The Terminator
by James Cameron
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DVD details
Actor: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lance Henriksen, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Paul WinfieldDirector: James Cameron
Brand: Sony
Cinematographer: Adam Greenberg
Writer: James Cameron
Producer: Derek Gibson
Producer: Gale Anne Hurd
Writer: Gale Anne Hurd
Producer: John Daly
Writer: William Wisher Jr.
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-06-05
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of The Terminator
DVD Review: An Impressive Work of Entertainment Mired by Scientific Implausibility
Summary: 1 Stars
Having recently rewatched this film after having seen it only once on TV some years back, my verdict remains unchanged: The Terminator is a terrific entertainment, with genuine thrills, a taut script, and an Oscar®-worthy piece of Method acting from future governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. But all this is for naught in the end, because the film sports some unforgivable scientific and, I would even argue, philosophical discrepancies.
The basic, overarching, unpardonable flaw in this movie is its understanding of time travel. Now, of course there are countless competing theories about the nature of time, but one thing every Joe and his five-year-old kid agrees on is that there are two incompatible understandings of time travel, but James Cameron wants his movie to have both. Since the movie involves a closed causal loop (Sarah Connor has sex with some dude from the future and that produces John Connor who sends that dude back in time to conceive him, because if he doesn't get conceived he's DEFINITELY screwed), you would assume it has a view of time travel as causing circular patterns, and where everything happens only once. This contrasts with the Back to the Future scenario in which it's possible to change the past. That's right: you CANNOT change the past if you allow closed causal loops; it simply can't be done. To change the past you need hypertime. Think about it: if I go back in time and kill James Cameron before shooting started, did the movie THE TERMINATOR ever exist? Well, it used to used to exist, but then after I went back in time and did my mischief it didn't used to exist anymore. So we've got two levels of temporality here, regular time and hypertime, with which we can navigate through regular time. It all sounds very complicated, but it's really not when you get down to it. Like I've always said, the problem with modern society is that nobody's willing to take the time to understand time.
The Terminator definitely wants it both ways because, despite the causal loops, everybody in the movie seems convinced that you can change the past. Otherwise, what's all the fuss about? Stay home and get it on all you want with your future boyfriend, Sarah. That terminator couldn't hurt you with an atomic bomb.
I suppose it would be plausible to say that everyone in the movie is just stupider than I am and never studied the philosophy of time travel in college, but you'd think that a computer that was smart enough to make a robot that can perfectly mimic Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent would realize that hypertime was going to be a bit of a problem.
That's the movie's second greatest flaw: The computer that created the terminator is a really underdeveloped character. Not only does this prominent villain never make an appearance (c'mon, even Sauron showed at least an eye), but the character's behavior is wildly inconsistent. It was able to rebel against humanity and set itself up as supreme dictator of the world, but then some miscreants defeated its reign with some firecrackers their mothers told them how to make when they were ten-year-olds? It's weird how such state-of-the-art machinery can have such low tech security holes.
And its plan for getting back at the humans is so byzantine it was bound to fail. To think there were so many other alternatives that had pretty much a 0% failure rate. Reese explains at one point that even though the terminator was made out of metal, it could go back in time just like him because it was surrounded by flesh. If that's the case, why not just wrap a hydrogen bomb in goat intestines and send that back to 1984 Los Angeles? Do that and you not only solve the Connor problem but you also probably keep the world from turning into that overpoluted mess that Cameron's fx team did such a great job designing.
And John Connor: What were you thinking sending Reese back in time to exactly the same time as Schwarzenegger? Send him back six months earlier. That way he can move her to Baltimore under an assumed name, knock her up, and then when the governator shows up in LA half a year later, he doesn't even get a forwarding address, and the world is saved.
And why send the terminator to a time so recent? Wouldn't the job be easier if you instead killed one of his ancestors at the time of the bubonic plague? That way you don't need any laser-scope pistols or 12 gauge shotguns. Just cough on that sucker and it's goodbye John Connor.
I could go on forever explaining this movie's regrettable flaws, but I think I've outlined the basic gist of it. It really is sad because the movie does sport some great action set-pieces and marks the start of the terrific career of James Cameron, who would go on to make the much more scientifically plausible Avatar. But for all its worth, I'm forced to give this one a reluctant thumbs down.
Description of The Terminator
In the year 2029, the ruling super-computer, Skynet, sends an indestructible cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) before she can fulfill her destiny and save mankind.This is the film that cemented Schwarzenegger's spot in the action-brawn firmament, and it was well deserved. He's chilling as the futuristic cyborg who kills without fear, without love, without mercy. James Cameron's story and direction are pared to the bone and all the more creepy. But don't overlook the contributions of Linda Hamilton, who more than holds her own as the Terminator's would-be victim, Sarah Connor--thus creating, along with Sigourney Weaver in Alien, a new generation of rugged, clear-thinking female action stars. It's surprising how well this film holds up, and how its minimalist, malevolent violence is actually way scarier than that of its far more expensive, more effects-laden sequel. --Anne Hurley
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