#whatyear

In light of the impending return to the Terminator franchise with this summer’s Terminator Genisys, I thought I would re-visit (yet again) the classic that started it all. Now, Terminator 2 is often referred to as one of the prime examples of a sequel being superior to the first instalment and in a lot of ways, I would most certainly agree. But for me, the 1984 original will always come out on top. It’s one of my all-time favourite films so allow me to take a minute to gush – GUSH I say – about this seminal sci-fi landmark.

James Cameron will obviously go down in history as being one of the most influential directors in history – and between Titanic and Avatar, he surely has at least some of your money – but I’m always blown away by his screenwriting craft, especially in his earlier films. He had this incredible mind and skill for lean, exciting storytelling and the way he deals with plot, exposition, propulsion and character is so efficient, it really helps point out just how bloated and lazy a lot of Hollywood writing is today, especially in blockbusters or ‘popcorn’ flicks.

Take the opening of The Terminator. Within a few lines of on-screen text, he tells us what we need to know about the future war. Not everything. Just enough. No rambling, no pontificating. Just information. Then the very next scene is the Terminator arriving. Boom, we’re off. In fact, the first 20 or so minutes of this film is practically a silent movie. And it’s wonderful. All mood. All visual. We meet the young Sarah Connor and witness Kyle Reese appear with a thud, naked, into this strange new world. 

His demand to know the date, specifically the year, instantly tells us he is from the future. Then the Connor murders begin to take place and a few quick scenes with the cops aside, the screws are tightened right up until the Tech Noir shootout that finally pushes Reese and Sarah together, having left Sarah in the dark up until this point as to who was actually attempting to kill her.

Watching this again, it made me realise just how streamlined yet suspenseful this first act is. In fact, I’d argue that the most similar thing we have to this film’s structure and pacing today is something like No Country for Old Men – another brilliant, heightened chase movie that uses dialogue sparingly and is one large cat and mouse game. Javier Bardem would make a fantastic Terminator – that haircut is fooling nobody.

The next trick happens all through the initial car chase scene – this is where Reese effectively has one giant exposition dump, coming clean to Sarah about who he is, what the Terminator is and making damn sure she knows the consequences (“it absolutely will not stop, EVER, until you are dead” – badass). Set this type of scene in a diner or somewhere that two characters can casually have a sit down and a conversation and it’s obvious. Boring. Nothing at stake and zero momentum. Set it in the middle of an action scene and you’re killing two birds with one stone. We’re learning new information about the machine AS said machine is demonstrating why he’s so dangerous; literally punching through windscreens and showing no signs of slowing down. Cameron knows you will sit up and listen to the necessary points if it feels like your life depends on it – and we’re feeling so closely connected to Sarah at this point that we will hoover up every word he says. 

This technique of keeping us on our toes whilst taking in new information is played out again during Reese’s interrogation – we hear some of it in the room with him but then we cut and hear the rest of it from a distance – watching him on the monitor with the cops and with Dr Silberman, where it takes on a new dimension: we’re seeing how insane his story sounds from the perspective of the dismissive, outsider cops and it almost dares Sarah to join in with them. This is crazy right? 

And what better way to instantly abolish that thought by literally having the Terminator smash his way into the police station – a supposed place of safety – and blow away every single person in it! The message, if it wasn’t clear before, sure as shit is now – nowhere is safe. He will find you and kill you. A perfect opportunity to also eliminate essentially the entire supporting cast too including the two cops, Cameron regular Lance Henriksen and Paul Winfield. This puts the story right back on its rails and propels it towards it’s only logical conclusion – a showdown between (wo)man and machine.

There’s an interesting topic of discussion going on right now about how much modern trailers spoil the film, and how much of this is happening due to pressure on the marketing people from the studio. We live in an age where we can instantly connect and converse with anyone online the second something appears, leaks or is released – making for instantaneous feedback from the fans. Interesting, this week has become the perfect case study from three different trailers. On one end of the spectrum was the teaser for a teaser for Batman V Superman – a gimmick everyone seems to be sick of that involves showing a few seconds of footage from a trailer you’ll be getting in a few days’ time. Pointless? Or revving the engines? The latest Star Wars VII teaser seems to have managed to hit just the right balance between revealing new footage to drive people wild yet still keeping the overall structure of the story vague. We see enough cool shit, out of context, to know that we should definitely be getting excited and we’re thankful that no important plot directions have been ruined (we can assume). Ending on such a fan-serving reveal as Han and Chewie sure as hell doesn’t hurt. And then, almost as a complete opposite to that tactic, comes the latest Terminator Genisys trailer – filled to the brim with money shots, callbacks and most crucially, an apparent mid-film twist that I won’t spoil in this post. The very fact that you have to put spoiler warnings on certain trailers these days tells you all you need to know – we’re being shown too much. The new Avengers film has also degenerated into hugely dense montages of new footage and now even a handful of complete clips. So close to release and with buzz at an all-time high, this seems pointless to me.

The point I guess I’m driving at with all this relates to Terminator 2. If you watch that film, without ANY knowledge that Arnie is now a good Terminator, the writing is SO clever and precise in when it shows it’s hand. It’s genius. You’re led under false assumption throughout the first act, with the story mechanics relying on what knowledge you’re bringing in from the first film. And then the slow mo corridor scene is where it all comes to a head and seriously, if you didn’t know who was who, this would blow your mind. You see Arnie pull a shotgun from the rose box, you see the terrified John Connor desperately trying to escape, you see the T-1000 round the corner, then Arnie raises the gun and…. ‘Get down’. BAM. T-1000 sports a new liquid metal gun blast in his shoulder and suddenly all bets are off. Of course, even the trailer back in the day for T-2 revealed this surprise but I guess my laboured point is that there are certain reveals that are best kept unknown to truly appreciate the skill at work with the writing. If it’s one that the very premise doesn’t rely on then for God’s sake don’t spoil it. And I think that’s what the new Genisys trailer has done and that’s a shame as it either shows a lack of faith in the film from the executives or it’s a cheap stunt to get it trending on twitter… for all the wrong reasons. But hey, people are talking now and that’s what they need.

Wrapping up, I realised when the credits rolled on the ’84 Terminator what it can be most aptly compared to.

Alien.

The original Terminator is a stone cold horror movie, wrapped in a sci-fi shell. It deals with cyborgs and time travel and dystopian, nuclear ravaged futures but at its core, it’s a slasher flick. It’s about a big bad monster, of supernatural origins, hunting you down. Take the recent horror masterpiece It Follows for example – another film that deals with an unstoppable force constantly coming right for you, and it’s terrifying. So if The Terminator is Alien, then T-2 is definitely Aliens – same monster in play but turned on its head, with another similar but new foe, everything turned to 11 and a more ballsy and direct approach to the action scenes that make up its DNA. And seeing how Cameron himself was the guy responsible for Aliens (one of my top FIVE movies of all time), I think he knew what he was doing when it came time to sequelise his own story. Turn it into something recognisable but different. Don’t just copy the same story – or mood – of the original. Everything I’m seeing from Genisys has me worried.