INTENTION AND STRUCTURE

This is the incredible, intertwined story of The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the tech noir epics that defined the career of James Cameron and redefined an entire genre.  

Following the success of Aliens Expanded and The Thing Expanded, it completes a trilogy of Expandeds: three passionate and innovative celebrations of the most provocative, enduring science-fiction (or is that horror?) films of all time. Made by fans, driven by fans, to be watched by fans, Terminator Expanded will not indulge but luxuriate in the rich, funny, evocative contributions from director, producer, stars, appreciative filmmakers, critics, scientists and devoted fans. Those who know the films better than any others.  

This is going to be a long documentary and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Put more simply, Terminator Expanded is the most detailed analysis ever undertaken of two extraordinary movies, treating them as two parts of a single, time-looping saga, and reaching out into the extended universe they created, and how they dwelt upon so many fears in the real world.

You may know the legends, but you have never heard them told like this. The one about the unknown director determined to make his propulsive science-fiction thriller without losing control. About how he convinced himself to cast an Austrian bodybuilder as his future-world assassin time-vaulted into the present, and how that was the making of them all. About how a film from nowhere became a smash hit at the box office and launched the most prodigious directing career in history. And the one about the sequel (after Aliens, Cameron’s second perfect rendition of the second act) on which his only rival was himself, the most expensive film of all time that had to become the biggest film of all time – and duly did. About how this punk kid from Canada wrote his own future.

The methodology has been honed by two previous documentaries: using graphical prompts and devices, we enter the beloved films, exploring them from within, sequence-by-unforgettable-sequence, drawing out reminiscence, anecdote, analysis, know-how, theory, twists, and context. Individual scenes will be scanned for nuance and hidden depths: more than ever, freeze frames, highlights, and textual information will add extra layers of narrative. And again offers the chance to spin off into fascinating, but more tangential sidebars, opening whole new areas of discussion outside of the central timeline. To paraphrase executive producer Robin Block, this is the chance to swim about within two classics.

By the way, all those interstitial graphics will come from the inside of a Terminator’s head. Sometimes this stuff writes itself.

This monumental documentary will tell many stories. The history of those first two Terminator movies, of course: their making, their triumph, their influence, and what it is that makes them tick. But also the coming of age of James Cameron alongside the transformation of Arnold Schwarzenegger into a new level of superstar like two forms of Manifest Destiny. All the human tales from producer Gale Anne Hurd, keeping them on track; to Linda Hamilton, making sure we know she is the protagonist; to Edward Furlong, the rough-edged kid who resists the pull of the saccharine or cute. This is the story of a franchise and extended universe that never fired as did in these first incarnations – Cameron’s touch was too integral and too subtle to be replicated. This is also about the evolution of special effects from the enormity of Stan Winston’s contribution to the fateful dawn of computer generated imagery. And the fandom that has grown up around the two films, as different again from the followings that populated Aliens and The Thing.

Yet arguably what separates Terminator Expanded from previous incarnations of the Expanded format is that it is a tale, spread across two films, about uncertain futures. Indeed, it is starting to look awfully prophetic. In good and more debatable ways, the Terminator films reshaped the entire industry. But Cameron’s foreboding echoes out far beyond the borders of Hollywood. The rise of artificial intelligence in the here and now, and where it might take us, has made the first two Terminators more relevant than ever. As do their stark warnings about nuclear annihilation.  

For all the dizzying complexity of the ideas and the depths to which the documentary will delve, at heart, or in its core programming, Terminator Expanded is very simple. After the wonderful hours spent in its company, we will be reminded why these films still mean so much to us.

Hasta la vista, baby…

Glossary

These subheads designate different ways of looking at the film, while they are highlighted in the synopsis as a guide, they will be more implicit in the finished film.

CASTING: memories of how individual roles came to be cast, and those that missed out, but also an exploration of the casting choices and how they add to the whole. What each actor contributes to the community of the film.

DESIGN: discussions of design choices and origins, how they reflect and develop the franchise aesthetic, but also the symbolic, biological, and metaphorical/mythical interpretations.

EXT UNIVERSE: expanding the discussion to take in the extended universe of books, comics, and games.

FAN: fan theories, experiences, passions and views.

SCIENCE: a scientist gives their opinion on the veracity of the film’s concepts.

SIDEBAR: a tangential exploration of certain subjects that arise from the main narrative thread. Stories within the story. Think of them in the style of the brief encyclopaedia-like asides in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

THEME: a discussion of the themes within the film.

