2/01/2009

The Terminator (1984)


It's a thrill for me to speak about The Terminator, one of "the films" of the eighties, this movie was so influencial and has a clear influence on the whole science fiction genre, with a clear inflence on suc a movies as The Matrix franchise.

To put you in the setting the time is the beginning of the eighties, and the robotics are advancing the first personal computers are sold, the Walkman is very popular, and it lead to rise of many issues, and what if the robots could build their own consciousness and start to exterminate humans, well if that is to happen it surely easier for the computers with the big well of human knowledge and experience called the internet.

So much for that, the year is 1984 (George Orwell obvious Reference) andSarah Connor is a waitress in a diner, who loves to party guys who own a porsche, but somehow she is the target of a mysterious killer (Swharzenegger) who came to life naked in a thunderstorm, who has this tendency to kill everybody in the phone book whose name is Sarah Connor, and there is another naked guy (Micheal Biehen) who talks and acts paranoid but he pretneds to want to protect her, this story seems pretty basic, but add to that cocktail the fact that both guys come from the future, one of them is not a hundred percent human, and doesn't speak much, and is pretty direct when it comes to killing people, he is "The Terminator" and he does... terminate.

It turns out that the young sweet Sarah is very important to the future of humanity, and that big Artificial Intellingce from the future want her dead, so the movie is basically the Terminator trying to kill her, and her becoming more and more aware of her influence on the future, leading to some paradoxal consequences, this movie is still enjoyable to watch especially for the people who were born after the eighties ended, and have no frame of reference to this weird and optimistic era.

Shwarzenneger acts wonderful in here, probably because he has no facial expressions to perform, Lynda Hamilton as the sweet Sarah, is really a wonderful mirroring to her more serious Sarah in the no-less-valubale sequel, and the action sequences are beautiful, especially the robotic stop motions used in here, because it was before CG, which makes them even more impressive.

It is really hard to forget the assault on the precinct on the police, or the whole robotic paranoia running throughout the film, and the huge presence of Swharzenegger, he was never that much of an actor, but he has tremendous presence in here, James Cameron was a great director back then and the screenplay is so solid though, although the story is influenced by master science fiction works.

This is really a prequel to the Matrix in terms of ideas, because it deals with the robots having a consciousness, the matrix is about virtual reality, a concept which was still in development back then, but it's really a double winning bill, watching a great move, while rising important questions, i did not watch the movie for fifteen years, and today it's still relevant, still thrilling, and still powerful, as Mr Ebert would say "Two Thumbs Up", and I'll be back !.

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