154: Titanic

James Cameron #6

Titanic is a masterpiece, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The sheer visual spectacle James Cameron displays here trumps all of the negative elements of the movie. Cameron’s story behind the sinking of the Titanic may be full of contrivances and romantic blubbery, but it is also full of heart-wrenching honesty about this tragic event. There may be better movies out there, but none of them with the visual splendor Cameron unleashes on his audience. It isn’t hard to understand why this movie went on to become the number one boxoffice success ever… at least until Cameron’s next movie Avatar, but more on that in another piece.

In 1998 I was at an age when one wants to be an individual. I didn’t want to be part of the masses and sought out movies that other ‘normal’ people probably wouldn’t go see. Therefore I was not really looking forward to Titanic, a movie that was hyped so much upon its release. It was probably nearly a month after its release that a friend of mine dragged me to the theater to see it. It is not often that you go to a movie that has been out for a month and still enter a packed theater. It was filled to the brim. That told me this could be something special. In the end I was so glad my friend took me to Titanic, because I was blown away. I didn’t care one bit about the running time, or the slightly stodgy acting, or the contrived romantic story. I was so completely immersed in the experience that everything else seemed to fade away.

I guess that was the experience a lot of people had… over and over again. Cameron created something magical: a movie about one of the biggest tragedies of the modern world that we all know the ending of, but actually know just about nothing about. Cameron filled out his epic with characters with have come to know and love. Rose, played by Kate Winslet, is the perfect mirror for every independent thinking woman out there. Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is the guy us men all want to be. The rest of the cast may have been a bit two-dimensional, but with a supporting cast that has the Titanic itself in it you don’t really need much more character than that.

One of the saving graces of Titanic may even be the running time. We get to spend a lot of time with the characters before anything really happens. It takes Cameron approximately one hour and thirty-eight minutes to get to the point where the shit hits the proverbial fan. Cameron’s patience gives us ample time to form a bond with these people who are bound to become victims, but who before this were often just statistics. That’s why the sale of tissues exploded when Titanic was released. We care for these people and we feel terrible when the ship goes down and we see all of them in the freezing arctic waters. And when the shit hits the fan it hits the fan in a spectacular way.

From the moment the Titanic hits the iceberg Cameron pushes his movie into overdrive and we are witness to one of the most horrifying ordeals ever. Cameron built an almost exact replica of the ship (just one side) off the coast of Mexico and added to that set with digital visual effects that were, of course, groundbreaking at the time. You believe every single moment we see the Titanic on the screen, it is majestic. The attention to detail in everything is also what sells the movie. Cameron wanted everything to be exactly like it was. From the china, to the window dressing, from furniture to uniforms. Nothing was left to chance. Titanic is, despite its flaws (Celine Dion), a movie you have to experience and let wash over you. That last shot of everybody standing there at the grand staircase welcoming Rose back to the Titanic gets me every time.

Did it deserve its Oscar for Best Picture? Considering the competition–Good Will Hunting, L.A. Confidential, As Good As It Gets, The Full Monty–I would have to say no. In my opinion L.A. Confidential is a better movie than Titanic, but I can forgive the Academy for being swept away by the enormous adventure that is Titanic. Other than Best Picture it went on to win ten other Oscars, including just about every technical Oscar given out that year. I think that is completely deserved. Cameron accomplished something here that will baffle people for a long time to come.

After completing Titanic Cameron took a long time off to do other things than directing feature films. He went on to direct three documentaries about the world underwater: Expedition: Bismarck, Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep. Especially Ghosts of the Abyss is remarkable. Cameron went back to the wreck of the Titanic to add to the epic he already had created. It is a beautiful documentary with astonishing photography of the actual Titanic. Highly recommended if you want to see more of the Titanic. Every once in a while I return to Titanic and I urge everybody to do the same.

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137: True Lies

James Cameron #5

I have never been a fan of True Lies. While others herald this as a great action movie, all I see is a flawed attempt at making some sort of James Bond knock-off. I am convinced that Cameron made True Lies to get Twentieth Century Fox to give him the money to make his next movie Titanic. I wasn’t there, so this is all speculation, but I think Cameron gave them this treatment he wrote about a normal man who in reality is a spy and convinced Fox it would be a big hit. That it was, no doubts there, but it wasn’t the classic many make it out to be.

