Solid Snake

I got the BD, remastered, from a friend. Specs of the BD aside, it's really interesting to see how well and still fresh the film can be at times. I hadn't seen it in a long time.

As a critical analysis, this thing is pretty insanely detailed. While someone like the Terminator and Sarah are what they are, and they're good characters... It's the supporting cast and Biehn that really shine in this thing. Biehn especially, I think we focus so much on Cameron and the film itself that Biehn gets lost in the positives for the film. Like he is running on all engines in portraying Reese. He's bruised, stressed, tired, and just struggling to get his mission accomplished. Add in that visually, he is a small guy. Not meek but not athletically bulky either. Which is interesting to see how he is now cast as this super fit guy in T5 now. Cuz apparently you need to be that way to kick some ass. Sad thing to see how that has changed in action. We need the visual of body strength to show strength.

The film has some solid pacing. The action itself is very matter of fact, it's pretty blunt in how it is focused as a propulsion for the the story.

Even when it stops, its exposition is very interesting. It doesn't bore but engages in getting your attention.

The music rocks, KINDA sorta cheesy but its pretty good too.

It doesn't need mention but it really nice to see action play out without the edit being the action. It's clean, it's impactful, and you visually feel the impact of it. Which is something Cameron wildly excels at. Making that action look like it could shake the room.

Never noticed this till recently but there is some amazing composition of how he properly conveys the size of the machines treading around and flying. It's pretty fucking good.

PatD

I always thought that *some* of the deleted scenes should have been re-integrated back into the movie for a Special Edition/Director's Cut of the film. The most notable is the bit where Sarah is trying to talk Kyle into blowing up Cyberdyne (which, of course, is foreshadowing T2). The other is the ending where it's revealed that the factory where the showdown happens belongs to Cyberdyne and there are representatives there who take a look at the wreckage of the T-800. I thought that scene was a serious omission as it brings the whole situation full circle.

T1 definitely deserves better than it's gotten on home video. If T2 is one of the greatest action movies of all time, than T1 is one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time. They're both classics and should be treated as such.

EddieMoney

Really one of the best sci-fi movies ever, and my favorite of the series. I'd go as far as to say it plays like a horror film.

Solid Snake

Again... I haven't seen this in so long. But seeing it again.. the beats, the pacing, etc. Has that of a horror film. Does justice to the formatting. Was interesting to recognize that now whereas years and years ago it would never have crossed my mind.

EddieMoney

I saw it when I was pretty young, well before the sequel, and I found it pretty terrifying at the time. And what's not to love about Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen as the cops? Perfect.

kefrank

On that note, for music nerds here's a pretty interesting article about the often-argued-over time signature of the Terminator theme song:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/c..._the_ages.html

Solid Snake

I didn't really like T1 as a young kid. I actually found it boring cuz T2 was the thing for me as a kid. It was neat but I didn't start jiving w/ it till I got older.

inri222

IMO it is James Cameron's best film.


"The brutality and low acting skills are unfortunate… But as a vision of the future and the relation between man and his destiny, the film is pushing the frontier of cinema as an art."

- Andrei Tarkovsky on The Terminator

Draven

That is fascinating. Thank you for posting it.

EddieMoney

I agree with you on this. He has made a handful of great films since (primarily Aliens and T2), but "The Terminator" is probably his best.

Solid Snake

wow. That's pretty fucking cool.

wearetheborg

I liked T1 better than T2.

hanshotfirst1138

T2 set a standard for modern blockbusters, but it doesn't have the raw, Corman-bred exploitation roots of T1. That police station massacre is still shocking, the nighttime cinematography has a spooky quality, and it's almost as much a horror film as a sci-fi action movie, raw, pulpy, and lean in a way Cameron's bloated later movies never were. There are problems with the film, but there's a perfection to its lean, brutal, mean quality which shows Cameron when he was raw, young, and hungry and before he was the "King of the World." That cocktail of noir, horror, pulp SF, and action film still feels fairly unique. Fuck, I want that Blu with the mono track. Even Cameron used to shoot on film .

E Unit

Everything about this movie makes me all the more mad at the constant barrage of shitty sequels we keep getting. The original Terminator stands all alone as one of sci-fi's absolute best. T2 continued the story line and expanded on the special effects and action, but for me, the original opened my eyes way more. We won't get any more greatness from this franchise unfortunately. The new trailer clearly showed that.

Sonic

I saw Terminator tonight on tv and kept thinking how much of an amazing movie it is. Arnold is relentless in this one and I think that is what made Terminator excel. The scene when Reese puts Connor in the car and Arnold jumps over the fire and lands on the windshield and punches right through it in slow motion is classic. You can feel the fright of being stalked/chased.

I love the atmosphere in Terminator, the nightly action, the 80's scenery. For some reason you can feel the quality and energy of many of the action scenes.

Terminator is a sci-fi masterpiece.

collven

I had a pair of the black Nikes that Kyle picks up at the beginning of the movie. I thought I was so cool, lol.

Mondo Kane

Wait. You mean to tell me that BD was able to win the format wars by not even putting forth their best effort during that whole time? Dang.

Artman

Yeah watched it again when the new BD release came out. I'm most impressed with the energy of the camera work...those car chases especially, you just feel it. That's something that T3-5 have not been able to even come close to (as well as acting, writing... pretty much everything)

mcnabb

Thought I love both T1 & T2, T1 is a much better film. It is a just a much grittier film, and the pacing is as good as it gets for a film from this genre. T2 has the advantage of a bigger budget, and a built-in audience so there can be a few 'wink wink' jokes, but T1 is a hard hitting scifi film that never stops from start to finish.

joliom

It makes perfect sense that Reese is lean and wiry looking in T1. He comes from a pretty bleak future where people are starving and living like rats. It's stupid that these sequels insist on casting people that look so athletic and fresh. That's moronic studio execs thinking the audience won't relate unless there's plenty of eye-candy and buff bodies on display. Michael Biehn was the perfect Kyle Reese. He had the right look, the right attitude, and the right personality. And he killed it on the acting front.

Lastdaysofrain

Not to keep pimping my podcast, but I did an interview with Bess Motta last week who played Ginger in the original Terminator. There's some really interesting tidbits about what could have been casting, role switching and some cool behind the scenes stuff if you are interested.
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Ky-Fi

I took a screenwriting class this past summer taught by the second-unit action director of The Terminator, and he had some interesting tidbits about the filmmaking and casting decisions as well.

Watching this again recently I was struck by how tight and economical it all is -- not very much wasted screen time at all.

Solid Snake

Yeah. EVERYTHING it can use... is used. Adds a lot for a background too.

Why So Blu?

I watched the deleted scenes. Cameron was right to delete the scene where Sarah says they should destroy Cyberdyne. That's pretty much the story for T2, so Cameron would have had come up with something else. That, and it was low budget and it would have been another subplot to get through undermining the fact that they have an unstoppable killing machine after them.

The last deleted scene with the Cyberdyne employees was cool but didn't matter if it stayed in or not. Joe Morton pretty much cleared it up in T2 when they asked him where he got the microchip: "Don't ask."

hanshotfirst1138

Definitely Cameron's Roger Corman roots. Brutal, lean, and mean, and in contrast to the excesses which could define his filmography later. Squeezes every dime it can out of the small budget.