First Contact: The Terminator

A machine monster chase film with a romantic, time loop twist

The Terminator debuted in theaters in 1984. I’m embarrassed to admit that forty years later, I’m seeing this blockbuster for the first time. I’m an old-school nerd, so I’m not sure how this happened—especially since the original The Terminator is one of my sister’s favorite movies. She speaks of it with such intense affection that I have always felt as if I knew the story or at least the concept: A time-traveling hero goes back in time to save a woman from a time-traveling android assassin. Long before he was the governor of California, this was the film that solidified Arnold Schwarzenegger as a box office superstar and was soon followed by the even more famous sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which gave us android Arnold as a hero. I’ve heard the Terminator lingo with classic lines like “I’ll be back” and “Hasta la vista, baby.” I knew all the catch phrases anecdotally and I have seen clips and parodies over the years as the Terminator films became entrenched in our culture the way Star Wars and Rocky did. Film clips were played so often that I felt as if I understood it enough. Did I even need to see the actual films? My sister was horrified to recently discover that I had never actually watched the original 1984 The Terminator. So, a few weeks ago, I bought a digital copy of the film and, for the first time, I sat down and finally watched it.

Summary: [Warning: Spoilers] The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a killer android from the future who arrives in town on a mission to kill a woman named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). Soon after, a young man (Michael Biehn) also arrives from the future to intercept the Terminator and save Sarah. Sarah Connor is an ordinary and unremarkable young woman working as a waitress. After seeing news reports of the murders of other women named Sarah Connor, she quickly realizes she is the next target. She contacts the police but they are largely unhelpful. Sarah notices a young man following her and fears he is the serial killer. However, the man, Reese, protects her when the real Terminator shows up and ultimately, after a brief encounter with the police, the two go on the run. Reese explains that he is from the future, where Skynet, an organization of intelligent machines, has subjugated and almost destroyed humanity. The Terminator has been sent to kill Sarah because she is destined to have a son, John Connor, who will lead a successful rebellion against the machines. While hiding at a motel, Reese confesses his love for Sarah and the two spend an intimate night together. Later, the Terminator arrives, and after an extended violent confrontation with Reese and Sarah, the Terminator is finally defeated, but Reese is killed in the process. Later, a pregnant and grieving Sarah leaves town while planning for the future battle that is to come. In classic time loop fashion, Reese became the father to the same John Connor who sent him there.

First impressions: 1) The overall vibe of the film is intensely and nostalgically ’80s: the muted audio, the intensely teased hair, the ’80s acting style (in your face, no subtlety). 2) Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor is so different from the tough, weapon-toting person I have often seen in the clips from later Terminator films. In The Terminator, she is ordinary, unsure, and not particularly skilled. 3) Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese is so young. I’ve seen him in later roles in Aliens and The Abyss, playing the sturdy, mature, good-hearted hero, but here he is almost adolescent. He’s not just physically young, but also emotionally immature. He is the most stressed and angsty character in the film. 4) The thing that made the biggest impression on me was the Terminator himself. I can see why this role was so pivotal. In a sea of subdued dialogue, he was a scene-stealing show-stopper. He shows up (body-builder) naked in the first scene and walks around unconcernedly wreaking carnage until he finds clothes and goes hunting for guns and ammo. His flat, pragmatic, lethal persona was a perfect foil to the emotional drama in the film.

What surprised me: 1) The famous Sarah Connor, the main character in the film, has almost no backstory and very little context. She doesn’t have tragic origins, major life obstacles, special skills, or even a goal she is working towards. She is a blank slate on which the ensuing adventure is written. 2) Likewise, the Terminator is just a killing machine. It has no stated unique motivation or agenda other than the assassination ordered by Skynet. In our current era of complex or semi-sympathetic villains, I was surprised to be so entertained by a straightforward killing machine. 3) Most surprising is Reese. Of all the characters, he has the most emotional context. He comes from a war-torn life and he is her (future) son’s friend who volunteered to protect Sarah. He volunteered to go back in time because he was in love with the idea of her. He does not grow to love her; he arrives in love with her —fairy-tale style— because he has fallen in love with a photograph of her long before he meets her. He shows her the photo and says he always wondered what she was thinking about in that moment. Later we see the photo being taken while she is thinking of Reese. I love a good time loop. And it’s remarkably romantic for a film that’s mostly about killing. 4) Sarah’s roommate and the roommate’s boyfriend get a significant amount of screen time. They are adorable side characters who meet a violent end. I’m not sure why we see so much of them, but it’s surprisingly enjoyable. 5) Finally, in addition to the leads, I was surprised to see veteran actor Paul Winfield in the role of the grumpy Black police captain and the immediately recognizable Lance Henriksen, who plays Bishop, the future android of the Alien franchise. These reverse cameos helped anchor my sense of The Terminator’s place in my film-watching timeline.

Overall impression: After so many years of knowing about the franchise but never really watching it, The Terminator feels like a classic human-versus-machine story. As our society struggles with issues related to technology and AI, The Terminator still feels relevant, although the film style seems intensely old fashioned. And, honestly, I love the irony of that.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Highlights:

• Excruciatingly ’80s
• Classic chase film
• Surprisingly romantic

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Avatar: the way of self-indulgence

James Cameron's new toys are pretty and shiny, but do they mean anything?

