Looking Back At James Cameron’s ‘The Terminator’ On Its 30th Anniversary

While Orion settled with Ellison out of court and he was given a credit on the home video release, Cameron always opposed that. And for once we’re on the notorious egomaniac’s side here, not least because later, when success had made him pretty much untouchable, he came out with the delightful Cameronism, also reported by Keegan, that “Harlan Ellison is a parasite who can kiss my ass.” Ellison may very well have served up the inspiration for the script, for all we know, but the things that made it “The Terminator” — the action, the love story, the man vs. machine apocalyptic futureworld — are all Cameron. There’s a reason we’re not here to celebrate the 50th anniversary (which happened in September, trivia hounds) of the “Soldier” episode of “the Outer Limits,” after all.

The story also goes that Cameron’s original idea for the script involved two Terminators being sent back, one a metal-and-living-tissue cyborg, and the other a liquid metal machine that will sound familiar to fans of “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” (i.e. everyone). Realizing that he didn’t have the tech to make the liquid metal effect a reality back then, Cameron rewrote the script into the incarnation he then went on to shoot, only to return to the idea seven years later for the film’s infinitely more bombastic sequel when the software had finally caught up to his imagination.

But as much as we have a lot of time for the still-awesome power ballad/stadium rock ballsiness of ‘T2,’ it’s the original film that remains somehow the more impressive achievement; shot for a fraction of the 1991 film’s budget (‘T2’ famously crossed the $100m barrier; “The Terminator” was made for $6.5m and some pocket lint) the original film had a sincerity, a realism and a heartfelt, albeit despairing quality that was replaced by broad-stokes adventure-cum-buddy-movie in the second installment. And let’s not even get started on the third (not great but maybe unfairly maligned Jonathan Mostow film) or the fourth (terrible McG version). Cameron, of course, would pull off a similar trick with another sci-fi sequel where he took the horror-inflected inventiveness of Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and parlayed it into the thrillingly tense action/adventure of “Aliens.” It’s hard to say which is actually the “better” film as, despite being in the same franchise, they actually occupy different genres.

But back to the lore of “The Terminator.” Schwarzenegger was famously mooted for the Michael Biehn role originally (at which the mind sort of boggles) with O.J. Simpson put forward as a suggestion for the killing machine. But having met the Austrian Oak, Cameron cast him as the machine, gave him 18 lines (65 words, we believe) and launched a stratospheric career. Of those sixty-five life-changing words, the most iconic three, “I’ll be back” apparently caused Schwarzenegger such problems that he asked to have them changed (“I will be back” was the alternate phrasing that Cameron vetoed). His accent made them difficult to say and he was particularly self-conscious about the line, yet as Cameron would say later, “Somehow, even [the] accent worked…It had a strange synthesized quality, like they hadn’t gotten the voice thing quite worked out.” And thanks to Arnold, an entire generation of moviegoers would grow up with the impression that the obvious voice for a robot to speak in naturally (even a robot that could precisely mimic other people’s voices and speech patterns) would be that of a monotone suburban bodybuilder from outside Graz in Austria. (Those three words, delivered awkwardly with equal stress on each syllable, were recently voted the 37th best movie line of all time by the AFI.)

Meantime Sting was considered for Reese, Rosanna Arquette auditioned for Sarah and “The Godfather” visual effects master Dick Smith was sought to create the models and puppetry needed for the Terminator. It was just a twist of fate, or several, that an initially reluctant Michael Biehn, and a hot-off “The Children of the Corn” Linda Hamilton were preferred in the final analysis, while Smith turned down the job, but suggested a friend of his, the now-legendary Stan Winston.

There was no way of anticipating the stickiness of that one throwaway line, or the culty, obsessive fandom that the film would inspire and that would goose its take to a very respectable $78m worldwide. In fact, Orion was so unsure about the film they held only one press screening prior to its opening and released it with very little fanfare. But sometimes justice is done. The film found an audience and the trend for merchandising the hell out of anything remotely successful kicked off. Within a few months a novelization was on the shelves (oh the ‘80s), several “Terminator” games were developed for the Sega and Nintendo platforms, and the excellent Brad Fiedel soundtrack, including the now iconic synthy theme tune, did well as a separate soundtrack release. And finally appearing on home video and laserdisc, the film found a whole new audience; indeed it was with a battered VHS copy that this writer got her first grimy metallic taste of this broken, doomed pre-apocalyptic world, and it’s a setting that, despite its bleakness, I’ve enjoyed returning to with some frequency ever since.

Which comes back to story. As much as the stars and the action and the then-cutting-edge special effects may have got us all in the door once, it is the story that can bring us back time and again. And yet it’s a story that is so fundamentally illogical that by rights it should be alienating: so John has to remember to send back his own dad, who is his age, to meet his mom, otherwise he’ll never be born? As suspension of disbelief goes, it’s a pretty big pill to swallow. Yet once you accept that barmy, self-contradictory premise, everything else unfolds with perfect, relentlessly linear logic, and the little breadcrumb trail of mini mysteries laid out along the way (what was she thinking when that photo was taken? Why was it Reese who was chosen to be sent back? ) are all given their own satisfying reveals.