At the time True Lies came around Arnold Schwarzenegger was going through a bit of an identity crisis. After years of having played action roles he started to try his hand at comedy a lot more. With Last Action Hero he was clearly poking fun at himself and the genre that he was very much a part of. With Junior he went totally off the rails, so let’s not dwell on that. In between he made True Lies with James Cameron, with whom he made his most iconic movies, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. True Lies is tailor-made to Schwarzenegger’s identity crisis in that it tries so hard to be funny and full of action at the same time, but the problem is you need a leading actor who can act to pull that off and Arnold is not that guy.

There are three shining lights in the cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill Paxton and, wait for it, Tom Arnold. Yes, I said Tom Arnold. Jamie Lee Curtis is excellent as the timid wife who has to come to terms with the fact that there is this whole other world she wasn’t aware off. Her erotic dancing scene is a brilliant combination of sensuality and comedy. Bill Paxton goes all out as used car salesman and professional liar Simon. Paxton throws everything he has in this role. He is despicable, pathetic, charming and just plain stupid at once. Paxton is a limited actor, but he knocks this one out of the park. And then Tom Arnold. He is truly the comedic heart of True Lies. His lines are timed like a Swiss watch. They are always on the money and very funny to boot. His stuff really holds up. I wish I could say the same about the rest of the movie.

True Lies is a terribly structured movie. Cameron is not known for writing the best dialogue in the world, but usually the structuring of his movies is perfectly alright. Not so with True Lies. The movie starts with a very James Bond-y sequence that involves explosions, chases and everything else you expect from a spy thriller. We subsequently get into the home situation of Harry where he has to hide his real job behind the guise of a boring salesman. So far so good. Then we are introduced to the bad guys of True Lies, a bunch of incredibly stereotypical Middle Eastern terrorists. The shallow portrayal aside, this is still a fun movie. Then something strange happens. The entire terrorist plot disappears for a long time. From that point on we focus an inordinate amount of time on Harry’s relationship with his wife and the fact that she may or may not be having an affair with douchebag Simon. After this is all dealt with the terrorists show up again out of nowhere to get that part of the movie going again. This is such clumsy writing that it is hard to believe Cameron wrote this. It feels like a first draft that was accepted blindly by the studio and given the green light. This is the most jarring example, but True Lies is full of writing decisions that would not get past a script doctor if the name JAMES CAMERON wasn’t on the cover.

An excuse I hear a lot when talking about True Lies is, “But the action is great.” I disagree with that to a certain extent. I recognize the skill with which these action sequences are made. Having Arnold Schwarzenegger on horseback going after the terrorist on a motorcycle through busy streets all the way to the top of a skyscraper is certainly an impressive feat, but it is also completely ridiculous. I can’t get into the extreme level of action Cameron displays here. Having Arnold fly a Harrier fighter jet outside a building and shooting the bad guy hanging from a rocket through a building into a helicopter is simply beyond anything I can get behind. It is just way too far out there and, honestly, doesn’t come across as something Cameron would consciously do. This may be a cynical view, but I truly think True Lies was like a gateway movie to get to Titanic.

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136: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

James Cameron #4

After the incredibly ambitious The Abyss, which was not received favorably, Cameron probably thought a sure thing might be a better way to go. He decided to return to his feature film debut (Piranha II not counting), The Terminator. There was a second story that  he wanted to have told and what a story it is. I remember going into the screening of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and being blown away by it. I can not remember whether I had seen The Terminator (T2) yet (I probably had, I was almost 17), but if that were the case it certainly didn’t bother me. From the moment of the terminator’s foot crashing down on that poor skull I was hooked and Cameron took me and everybody else on a journey that was unforgettable. And coincidentally it cemented Cameron’s name as a sure fire moneymaker.

After a short monologue by Linda Hamilton, returning as a beefed-up Sarah Conner, and our first glimpse at the end of the world, Cameron takes us right back to 2029 AD, where the civil war against the machines is in full effect. John Conner is now the leader of the resistance, but that could soon change, because the machines are sending back a terminator to kill him before he is even born. But that is a story for another movie. This time the machines think they are smarter and they send a terminator back to the time when John is a teenager, a deeply troubled teenager, because living with his mother hasn’t been all that pleasant for him. Luckily for John he has sent back a terminator as well. He managed to reprogram one to obey John no matter what happens. Now the only question remains is which terminator will reach him first. This results in a brilliant game of cat-and-mouse between the two terminators. Caught in the middle are John and his mother Sarah, who has for years been locked away in a psychiatric institution because of her rants about the end of the world.

