Just the Ticket #167: The Terminator (List Lookback)
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
The result of James Cameron reading too much Harlan Ellison and falling ill during the Rome release of Piranha 2: The Spawning (he was malnourished and had a fever dream about a crawling robot torso with kitchen knives), The Terminator was written and directed by Cameron, and co-written and produced by The Walking Dead's Gale Anne Hurd for theatrical release in October of 1984.
And yet, we're supposed to believe (according to Terminator: Genisys) that this is all powered by a modern smartphone app that went crazy when it hit puberty. Where's Zeno when you need him, 'cuz this timeline needs to go.
But because he's played by Michael Biehn instead of Sting (yes, we could have had a Terminator where Sting protects Rosanna Arquette from O.J. Simpson), Matt Dillon (One Night At McCool's), Kurt Russell, Treat Williams, Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce Springsteen, or Christopher Reeve (yes, Snake Plissken, the direct-to-video Substitute, Agent K, The Boss, and the fucking Superman could have had this role, too), he dies from an underwhelming explosion, heat exhaustion, and smoke inhalation after being shot in the shoulder, so Sarah must dispatch the lumbering endoskeleton herself (leaving just enough uncrushed so that a vacuum cleaner salesman can spend the next seven years reverse-engineering it for a major tech lab and inadvertently butterfly effecting a nuclear apocalypse).
He's been the inspiration for Future Trunks in the Cell and Goku Black arcs of various Dragon Ball media (who, in turn, inspired Silver the Hedgehog in several 3D Sonic games). The Terminator design has been parodied and homaged in Contra games, Superman media, and the Red Ribbon Army arc of Dragon Ball, among innumerable other TV series, games, and additional entertainment properties. Schwarzenegger even loves the movie so much that the Terminator has become a big part of his meta-character and personal branding, quoting lines from the franchise in his other film appearances, like "I'll be back" is his Ezekiel 25:17. A little recognized Terminator reference also occurs during the fourth season of Dexter, when John Lithgow's Trinity character kills his way through the phone book in search of "Kyle Butler," in much the same way as the T-800 targets the two Sarah Connors before setting his sights on Linda Hamilton's character.
He also...acquires...some military-grade weaponry from a gun shop owner played by Dick Miller (the barkeep in Midnight Runaround) because there's nothing more inconspicuous than a giant, robotic Austrian dual-wielding massive automatic weapons and killing every bipedal hindrance in sight.
If my comments about kidnapping and destiny-driven Stockholm Syndrome weren't enough of a clue, I feel like Sarah and Kyle's relationship developed too fast and ended too abruptly, and the film could have played with the suspense of whether or not Reese was a threat for a bit longer. The dialogue does a competent job of making those character leaps feel more natural, even given the part in the middle (at the police station the night before the Terminator attacks) where his sanity is called into question and the cops explain away the cyborg's unstoppable nature with Kevlar and PCP.
Actions ultimately speak louder than words, as well, and Biehn gets to dimensionalize and humanize his performance with some surreal fish-out-of-water moments to juxtapose against his default, traumatized prisoner/soldier characterization, so Sarah growing to love him isn't based entirely on him forcing her into his world because she also gets to see him in her world for awhile before things get dark again and they have to kick some shiny metal ass.
Sadly, as much as I like it as a piece of my childhood, The Terminator is too memorable and ubiquitous to provide much novelty and too basic and flawed to be fun. I don't hate it, or even find it unremarkably average. I just found myself asking, "does this make me feel the way Alien or Pulp Fiction did?" And my answer, much as I will catch heat for saying so, was no.
a.k.a. the Ticketmaster.
In these List Lookback posts, I have often opened with a justification for why I chose certain movies to review in certain months, like One Night At McCool's being a cheesy, twisted romance movie that I reviewed in February, Alien being my April selection because of alliteration and its disturbing fertility imagery, The Faculty being September's review because of Back to School season. Most of my choices came down to holiday theming and month-based alliteration or logically elastic punnery. I even reviewed Last Man Standing in August because it was literally the last movie I hadn't decided on a month for yet. To which you might ask, "So, if The Terminator has no thematic connection to Christmas and no alliteration or pun connection to December, what's up with that?" Well, random enquirer I just made up for the purposes of forcing exposition, I decided that I wanted The Terminator to not only be the selection for the last month of the year, I wanted it to be the last movie I reviewed this year; I wanted The Terminator to literally terminate 2024...except for tomorrow's Time Drops post..., and the Dragon Ball DAIMA review on Monday..., and the State Of the TicketVerse Address that I (try to) do every New Year's Eve.