TIMELINE: catching up with the narrative streams of the two films.  

INTRODUCTION

A vision of the director James Cameron has become: the most successful, but more to the point, groundbreaking director of the modern age. Even here we begin to sew in the chill of AI and how Cameron’s prophecies are taking shape in the real world. Then, gathering pace, the theme of how his two Terminator films shaped everything – and more than any other films define him. The first, the great announcement of his talent, commercial instinct, and unstoppable drive and ingenuity to bring his vision to the screen. The theme of battlegrounds emerges – you must will a film into existence. The second, the confirmation of his greatness, the wild ambition and daring, shaping the future of the industry, indeed of the world. And it all begins with a dream…

TERMINATOR EXPANDED - PART I

THE TERMINATOR

 CHAPTER 1: THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

CLIP: The Orion logo gives way to Los Angeles 2029AD, a hellscape sheathed in cool Cameron blue. The Future Wars. The treads of a Hunter Killer crush a pile of human skulls. It’s just a taste, as quick and bitter as a shot. Skynet, that AI motherlode, fights a human rebellion.

The opening sequence is quick a taste of a devastated future LA, and the battle that has raged (all those skulls speak of years of conflict). Also how behind-the-camera Cameron is a realist. THe knows he can’t afford to create an entire future-set epic. Hence the film would be made and shot in present-day LA.

THEME: Why is it so important to begin with the future, something to carry with us through the film: a dystopian tableau of civilisation in ruins. An idea of what’s at stake. All this, the present, will be gone.

DESIGN: Creating the futureshock, battlefield iconography of what these crucial flashforwards. How much did Cameron design himself? Did he base it on World War Two? Something of Vietnam? Who were the model team behind the scenes.

What does the future add to the past – how Cameron needed us to understand what was at stake.

DESIGN: Notice how the sound effects, the laser blasts and rumbling machines, are melding into Brad Fiedel’s score. The sound effects are doing the heavy lifting of these moments.

The irony and charm of the model work. It may have dated (the director thinks so) but it was decent stuff for its day and its budget, and still powerfully tractile. Effects limitations were already being overcome. This is the world Cameron sprang from – the dust and glue and ersatz reality of Corman’s model shop.

SIDEBAR: The Sci-fi Kid

• Growing up in Chippawa, Ontario, addicted to sci-fi.

• The books, films, and shows that fed a febrile mind.
• Seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey – determined to know not what it means, but how it was done.
  
• A genuine fear of nuclear apocalypse.
  
• Coming to LA and finding a way into the film industry.

Flashback: to the night he saw Star Wars as an Orange County kid, how he loved it, and how it enraged him – it was as if Lucas had reached into his head, this is what he should be doing, this was who he was.

Flashback to rising through the ranks at Roger Corman’s B-movie factor, meeting Gale Anne Hurd, and how they would shape the future together.

What was he like in those Corman days? Already obsessed? Were there signs of what he would become?  memories from those who were there like Hurd, Alec Gillis, and Lance Henrkisen. And those who know the story.

Time to tell the story of the nightmare that took him to Rome – Piranha 2: The Spawning. We are teasing Chapter 2.

TIMELINE: The necessary info dump becomes an ongoing challenge. Cameron begins with an explanatory caption: “The machines rose from the ashes of nuclear fire…” It’s like dystopian poetry. Then…

The LOGO! The SCORE!

CHAPTER 2: THE SPARK  

CLIP: the naked T-800 arrives Atlas-like amid a crackle of blue sparks, he stirs, rises, graceful as a ballerina, and takes in this new world – Los Angeles, 1984, the past.

The specific idea for The Terminator was born out of a vision, or maybe hallucination is the better word, of the endoskeleton crawling out of apocalyptic flames, minus legs. This image of metallic death. That got the servers whirring in the deep spaces of Cameron’s imagination. From there, he not only devised an entire story for his icy, future assassin, but figured out the means to make it. All he needed was backing. His savvy partner Gale Anne Hurd would set to work on that front. Plus a detailed examination of a villain’s entrance, at the iconic Griffith Observatory,

Elements to explore:

Throughout the chapter, we follow the story of Cameron’s epochal dream, sick as a dog in Rome.

TIMELINE: our first view of a Terminator, Schwarzenegger-shaped torso, size of an outhouse. Face implacable, but strangely alluring.

An overview of the heavy metal concept of a time-travelling assassin born out of that dream.

DESIGN: Establishing the mind-boggling, time-bending technology, without needing to show it. Symbolically, those sparks were generated from the original Tesla machine used on the 1931 Frankenstein.

