his eye. But holy smokes is it close enough to the real deal. I almost wanted to believe that whole scene is just Arnold and not a fake. The other scene I want to bring up is when The Terminator, when his skin is burned off, is facing off with Kyle in the machine factory. As fake and tacky as that looks, it is just amazing they pulled that off. Biehn really acts amazing to pull off Kyle actually battling T100.

I can’t go and not talk about Arnold. He is just perfect for this role. There aren’t many lines, but they are all memorable from “Give me your clothes, now!” to “I’ll be back”. But he has this weird aura around him when he plays The Terminator. It is almost creepy, you know he is evil and just wants to kill everyone that gets in his way. He keeps this stone cold and serious attitude throughout the movie, which is different from a lot of his other ones. He might not be the Arnold we love, but he is the Arnold we remember.

To this day, The Terminator has one of the greatest action sequences, in my opinion. It is just guns, guns and more bloody guns. There are a few explosions but it is nothing compared to all the gunfire and all the glass that gets shattered. It all starts when T100 walks into the gun shop, picks out a whole array of guns for his disposable. And it doesn’t end until all the ammo is finished. I mean everything is shot, glasses, windows, doors and even humans! This movie is brutal, but amazing.

Kyle and Sarah have a deeper history than Sarah thinks.

If this movie was a cake, the last ten minutes isn’t the icing on the top, but the gorgeous model in it, wearing a banner “Happy Birthday”. The Terminator is now just the shell, and both Kyle and Sarah are trapped in a machine shop. There is just this hunter mood that fills the movie with the tension that is built up already throughout the whole movie. As the T100 slowly creeps up to Sarah, the horror that Sarah must be thinking is increasing. All the way until she presses the button to squeeze T100 and says the greatest line in this whole movie, “You’re terminated, fucker”. BAM T100 is non-functional, Sarah lives on and the paradox lives on again.

I can keep on watching this movie, it does not get old. The action is awesome, the effects live on in this weird nostalgic way and the story is just amazing. Every time I see this, I get goose bumps from the creepy tension from T100. It is great feeling when you watch a movie and you feel like you are getting hunted and feel what the characters feel. Even though this isn’t an Arnold film, I still think of The Terminator when anyone says Arnold Schwarzenegger. Also a Happy birthday to that awesome Austrian man.

Arnold Rating:
One-liners: Very few, but all great. “I’ll be back”. But I still find Sarah’s last words to T100 before she kills him to be the best of the whole movie.
Action: Lots and lots of it, all filled with simple gun shoot outs. It’s like a western but in the 80’s based characters from 2020.