As I was watching The Terminator, I spent a good amount of time thinking, “what wasted potential.” Putting myself into the context of a mid-1980s film viewer, some of the visuals and sounds from this movie were especially impressive. The way the score combined futuristic synth with more horror-inducing elements perfectly encapsulated the tone of the film. However, what left me so disappointed is that the characters involved in the action scenes have very little development and that the more interesting storyline is only mentioned in exposition.

The closest any character comes to an arc is Sarah Connor. By the end of the film, she is a confident to-be mother, which is certainly different from damsel-in-distress portrayal throughout most of the film. However, is her character in the end really any different from the beginning? We see her take a creepy, sexual phone call from her roommate’s boyfriend completely in stride, and her relaxed confidence and humor are evident both in the beginning and the end. One could argue that, although she learns the most of any character in the film, Sarah Connor does not really have an arc. The same could be said for Kyle Reese. His heroic moment comes as he sacrifices himself for Sarah, but he has always been willing to sacrifice himself, demonstrated by the one-way nature of his time-travel mission. And since the main villain is a psychopathic robot, none of the three main characters experience very much, if any, character development. The intense action scenes that are plentiful in this film thus lack much emotional impact because the audience has never been given a chance to connect with the characters.

Finally, the entire premise of the film seems flawed. Which of these two options sounds more compelling? An assassination attempt on a seemingly random woman in 1984 Los Angeles, or a post-apocalyptic war between humans and robots/artificial intelligence? The best scenes in the movie come in the form of flashbacks (flashforwards?) to the future conflict. Without taking into consideration any films that follow in the Terminator franchise (because I legitimately have no idea what happens in the following movies), I believe a more effective and entertaining version of this film would focus on the war with the mythology of Sarah Connor and the Terminator being woven into the narrative.

There’s a lot to like about Terminator. I dig its aesthetic and the action is solid. And I dig stable time loops in movies.

However, I would hesitate to call it a particularly *deep* movie. There’s a lot to be said about its predictions regarding machines, but it doesn’t go particularly in depth on the questions it raises. It’s thematically rather shallow. I suppose the closest thing that comes to a theme is during scenes where Sarah doubts herself and Reese assures her that she’s a capable person who will one day raise a great man. You can see a sort of theme about even ordinary people can lead to great change, but again, this doesn’t really leave a lot to chew on. I would have liked to see a more in-depth look on what led to the apocalypse, on what made the robots decide that human beings were a detriment, and on what aspects of John Connor brought hope to humanity. It could very easily have been a commentary on the value of the human spirit and lead to a far more interesting discussion of man vs machine. Again, we get a little bit of this at the end, but at that point the movie is more interesting in developing Sarah and Reese’s romance than looking into the actual dynamics of the world. My personal favorite parts of the movie were the parts that were in the future. It would have been fascinating to take a deeper dive into that world and the psyche of those who inhabit it.

Perhaps one thing the Terminator was lacking in was some form of hope. While this is in no way a requisite for a film to be good, and actually could be seen as making the film independent of Hollywood tropes such as happy endings, for many viewers a question undoubtably arises as to why one would watch a film that depicts humans dooming themselves. Though it is true that the film does offer hope in the form of the message that John relays to Sarah Connor through Kyle Reese, the message itself is rather insignificant, it simply being that the future is not set in stone and thus things can change. Even so, it is problematic to view this as a hopeful message as the film asks the audience to question the veracity of the claim, as John is the son of Kyle who was sent back in time to save Sarah, implying it was fate for Kyle to go back and things could not have happened any other way; the future was already written. In this sense, the film portrays humans as slaves to forces outside their control and offers little solid for the audience to grasp on to.

Additionally, the film was also particularly binary. While this again isn’t necessarily a bad thing, for someone looking for more depth, the Terminator is incredibly lacking on anything outside of “good guys” and “bad guys.” Kyle Reese is the protector, Sarah Connor the protected, the Terminator the embodiment of evil, and the police are essentially nothing more than obstacles meant to slow the plot down and establish the next fight scene. In this way, none of the characters manage to move beyond their essentially monolithic roles. Unlike a film such as Ex Machina, the machines in the Terminator are never given any form of compelling reasoning for their motives and thus fall flat as any sort of complex characters. Moreover, while Kyle Reese’s motives are more than to save the life of John Connor given his romantic feelings towards Sarah Connor, it cannot be said his motives are any more than to protect Sarah out of his love for her, and thus he also becomes a monolith.

