You might be wondering, “What’s up with Nathan and time travel?” And you may have a point, but I wasn’t thinking about that link when I re-watched this recently. It just popped up in my Amazon Prime feed (though I own the first four on DVD) and it sounded good.
I thought I’d share some thoughts about the film, the premise, real-life news items (that possibly, sub-consciously affected my watchlist), the theory of time travel, and how the film holds up.
Background
Written and directed by James Cameron (also of Titanic and Avatar fame), Wikipedia says the film, “helped launch Cameron’s film career and solidify Schwarzenegger’s status as a leading man,” as it topped the box office for two weeks.
Gee, the role of a robot worked out well for a bodybuilder with little acting experience? They didn’t find his performance “too wooden?” Shocking. To be fair, Schwarzeneggar had already done two Conan films prior to this (1982 & 1984), but again, those weren’t exactly Oscar-worthy performances.
Unstoppable Automatons
In any case, the Wiki-lore on this movie states that, “suffering from a fever, Cameron had a nightmare about an invincible robot hit-man sent from the future to assassinate him.” I’ve had that nightmare, but only since watching The Terminator. However, it turns out that–according to Mike Pearl of Vibe)–“But as for the plot about a time-traveling soldier from the future on a mission to kill a foe in the present? He stole that—yep, stole in the legal sense—from an old episode of The Outer Limits written by sci-fi god-among-men Harlan Ellison.”
Nevertheless, the idea of an unstoppable automaton that just keeps coming have been around at least since the Golem of Prague myth, around the 16th Century. Prior to that, we still have the idea of Sisyphean tasks (e.g. rolling a large boulder up a hill, so it can roll back down again). So dreams like this may have been common.
Real Life Intersections
Last year, the film jumped back into the spotlight, as researchers at Cornell University created creepy lifelike machines that could grow, learn and die. More recently, China has launched a national surveillance system, with over 20 million cameras, that it calls The “Skynet Project”. I always gotta wonder about people who cluelessly name things after pop culture they like. Do they think they’re doing a “wink?!” “We know it looks like we’re creating a dangerous surveillance system that, if it were to become self-aware, would take over the world and doom all of humanity, but we’ve named it after the fictional project that does exactly that, so it’s ok”? WTF?
Time Travel
The theory of time travel in the Terminator franchise is a moving target, but if we look at just this first movie, it’s pretty simple. The Terminator has to go back in time to kill Sarah Connor because in the future that will be, it already did. And Kyle Reese has to go back to stop it–and father John Connor–for the same reason: because he already did. It doesn’t even attempt to alter the past, but rather, creates it, and so it creates a time-loop that closes itself, without any paradox. We don’t know if the humans will win, but we do have the knowledge that they’re at least annoying Skynet, so maybe they’re on the right path.
Does it hold up?
Sci fi movies from the 1980’s fare remarkably badly in the #MeToo era (I’m looking at you, Weird Science). My “Wall O’DVD’s” is a lot less impressive when you take out all the problematic titles. So how does The Terminator fare?
Well, I don’t claim to be an expert, but, “fairly well.” Watching it again, I didn’t have as many *cringe* moments as I have with other popular films from the period. True, the sex scene–though conceptually necessary for furthering the plot–could have been set up and executed differently. The relationship between Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese is a bit problematic–hormones (she’s supposed to be 19, in the script) mixed with the adrenaline from being rescued several times, compounded with the idea that he’s a virgin who came back in time specifically for her seems to add a note of pity, if not obligation to the sex scene. The main thing that saves the relationship is that, as Kyle’s strength wanes, Sarah’s rises, so that she’s carrying him in the end, and thus, she alone ultimately terminates the Terminator.
“Wow, Mr. Man, you didn’t find any problematic gender issues in this? Well you sure did your due diligence.”
Ok, so what did I miss? Comments? Thoughts?
