The Terminator, 40 years on

Still the greatest of all

It was 1984 and a simpler time. There were pay phones and phone books. Customers at American dinners paid with cash. But it was also a time when some directors had fevered nightmares about the future and dystopian stories were frequent in literature and cinema.

This was the year that the greatest Si-Fi film of them all was released, The Terminator. It was not about the dystopian vision of George Orwell’s 1984. Instead, James Cameron drew a terrifying picture of the future, August 29^th 1997 ‘Judgment Day’ when the machines targeted mankind for extermination. The machines, Skynet, became too smart for mankind and set in motion a chain reaction that resulted in nuclear Armageddon.

The Terminator is a movie that on one reading I should not like. It is certainly brutal in places. It is no Age of Innocence. In many ways it is a simple ‘hunter story,’ something is on the loose and it is hunting a woman named Sarah Connor. This something must use the aforementioned phone book to help it on it’s hunt. A very simple job, just proceed down the names and you’ll get her in the end.

In fact, Cameron took inspiration from Halloween, another version of ‘man hunts woman’. In Cameron’s movie however, the hunter is something even more frightening than a child killer grown up, more terrifying than any evil monster; this hunter is a machine. It is neither good nor evil; it just has a mission. It is post-evil.

Photo by Thierry K on Unsplash

This machine, sent back in time from the future, has been programmed to terminate Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor, the leader of the future resistance against the machines. It’s nothing personal. This is just what it must do. The brutal way in which it kills the other Sarah Connors brings home just how superior this machine is.

The Terminator is a T-800, human flesh over an endoskeleton. Nothing can challenge it’s build and strength. But this is not really what it makes it such a fearsome killer. It is terrifying because it is a machine, a computer in essence. It is worse than evil. It has no emotions whatsoever. As I said, nothing personal.

Instead of having evil intent or motives The Terminator, famously played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, has been programmed to kill Sarah Connor. As Kyle Reese explains to Sarah; "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!” This is the ultimate nightmare of ‘computer says no’ only in this case it is ‘computer says kill.’ The Terminator is relentless. It is unstoppable.

We’ve all been there, ok if not actually crawling away from the now legless Terminator relentlessly pursing you through a factory. But we’ve all been there - stuck on the end of a line, talking to some assistance bot on a website because you absolutely cannot get hold of a living human person. Ever.

The victims of the Horizon-Post Office scandal were sort of chased by their own Terminator. In that case the computer said they stole thousands of pounds from the Post Office. I don’t want to hear your flimsy excuses, or how you are an up-standing citizen. ‘It can’t be bargained with, and it can’t be reasoned with.’ It’s a computer, a machine. The computer says you stole money, so you stole money. Talk to hand, as the computer is not listening.

In this way, the film is visionary. The coming of AI makes it more relevant than ever.

The Terminator has great actors, an iconic soundtrack and a very distinctive tech noir feel.  It also has a heart; provided by the love story between Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor.

Kyle Reese is the human soldier sent back in time to protect and save Sarah, a simple all-American girl. In truth she is a Mary figure, who will go on to have an infant John and future saviour of mankind. Reese is no match for the Terminator. He is vulnerable. His only advantage is that he is fast and slight. He is deeply scared by having fought in the future war with the machines. But Kyle Reese loves Sarah Connor, he tells her ‘I travelled through time for you Sarah.’ Sarah despite the horror, loves him back. It’s this love that will save humanity.

Later Reese sacrifices himself for Sarah and her future unborn son. A classic story of a male sacrificing himself for a vulnerable woman and her child. (This traditional story arc was trashed in later films, which is why every Terminator film that comes after one and two should be ignored.)

When you watch the Terminator again, and I encourage you to do so, you must keep in mind that there is no CGI in it. I believe it still looks better than most films today. The explosions were carried out as series of small explosions and the endoskeleton, was an actual creation, moved with the help of puppeteers. More on the making of it can be found here.

So raise a glass to James Cameron and his iconic creation The Terminator. It is 40 years old this October and remains the greatest of them all.