The limitation of the cast of The Terminator to only three main characters creates a lack in the skeptical perspective that most people would have in response to the plot of the movie, which creates disorder in the plot and neglects a potentially interesting side plot.

The criminal psychologist Dr. Silberman fills this role for most of the movie, and through his interrogation of Kyle Reese, he creates an opportunity for Kyle Reese to answer some of the many questions that the audience might pose regarding time travel. For example, he clarifies that there will be no other time traveling events besides the ones involving him and the Terminator. However, after the Terminator assaults the police station, Dr. Silberman longer provide an opportunity for Kyle Reese to answer questions about time travel. This opens the door to a series of questions that poke at the foundations of the plot as the intensity of the plot increases. Kyle Reese’s revelations about the future can be easily dismissed by a psychologist designating him a loon, but it is less clear how the destruction at the police station and along the path of the Terminator would be dismissed.

The side plot involving the police attempting to solve what they believe to be a serial killing case provides a more practical motive to contrast the somewhat convoluted motives involved in the main plot. Now You See Me exemplifies how a bewildering main plot can be tied into a straightforward side plot. In this movie, the actions of enigmatic magicians are thematically juxtaposed but narratively linked with the criminal investigations of the FBI. This enhances the plot by representing two perspectives on the plot. The Terminator receives a similar boost until the characters providing the boost die, which creates an absence in the final minutes of the movie.

Overall, I thought Terminator (1984) was a good, action packed movie. It featured everything necessary in order to entertain the part of the audience that relished the multiple fist fights and car chases. I personally don’t think it lacked anything but I do think that it had too much of everything. The movie is spends most of its time displaying car chases and shootings which are highly predictable and superfluous: you don’t need four car chases in a movie to let the audience know that Sarah Connor is in trouble.

In my opinion, the movie’s time would’ve been better spent developing the storyline between Kyle and Sarah. James Cameron could’ve deepened their relationship and even portrayed Sarah as more of a warrior rather than giving her the one “Move soldier” line. I don’t think that the one line properly set Sarah up to be the legend she was supposed to be. At the same time, the movie only allowed Kyle to save Sarah and give her a kid. I wish he would’ve spent more time alive in the movie. With these changes I feel like the movie could’ve been way greater than it already was.

I personally feel like The Terminator is, although simple, a movie of complete plot and character development. The movie successfully implies its bleak vision of human future by inserting fragments about the hardship in the future life; at the same time, it exhibits a smooth progress in the relationship between Sarah and Kyle, making it easy for viewers to see them being a across-time couple in the second half of the movie.

However, some viewers might still argue that the movie lacks depiction of the future world. In 2019, we have seen enough future-predicting movies that it is no longer difficult to imagine a future nuclear war or a utopian/distopian future world dominated by undefeated power holders. In 1984, however, when the movie first came out, many viewers might have only seen star wars, so the post-nuclear war generation being watched by emotionless human-shape robots could just be as intriguing as the plot itself. Some viewers would therefore wish that the movie provided shots on the future governors, the future city, and even the robot manufacture scenes.

It is also possible for people to feel as if the plot, especially the romantic part of it, is too simple. “A woman falls in love for her savior, who died in the end.” For people who always look for some intriguing love stories in all movies, this might be the most underdeveloped story line. Before the couple had shown enough tenderness on screen, one of them is six-feet under. Since Sarah’s transformation is fueled by her experience with Kyle, this might contribute to a feeling of insufficient foreshadowing for Sarah’s transformation into a strong woman, who, in the closing scene, pregnant, alone, but still determined to drives toward whatever future that awaits.

Growing up my mom made sure that I watched all of the classic movies that she grew up watching: Star Wars, Jaws, Back to the Future, etc. Naturally, The Terminator was included in this list. I loved it! The awesome action scenes were perfect for a young boy, and I thought it was funny that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the bad guys because he was our governor at the time. I watched that movie multiple times over the course of my childhood so it has a special meaning for me, but I haven’t rewatched it in the last couple of years.

