Tech Noir "The Terminator"
This article was originally published in summer 2009. [Thanks to Leave Me The White for some of the screencaps] I'm reposting with minor edits in celebration of the 20th anniversary of its sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day on this 4th of July Weekend. Plus, what's more American than spectacles of Hollywood violence that launced billion dollar franchises?
"Tech Noir"
In March of 1984 when The Terminator began filming, the director James Cameron and the producer Gale Ann Hurd were no Hollywood heavyweights. Cameron was no one's idea of a visionary (except for perhaps his own) and had only one feature under his belt, Piranha 2: The Spawning -- auspicious beginnings! Hurd had learned the production ropes on B movies for Roger Corman. Cameron and Hurd intended for the dark, fast and cheaply made robot movie to be their calling card. Seven months later in October the movie premiered with only its deceptively simple premise (killer machine hunts woman) and Conan the Barbarian (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to sell it. The Terminator was an immediate hit, though not quite a blockbuster. It earned a Conan-like $38 million gross in its initial run (which I believe is something roughly in the ballpark of $100 million in today's ticket sales).
As a franchise it was a slow starter but as a stand alone movie The Terminator was anything but. The movie begins with a bone crushing (literally) view of "The Year of Darkness", in which massive machines hunt humans in desolate post-apocalyptic ruins. Very quickly we're thrown back to present day Los Angeles ...present day in in the 80s at least.
An electric storm begins and a naked crouching man rises from the clearing smoke. He proceeds to walk emotionless through LA and slaughters some punks for clothes. A second electrical storm follows dropping another naked man into downtown LA. The twin sequences are mostly wordless but already Cameron's story instincts are shining: The first man (we don't technically know he's a machine) is already embedded in the audiences mind as an cool collected deadly force to be reckoned with, the second Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) is, in contrast, a scurrying, less capable and frankly desperate looking man.
In short, he's mortal.