The Terminator (1984 James Cameron)

9.9
"Thank you, Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can't help you with what you must soon face, except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist."http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/

This is the first in my series of Favourite Films reviews! The Terminator is way up there in my top 10 for a lot of reasons, its one of my favourite franchises despite the varying quality of its films. As a franchise the order of greatness has to go 1,2,TSCC,4,3, why? I will explain later but first to the best of them all, the first, The Terminator!

The film opens in the year of 2029, fans will know this is the year Reece travelled back (could be the plot line to 5/6), the dark blue sky is lit by the laser fire of the hunter killers, rubble destruction and skulls litter the wrecked landscape and the text reads "The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire. Their war to exterminate mankind had raged for decades, but the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here, in our present. Tonight..." Cue the epic awesome and perfectly suited steel sounding drum theme, dum dum, dum, dum dum....

Next comes this scene of genius, a monster of a man, naked odd, appeared from a ball of light vs instantly hateable 80's punks. This scene is what I often quote in its mood as to why I like this film most, the terminator doesn't shoot the guys, push him over or cop out in any way, he punches the guy through the chest, pulling out a blood red hand and murdering the three. You can see from this image alone the cold blue steel in the setting is beautifully fitting, in the scene the dialogue is simple but good, the terminator assessing the language is a smart bit of SF and it is an excellent scene setting the terminator up as a truly evil villain.

Next to appear in the same way is Michael Biehn's character Kyle Reese, at this early interval if you know nothing of the franchise you would think he is just as evil. This is cleverly reinforced by the inclusion of the police, who try and chase him down at every moment vilifying him like the terminator. There is no doubting however that he is cooler, he grabs his trademark long jacket and his shotgun looped round his arm (which is shown to him by none other than john connor himself in Salvation) to set off to do some damage. The Terminator brilliantly introduces Sarah with the phonebook, an excellent narrative device.

The thriple scene of the terminators arming, the first Sarah Connors death, The Sarah Connors menial job brilliantly, ironically summed up by her co worker who says "in a hundred years who's going to care?" and also inter cut with Kyle Reece getting his car makes Sarah look as thought she has no chance in the world at survival, its desperate and worrying for every member of the audience, how could she survive? a specifically nice moment in the whole of this is the terminator asking for a plasma rifle at the gun shop, simply brilliant and funny.

Before the killing, the meeting and the real beginning of the chase begins we get another flash forward/back to into the future which is Kyle Reece's past and see him kicking some more Skynet ass. This is introduced by a genius track down from what we think is a crane wheel, in actuality a Skynet tank, down to some skulls. The future again looks bad ass and we get a glimpse of what fighting Skynet is like.

Cut to Ginger, this bit quite comical, full of false sense of security and false jumps. My favourite moments in the film are Matt telling The Terminator he would "bust him up" and Sarah's ironic repeated answer phone message "Your talking to a machine but don't be afraid of it, talk to it, machines need love too", pure genius!

At the climax of the first act, so much seems to have already happened and the action still has not really begun, the audience knows, as does Sarah, that she is being followed and the police aren't going to reach her in time, exciting stuff. The scene to "end" this climax and start the real action is set in "TechNoir" an 80's nightclub that almost reflects the future, is full of colour and makes a perfect setting for the meeting of the Terminator, Sarah and Kyle Reece. An excellent sequence of slow motion crescendos with Sarah being saved from the Terminator by the unlikely hero Kyle Reece uttering the resonating repeated line "Come with me if you want to live." It comes to light in the following exposition is there to save her, this isn't through boring simple exposition though, not in Terminator, the exposition takes place during a daring car chase of classic 80's action convention. All of the complicated time loop questions are simply answered by Reece with "One possible future maybe, I don't know tech stuff" leaving the film to concentrate on the chase and hunt rather than too much SF. One of the best things about this section is Sarah's disbelief, it adds a certain amount of believability to the film and to her character.

The second act begins after the Terminator escapes and Reece is left to face the cops, the two cops in the lead of the investigation are fairly conventional but brilliant just the same and feature quite heavily in the first and second act. A hard chief with a constant cigarette (almost two) and a simple detective with a tendency to let his mouth run the two make a great double team and inject a little comedy into the dark tale. Silberman however the psychiatrist analysing Reece is a brilliant character who is almost too easy to hate, he believes Reece is completely insane and smiles at the career he could make from him. The only person who gives Reece any credit is the chief lt. Traxler who gives a slight pensive look rather than mocking. A person has a good right to think Reece crazy, in his interrogation room he rants and raves as well as a top class crazy, screaming that the Terminator "will find her and when he does he will cut her throat and rip her heart out". The Terminator himself is a this point patching up and recovering in a gross but still authentic way, he slices his arm and eye, fixing the inner parts of his exoskellington. Although it is clearly a rubber mask used at this point, the waxy look almost makes the Terminator look synthetic, this mixed with Reece's comment about older model Terminators having rubber skin again adds to the overall authenticity of the film, scene and special effect.

Unfortunately for the cops, Reece isnt crazy and after fixing himself, arriving at the police station and speaking those immortal words "I'll be back" the Terminator rips through the police station killing dozens, Sarah and Reece however manage to dodge the cyborg and escape into the night. The two following scenes are Kyle Reece and Sarah Connor building their romantic relationship, Reece's confession that he "crossed time" for Sarah is a beautiful romantic statement and their relationship really blossoms into something beautiful. The first of these scenes contains a cutaway/ dream of Kyles future/past. An amazing visual, beat down sewer pipes, televisions on fire, and terminator detecting dogs, this future is the true terminator future and what Salvation fails to recreate. The scene ends with an epic transition, the photograph of her burns and slowly fades into Sarah's sleeping face, awesome! The scene comes just before Sarah's fatal mistake, ringing her mother, this showcases the Terminator's ability to copy voices and lands both Sarah and Reece into the target of the Terminator once again.

After pipe bombs and time travel circle solving love making the third act begins, the Terminator attacks on his badass motorbike to chase the couple to the action climax of the film. The last part of the film is summed up by saying that the Terminator just wont stay down! This is typical of 80's action flicks but fortunately doesnt drag too long.

The last scene answers any questions you might be confused about, John is Reece's son and "theres a storm coming".
9.9

I will review the other films in a little less detail but to put it simply:
Terminator 2
Has good continuity from the first one however the inclusion of John Connor is troubling, whilst I like his character he is one of the most annoying kids alive. It is also more od a big blockbuster franchise kind of film, it opens the series up to a family audience which I have mixed feelings about. But still a good film in general.
Terminator 3
Bad, not much else to say, well written to an extent, especially the ending but apart from that its pretty bad. Just a random action flick not really worth being a T film.
Terminator Salvation
Disappointing but not awful, I dont really like the Marcus story but it does work and could have been good, I also dont mind Bale as John Connor but would have preferred someone else. The main let down is with the world of the film in general, the amount of it set in day time and set in desert rather than in tunnels and sewers was a shame, the future didnt look up to the future in 1.
Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles
Awesome! Plain and simple, its smart, it works and its an amazing stand alone series too. Its a crying shame it was cancelled!