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The Terminator (also known as Terminator in some early trailers and posters) is a 1984 science fiction/action film featuring former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger in what would become his best-known role, and also starred Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn. Directed by James Cameron, who was only 27 years old at the time, the premise of the movie is that a "Terminator" android (played by Schwarzenegger) has been transported back in time from 2029 to May 12, 1984 to assassinate a woman named Sarah Connor (played by Hamilton). Issues raised by the film include nuclear war, time travel, causal loops and artificial intelligence.
The setting and characters have also been adapted into video games and comic books, including some in which the characters are paired with (or against) characters from other movie-licensed properties, including Predator, Robocop, Superman and Alien.
PlotSpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
A young woman named Sarah Connor is inexplicably being hunted by a relentless killer who is apparently tracking down and killing women who share Connor's name. She is eventually approached by Kyle Reese, played by Michael Biehn, who explains that in the future, an artificial intelligence called "Skynet" will be created by military software developers to make strategic decisions, but unexpectedly becomes self-aware. In a panic, the human creators attempt to shut Skynet down. In the interest of self-preservation, Skynet seizes control of most of the world's military hardware and launches an all-out thermonuclear attack on humanity, leading to a total war between human and machine. However, a man named John Connor eventually leads the human resistance to victory, only to discover that in a last-ditch effort, Skynet had discovered time travel and sent a Terminator, a highly advanced robotic killer, back in time to the 1980s to kill John Connor's mother before he can be born. John Connor sends Reese, a trusted lieutenant, back in time to protect Sarah from the Terminator at all costs. The key difficulty in Reese's mission is that the Terminator, variably identified as a cyborg or robot, is of an extremely durable construction that can sustain a considerable amount of damage. Since the time travel mechanism precludes the traveler from carrying non-living matter outside the being's body, Reese was forced to arrive naked and unarmed, and the small arms of the 1980s are barely powerful enough to faze the Terminator; and that the Terminator himself is limited to the weak weapons as well. In addition, the Terminator's organic covering, when intact, makes it indistinguishable from humans. This makes it very difficult to convince anyone of Sarah Connor's time that this assailant is actually an extremely advanced machine.
Image:HK-tank.jpg Ground HK Tank While hiding in a multi-story parking garage, Reese explains everything to a skeptical, frightened Sarah. However, the Terminator arrives again and a pitched gun battle between the two moving vehicles results in the Terminator crashing its car and Reese being arrested by the pursuing cops. At the police station, Sarah is looked after by Lieutenant Traxler (Paul Winfield) and Sergeant Vukovich (Lance Henriksen) while Reese is interrogated by a fascinated criminal psychologist, Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen), who concludes that Reese's "delusions" are astoundingly intricate and are constructed in such a manner that they require no proof and are thus safe from refutation. Meanwhile, the Terminator retreats to a hotel room and performs maintenance on its damaged cyborg arm and eye socket before re-arming itself and heading for the police precinct. The Terminator arrives at the precinct only to be told by the desk sergeant that he cannot see Sarah. After uttering his famous low-key catch phrase "I'll be back" (the first time Schwarzennegger committed these now immortal words to film), he drives a car through the doors of the building, crushing the desk sergeant. The Terminator then goes on to brutally massacre everyone that gets in his way. Police officers, including Traxler and Vukovich, try to stop it but are all slain. Reese manages to break free and rescue Sarah before the Terminator can get to her. While Reese is hiding that night with Sarah, we see his past (our future) in a flashback. In this post-nuclear world, we see that he once had a Polaroid photograph of Sarah. The photo is burned during an attack by a Terminator on a human resistance base. The next day, Reese and Sarah take refuge in a motel, where Reese makes pipe bombs, teaching Sarah how to make the explosive from household supplies. Sarah asks Reese if he's disappointed in her (the "real" her compared to the legends and stories about her) and asks if he's ever had a lover; he replies no to both questions. Reese also confesses that he is in love with Sarah. At first, Reese thinks he has made a fool of himself and tries to shut off his emotions from her, but Sarah reciprocates his feelings and kisses him tenderly, and they make love. Later that night, the Terminator tracks them down and pursues them along a motorway, shooting Reese and wounding him. An increasingly resourceful Sarah manages to knock the Terminator off