Writing The Terminator, first as a treatment then a script: the Cameron way – describe his story then give it voice. A script so good, declared Cameron, that no studio could turn it down.

What did close friend William Wisher and a credited Hurd contribute?

The influence of John Carpenter and producer Debra Hill’s partnership on how he and Hurd might take on Hollywood. There is a running theme of Carpenter being the figure Cameron aspired to be.

The battle to get studio backing and keep control. Arriving at Hemdale, the scrappy indie run by the cavalier Brit John Daley (the Terminator films were always backed by these flamboyant personalities), who had a distribution deal with Orion.

Cameron would have to deal with eccentric paymasters.

TIMELINE: The arrival of the T-800 to be greeted by a trio of punks. A discussion of that beloved scene with Bill Paxton, Brian Thompson, and David Kristin. An interview with Thompson will enliven with all the details. How the unflinching T-800 is processing their foul-mouthed attitude – learning to be a cyber-punk.

Paxton remembered. This was the first time they had worked together – beyond Paxton lending a hand (or being told) to help paint one of Cameron’s sets back at Corman.

SIDEBAR: THE FUTURE IS NOT WRITTEN

• A brief history of time travel in the movies.

• How Cameron sets up his loop. And why he had to pick present day LA.

• SCIENCE: is time travel possible?

CASTING: The cameo by Bill Paxton, another Corman vet.

THEMES: how Cameron establishes his themes - technophobia, fear of authority, what makes us human.

TIMELINE: The arrival of a second time-traveller: the very human and very desperate Kyle Reese…

CHAPTER 3: THE MOTHER OF THE FUTURE

CLIP: the interior of a bustling diner, shitty customers, brats, general chaos (have these people got Judgment Day coming?) where Sarah starts her shift, and is immediately engulfed by stress (it will only get worse from here). The television news clocks that a Sarah Connor has been killed. What are the chances?

Meet Sarah Connor, the least-likely saviour of the world Cameron could imagine. She was partly based on his first wife, who waitressed at a Bob’s Big Boy in La Brea. She is effectively our protagonist, transformed by trial from screaming unbeliever to warrior maiden, and the first of Cameron’s unforgettable female leads. And meet Kyle Reese, another time traveller, but so clearly human. Machines don’t do desperation. Michael Biehn is crucial to the mix, and vivid in the character. This was the start of a relationship that would span three movies with James Cameron, the role that made Biehn a science-fiction icon. But what kind of film are we watching? There was only so much money to conjure up a terrifying future in the present.

Elements to explore:

Our first impressions of Cameron and the high concept film. How swiftly he tells his story.

How the Terminator films are two of the great Los Angeles movies. In fact, few films have shot the city so thoroughly. But it was a production on the run, shot guerilla style, permits an afterthought, all Cameron’s lessons at Corman’s knee put to emphatic use.

Can we map the film across the city both as a story and a production?

CASTING: The story behind casting Linda Hamilton, beating Rosanna Arquette and Jennifer Jason Leigh to the punch. What she brought to the character – a hint of something more.

And the story of how the film was nearly derailed when she broke her ankle in the first week.

How Cameron writes characters out of the ink of his own life: soldiers, waitresses, and truckers, tough working class heroes tossing out hardboiled dialogue.

CASTING: Michael Biehn’s audition. The man who beat, or undercut,

Christopher Reeve, Kurt Russell, Mel Gibson, Treat Williams, Tommy Lee Jones, Matt Dillon, Scott Glenn, Mickey Rourke, Sting, and Bruce Springsteen.

TIMELINE: Reese’s trauma takes his dreams back to the future.

DESIGN: Returning for a more elaborate version of the futureshock, battlefield iconography of Reese’s flashforwards – triggered by the visual pun of building works in the present day! The live-action scenes of Reese’s patrol were filmed at the Bethlehem Steel Plant in Vernon like a dry run for Aliens.

This is the very first sighting of a Cameron dream sequence.

THEME: a director confronting the apocalypse.

TIMELINE: The T-800 sets about his business, checking the phone book. This serial killer has the weirdest MO – he only kills “Sarah Connors”.

CHAPTER 4: JUST WHAT YOU SEE PAL

CLIP: the T-800 goes shopping. To the Alamo, a shabby sports cum gun store somewhere off the main drag. He’s got a long list of requirements, including an Uzi-9mm. But no credit card.