But I'm talking movie reviews here, so let's travel back to the past to save the future from the present, and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest stocking stuffers of news on my content.
Apparently, four or five years from now, Trump will succeed where ninety percent of 80s action movie terrorists failed, and trigger World War III. But unlike most decades-later threequels (which get released direct to video on a much smaller budget and with a PG-13 comedic tone after spending an entire human growth period in Development Hell), this time, the result is less about toxic critical backlash and more about a literal nuclear war with AI-powered machines...that run on Motorola Assembly Language...with human-written comment documentation, which makes no sense.
Come to think of it, considering that Google Gemini exists and Elon Musk (whose self-driving cars spontaneously explode) has financially leveraged his way into a cabinet position in the White House, maybe this timeline needs to go, too....
One of said AI-powered machines is the T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger, though the role could have gone to Mel Gibson or Sylvester Stallone - both of whom turned it down, with the Stallone casting later getting a nod in Last Action Hero - or O.J. Simpson, whom Cameron did not think would make a convincing killer at the time), a cyborg infiltration unit sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton, fresh off of filming the first Children Of the Corn, though Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rosanna Arquette were also considered for the role), professional diner waitress and the future mother of Human Resistance leader John Connor (later played in T2 and Dark Fate flashbacks by Edward Furlong, in Salvation by Christian Bale, and subjected to character assassination for the sake of a plot twist in Genisys).
But neither the movie nor Sarah as a character would have lasted very long, nor (spoilers for a forty-year-old movie that is still somehow younger than me) would John Connor exist, if the titular Terminator had been the only character sent back in time.
Enter Kyle Reese (Michael "I Die In Everything" Biehn, Aliens), a Human Resistance soldier who elected to travel back in time to protect Sarah (and aid in traumatizing PTSD and Stockholm Syndrome into her because the loop theory of time travel says he's destined to be John's father) from the Terminator.
For such a "low budget" movie (reported $6.4 million, equivalent to almost $20 million in 2024, which is comparatively low by modern blockbuster standards), the practical effects that bring the T-800 to life are amazing, using a combination of mechanical puppetry and stop-motion for the scenes that aren't pure Schwarzenegger, and the "Hunter Killers" from Reese's future-set flashbacks, let alone the bleak, nuclear boneyard setting of them, are impressively realized through practical and visual effects (but I think the flying HKs underwent some digital retouching that makes them not look as real as I remember from my VHS days).
Of course, The Terminator has had a massive, without qualification, impact on pop culture. Images of Kyle Reese from this movie have been "borrowed" and "repurposed" for box and cartridge art of Snake on the NES game, Metal Gear.
This gets the attention of the police, including Bishop himself from the Alien franchise, Lance Henriksen,
who took part in a hilariously sensational pitch meeting (not that one) for the film while dressed as the Terminator. Reese (who was seen by patrol vehicles stealing clothes from a homeless man because the time machine strips you naked, and later stole a police issue handgun, a shotgun, more clothes, and several cars, and kidnapped Sarah during a shootout at a night club) gets blamed for the T-800's systematic murder spree and interrogated by a criminal psychologist (Terminator trilogy regular Earl Boen, whom I swear had to have his lines dubbed in one scene because he yawned during a take that made it into the film) 
with a very good point. What's with the whole, "inorganic material can't travel through time unless it's covered by organic material" explanation? Isn't most clothing made from animal-derived textiles? Why don't people with stitched up wounds bleed to death when they come through? Why don't people just smuggle weapons under their skin? What happens to dental fillings? Breast implants? Speaking of breast implants, why can the T-X and T-1000 travel through time if they're made of liquid metal? There are biological air gaps like ears, nostrils, and eye sockets designed into the human form, so why doesn't an empty skinsuit land when a Terminator tries to travel through time? I have questions that demand answers! But those answers would ruin the movie!
Anyway, when the naked Terminator arrives, he kicks off a franchise trope by killing a group of punks for their rizzy 80s drip fits (I just threw up in my mouth because I have brainrot intolerance), including Mr. "Game Over, man; game over!" himself, Bill Paxton, and Moonlighting, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and 9-1-1 actor Brian Thompson.
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I'll be back to review movies sometime in the coming year, but until then, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest stocking stuffers of news on my content.
Ticketmaster,
Looking back,
Hasta la vista, baby!
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