its motorcycle, but she crashes her truck. The Terminator commandeers a large tanker truck and drives it towards the pair's wrecked pickup truck. Sarah and a badly-wounded Reese escape just in time and Reese destroys the tanker with one of his few remaining bombs. The Terminator is shown collapsing in a burnt heap in the remains of the tanker. Image:T800-in-flames.JPG Terminator endoskeleton. As they embrace, believing the Terminator is destroyed, its still-functional metal endoskeleton emerges from the flames, and pursues them into an automated factory. In the ensuing standoff, Reese jams a pipe bomb between its abdominal piston and spine, blowing up the Terminator but also killing himself in the ensuing explosion. Just as Sarah finds Reese's body, the Terminator's mangled torso revives and pursues her. She eventually manages to crush it in a hydraulic press. The end of the film shows Sarah traveling in Mexico, several months pregnant. She records audio tapes which she intends to play to the child (clearly the soon-to-be-born John) at some point in his life. Her monologues reveal that Reese is the father, and that John was conceived during their one night together at the motel. While Sarah's gas tank is being filled at a gas station, a young Mexican boy takes a photo of her using his Polaroid camera, and talks her into buying it for a few dollars. It is the same photo Reese will have in the future. The boy then mentions that there is a storm coming, to which Sarah chillingly replies, "I know". Calm but determined, Sarah drives off into an ominous future. Cast
InspirationsSome aspects of the story were sufficiently similar to two episodes of the TV series The Outer Limits — both episodes written by Harlan Ellison — that Ellison pursued legal action against Cameron. Cameron settled out of court and acknowledged Ellison's work in the film's credits. However, some time later, the credits were mysteriously taken out (rumored to have been removed by Cameron himself)[citation needed]. Another lawsuit was filed until the credit was reinserted. The episodes in question were called "Soldier" (which involves a specially-trained man accidentally sent back in time) and "Demon with a Glass Hand" (concerning a time traveler who suffers memory loss and relies on a computer chip implanted in his artificial hand to give him information about his mission while assassins sent from the future attempt to kill him). There is also some similarity between the concept of Skynet and the evil intelligence featured in Ellison's short story, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream". Despite settling out of court, Cameron still maintains to this day that the Terminator was his original concept. He claims that the concept of the Terminator came to him in a dream; furthermore, he states that in his original vision, the Terminator was a small, unremarkable man (as opposed to the large, muscular appearance of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger). This would allow the Terminator even greater ability to conceal itself among the human population. Only when Schwarzenegger, who had originally auditioned for the role of Reese, was cast as the Terminator instead did this concept begin to change[citation needed]. The story also bears strong resemblance to two short stories by Philip K. Dick[citation needed]: "Second Variety" (1953) and "Jon's World" (1954). These stories feature a post-apocalyptic world where robots (originally designed to fight on behalf of one human faction against another) develop newer models which disguise themselves as humans to infiltrate human bunkers belonging to both factions. "Jon´s World" also involves time-travelling. Another potential inspiration is the well-regarded 1962 French film, La Jetée[1], a short black and white film by director Chris Marker. Told entirely in still images and narration, the film concerns a man in an underground post-nuclear future sent back into the pre-apocalyptic past to obtain resources necessary to continue humanity. The man is selected for his mission because his fixation on a memory from that period, in which he sees a beautiful woman and a man dying. The film concludes, as The Terminator does, with a predestination paradox; while in the past, the man falls in love with a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the woman in his memory, and then fulfills his own destiny by becoming the very man he witnessed dying, thus enabling him to travel back into the past. That story was later adapted by Terry Gilliam in his film, 12 Monkeys[2]. A similar plot of a killer machine (A. Balcers) sent back in time to change history was seen in a fairly obscure film from 1966 entitled Cyborg 2087.