Cameron was determined that he had his ideal Terminator, but his backers had their own ideas. He stood his ground, Lance Henriksen was the whole point. He had the right poker-faced disposition for a walking machine, and the kind of wiry, inconspicuous frame that could sink into a crowd unnoticed. The producers had other ideas. One of them is pretty good. As soon as Cameron met Conan the Barbarian for lunch the whole concept was transformed. Hell, the whole of cinema was transformed.

Elements to explore:

TIMELINE: The famous “tooling up” sequence in the gun shop with Dick Miller, a B-movie icon from numerous Corman movies.

Schwarzenegger only has seventeen lines in the film but he sells every one of them.

THEME: Cameron the peacenik who fetishized guns. Was this our first encounter with an Uzi?

CASTING: how to find a Terminator. Who else was on the list? Why it was so vital to the believability (not realism) of the whole concept. Cameron has such a gift for conceiving a movie world in which his high flying ideas make sense.  

His backers were thinking O.J. Simpson.

Or worse still, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

             SIDEBAR: Lance Henriksen is The Terminator!

• As far as Cameron was concerned the matter was already settled - his old Piranha II pal Lance Henriksen was his T-800. There is artwork to prove it.

• The original concept – the stealth machine, unassuming, wiry, the perfect assassin, able to disappear into a crowd. Comparison can be made with Robert Patrick’s T-1000.

• Henriksen was getting into shape by scaling fire escapes. He turned up at Hemdale with foil on his teeth to frighten the secretary. He thought of this killer machine as a “spider”.

• What is Henriksen’s take now – on his great could-have-been. On the sensation the film became, in which he did still play an LAPD cop failing to get a grip on the situation.

Flashback: two takes on the famous lunch, where Cameron first met Schwarzenegger, deluded into thinking they are discussing the possibility of him playing Reese. Having at first dismissed the idea of Schwarzenegger, all that Cameron can think is what a Terminator he would make.

There is a recalibration of the central concept, and the entire tone. The former Mr. Universe will fill the boots of the T-800.

TIMELINE: the iceman cometh. Cameron on how the T-800 moves – the dilation of time.

THEME: a side effect of Schwarzenegger – black comedy. How the film began pumping irony.

The pleasure of The Terminator, Cameron always said, is that “he takes the path of least resistance.” We can all relate, wanting to tell the world exactly what we think of it without compunction. It’s cathartic – little wonder the audience was cheering on the villain.

TIMELINE: Sarah can’t go home, so attempts to hide in public. Not that that’s going to make a difference.

CHAPTER 5: BATTLE OF THE BEEFCAKES

CLIP: an LA apartment, fairly nondescript, though not shabby for two jobbing waitresses. This is the home of Sarah and bubbleheaded bestie Ginger, who has just had sex with her bodybuilder boyfriend Matt (never have sex!). As Ginger heads to the kitchen for supplies, insulated in her Walkman, the home invading T-800 and Matt set to across the bedroom.

The scene is a fight sequence, brutal certainly, but also played for ironic effect. They filmed at 420 South Lafayette Park Place, one of those strangely hushed residential side streets, giving us another taste of LA circa 1983-84. It’s framed as a battle of beefcakes, a chance to witness the T-800 confront someone his own size (which makes little difference – every moment in the company of the Terminator is a lesson in his indomitability), which encouraged a more improvisational choreography on set. Is it kind of homoerotic too? Rick Rossovich’s Matt in his tiny pants. Cameron is clearly having some fun at the expense of bodybuilding culture, a joke that gathers pace through the film (centred on the sheer outlandishness of Schwarzenegger himself), and will be passed onto a sequel where Hamilton joins in the buff boys parade: humans becoming more like machines.

Elements to explore:

CASTING: Ginger and Matt, this loveable couple trapped forever in the eighties, offer two more of those small but memorable roles in the saga. Ginger is given real charm by Bess Motta (actress, singer, fitness personality), who will have her tale to tell. As Matt, Rossovich will recount his side of the story. He was cast as the jerk boyfriend without an audition; it was all about the look (he’s the Californian flipside of Schwarzenegger). Having been cast, he actually confronted Schwarzenegger at a Venice Beach gym: “I was being a dick, like I can be!” Though he was, in fact, a huge fan. Schwarzenegger was such an icon to this subculture.

