From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Jul 2 11:16:03 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!newsfeed.sunet.se!news00.sunet.se!sunic!news.sprintlink.net!news-stk-200.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!new-news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!main.Germany.EU.net!Germany.EU.net!wizard.pn.com!brighton.openmarket.com!decwrl!news.PBI.net!cbgw3.att.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: rsetlur@sbee.sunysb.edu (Raghava S. Setlur) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: THE TERMINATOR (1984) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 1 Jul 1996 18:11:38 GMT Organization: Electrical Engineering, State University of New York at Stony Brook Lines: 120 Sender: ecl@mtcts1.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: ecl@mtcts1.att.com Message-ID: <4r94cq$2in@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: rsetlur@sbee.sunysb.edu (Raghava S. Setlur) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtcts2.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #05543 Keywords: author=Setlur Originator: ecl@mtcts2 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:4857 rec.arts.sf.reviews:990 THE TERMINATOR A film review by Raghava S. Setlur Copyright 1996 Raghava S. Setlur (1984) 3.9 / 4.0 I never liked Arnold S. We even had a bastardization of his difficult last name. His movies were, how shall I put it, mentally negligible. When this movie came out back in 1988 in my hometown of Bangalore, India, I politely declined the invitation from some of my friends. But as weeks went by, one day when there was nothing else to do, and all the other movies I wanted to see were seen, I grudgingly went to see this flick. Let me tell you somethin'. I loved it man, I loved it. Arnie was perfect in this movie. All that bad press about being as stoical as a robot really pays off here. The story, visuals, action, colors and the effects blend together successfullly, capped by some eerie music. Anyway the premise of this movie is this: In the future, there will be a nuclear war against, get this, computers and humans. Most of the humans die but a few enterprising souls survive the holocaust. I never did get how they did. Probably it is a crime to watch movies on basic cable. You don't know what they leave out. How did the computers survive. There might be more than a few technical glitches in terms of the effects of nuclear explosions on power supply could be intricate. This and some other questions do come up, inevitably in any science fiction or time travel movie. Another one would be that the man from the future explains that only living things could get through the time machine, so he could not bring his custom made ray gun or his best suit, but came in his birthday suit instead. Pray tell me how hair and nail which are dead tissue survived the arduous journey. The terminator itself, or a cyborg has a metallic skeleton. Would it survive, I wonder? Maybe, just maybe, there is some simple explanation to all this. The Hollywood way of portraying easy sex. Linda Hamilton eagerly goes to bed with the man from the future immediately after he says that she was the only woman he wanted. Very accomodating. That was not the typical blind date. There are many instances of such inexplicable actions in Hollywood movies that tends to carry the notion of the loose American women to all parts of the world. My idea of American women was formed from the American movies. These are some nitpickings in an otherwise perfect movie. It has good story to tell and paces it well, making it very entertaining and edgy along the way. Critics who have a bias against action/ sf genre (Gene Siskel comes readily to mind) and keep complaining that every picture is a genre picture should see this one. It is much, much better than those weary drama movies that they keep harping about. The concept of existence and different realities is similar to back to the future movies, but is stronger. The mind boggles at the complexities of all this. The machines want to kill off the humans' leader's mother before he was born. They rig up a time travel device back to the present. And send a death dealing machine with human features and outer tissues. Fortunately for us, a human soldier manages to follow. The terminator's mission, it will accept it, for Christ's sake, it is a machine is to go back to 1984, kill the mother of the child who will one day become the ruler of men in the war against machines in a post apocalyptic world. Here name is Connor, Sarah Connor. The city: L.A. You will have no team and no, yes I mean no, point man. You will also have no clothes. But that is a minor inconvenience. One of the things I liked about the killing and the mayhem is that the terminator cannot be argued or cajoled with. It does not sit around making small talk and giving away secrets (Bond movies) but just says " I'll be back." Which it does. Then promptly goes about doing its business of killing. If you wanna shoot, shoot, don't talk. The lack of dialogue and emotion actually works in Arnold's favor since that is how a terminator is supposed to act. And he is the bad guy. Nowadays he plays the good guy which is less interesting. One of the mistakes the sequel made. This is vastly superior to T2, which had the mental institution thing that left an unpleasant taste in the mouth. The only thing that T2 did better was its special effects. But that is another review. The way everything fits into place is pleasant to see. Of course there are the usual shootings and car chases but it seems more relevant than most other pictures as the terminator tries to kill every Sarah Connor in the phone book. The screenplay writers are to be congratulated. The production values are good and the direction very sure footed and stylized. There are some neat tricks and ideas which makes it a pleasure to watch this movie. The terminator can learn the accent and inotation of every person it hears. With a computer screen that pops up occasionally to process data for it. Dogs can detect terminators and start barking at them. Why? No idea. When you have this wacky idea that somebody in a large American city is picking names from the phone book and shooting them, it is surprising that no one has used motif in real life. We have letter bombers and Zodiac killers, so somebody might still use it. The rest of the movie deals with the Terminator trying to kill the Connor woman and the man from the future trying to save her. The special effects are ground breaking and the story is inventive till the end. The last 15 minutes with arnold coming out of the fire like a phoenix minus his human persona and chasing the two people is spooky. This is great special effects with the skeleton like robot running around. You still get the feeling it is Arnold S. even though you don't see him on the screen. Mission: Impossible. Even for the terminator. I enthusiastically recommend this movie to anyone who has not seen it. A classic. A near perfect score of: 3.9 / 4.0 --XXX-- -- As always, expecting a reply, Bye for now, Raghava S. Setlur. SUNY at Stony Brook rsetlur@sbee.sunysb.edu June 21, 1996 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu May 22 17:17:53 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news00.sunet.se!sunic!news99.sunet.se!erinews.ericsson.se!erix.ericsson.se!newsfeed2.luth.