They have great chemistry and feed off each others’ performances. I go back and forth between ranking Michael Biehn or Linda Hamilton as my favorite actor in this film. The transitional scenes between Arnold Schwarzenegger and the endoskeleton feature a droopy, fake-looking mold of the actor’s face (most notable when he’s performing repairs on his eye), but that also has an eerie charm. Lacking motion blur, the metal endoskeleton moves in a herky-jerky fashion like the skeletons in “Jason and the Argonauts.” But that actually adds to the creepiness, especially when the Terminator limps down the hall as Sarah and a badly injured Reese frantically shut the door. While its first sequel was at the leading edge of computer effects, the original marks a delicious one-last-taste of stop-motion effects after the Terminator gets his human skin burned off in the final act. Thirty-one years later, it has spanned four movies (with a fifth, “Terminator Genysis,” coming in July and giving me an excuse to embark on this flashback series), a TV show and myriad books and comics. Wanting to make his own “Star Wars”-level blockbuster, director James Cameron drew upon the tropes of time travel and robots – and more specifically and controversially, a couple of “Outer Limits” episodes (which is why Harlan Ellison is credited in the closing scrawl) - to launch a hugely popular franchise. “The Terminator” (1984) is a pivotal movie in sci-fi history.
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