Back in 2009, it seemed like the first Avatar film would set the standard for visual effects for decades to come. It was a completely unexpected technical masterpiece that wowed audiences with hyperrealistic landscapes capable of lulling the mind away from the embarrassing flatness of the characters and the story.

Look at us now, jaded and benumbed by four Avengers, one Gemini Man and three Hobbits. We're in an era when digital magic doesn't impress the way it used to. The sequel Avatar: The Way of Water is doubtlessly gorgeous, with lifelike beasts that look solid and tangible, and edge-on shots of 3D ocean surfaces that make the viewer sway in the chair with the waves. But moviemaking isn't just composing beautiful frames. Despite all the trailblazing technical innovation created expressly for this film, the three hours of Avatar: The Way of Water end up feeling like a three-meal course made entirely of plain water.

We return to the exomoon Pandora, where humans continue to exploit natural resources with no respect for the native population. It's been roughly 15 years since the events of the first Avatar, and our human-reincarnated-into-alien protagonist Jake Sully is now a family man. But the greedy humans are back with a vengeance, and Jake has to flee with his family to avoid bringing any further destruction to the natives. And here we have the first eyebrow-raising choice in this film: the implication that 15 years of Jake integrating into an alien ecosystem and culture to raise four kids of another species doesn't seem worthy of telling, and only when humans reenter the scene do we get to continue the story. For all the lip service that this franchise professes to respecting indigenous communities, it's, at the least, noteworthy that director James Cameron only tells the parts of this community's story in which their colonizers get involved.

Once the basic conflict is established (emphasis on basic), the rest of the movie is an extended theme park ride followed by an admittedly good battle sequence. Avatar: The Way of Water repeats numerous plot beats from the original, dropping our focus character into an unfamiliar environment where he needs to learn the rules of survival, earn the trust of the locals, and fight to defend his new home. We hear the same vaguely New-Agey platitudes about interconnectedness and the cycle of life, we're told again that the whole world functions as a hive intelligence, we watch yet another predatory expedition to destroy a natural beauty for (literally) astronomical profit, and we're left with the same simplistic message: nature good, humans bad.

Worse still, this repetition of preachy talking points occurs without the already minimal character development of the first Avatar. Four alien teenagers are introduced with the single personality trait of "they're teenagers." The lead duo are reduced to the most commonplace clichés of married couples in movies, with a Jake who has confused martial discipline with parenting, and a Neytiri who only reacts to events by making concerned faces but leaves no footprint on the plot. The return of archnemesis Colonel Quaritch might suggest a thematic statement about the damaging effect of human intervention (mirrored in Jake's clumsy attempt to raise his alien kids by introducing them to all the bad parenting techniques of Earth), but that's not what Cameron is interested in exploring. We're here to gasp at picture-perfect fish, not to reflect on the mistakes of humankind.

Even when the dialogue alludes to the ecological problems back on Earth, that crucial piece of context isn't afforded the prominence it should have. Colonel Quaritch's personal vendetta against the Sully family feels absurdly small compared to the actual problem of the entire human species planning to move to Pandora permanently. A plot development that raises the stakes of the main conflict in exactly the way a sequel is supposed to doesn't get more than a throwaway line that Cameron evidently doesn't intend to address until a future movie. The same frustrating approach is used with the character of Kiri, the only truly interesting addition to the story, who spends the length of the movie carrying a neon sign that flashes "I'll matter later."

If Cameron gets his way, we'll have three more entries in this franchise. The problem with multiple sequels in the Age of Marvel is that directors have forgotten that films are not, and should not try to be, TV episodes. Avatar: The Way of Water would have been a serviceable filler episode in a streaming show, with its temporary change of setting, a self-contained chase subplot, and just enough links to the larger arc. But as the standalone movie it should have been expected to be, it's drowned in blue pixels that enchant the eye but have very little of substance to say.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10.

Bonuses: +100 for once again pushing forward the quality of visual effects in cinema.

Penalties: −100 for having only the faintest, digitally rendered shadow of a plot, a theme, or actual characters.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

The Roger Corman Interview

Roger Corman has been, arguably, the single most important voice in the history of independent cinema. It was an absolute honor to be able to sit down with him in his office to discuss his new film, Death Race 2050, and specifics from a career that spans seven decades.


For the uninitiated, Roger Corman began writing, directing, and producing in the mid-1950s. He launched the careers of actors like Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda, and revived or reinvigorated the careers of Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and others. As a producer, he gave directors like Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante, and James Cameron their starts in filmmaking. He worked extensively with writers such as Twilight Zone alumni Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, who were also seminal sci-fi and horror writers in their own right. His distribution company won foreign language Oscars for the films of Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini.

But at the end of the day, this is a guy who just made a lot of great movies. From the 1950s beatnik satire A Bucket of Blood to the 1960s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, to the 1970s punk hallmark Rock n Roll High School and beyond, Roger Corman may have spent a career working with low- and medium-budget films, but he managed to create lasting art, documents of the times, and just goddamn fun movies, and he continues to do so.

If you haven't, check out Death Race 2050, streaming on Netflix and on DVD and VOD or watch the original, Death Race 2000, on DVD or streaming on FilmStruck. And enjoy the interview. I sure as hell did.

Posted by Vance K — co-editor and cult film reviewer for nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012, musician and songwriter, and Emmy Award-winning producer.