The Terminator

• 1. Introduction

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  The Terminator arrived in American cinemas on the 26th of October 1984, and it began with a nightmare. Director James Cameron had fallen ill in Rome during the troubled release of his first film, Piranha II: The Spawning, and in his fever he dreamed of a metallic torso, holding kitchen knives, dragging itself out of an explosion. That image became one of the most enduring science fiction villains ever put on screen. How did a sick, largely unknown director, working with a budget of roughly six and a half million dollars, produce a film that would top the United States box office for two straight weeks and eventually gross nearly eighty million dollars worldwide? And how did a film that both its star and his studio privately dismissed as a B-movie end up in the Library of Congress?

• 2. A Dream in Rome

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  Cameron was inspired by director John Carpenter, who had made Halloween on a low budget, and used the fever dream as a launching pad for a slasher-style film. His agent, however, disliked the early horror concept and asked him to work on something else. Cameron dismissed the agent. Back in Pomona, California, staying at the home of science fiction writer Randall Frakes, Cameron drafted what would become The Terminator. His influences stretched from 1950s science fiction films to the television series The Outer Limits and contemporary films such as The Driver and Mad Max 2. To turn the draft into a full script, Cameron enlisted his friend Bill Wisher, who shared his approach to storytelling. Because Wisher lived far away, the two communicated by phone, recording their readings of new scenes to each other. The original outline contained two Terminators sent to the past: one much like the version that appeared in the final film, and a second made of liquid metal that could not be destroyed with conventional weapons. Cameron felt the technology of the time could not realize that second figure. He shelved the idea, and it waited a decade to become the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

• 3. The Dollar Deal

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  Gale Anne Hurd had worked at New World Pictures as Roger Corman's assistant before showing interest in Cameron's project. Cameron sold the rights to The Terminator to Hurd for one dollar, on the condition that she would produce it only if he was to direct it. He would later regret selling those rights for a single dollar. Hurd suggested edits to the script and took a screenwriting credit, though Cameron stated that she "did no actual writing at all". The two then leveraged mutual friends from the Corman network who were working at Orion Pictures. Orion agreed to distribute the film if Cameron could secure financing from elsewhere. John Daly, chairman and president of Hemdale Film Corporation, was the decisive figure. To make the pitch for Daly, Cameron arranged for his friend Lance Henriksen to arrive at the meeting early, dressed and acting like the Terminator, wearing a leather jacket, fake cuts on his face, and gold foil on his teeth. Henriksen kicked open the office door, sat in a chair, and waited. Cameron arrived shortly after and relieved the staff. Daly was impressed by the screenplay, Cameron's sketches, and his passion, and in late 1982 agreed to back the film with help from HBO and Orion.

• 4. Casting the Machine

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  Orion originally approached Schwarzenegger for the role of Kyle Reese, wanting an actor with rising domestic popularity and foreign appeal. Cameron was uncertain; he felt he would need someone even more famous to play the Terminator itself. Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson both turned down the Terminator role. Orion co-founder Mike Medavoy suggested O. J. Simpson, but Cameron did not believe Simpson would be credible as a killer. Cameron agreed to meet Schwarzenegger with a private plan to avoid casting him by picking a fight and returning to Hemdale with a verdict of unfit. Instead he was charmed. Schwarzenegger talked at length about how the villain should be played, and Cameron found himself sketching his face on a notepad and asking him to stop talking and hold still. After the meeting Cameron told Daly that Schwarzenegger would not play Reese, but that "he'd make a hell of a Terminator". Schwarzenegger himself was far from enthusiastic. During an interview on the set of Conan the Destroyer, asked about a pair of shoes belonging to The Terminator's wardrobe, he replied, "Oh, some shit movie I'm doing, take a couple weeks." In his memoir Total Recall he explained that he saw the low-profile film as a challenging change of pace from Conan the Barbarian, and low-risk enough that it would not damage his career if it failed. For the role of Reese, rock musician Sting was considered but declined because Cameron was too unknown a director at the time. Cameron chose Michael Biehn, who had recently seen Taxi Driver and harbored aspirations of working alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Biehn initially found the project silly, but changed his mind after meeting Cameron. To prepare, he studied the Polish resistance movement in World War II. For Sarah Connor, the script described a nineteen-year-old whose "vulnerable quality masks a strength even she doesn't know exists." Lisa Langlois was offered the role but was already committed to another production. Cameron ultimately cast Linda Hamilton, who had just finished filming Children of the Corn.