Cameron wasn’t planning on making a carbon copy of The Terminator. He wanted to shake things up, play with his audience’s expectations. Sarah Conner is no longer the meek victim we saw in part one. She has become bitter and cynical while preparing for the seemingly inevitable demise of the human race. Her arc is especially interesting in T2, because during the movie she becomes the terminator while trying to stop SkyNet from becoming the malevolent force it is bound to become. As a counterweight Arnold Scharzenegger’s terminator is becoming more and more human. Under the influence of young John Conner, the T-800 slowly but surely starts to recognize what it is to be human. He even learns how to smile and not kill someone while on a mission. Cameron plays with the mythos of The Terminator saga, succeeds admirably and made a movie that in many ways is better than its ancestor.

A huge part of T2‘s success can also be attributed to the visual effects. These are phenomenal, as is to be expected from a James Cameron movie. Robert Patrick’s T-1000 is made of liquid metal and we don’t doubt it for one second. When he came walking out of that car crash and morphed into his human form everybody gasped. After that we see him skewer people with needles and swords, drop through a helicopter window in liquid form and assemble himself after being blown to bits. It was astonishing to behold and at that point we knew the face of visual effects were changed forever. There is no doubt in my mind that Cameron’s work on T2 paved the way for future movies. Maybe not the actual soft- or hardware, but more the awareness that it can be done made people go further and further to create what would become some of the most iconic movies of all time like Jurassic Park and Toy Story.

Some of the effects come across as a little dated. Take for instance that iconic scene where the T-1000 walks out of that fiery crash. The animation of that figure is crude at best compared to what is possible today. It is like watching the Taun Taun running across the snowy fields of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. You see clearly that it is stop motion animation and today that could have been much more smooth, but we don’t care. That is what the state of visual effects were back then and it is part of that movie as much as the performances are. The same goes for T2 (and every movie for that matter). Sometimes things are going to look crude, but that is the way it is. However, for the most part the visual effects–practical and digital–are still examples of how visual effects can enhance your story. Something a lot of filmmakers can learn a lot from.

There are some things, however, I do have a problem with. One of them is the introduction of the T-800, Schwarzenegger’s terminator. Cameron uses George Thorogood’s song Bad to the Bone after the T-800 assaults a group of bikers in a bar. I never really understood why Cameron did this, because it breaks the serious tone of the opening in such a jarring way. It certainly doesn’t fit the overall tone of the movie. There are comedic elements in T2, but they stem almost all from dialogue and action, never from audio elements or songs. Another thing is the sloppiness with which some of the scenes are handled. For example: Miles Dyson walks into his clean room without any protective gear, while other people walk around in full get up. This is just lazy and something that could have been fixed easily. And one last thing: how convenient that they happened to end up in a metal smelting factory. With that said, I stop my nitpicking.

Once again the Special Edition is the version of T2 you need to watch. The scenes returned to the movie add a lot of depth to the relationships between the characters. Most startling are two sequences. The first is where Sarah Conner has to remove the microprocessor from the T-800’s head to reset it. She then has to make a decision that could have dire consequences. The other occurs after the T-1000 is blown to bits in the factory. Apparently getting blasted to bits wasn’t so good for the T-1000 after all, because we see him struggle when he comes in contact with other metal. This solves one of the most glaring omissions from the theatrical cut of T2: How did John know which Sarah Conner to trust at the very end? It appears that he could see the difference because the T-1000 was fused to the metal grating he was standing on. It is unbelievable to me that Cameron let this cut go ahead it is that crucial to the outcome. Strangely, though, some small beats are missing from the Special Edition that were in the theatrical cut.

If it wasn’t obvious yet, I absolutely adore this movie, warts and all. The sheer kinetic force of T2 is enough to take your breath away. There is not a moment wasted and still the movie clocks in at a whopping 137 minutes (152 minutes if you are watching the Special Edition). It is to Cameron’s credit that he is able to create such an engaging story in the middle of one of the most spectacularly ambitious action movies ever. Something he was not able to do in his next film, True Lies.

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134: The Abyss

James Cameron #3

The Abyss is in my opinion one of Cameron’s best movies to date. This is by far not the popular opinion. A lot of people have a problem with the whole NTI-subplot and how it functions more as a deus ex machina than a true plot point. I don’t agree with that, I think The Abyss is a beautifully structured action-adventure movie with a heart that sticks with you, no matter what. Provided you watch the Special Edition and not the original theatrical cut, but that is almost always the case with a James Cameron movie.

