The Terminator

The Terminator, originally uploaded by Dunechaser.

What I'm Watching: I have been itching to watch Terminator since The Sarah Connor Chronicles hooked me, and I watched it last night on a Blu-Ray disk. That movie, originally released in the Fall of 1984, brings back many memories. I saw it in a theater and remember loving it. I remember, in college, trying to convince a friend to watch it who wouldn't because she didn't like the idea that Sarah was valuable only because she gave birth to John Connor. I tried to explain to her that Sarah meant a lot more than that: if John had been raised by someone else he would not have led any resistance. She never did watch it. I remember I had taped it off of HBO and I pretty much wore the video out because it was my go-to movie when I wanted to watch something but didn't have anything new (until I got ahold of James Cameron's next movie: Aliens).

Terminator is still a good movie. The haircuts and the low-budget effects ($ 6.5 million - even in '84 movie terms that's low budget) date it some, but the story is still effective. And everyone is so young! Linda Hamilton, Arnold Swarzenegger, Micheal Beihn,.. hell, even Lance Henriksen, Paul Winfield, and Earl Boen! I have a hard time thinking that this movie is almost 25 years old.

The biggest difference, I think, between the Terminator franchise and the Alien franchise is the Terminator has much more story to mine. Alien took a left turn into a big mound of cow manure during the first 2 minutes of Alien3 and never got any better. Like I have said - Terminator 3 wasn't bad and the new TV show has been outstanding.

Of course I shiver a little with news of Terminator 4: it's the story of the aftermath of Judgement Day (so I have to wonder: is this new movie going to take into account / going to be taken into account by SCC? If so then poor Sarah and John are doomed to failure, yet again). The bad news is that McG (yep, that's his name. He should change it to McLovin) is directing. He did the Charlie's Angels movies (bleh). The good news is Christian Bale is playing John Connor, so there's a reason to watch. No, Arnold is not going to be in the movie, and I have no problem with his omission. Many different T-Models exist, after all.