This is why I enjoyed this prompt so much because it enabled me to rewatch the movie with a different mindset, and I realized there was lots of things I dislike about Terminator. The action scenes that entertained me so much as a kid had become lackluster. Maybe I’m spoiled because of the amazing CGI accomplishments of modern movies like Endgame, but the stop motion robot movements have become humorous to me. It just didn’t carry that same “wow” effect it had for me as a kid. But also, as I have gotten older I think I have become less impressed with action sequences. Fight scenes have become a dime-a-dozen in Hollywood, and as a result of this I have found myself placing more value in dialogue within movies. It’s kind of a basic aspect of a movie, but good dialogue can make or break a scene. Especially after taking a film class of my own, I’ve realized how hard it is to create a script with natural flowing dialogue, and on top of this how hard it is to act and perform the lines. Now that I look back at The Terminator, dialogue is what I am the most unhappy with, which is kind of funny because of all the famous catch phrases from this franchise. But beyond those, I noticed that there were relatively few dialogue sequences compared to the action scenes, and the dialogue that did occur was rather weak in my opinion. Dialogue is a really important part of character development and enables the audience to bond with the characters. I especially felt the dialogue between Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese was weak, which made for a weak storyline that extended from the fact that they were being hunted by Arnold Schwarzenegger.  

After watching The Terminator, I felt that the greatest absence was the lack of situation that the plot revolves around. The movie begins with roughly 20 seconds of a title sequence that gives a background about machines from the future wanting to exterminate mankind for ages, but the final battle would be fought in the present. However, within the 1 hour and 48 minutes of The Terminator, the next time more situational information was given is roughly 40 minutes into the movie when the Terminator finally tracks his target, the exact Sarah Connor, at a nightclub where Kyle Reese explains to Sarah that an artificial intelligence network Skynet will initiate a nuclear holocaust and her future son leads the resistance movement. The only other instance of situational background being shown is 30 minutes later where the Kyle’s daily life is seen from the future. The lack of situational background made the beginning of the movie confusing, as well as action scenes being a drag due to the lack of information as to why the scenes were happening.

Another problem that I found in The Terminator is the lack of character background of the three main characters: the Terminator, Kyle Reese, and Sarah Connor. The Terminator was portrayed as an indestructible, but destructive, emotionless android and that’s it. There is no origin story, no journey to the movie’s time period, and no background of the artificial intelligence network Skynet. The lack of information made it difficult to develop the Terminator as a true antagonist. Additionally, the love connection between Kyle and Sarah seemed forced and sudden in order to justify certain aspects of the plot. While Kyle was given some character background, it did not feel like enough for him to time travel and ultimately die in order to save Sarah, someone who he claimed he “loved” without meeting her.

An obvious absence in the film is high-quality action scenes with the help of better special effects. It is understandable given the time which this movie was made (1984), that the crew did the best they could with the technology they had in the 80’s. But for the sake of the audience’s enjoyment, the movie would have been better if it had come off more realistic. Again, there was little that could be done to help this though. Another item that ties into this is editing. There are moments where the voice overs don’t overlay properly with the lip movements of the actors. This could be when the Terminator is speaking or simple action scenes where the actors cannot be heard during shooting and require voice overs to be done. For instance, when the Terminator impersonates Sarah’s mom, his actions are not in sync with what is heard.

Plot-wise, I think the audience might appreciate more development of the romance, especially since it is the product of Kyle and Sarah’s love that start this entire thing. More development between the two would have added more flavor to the plot and the movie would have been more worthwhile. I also did not like how the Terminator did not die in the fire –  the audience could have easily assumed that he was a robot made out of cheaper metal and that would’ve been the end of the movie. I felt the audience already understood that he is practically indestructible and him surviving the fire was redundant. Additionally, I think another necessity would be more background information on the future in 2029 and the whole concept around Skynet and John himself. It would have made the movie more cohesive and easy-to-follow if they included scenes of the future featuring John in the apocalypse. It would be nice if the audience was given knowledge fortifying why this chaos is going on in the first place.

One important thing that was missing for me in The Terminator (1984) was the development of the relationship between Sarah and Kyle. Given that the entire premise of the movie hinges on them falling in love and having sex in order to bring John into existence, I feel that their relationship lacks depth. They’ve known each other for barely a day and that day has hardly given them time to talk as they’re being chased and shot at constantly. Their relationship just seems very one-sided. On that note, since Kyle claims that he has been in love with Sarah for a long time, it might have been interesting to see more of him in the future talking to John about his mother and why she was so great.

I would have also been interested in a slightly more developed antagonist. Arnold Schwarzenegger does a terrifyingly good job as a hulking, indestructible bad guy, but that’s the issue. The fact that the Terminator can survive explosions, gunshots, and literally being torn in half makes him less believable as a character. Aside from that, his motivations also lack depth because he is simply a machine following orders. It would have been cool if the addition of human flesh and blood to the structure of the Terminator influenced its ability/desire to kill humans, since it would have more in common with them than if it was made of rubber.