In The Abyss we meet the crew of a deep-sea drilling rig, who are told to go to the edge of an abyss to inspect a nuclear submarine that sunk there. A group of Navy Seals are sent down to assist the crew members along with the designer of the rig. Together they must find the reason for the sinking of the sub. What they don’t know is that the whole incident was orchestrated by a force beyond anything they could have imagined and in time they will learn that love is a much more powerful force than hate. This is an awfully short synopsis for a movie that takes nearly three hours (that is the special edition) to tell its story.

In The Abyss Cameron blends action and adventure with science fiction and drama with extreme ease. We go from high concept underwater action sequences, one of them involving a sinking crane, to small character moments that give the movie a depth that is often missing in Cameron’s movies. Comedic moments give the situations, which are often very claustrophobic and tense, a more realistic feel. After all, this is a group of people who have been down in this rig for a long time and a way to alleviate some of the tension is to joke with each other. The chemistry between the actors is excellent. Much of that bonding must have been formed while shooting The Abyss.

Cameron is notorious for getting what he wants and when that isn’t readily available, he will invent it. To film The Abyss he chose to create too gigantic water tanks to facilitate his vision. He built the sets in the tanks and this shows. You can feel the weight of the water when watching The Abyss. It is a feeling that could not be replicated by digital effects, at least not yet. Combine this with an abundance of small quarters, cramped submarines and low ceilings and you have a beautifully claustrophobic whole that squeamish people may want steer away from.

Shooting The Abyss has become a bit of a legend in film making history. While not on the same level of Apocalypse Now, The Abyss sure ranks among the movies that have had the most troublesome productions. Spending months underwater was something that became a little too much for a lot of the cast members, driving them to nervous breakdowns and irritable skin (because of the chlorination of the water). The hardships of the cast and crew are evident on the screen and lend an even more realistic tone to the movie.

This is by far the most personal of Cameron’s movies. Not only is it about one of Cameron’s favorite hobbies: underwater exploration, it is also about the relationship between a husband and wife who are fighting to keep their marriage alive amid everything that is going on. Cameron and his wife Gale Anne Hurd were going through a rough patch in their marriage at the same time Cameron was trying to get The Abyss made. He even admitted that he modeled Lindsey Brigman on Hurd. She is a tenacious, brilliant, beautiful woman who can be hard to live with. At the same time Virgil ‘Bud’ Brigman is a short-tempered son of a bitch who also can be hard to live with. It isn’t hard to figure out what the home situation would have been for Cameron and Hurd.

The Abyss is Cameron’s attempt at finding a solution to his marital problems, even if he has to find extraterrestrial life to do so. He is willing to take any situation to rekindle his wife’s love for him. This deeper level of meaning makes The Abyss even more powerful, certainly when you are married yourself and you can understand how hard it can be to keep the flame going in a marriage. The most intense sequence comes when Bud has to let something happen to Lindsey that is nothing short of traumatizing to anybody involved. The resulting couple of minutes are some of the most harrowing you will ever see in a movie. This is easily the most emotional sequence Cameron has ever directed in his whole career. Even the final scenes of Titanic can not compare to this.

When talking about Cameron’s movies, almost always there is a Special Edition to put next to the theatrical cut. The Abyss is no different. Because of time constraints and demands from the studio Cameron had to cut several scenes from the movie. It did not do the movie any good. Especially the ending became a rushed affair that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. This cutting garnered Cameron devastating reviews. With the Special Edition he was able to go back and solve some of the problems with The Abyss. He went back to the visual effects engineers to finish the tidal wave scene at the end, which filled out the scene and gave the movie a more cathartic conclusion. All of a sudden it made sense that we were constantly bombarded with news about a pending nuclear war. This was Cameron’s way of saying that the world should get their act together and stop the nonsense. Like Robert Wise did in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

This message, combined with the relationships Cameron built among his fictional crew and the spectacular action sequences, makes for a movie that is well worth your time. And I urge everybody to go back and watch again. And again. And again.

