Space 1979 Franchise Fatigue 2: The one that had to be ignored by its sequels

 

Title: The Terminator

What Year?: 1984

Classification: Mashup/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: Ow, My Brain!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

In considering the lineup for this series, the real surprise was that there were no surprises, outside of the choice of Raiders of the Lost Ark to open it. I already had a good idea what “franchise” movies I wanted to cover when I first made an exception for “Trek 1”, and little if anything changed in the meantime. What I did quickly run up against were the problems that had kept me away from franchise movies in the first place. To start with, I had to work with a rating system calibrated for obscure and usually low-budget films. I also was left with a set of classifications based on actual or reputed connections to the same movies. Finally, I ended up all the way back to pop culture references and inside jokes that had been in the DNA of this feature, including the headers of most if not all my reviews. With that, I present The Terminator, the one 1980s franchise movie that was least suitable for a franchise.

Our story begins with short sequence and a text crawl portraying a war in the far-off year of 2029, fought between man and machines. We then meet our main characters, a woman named Sarah Connor and two time traveler, a wiry, nervous guy named Kyle and a muscular, nearly silent character who simply ignores most weapons. The big guy quickly acquires an arsenal and kills several women who shares Sarah’s name, attracting the attention of two police officers. Meanwhile, Sarah is spooked by Kyle as well as the murders, until he saves her from the would-be assassin. Kyle then lays out the stakes: She is the mother of an unborn leader who will lead the human side to victory in the aftermath of a nuclear war, while the other guy is a robot sent from the future to kill her and wipe out her son’s entire existence. As the cyborg closes in again, Sarah and Kyle must scramble for a way to fight back. But the most terrifying discovery of all is that the two time travelers may already have written their own future and hers!

The Terminator was the first major film directed by James Cameron, following work on the Roger Corman movies Battle Beyond The Stars and Galaxy of Terror. The movie was produced by Hemdale, a studio known low/ medium-budget science fiction and horror films (see… Highway to Hell?). The movie starred Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese and Linda Hamilton as Sarah, with Arnold Schwarzenegger in a breakthrough role as the Terminator. Other cast included Paul Winfield as Lt. Traxler and Lance Henriksen as his partner Vukovic. Bill Paxton and Dick Miller (see Night of the Creeps) had minor roles as the Terminator’s first victims. A scene revealing the discovery of the Terminator's remains by Cyberdyne was cut from the theatrical release. Biehn, Henriksen and Paxton returned in Cameron’s Aliens. The movie received a novelization by Randall Frakes, as well as a comic first published by NOW in 1988. Additional tie-in media and merchandising, including a Dark Horse comic and a Kenner toy line, did not appear until close to or after the release of Terminator 2 in 1991.

For my experiences, the foremost thing I can say is that this is probably the most personally involved with any movie or franchise outside of Star Wars. It was possibly the first I looked up all on my own, starting with a recording of T2 that didn’t even have the last half hour, so long after the movie came out that I was already legally free and clear to go to R-rated movies on my own. From there, I watched the original, the threequel, the TV show, and the reboots, I read most of the comics and a lot of the books, and I wrote my own fan novel. In all that time, I’ve rarely run across anything I didn’t like, at least at the time. But what I keep getting back to is that the original film was singularly unsuited for any kind of sequel. (I suppose this was reflected to a point in the adventures of Unit 838, which I tried to set up as a “T0” timeline.) The storyline is a literal closed loop, or would have been without idiotic interference, with John Connor and Skynet locked together in birth and death. Even apart from that, I have become far more aware how much the movie was rooted in the pop culture, politics and anxieties of the 1980s. It should have been all but impossible to update it for any other time, but that didn’t stop people from Cameron on down from trying and at least occasionally succeeding.

A big part of what got me interested in the movie is certainly the concept and effects of the Terminator, which I just realized I didn’t even cover in the usual background above. The big praise deservedly goes to Stan Winston, who went on to do the Alien Queen and Predator (see also Invaders From Mars). Credit is also due to Doug Beswick, who did stop-motion shots of the unskinned Terminator in the finale. What I think has been increasingly overlooked is that the effects actually make the cyborg appear more clearly vulnerable than earlier robots and creatures. It rarely seems to take serious damage, but a solid hit will at least have a visible effect, and eventually the cumulative effect begins to affect its performance. This especially shows in Beswick’s shots, where the jerky second-tier stop-motion accentuates the motion of the damaged machine as it actually limps after its target.

But the machine and effects are just a tool to tell the story, which mostly works its way along on pure adrenaline. The action sequences are intense, yet occupy quite a bit less of the running time than one might tend to remember. A good part of the rest is filled by the intense monologues and war stories from Reese, peaking with a line I quoted when I told my own story for this blog: “We were that close to going out forever…” There’s plenty more fun from the supporting cast, starting with Paxton’s cameo as the ill-fated punk, which I recognized on my own after a few viewings. Another highlight is Miller’s quite brief appearance as the naïve gun store owner, which I came very close to accepting as the “one scene”. To me, the most rewarding and watchable arc is the repartee between Winfield and Henriksen, which gives the movie an underappreciated police procedural vibe that carried over in movies like The Hidden. (And yes, I know all about how Arnie replaced Henriksen.) The pair are truly charming, and do a great deal to give a perspective on the proceedings that the viewer can truly identify with.

Now it is time for the “one scene”, and after more than 2 decades, the choice wasn’t easier. There was one that did stand out a little more than usual, and it was Reese’s interview with Dr. Silberman, played by Earl Boen, whom we have previously sighted in Battle Beyond The Stars and Chopper Chicks In Zombietown (??!!). Biehn is in top form giving the account of the defeat of Skynet and the unexplained limitations of time travel; there’s real pride as he says, “We’d won.” The doctor is amused if not quite mocking as he questions details of the tale. It all comes to a head when he asks how Reese can return to the future, setting up the grim synopsis: “Nobody goes home, nobody else comes through… It’s just him and me.” Meanwhile the two cops look on, and Henriksen begins to tell his own story of a memorable psychotic. In the middle of it all, Winfield interrupts him, and I like to think that his character has begun to wonder.

With all that, I once again come back to the rating. (And I still haven’t referred back to my Cyborg 2087 review for my further thoughts on the franchise backstory…) In this case, I have turned to the unrated rank simply because I cannot find a way to apply my usual scale. It was already awkward giving Raiders the same rating as The Black Hole and Krull; here, I simply cannot go further. But that is not quite the whole story, either. As much as I still like the movie and franchise, I have long since reached a point where it is difficult at best to consider it on its own merits, especially independent of the later franchise. What I can still muster is pleasure and a little bit of envy for a new generation who can now choose where to start when taking in the franchise. Take it from me, there’s no better place than the beginning.