Schwarzenvember: The Terminator

Every franchise has a beginning. Every franchise also has an end. Some franchises don't end well. And while we sit and ponder on the future of this one franchise, and keeping in with my Schwarzenegger fest, I suppose it's time to look at the first Terminator movie. Yes, the original, 1984 horror-action fest. The beginning of it all, from the Skynet fear to the Arnie one-liner, this one had it all.

What was Terminator, though? Well it all started when director James Cameron got sick and had a dream about robots. You know, as you do. Then he decided to go home and write a story about a killer robot from the future sent back to the present to kill a certain person. And that became Terminator. Arnie was cast...not as the Terminator, but as Kyle Reese. But after Cameron had a chat with him he was switched to the Terminator and everyone else eventually got involved. Little did they know the franchise that would eventually blossom from this. They also didn't know that it'd dim down to a meager waft of hot air about thirty years later.

But enough griping about how much Terminator has gone to shit, we're here to talk about the genesis. No, not Terminator Genisys, but The Terminator. We need to know how it's held up over the years, and that's what I'm here for. So let's do it.

Look, everyone knows the story of Terminator. The Terminator goes back in time to 1984 to find and kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) the mother of future resistance leader John Connor. Meanwhile, resistance fighter Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) is sent back to protect Sarah Connor, and to explain that her son will one day become a fighter in a resistance against the machines. They fight, fall in love, and triumph over the Terminator in the end. It's a classic story these days, in all honesty.

And frankly, The Terminator is a classic movie. In all honesty, I believe this movie was kind of ahead of its time. Action movies in the 80s are fantastic, don't get me wrong, but there honestly was a level of /believability/ about this. Now, while killer robots might still be a thing of science-fiction, the way this movie was created and acted made me honestly believe that a robot-brought apocalypse could still be on its way. And I like that, it's definitely held up over the years in most aspects. Note how I said most, however.

Where this movie falls short is some of the effects and certain plot devices that went on that made it possible. Some things just don't hold up, such as the practical effects on Arnie's battle-damaged face, and the stop-motion robo-skeleton during the last 1/4 of the movie is almost laughably bad. And some of the aspects of what goes down just seem a bit convoluted in today's culture. I get that Connor was supposed to be a bit of a dimwit to some extent of the situation, but some of the situations she gets the duo into are just unnecessary. There's ways of doing things, and this is not one of them.

But either way Terminator is still a classic movie, and it did start one of my favorite franchises of all time. It's still a shame that the franchise is going to the toilet, but what can we do. Either way I'm giving The Terminator a modest 8.1/10 for what it is. Now, let me go on another month-long break before I continue this series, am I right guys?

WRONG.