Review: The Terminator (1984)

The Terminator

Rating

Director

James Cameron

Screenplay

James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd, William Wisher Jr.

Length

1h 47m

Starring

Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, Paul Winfield, Lance Henriksen, Rick Rossovich, Bess Motta, Earl Boen

MPAA Rating

Review

There was a time when James Cameron was one of the most economical directors working. After his inauspicious debut helming the horror sequel Piranha 2, Cameron moved on to the sci-fi genre with surprising finesse. The Terminator is a sparse, lower-budget feature that captures the essence of Ray Harryhausen and would lay the groundwork for his seminal achievement two years later: Aliens.

In the future, a devastating nuclear holocaust nearly wipes out humanity and a small band of human rebels take on the artificial intelligence and their cyborg warriors and win. To prevent this, Skynet sends a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to kill the mother of the leader of that resistance: Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). The resistance learns of this mission and sends their own operative (Michael Biehn) back to protect her. What follows is a string of cat-and-mouse chases with lots of explosions and violence leading to what is a predictable, if entertaining end.

On a relatively small budget of $6.4 million (equivalent to just under $19 million in 2024), Cameron launched his career with great success, leading to increasingly higher budgets as the years went on through to his unlimited checkbook today. Following this with Aliens showcased the ability Cameron had with turning high octane thrills in to box office successes while maintaining their overarching quality.

Schwarzenegger’s unemotive quality was a benefit to this emotionless automaton and although he’s ostensibly the villain of the film, he carried it quite well. Hamilton and Biehn were exceptionally helpful to selling his humanity but there was no doubt a star had been born. While one wouldn’t call any of their performances exceptional, they each struck the right tone needed to keep the film within the range of believability and that is a difficult thing to accomplish with a science fiction premise like this one.

With that small budget, Cameron showed how a skilled director didn’t need fancy visual effects to tell a story, focusing on what the eye doesn’t see and relying on the rare glimpse of gore and cybernetics to keep the audience invested and unnerved. This skill set would help him with his follow up feature, Aliens, but those two would be the last of his inconspicuous attempts at creating movie magic.

The Terminator may have been usurped by several of his later efforts but it remains one of Cameron’s best and were he to go back to such a conservative budget again, we might be in for a real treat.