Next Up: Cameron’s return to the Terminator universe in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

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133: Aliens

James Cameron #2

After Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien was a surprise hit, Fox wanted nothing more than to continue the series, but they never got the ball rolling on that one. It wasn’t until producer David Giler and director James Cameron started talking during the production of The Terminator that the possibility of a return to Alien seriously began to surface. Cameron wrote a pitch and after The Terminator became the hit that it was, he got the green light from Fox to produce Aliens. Cameron took this chance to create a movie that would take us on a rollercoaster like we’d never experienced before. I wasn’t old enough for my parents to let me go see it on the big screen. Not that I would have wanted, because the trailers and the clips I had seen on television scared the living crap out of me. And on top of that by that time I had not yet seen Alien.

It is now decades after Scott’s Alien. Ripley has been drifting through space in her escape pod, fast asleep with Jones the cat beside her. It is by chance that a salvage crew comes across her and brings her back to Earth. There she finds out that her only daughter has passed away (not in the theatrical cut) and that the company isn’t planning on believing her story about what happened to the Nostromo. It is only when all contact is lost with the colony on LV-426 (the planetoid from Alien) that the military wants her to come with them to see what’s going on there. After some time and more bad dreams, Ripley decides to tag along with the Space Marines, who are a really nothing more than a bunch of arrogant ragtag soldiers. What they find on LV-426 will be nothing like anything they have ever seen before. Before they know it they are in the middle of a war with creatures that have acid for blood and no reason to stop killing them.

It becomes evident that Cameron doesn’t want to wait for his audience to settle down and acclimate to the Alien Universe. It takes him just short of eight minutes, including credits, to get to his first chestburster scene. Something Scott took more than an hour to do. From that point on we know exactly what we are in for. This is not Scott’s Alien, this is Cameron’s Aliens and he is not going to take prisoners. He does, however, pay homage to Scott. When we first enter the U.S.S. Sulaco Cameron takes the time to let the camera roam through the rooms on the ship. He dwells on a locker with a pin-up inside and drifts by weaponry and equipment, an empty mess hall and ultimately a long row of hibernation chambers. Just like in Alien, the difference is that this time around everything is military as opposed to the commercial vessel that the Nostromo was. He even went so far as to put a gravity contraption in the mess hall like in Alien, only this time it isn’t a colorful bird but a metallic set of balls and rings. Once more a clue that this isn’t the Alien you know.

Three main themes common to Cameron’s movies come about in Aliens: strong women, the ineptitude of armed forces and evil corporations. Scott established Lt. Ellen Ripley as a strong leading lady who can take care of herself and defeat a deadly alien in the process. Cameron takes that foundation and adds a maternal layer to Ripley. We learn (from the special edition) that Ripley was a mother herself, but that her daughter has passed away before Ripley got back from her drift through space. This leaves her distraught and without a reason to keep on living a meaningful life. The discovery of Newt sparks her maternal instinct in such a way that the final scenes from Aliens even hinge on them. It is Ripley who must, at any cost, rescue Newt to fill that void left by the loss of her biological daughter. This gives Aliens an emotional core that is hard to deny. It even got Weaver an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Unfortunately she lost to Marlee Matlin for Children of a Lesser God.

The second theme is the armed forces. In a lot of Cameron’s movies the armed forces are portrayed as a group of mercenaries. In Avatar they are the company’s stooges, in The Abyss they are the mindless anti-communist killers and the police is often incapable of getting a handle on the situation in Cameron’s movies. In Aliens the situation isn’t different. Cameron modeled his Space Marines on soldiers we know from the Vietnam War. These soldiers were often cocky, arrogant and not always the best to have beside you when push comes to shove. We see this clearly in Aliens. On board the Sulaco these Marines mouth off constantly as if they are Masters of the Universe, but when the first real battle breaks out with the aliens they start to panic almost instantly, resulting in chaos and death for many. In the end it is Ripley who has to save mankind from one of the biggest threats out there.

The last theme is the evil corporation that controls all and blindly tries to get whatever they want, no matter the cost. Almost every one of Cameron’s movie has this theme running through its veins. The Weyland-Yutani corporation is one of the most sinister corporations Cameron has ever used. They are willing to send civilians to a derelict spaceship to recover something they really want, twice. They did this in Alien and now in Aliens. Cameron loves this and he loves to make them pay for their hubris. The face of the evil corporation in this installment is Burke, played surprisingly serious by Paul Reiser, who is better known for his comedic roles. He is as evil and sinister as the corporation he works for. He does things that are despicable and doesn’t flinch when he is called out on it. A fine piece of work.