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!feed1.news.erols.com!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: jyan@hsc.usc.edu (Jun Yan) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.movies.past-films Subject: RETROSPECTIVE: THE TERMINATOR (1984) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.past-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 20 May 1997 01:06:35 GMT Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA Lines: 91 Sender: evelynleeper@geocities.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: evelynleeper@geocities.com Message-ID: <5lqter$2ca@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: jyan@hsc.usc.edu (Jun Yan) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #07578 Keywords: author=Yan Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:6987 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1283 rec.arts.movies.past-films:56138 THE TERMINATOR A film review by Jun Yan Copyright 1997 Jun Yan Writer: James Cameron with Gale Ann Hurd Director: James Cameron Producer: Gale Ann Hurd Actors: Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwartzennegger, Michael Beihn One of the most popular films of all time, "The Terminator" is does not look too old for being made in 1984 except for Linda Hamilton's funky haircut. After watching it for the 6th or 7th time today, I feel it deserves a review. Sarah Connor is just a waitress living in Los Angeles who cannot be more ordinary. She has the same problem everyone else has in this world. Then why would a ruthless killing machine from the future -- the terminator, go through every imaginable trouble just to exectute, or terminate, her? And why would another man who claims to be a soldier from the same place as the terminator, give up his own life just to protect her? Soon we learn that the future is doomed and the only hope for mankind, John Connor, is the unconceived, unborn child of Sarah. So the race is on between Kyle Reece, seagent of the underground army led by John Connor in the war against the evil machines and computers, and T101, played by Arnold, the never quitting machine that would just not give up his assignment. Unlike the more technically refined sequal T2, this original Terminator has the crude look of a smaller and more personal film. What still amazes me now is the enormous ability of Jim Cameron to mix strong emotions and mood with breath-taking action sequences. Repeatly, scenes are set to contrast the huge and oppressing image of machines and the fragile and desperate humans struggling for survival. He preys on our fear for the dominance of computers and machines and the feeling of alienation in a technological world. The idea is not terribly original, but he does it in a sincere and unpretentious way that is convincing. What about this movie that pushes all the right buttons in me to make me jump? I think it's the sense of the end of the world, the sadness of the inevitability of the doomed future that one can fight but cannot change. As if one is told in absolute certainty the s/he is to die of this kind of death with no escape. And no matter how hard we try to avoid it and seem to succeed, we know deep down it's coming and unstopable. It's a primal fear in us for death, symbolically. The writers and director stress the frailty of humans, both in Kyle Reece and Sarah Conor, in sharp contrast to the indestructable terminator -- you just can't kill it. The sight of the burnt down machine chasing Sarah in the factory is a nightmare that is as effective as any horror movie. The vulnerability in our main characters are both physical and emotional. That makes the audience identify with them and be repulsed by the might powerful machine. I am particularly fascinated by the writers' constructing of the psychological state of Reece, given an entirely imaginary world in which he grew up. It is just so darn rare for a thriller to even remotely *care* about its characters. And the romance developed in the middle of all the intense car chase and gun blasts is, believe it or not, more heart-throbbing to me than most movies that try too hard to be romantic. Because we care about the couple and we follow them through their life-and-death journy, it's natural that they generate a tender feeling toward each other since the world is gonna end anyway. I hope this explains the big soft feeling stuck in my throat every time I watch the part where he said, "I came through time for you, Sarah. I love you, I always have." A couple words on casting. I don't know who thought of casting Arnold as the terminator. His physical appearance fits perfectly in the role of a cold-blooded, undefeatable killing machine and came through as absolutely chilling and terrifying. I'm afraid this caused type-casting for Arnold to prevent him from his future comedies just like Rambo ruined Stallone's chance of doing Ellery Quinn. Michael Biehn, as much as I like him, is truly not very good at acting. However, he has the look of a desperate and damaged man, a man in pain and hurt, more emotionally than physically. Simply the look is enough. It's no surprise that Cameron later casted him as the psychotic villain in "The Abyss." Linda Hamilton, with her "lion"-style haircut, successfully leads us down the path of Sarah Connor's transformation. In the end, we are convinced that she is capable of being a "legend" mother. And all this makes her astonishing appearance in this sequal natural and less strange. It is interesting to see her evolve from screaming and being saved (which is not at all unnatural after building up her normal life) to fighting to save both herself and her lover in the final confrontation sequence. I am a true believer in smaller and more personal movies. It's so ironic to see Jim Cameron going bigger and bigger while becoming less and less engaging and personal. Too much technology, the power of big corporations and alienation of human emotions and feelings are the things he condemned in both Terminator, yet I find him sliding down the same slope. "The Terminator" is probably the smallest, crudest, least perfect in special effects, yet it still is my very favorite.