Lemme explain to whoever keeps making these awful Terminator sequels why Terminator works.
James Cameron made an action-scifi movie with a brilliant time travel twist. He did it on a budget of something like eight million bucks. Which means the film had to be tight and the characters had to carry the film along; people had to care about them. Big action sequences were not going to cover up flaws.
Terminator didn't have Christian Bale, it didn't need Christian Bale. It had Arnold, who was originally slated to be the good guy, but who realized the film would work so much better with him as the bad guy. Don't tell this blog that Arnold doesn't know how to make movies.
Terminator taps into 80's psyche. Unlike the modern zombie craze, Terminator is a twist on something that was very possible, nuclear war. Every kid watching Terminator on Cinemax at 10:00* on a Saturday went to bed that night, and every night wondering, 'Will they press the button tonight?'
Had James Cameron decided to, he would have been an excellent horror film director. He made Terminator a goddamn horror show with scenes that have stuck with us our entire life. Reese's flashback scenes are brilliantly executed nightmares that tell us about the world from which he came. And let's not talk about the police station massacre.
Terminator is a small, brilliant idea brilliantly executed.
*While waiting for the Skinimax stuff to come on, or if necessary, negative porn. You Millennials are just gonna have to google that last one. I hang my head in shame.
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