As with a lot of Cameron’s movies, Aliens also had the good fortune of being treated to a special edition. Several minutes of footage were added back in to create a better movie, in my opinion. The funny thing is that when I scan through the scenes that were reinstated in the 1990 Special Edition, a lot of these scenes are natural to the viewing experience for me. Like the  sequence where Newt’s parents find the derelict ship on LV-426 or Hudson and Vasquez detecting the false alarm. Other sequences still feel reinstated, like the whole thing about the sentry guns, Hudson boasting about the weaponry or the scene where Ripley finds out about her daughter. Some of these scenes are very important in expanding on the motivation of the characters. We know Ripley hates the aliens, but the news of her daughter being deceased makes her drive to save Newt even more poignant. Having the marines interact a bit more makes them look a little less stupid. And very basic: knowing how the alien got into the facility in the first place is very important. I wholeheartedly agree with Cameron on putting these scenes back. They make for a better movie. Something we will see in his next two movies (The Abyss and Terminator 2) as well.

Do I think Aliens is a better movie than Alien? Well, that is a difficult question. It is only because they are part of the same universe that we compare these movies. They are so incredibly different from each other. A lot of people will tell you Aliens is the better movie, but I am not one of those. If I had to choose I would pick Alien as the better movie. That movie is so incredibly tight and tense that every time I watch it I am captivated by the sheer terror of it all. And while Aliens is still a great movie, some of the miniature effects did not stand the test of time very well. The absence of big visual effects set-pieces in Alien dates the movie less than Aliens and therefore I think Alien is the better movie. Cameron has made an incredibly ambitious movie with Aliens, especially when you take into account that this was his second movie as a director. Astonishing when you think about it.

Next up: The Abyss, one of Cameron’s most misunderstood movies.

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132: The Terminator

James Cameron #1

Some would say The Terminator is James Cameron’s first movie as a director. This is true, but technically it isn’t… from a certain point of view. When you stare at his IMDb listing you will discover a little 1981 movie called Piranha Part Two: The Spawning as James Cameron’s directorial debut. The sordid history of this less-than-subpar horrorcomedy tells us that Cameron did direct some scenes, but the movie was taken away from him by producer Ovidio G. Assonitis. Cameron tried to salvage the movie, but wasn’t successful. Ever since Cameron hasn’t considered Piranha Part Two: The Spawning to be a part of his filmography and rightfully so. Cameron’s real first movie is The Terminator, a fantastic 1984 science fiction thriller that cemented the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Even today, nearly thirty years later, The Terminator still continues to amaze. This story of a cyborg coming back from the future is full of life and that can’t be said of a lot of action movies these days. For anyone not in the know, here is the conceit: Sarah Connor is a lowly waitress who lives her life from day-to-day. LIttle does she know that in the future she will give birth to the leader of the resistance to a technological threat called SkyNet. A robotic killer is sent from the future by SkyNet to make sure Sarah isn’t able to give life to this dangerous person. At the same time the resistance sends a soldier back to protect Sarah from the terminator. It is a question who will get to her first.

Cameron doesn’t just want us to watch a movie about a woman on the run. He wants us to experience what it is like to be on the run from a killer cyborg from the future. From the moment Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn in his first of many collaborations with Cameron) says the iconic line “Come with me if you want to live.” there is no stopping this train. There are some moments that are used for exposition, mainly about what happens in the future, but they are always played with the terminator in mind. There is always the looming danger of the evil robot showing up to kill anything in his way. It is when Reese explains to Sarah that the terminator will not rest until she is dead that all bets are off. From that point the movie kicks into overdrive for the awesome endgame.

The unbelievably frustrating paradoxical issues aside–what time travel movie isn’t frustrating?–The Terminator is still a fantastic piece of science fiction. Much of that is owed to Stan Winston’s brilliant work on the evil cyborg. His work enabled Cameron to go much further than he probably could have hoped. Just the scenes alone of Schwarzenegger cutting himself up in front of a mirror are stunning. Winston’s prosthetics   on Scharzenegger really sell the whole idea of him being a cyborg. It freed Arnold of some of his duties to act like a menacing robot. At the end of the movie Arnold is freed completely when his is turned into one of the most menacing stop-motion monsters in movie history. Granted, some of the effects look a little dated, but the overall tone is still gripping. A modern masterpiece according to my humble opinion.

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