DESIGN: The entire eighties as an epoch is captured in one sequence. Matt as this featherheaded lunk, who thinks an awful lot about himself, but has no capacity to be a hero (he is the antithesis of Kyle Reese). Ginger’s sprawling hair and purple Kimono are a monument to the era

STYLE: Cameron deftly crosscuts between the fight, and it’s a percussive shattering of home furnishings, and an oblivious Ginger singing along to her music. The song cuts in and out with the two viewpoints. It’s such good direction: the scene runs the gamut from funny to thrilling to terrifying.

THEME: is this actually a slasher movie? It plays by some of the rules.

FAN: time to indulge in a little fan appreciation for short-lived Ginger and Matt. Can we imagine their backstory?

TIMELINE: a farewell to Ginger in slo-mo, a young woman shot in the back. The dread reinserted into the action via Schwarzenegger’s frozen expression and Fiedel’s score. Her attempt to drag herself away foreshadows Sarah’s final escape.

THEME: the dangers of technology. Ginger has been (improbably) unaware of the threat because she’s wearing her headphones, caught in her own world, listening to throwaway synth (in fact, the clunky German pop of Intimacy by Linn Van Heck – which presents the chance to catalogue all the real eighties tracks used in the movie). Then we sample Ginger’s quips on the answerphone: “Machines need love too.”

TIMELINE: Sarah’s trembling voice through the speaker, giving away her exact location. A nightclub called Tech Noir.

CHAPTER 6: A NIGHT OUT AT TECH NOIR  

CLIP: an eighties joint, pretty crummy, scene of the first shoot out. The place where Sarah, Reese, and the T-800 first cross paths. Revellers scatter, revellers die. Reese saves Sarah with another immortal line: “Come with me, if you want to live.” What choice does she have?

There is something deliciously knowing in how Cameron christens his club Tech Noir. He is defining his own genre – science fiction in the here and now, filled with portents of doom, and driven by the human impulse to survive. It’s the central thesis of his entire career – survival. The action scene that ensues propels not only the story (Sarah is now on the run), but our understanding of how Cameron’s style works. These are character beats: the mesmerizingly (and darkly hilarious) icy stalker, the hero who looks more like a hobo, the victim who can’t fathom what’s happening to her – the ordinary person plunged into the extraordinary. Hitchcock on steroids.

Elements to explore:

THEME: what’s the story behind the gag of labelling this place Tech Noir. Cameron was getting ahead of the critics, doing his own classifications. It worked. That’s the subgenre he pioneered.

TIMELINE: The shoot out at the Tech Noir marks the birth of Cameron’s kinetic variation on action cinema. And we see his gifts fully formed: narrative and thrill are the same thing.

What is it like to shoot a Cameron action scene?

Schwarzenegger’s rules for a Terminator. He must never blink while firing. Never.

              SIDEBAR: How To Build a Terminator

• A brief history of designing the T-800 from Cameron’s illustrations onward.

• An in-world discussion of how Terminator is constructed and what it is capable of. But only from the perspective of the first film.

• The talking heads extol what Schwarzenegger brought to the role.

• FAN: did we relate to the T-800 more than the heroes?  

It is also about the economy of image, a B-movie with aspirations.

STYLE: DOP Adam Greenberg and the look and feel of The Terminator. Blue, green, purple, with bursts of red: the undersea colours of an urban shocker.

TIMELINE: The twitching fingers of the T-800. He’s far from dead.

The editing is so crucial, the efficiency with which Cameron conveys his story. A genuine sense of unfolding panic.

These are the rules of the horror genre. Only hyperactive.

TIMELINE: we return to current events with that immortal line, as Reese plucks Sarah from the chaos, “Come with me if you want to live…”

CHAPTER 7: LISTEN AND UNDERSTAND

CLIP: time for some hard lessons, exposition like gunfire. Reese explains to a terrified Sarah and us what we are facing. “Underneath it is a hyperalloy combat chassis.”

Imagine this was your first time. You were into the groove: the two futureshock arrivistes gunning for one another like a genre mash up of western, horror, film noir, and science fiction (which it is). It is only now we get our heads around what is at stake. The rules of the game. The nature of a Terminator. Biehn’s dialogue, fired off with primal desperation to an understandably shellshocked Sarah, has become celebrated as an aria to the Terminator ethos. There was self-analysis thrown in for good measure, Cameron confessing to the unswerving drive to be the director that pumped inside him: “It simply will not stop. Ever!” The garage sequence that marked the arrival of Schwarzenegger on set – and he was fully formed, born to the discipline it would take to make the idea work, and to make the idea funny.  

Elements to Explore

TIMELINE: the humans make a getaway, the momentum of the cars is visceral. The energy levels are set at pure panic.

