Following the mediocre box office showing for Conan the Destroyer (1983), Arnold Schwarzenegger was ready for something new but was less than enthusiastic about a leap into the futuristic sci-fi market. When asked on the Conan set about his next film project, which was The Terminator (1984), Schwarzenegger answered dismissively, “It's some shit movie I'm making. Take a couple of weeks” (cited in Andrews, 118). Although The Terminator was not a box office hit, several months after its release the new video rental industry showed what it could do for films that were not big hits in their theatrical runs. Through video rentals the film built momentum and became a cult smash hit, making a national superstar out of Schwarzenegger. When offered a choice of roles between the heroic Kyle Reese and the villainous Terminator, Schwarzenegger chose to play the Terminator. As it turned out, this was a career enhancing choice—but one that, as will be seen, Schwarzenegger nevertheless came to have doubts about.

    Critic Jake Horsley concludes that one of the more remarkable things about the film is “the sheer audacity of its plot.” But “audacity” may be too kind a word for the convoluted and tortured logic patched together and served up in this James Cameron directed disaster spectacle.

    The year of the film's “present,” 2029, finds the world dominated by a computer network, called Skynet, which was initially constructed for monitoring defense operations. Programmed to have creative intelligence and learning capabilities, Skynet succeeds beyond expectations. Apparently having been programmed too effectively, the network evolves into a form of “superintelligence” exceeding the capacity and control of human intellects. Drunk with its own power, and evidently jealous as well, Skynet decides that humans must be exterminated. Through a nuclear conflagration, Skynet is largely successful in this task but, nevertheless, a small group of surviving human resistance fighters threatens to overcome the network. In response, Skynet programs a robotic agent, the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and sends it back in time to kill the mother, Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton), of the leader of the resistance group, John Conner—thereby changing the “present” that threatens the network. Having learned of this dastardly intention, the resistance fighters send a human from their group, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), back to the same time period to destroy the Terminator before it can destroy Sarah Conner. So instead of duking it out in “present” time, Skynet and the resistance elect to duke it out in a chosen slice of the past.

    Examined from any perspective, this plot presents itself as a colossal absurdity. The audience is asked to believe that a state of the art computer has not posed itself the question: What if the Terminator gets the wrong woman? Several women named “Sarah Conner”—but not the “right” Sarah Conner—are in fact indiscriminately terminated by the Terminator. The audience is forced to embrace the convenient but unlikely presumption that the death of these women—not to mention the reckless slaughter of other innocents and the wide swath of wanton destruction the Terminator leaves in his wake—will have no unwanted effects on the new future desired by Skynet.

    Much more could be said about the absurdities of the plot, but these shortcomings only serve to illustrate that details of plot must be counted as irrelevant in the search for any real substance in the film. In the quest for this generic substance Horsley correctly observes, The Terminator is, like Alien, a horror movie with a sci-fi setting. Cast in the light of the horror genre the film begins to make more sense as a theme, yet there is more to uncover regarding the psychology of its audience appeal.

The complete text can be purchased via credit card or PayPal for $1.34 here.

Topics addressed:

analysis commentary review of the terminator

plot structure and genre of the terminator

analysis of the violence in the terminator

themes and symbolism in the terminator

technology and the terminator

the terminator as horror and slasher genre

Click on the following link to preview other works on Media Violence 

Copyright © Gregory Desilet 2005
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Digital photography and website designed by WebNet Solutions