Dang. This is over 40 years old. That’s...crazy. I usually try to stick to the more obscure and non blockbuster kind of movies for my reviews. I don’t always succeed, because some are just too iconic. Cameron’s first major movie, because he kinda lamely disassociated himself from Piranha II: The Flying Fishes of Death movie. C’mon James, everybody starts somewhere. But this obviously put him on the map with a pretty cool sci-fi action movie. Are the effects dated? Yeah, some of them are a bit cheese. But it was pre-CGI days, and a pretty ambitious story. And it’s told well, even with some dodgy practical effects.
1984. 2029. There’s some time shifting goin on here. Literally. Sarah Connor is an average chick, shitty job, just trying to get by. But with circumstances beyond time’s control, she’s thrust into a much larger story. This is the first of 6 films and a brief TV series that somehow follow, so it obviously establishes a decent enough premise to milk for a never-ending franchise (to usually lesser results. Spoiler. The 2nd one, also by Cameron? Awesomer. The rest? Awesomelesser.)
This is still a pretty solid movie. I don’t know how it fares with, say, the current generation of movie-watchers and their movie watchin habits. But you have a lot of pretty significant “classic” points all hitting with this one. New action star Arnold Schwarzenegger hitting the scene in a significant fashion after his pair of Conan movies, up-and-coming action director James Cameron given the chance to take on a pretty decent budget film considering not much previous work, and it falls solidly into the ‘80s’ genre of action films, with a cool story and decent special effects and action sequences. The drum-thump-heavy score is pretty iconic too.
For the acting, Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor is the classic Damsel in Distress, awesome awkward dialogue from Lance Henriksen, and Cameron favorite Bill Paxton in a small first role of many to follow with the two. But honestly, what really makes the movie is Michael Biehn in the Reese role. He grounds it in a pretty amazing way. Makes the characters around him that much more relatable? Regardless, there is a lot of effects shots of the future that make this even more bad-ass than it already was. Terminator 2: Judgment Day takes the concept and ramps it up to 11. Cameron did good with that after doing good with Aliens 2. Avatar 2? Uh. Well. I can’t say. After the first one, I really didn’t see a reason to revisit that story. At least the 3D was cool there? I’ll watch a movie 25 years its senior and like it more, virtual space-fish-trees be damned. Or whatever the fuck that movie was about. Plus, this one? Extremely quotable, at any point in time. Fuck you, lack of 40 watt plasma range rifles!
