Terminator Essay, Research Paper

The Terminator

The Terminator is a non-stop action flick written by the creative genius of James Cameron along with Gail Anne Hurd. It’s your classic chase story of man verses machine. Set in the future as well as present day L.A., The Terminator delivers pulse-pounding excitement that won’t let you down.

In the year 2029 man is caught in the epic struggle for survival against what seems, unstoppable machines. The future looks quite grim except for john Connor, the leader of the human resistance. As the humans start to achieve some type of victory over the machines, the machines devise a new plan to conquer the humans; kill John Connor before he is even born. In order to do so a killing machine is sent to the past to terminate John’s mother. The Terminator (half man, half machine) played by Arnold Schwaezenegger, begins its hunt for Sarah Connor played by Linda Hamilton, and the only one who can stop it is Kyle Resse (Michael Biehn) a soldier from the future sent to protect Sarah.

The action doesn’t really pick up until the Terminator finally tracks Sarah to a local bar, but from then on out it’s total non-stop action. The movie is filled with gunshots explosions and car chases (usually all three combined) as the hero’s frantically try to escape the Terminator. Whenever the Terminator is around the body count keeps piling up, the machine doesn’t care about the innocent civilians or police that get in its way, it guns down every one that’s in-between it and Sarah.

The acting is absolutely outstanding because of Linda Hamilton. The facial expressions she uses makes the viewer understand just what emotions someone would go through after being told the human race depends on their life. Schwarzenegger portrays the cold, unstoppable killing machine perfectly. The lack of any emotion what so ever made the role extremely believable.

During the movie there are all types of special effects. There are the huge Hollywood explosions, gunshots and bullet holes, some puppetering and some really exciting computer animation. A great scene in the movie that showcased the special effects was when Schwarzenegger had to do some home surgery, which exposed some of his mechanical insides. The computer animated Terminator was visually impressive. The technology isn’t up to par with today’s standards, but for the time this movie was created it was the top of the line.

The only disappointing aspect of the movie is because of the time it was created. Because the film was shot in the 80’s the sound track is a little dated, but not only that, it doesn’t work to well with the movie. The 80’s bubblegum music just doesn’t work with the dark symphonic undertones. Some scenes were completely ruined because of the horrible noise that they tried to pass off as a sound track.

All in all if your hungry for an action intensive chase flick, The Terminator comes highly recommended.