[citation needed] ProductionImage:Terminator Polish promo poster.jpg A Polish promo poster for The Terminator (Elektroniczny Morderca, lit. "Electronic Murderer"). A pair of documentaries about the film, which appear on the DVD version, have a number of explanations of various issues about the movie. The Terminator and its sequels all occur (mostly) in Los Angeles, which is also where the films are shot. CastingFor the key role of the Terminator, Cameron originally wanted a typical-looking male of average size, who could easily infiltrate human society. As a result, Cameron's first choice to play the Terminator was Lance Henriksen, who eventually took the role of Lt. Vukovich. Both Cameron and co-writer William Wisher claim that originally Schwarzenegger was going to be offered the part of Reese, the hero. However, as a result of a lunch meeting, both he and Cameron independently realized that he would be better suited to play the part of the title character. However, Gale Ann Hurd, the film's producer, claims that Schwarzenegger was never considered for Reese's part. [4] Once Schwarzenegger was cast, the film had to be placed on hold for a year after Dino DeLaurentis chose to option Schwarzenegger to film Conan the Destroyer. The film was originally scheduled to be shot in Spring 1983 in Toronto, and filming eventually began in March 1984 in Los Angeles, California. Several date inconsistencies in the film were the result of this change of scheduling. Few people know that The Terminator was originally supposed to star Patrick Swayze. However due to previous roles as an actor, the director did not think that the audience would take him seriously. Later when Arnold Schwarzenegger was cast for the role, the director and staff felt more comfortable with the young bodybuilder. Deleted scenesSeveral scenes deleted from the theatrical release have been made available on DVD and other media. The most significant of these in the context of later films are a pair of scenes relating to Cyberdyne Systems. In one deleted scene ("Sarah fights back"), between the scenes in the underpass and the scenes in the motel, Sarah takes to heart John Connor's message to her relayed by Reese ("The future is not set."), and convinces Reese to find Cyberdyne Systems (the creators of Skynet) and destroy it. As it originally played out, Reese disagreed with Sarah, flatly saying that destroying Cyberdyne was "tactically dangerous" and simply not his mission; his stubbornness angers Sarah and a confrontation between the two ensues, with Sarah striking Reese in the face. On reflex, Reese pulls the revolver out on Sarah without realising it; Sarah berates Reese for this and not recognising her own fear in the situation, but Reese, weary and exhausted, does not listen, for he is too transfixed on their forest surroundings. Reese breaks down in tears as he laments that he "wasn't meant to see this", causing Sarah to develop more sympathy for him as he relates to her how the beauty of her time hurts him more than anything else. "It's gone..." he reminds her, "all gone... all of it... it's gone!" Sarah then uses this to persuade him to help her destroy Cyberdyne, thus changing the outcome. The purpose of this scene was to expand upon the character of Reese, showing his own Terminator like mentality and then showing his vulnerability in suffering the emotional breakdown of a man out of time. The counterpart sequence to this occurs after the factory fight scenes, when one of the factory workers finds the Terminator's CPU and gives it to another worker, saying he'll bring it to R&D (although never said onscreen, these two characters are sometimes referred to as Greg Simmons and Jack Kroll).[1] As Sarah is taken away by paramedics, the camera pulls out to show the factory sign: Cyberdyne Systems. Also deleted was a segment known as "Traxler's Arc" which placed more emphasis on the roles of the police officers Lt. Traxler and Sgt. Vukovich, with three scenes intercutting them into the chase sequence following the Tech Noir shootout and two that indicated Traxler had come to believe Reese: in Traxler's death scene he hands his gun to Reese telling him to do what he needs to do. Other, less significant scenes included Sarah talking to herself in her mirror at work, showing her own wry view of herself in the world, the Terminator walking away from the murder of the first wrong Sarah, an extension of the pipe bomb making scene where Sarah talks about all the things she'll show Reese once they get past the Terminator (meant to show Sarah's growing realisation of her importance in the world and contrasting it with her desire to live a "normal" existence with Reese while also indicating her growing affection for him), and a post-lovemaking scene where Sarah tickled Reese in bed. Score
Track listing
PhilosophyThe movie contains an example of a predestination paradox. The Terminator's mission, as described by Skynet, was to go back in time and kill Sarah Connor, thereby preventing John Connor from being the leader of the resistance forces that would destroy Skynet. However, had the Terminator not attacked the police station in its attempt to fulfill its programming, Kyle Reese would have been kept separate from Sarah Connor and John Connor (Skynet's real objective) would not have been born. This paradox can also be seen generally, in that if the machines had not tried to stop John's birth, he never would have been born (as Kyle Reese would never have had cause to go back in time). But the machines had to send The Terminator back in time regardless to ensure their own existence as Cyberdyne Systems uses the scrap from the destroyed Terminator in 1984 to create Skynet. John Connor cannot exist without Skynet and Skynet cannot exist without John Connor. Reese stated to Sarah that he came from "one possible future". Information on The Terminator DVD Commentary
Trivia
See also
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