Terminator Revisited

It was early 1989 and I was on an outbound week in a nearby national park with my school when I learned about an Arnie film I’d never seen called the Terminator. In the playground Arnie was big business, if you’d seen the Predator, Commando or the Running Man you were considered ‘in the know’. O.K we were only 10 and all of these movies had been classified 18 but like anything when you’re young; if you’re not supposed to do it, it needs to be done.

For some reason the Terminator had always evaded me. Looking back I think I may have been scared of the poster. That piercing red eye behind sun glasses instilled some sort of unknown fear that to this day I can’t identify with (or was that T2? whatever It was It put me off); and why would you want to watch the Terminator when Robocop had just been released? It was a more recent movie, unbelievably quotable and was the foundation for a generations profanity.

This was my stance, until one day walking up a fell with my friend in 1989 he told me the plot of The Terminator and everything changed. Kudos to him for describing the movie in such intricate detail that his description lasted almost as long as the movie and filled what would have been a very tedious walk up a fell in the Lake District. (Fell walking is o.k for some, but for 10 year olds who just want to play football, video games and watch movies. It was a chore.) I was sold. A man travelling from the future to protect the mother of the unborn leader of mankind from a cyborg programmed to kill, who has also been sent from the future! WTF!

Needless to say as soon as I got back home after that week he loaned me his VHS copy of The Terminator. Up to my room, crank up the VHS machine, warm up the T.V, reinforce the cello tape holding together my severed co-ax cable and I was good to go.

From the moment the Carolco sign disappeared I knew this was going to be a life changer. I don’t know about you but I get that with certain movies. Not so much these days. It can still happen but as I get older it becomes an all to rare event. If I’m honest I think the last one that left me feeling like I’d been punched in the face was Old Boy. Anyway, that’s for another day.

The music starts, what a theme. If I was a wrestler that would be my entrance music.

The movie has everything a bona fide blockbuster should have. A pretty heroine, a super cool hero, quality quotes and one of the greatest screen villains of all time in Arnie’s Terminator. I know Arnie isn’t the greatest actor but he followed Clint’s philosophy of ‘less is more’ in this role and pulled it off perfectly. He doesn’t need to have much dialogue, it’s all in his screen presence. Every time he’s on the screen he just takes over. He’s that menacing that it makes you root for the hero’s even more. You know he won’t stop hunting Sarah Connor until she’s dead and nothings going to get in his way. That’s apparent after the police station incident. And with Kyle Reese’s home made weapons it’s a case of David vs Goliath. Connor and Reese’s odds of survival aren’t good.

After it had finished I watched the closing credits. If I really like a movie I always do this. I’ve done it as long as I can remember. It’s like an athlete who does a warm down after running. I slowly disengage from the world I’ve just visited and savour it all. Plus I like to know who made the movie, where it was shot etc.

So, this morning in 2011, 22 years later from my first viewing of the Terminator with the world falling apart, war in the middle east, poisonous waste land in Japan and natural disasters becoming as regular as the rain in England, I turned on the T.V here in Bangkok wondering if SkyNet was responsible for it all.

Star Movies was showing at 8a.m in the morning……yep….The Terminator. O.K the swearing was cut but the violence was still there. Thai censorship standards are really mixed up. They’ll show a woman getting the crap beaten out of her by her husband, blood flying and the works on the lunchtime soap. Yet, for a nation whose first language isn’t English they’ll censor English swearing but show Arnie cutting out his eye.

Even so the movie was as grand as I remember. A masterpiece of modern cinema and craftsmanship of the highest quality by tradesmen who at that time were at the very top of their game. Stan Winston’s monster, James Cameron when he was humble and could write a decent line, Linda Hamilton’s perm, Michael Biehn’s Nike’s and Arnie’s pure awesomeness.

If this decade can bring us a movie that is still as relevant in 27 years as The Terminator is today then perhaps the humans will win after all.

Favourite quote

Reese: “what day is it, what year!!!!!?????”

O.K that couldn’t happen but I’ll let you off with it moment:

When we are introduced to Sarah Connor she’s a waitress in a restaurant, so, when did she learn how to operate a huge crushing device thing? There’s 3 buttons on the control panel she’s reaching for yet she hit’s the middle one and the press does the work. I presume the other buttons were to open the gate that’s dividing her from the machine and the other one stopped everything?

She got lucky.