I had to go back and give this one another try, there are movies that can only be watched once and then there are those that need to be watched several times. The original Terminator as out dated as it may be, I was surprised to find a lot of things that they came up with that we are doing now and stuff we are not doing. The fun aspect of his movie is the one liners although this one was actually more serious in how it was written for the big screen. We tend to quote lines from this movie in daily conversation and we find things funny, when in reality this was a very serious situation and everyone involved worked on it as a serious project I think. The deaths were brutal and even for being a rated “R” movie it doesn’t show much of the violence that we would see in a rated “R” movie now.
There is a lot of use of slow motion in the movie especially when showing Arnold Schwarzenegger, i guess trying to make the effect more dramatic when he is on screen. The acting is not the greatest but it is also not the worst, they were able to pull off their characters fine and I watched it with the 80’s in mind and that back then certain ways of doing things were just that way. Fun to see the trends changes, music and how people were on a daily basis. The appeal for more with this movie is the idea of machines taking over and looking at our time today when this review is written how much closer and closer we are to the future portrayed in this movie. We have robots and we are developing AI to help machines think for themselves. The parts of the movie which I had a hard time because i am so used to our effects now, but back then in 1984 when this came out that was great special effects. When the terminator is doing “surgery” on himself there is animatronics going on and some stop motion using puppets and yes you can tell its fake obviously, but, they took the time to make it real and it doesn’t hurt the Arnold already looks like a robot.
Should we be scared of the future that The Terminator give us and how close we are to seeing that? I have to hand it to the writers for being able to come up with a story that back in 1984 was looked at as the top of the line in effects and action. So in short Compared to today there is no comparison, but I love it then and I love it now just as much. I will be watching it again in the future as long as the robots haven’t taken over.
Check out the original 1984 trailer for The Terminator
