Reviews: "The Terminator" and "Terminator 2" form James Cameron's Perfect Duology
Movie of the Week #14 celebrates a franchise turning 40
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James Cameron’s The Terminator turns 40 this week, having originally opened in American theaters on October 26th, 1984. It was not, technically, Cameron’s directorial debut (that would be 1982’s Piranha II: The Spawning), but there is a reason The Terminator is generally remembered as the movie that launched one of the most successful and influential directorial careers in Hollywood history. Yet for a film that has left an indelible mark on popular culture, and on filmmaking in general, it still amazes me, every time I revisit the film, just how thoroughly homemade the original Terminator feels - and I mean that in the best way possible.
This is not the big-budget studio action epic Cameron would later come to perfect, but a low-budget independent horror flick, featuring a simple story, a small cast, and a whole lot of creative ingenuity. It is decidedly imperfect, but imbued in every frame with a raw, relentless passion for craft and creativity, and that is what I love about it so much. There is no sense at any point that the film is holding itself back because of its limited resources; the very first shots are a series of big, ambitious special effects images illustrating a terrifying future battlefield, and throughout, the film takes big swings that it always finds a way to always follow through on, even if just by the skin of its teeth, never afraid to let you see the effort underneath. When Arnold Schwarzenegger is replaced by an animatronic for the series of shots where the Terminator removes his organic eyeball, the film isn’t expecting anyone to be fooled by the switcheroo – it’s simply the solution they found to do the scene, and the scene matters because that graphic surgery the Terminator does so coldly and clinically on himself goes so far in selling the robotic terror of what lies underneath. Cameron and Stan Winston and the team around them found a way to sell that idea, and even if it is an ‘obvious’ effect, it is still a very good and effective one, reveling in the act of creation and inviting the viewer to awe at the creative achievement.
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