• 5. Production on the Margins

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  Filming was originally scheduled to begin in early 1983 in Toronto, but producer Dino De Laurentiis exercised an option in Schwarzenegger's contract that held him for nine months on Conan the Destroyer. During that delay, Cameron was contracted to write the script for Rambo: First Blood Part II, refined The Terminator script, and met with producers David Giler and Walter Hill to discuss a sequel to Alien. That conversation became Aliens, released in 1986. When production finally began in Los Angeles in March 1984, most action scenes were filmed at night, creating punishing schedules before sunrise. A week before filming started, Linda Hamilton sprained her ankle. Her scenes requiring running were pushed as late in the schedule as possible, and her ankle was taped every day throughout production. Schwarzenegger tried to have the line "I'll be back" changed, struggling with the pronunciation of the word I'll. Cameron refused to change it to "I will be back". Schwarzenegger speaks only seventeen lines in the entire film and fewer than one hundred words. The Terminator's physical appearance was designed through sketches passed back and forth between Cameron and effects artist Stan Winston, arriving at a design nearly identical to Cameron's original drawing from Rome. Winston assembled a team of seven artists who spent six months building a Terminator puppet, molded first in clay, then cast in plaster reinforced with steel ribbing, sanded, painted, and chrome-plated. One of the guns used in the film and on its poster was an AMT Longslide pistol modified by Ed Reynolds from SureFire to include a laser sight. Because diode lasers were not yet available, the helium-neon laser required an external power supply that Schwarzenegger had to activate manually. Reynolds received only promotional material for the project as compensation. The final scene showing Sarah driving down a highway was filmed without a permit. When an officer confronted the crew, Cameron and Hurd told him they were making a UCLA student film.

• 6. Sound of the Machine

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  Brad Fiedel composed and performed the score entirely on synthesizer, after a new agent at the Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency, Beth Donahue, sent Cameron a cassette of his work. Producer Hurd was initially reluctant because Fiedel had only worked in television. Fiedel convinced them by presenting an experimental piece he had created. He described the score as reflecting "a mechanical man and his heartbeat". Almost all the music was recorded live. The main Terminator theme appears in the opening credits and recurs throughout the film, including a slowed version when Reese dies and a piano version during the love scene. Critics described it as "haunting", with a "deceptively simple" melody recorded on a Prophet-10 synthesizer. The theme uses an unusual time signature that came about when Fiedel accidentally created an incomplete loop on his sequencer while experimenting with rhythms, producing what he called a "herky-jerky" propulsiveness. Fiedel also composed a separate piece for the sequence where Reese and Connor escape from the police station, aiming for something appropriate to a heroic moment. Cameron rejected it, believing it would deflate the tension the audience was feeling.

• 7. Release and Reception

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  Orion Pictures had little faith in The Terminator and held only one press screening before release. On its opening weekend the film played at 1,005 theaters and grossed four million dollars, reaching number one at the box office. It held that position for a second week before losing the top spot to Oh, God! You Devil. Cameron observed that the film was a hit "relative to its market, which is between the summer and the Christmas blockbusters. But it's better to be a big fish in a small pond than the other way around." Contemporary critical responses were mixed. Variety called it "a blazing, cinematic comic book, full of virtuoso moviemaking, terrific momentum, solid performances and a compelling story." Time placed it on its "10 Best" list for 1984. The Los Angeles Times praised its chase scenes, special effects, and "sly humor". On the other side, the Chicago Tribune gave it two stars, and Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it "a B-movie with flair" with "far too much" obligatory mayhem. Scottish author Gilbert Adair called the film "repellent to the last degree", charging it with "insidious Nazification". Audience polls by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "B+". Schwarzenegger had his own reckoning during production. After seeing twenty minutes of the first edit, he said: "this is really intense, this is wild, I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before" and realized "this could be bigger than we all think". On home video, the film continued to find its audience; in its second week on the rental charts it climbed to number four.

• 8. Aftermath and Legacy

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  Writer Harlan Ellison stated that he loved the film but believed its screenplay drew on his short story "Soldier from Tomorrow" and an Outer Limits episode he had written called "Soldier". Orion settled with Ellison in 1986 for an undisclosed amount and added an acknowledgment credit to later prints. Cameron was opposed to the settlement and was warned that if he refused, he would be personally liable for any damages if Orion lost a lawsuit. He later said: "I had no choice but to agree with the settlement. Of course, there was a gag order as well, so I couldn't tell this story, but now I frankly don't care. It's the truth." In 2008 the Library of Congress selected The Terminator as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and added it to the United States National Film Registry. The film won three Saturn Awards: Best Science Fiction Film, Best Make-up, and Best Writing. The American Film Institute ranked it 42nd on its list of America's most heart-pounding films, placed the Terminator character 22nd among the greatest movie villains, and voted Schwarzenegger's line "I'll be back" the 37th-greatest movie quote. The film has a 90% approval rating based on 129 professional reviews and a Metacritic score of 84 out of 100. Five sequels followed, along with a television series, comic books, novels, and video games. Schwarzenegger appeared in all but one sequel, while Cameron and Hamilton returned for Terminator 2 and Terminator: Dark Fate. Cameron's biographer Laurence Leamer described The Terminator as "an influential film affecting a whole generation of darkly hued science fiction". The Terminator robot has since been identified as the "prevalent visual representation of AI risk" in popular culture, a status the film's makers could not have predicted from a six-and-a-half-million-dollar shoot conducted mostly at night on the streets of Los Angeles.