Cameron was heavily influenced by Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Likewise, working wonders on a budget. How they achieved the vital car stunts. This is a chase movie after all. What did the budget restrictions draw from him?

STYLE: The challenge of being “Irving Exposition” – how Reese has to be hero, lover, war-torn soldier, and deliver great swathes of exposition on the hoof.

Dealing with the exaggerations of the storyline without blinking. Knowing where to place the irony – never make fun of the fundamentals.

Flashback: to the torments of getting the screenplay done. Cameron’s working methods. The contributions from Hurd and Wisher.

TIMELINE: the T-800 patrolling the parking garage was the first scene Schwarzenegger shot, and he had the character down already.

Why Schwarzenegger was late to the production. The small matter of Conan the Destroyer.

The movement of his eyes was improvised.

The flicker of machine irritation all was down to performance. He made being a machine both droll and deadly.

TIMELINE: Reese gives the grim backstory of the future. More splendid exposition. “It was the machines, Sarah.”

              SIDEBAR: SKYNET

• Unravelling the path to Cyberdyne Systems, Skynet, and Judgment Day

• EXTENDED UNIVERSE: The famous cut scene of the factory.

• THEME: Cameron’s distrust of technology in more depth.

• A hint toward concepts of Artificial Intelligence.

This chapter presents a chance to sample life on set. How tough it was, how thrilling. How Cameron had to use every means at his disposal (and more than a few that weren’t) to get his shots.

Individual memories and anecdotes give a real feel for the texture of day to day terminating in the backwaters of LA.

The sheer pace of production feeds into the propelling force of the finished film.

Hurd tells us how they stretched their meagre budget – those lessons from Corman programmed into their souls.

TIMELINE: the Terminator’s stolen police car smashes into a wall.

CHAPTER 8: NOBODY GOES HOME

CLIP: an interrogation room in the heart of a pissed-off precinct, the walls alarmingly municipal shades of green. A hired shrink with shockingly wide plaid colours and barely concealed smirks. This Silberman is easy to hate. Still, Reese holds onto his story, that he’s come from the future, sent to stop another time traveller. A machine in human form. When you put it like that it does sound crazy.

Events have reached a midpoint – time to regroup, take a breath, for the film to get its head together. What works so well about this essentially expositional sequence is how Cameron is holding his entire concept up for inspection. How ridiculous it all sounds when you say it out loud. But the director does so with the sure knowledge that we are too embedded (too convinced!) to laugh. We are onboard with this Judgment Day stuff. The scene is also a lesson in Cameron’s virtuosity with writing, spinning plot threads into a classic interrogation sequence. The scene is working on numerous levels: ensnaring the heroes, building tension for the big showdown, testing the bond that may have formed between Reese and Sarah, filling out the details of Reese’s mission. That it is a one way trip. “Nobody goes home!” We get a real sense of the man’s courage.

Elements to Explore

CASTING: meet Dr. Silberman, a shrink and a jerk. Brought in to assess the mad ones, the ones who have a story. The great Earl Boen, who had worked for Roger Corman, nails the saga’s signature, irksome sceptic (he’ll be back) with such sarcastic aplomb.

STYLE: Cameron achieves his flux of emotion and comedy with mirror shots, angling much of Reese’s intense dialogue through his reflection. It is, of course, a double mirror (how was this achieved?) with the precinct lieutenants on the other side of the glass.

It was a great scene for Biehn to play, all that choice dialogue, delivered with building fury – he knows what’s coming. It’s enough to drive you mad. Come to think of it, just how sane is Reese?

CASTING: we get to know our buddy-buddy cop duo, Vukovich and Traxler (where did Cameron find these names?), played on the edge of absurdity by Lance Henriksen and Paul Winfield. They might as well have been beamed in from a seventies police television show. They are so wired, so jacked on coffee, cigarettes and seen-it-all case histories, they only hear Reese’s testimony as the paranoid delusions of yet another crank dragged in from the streets. Henriksen (in one of the straightest roles he has ever done) was given partly in recompense after Schwarzenegger took over the robot. Longer in the tooth, Winfield had the most pedigree on the film (he was only the third black actor to gain a Best Actor nomination for Sounder in 1972).

THEME: Silberman’s beeper is a great touch – more machines playing up, the angry chirp of an alarm. The VCR is another piece of telltale tech.

THEME: those time travel knots are brought back out for inspection.  We even hear about the time-displacement equipment (this stuff is lore!) used to spring them back in time.

Cameron had, of course, visualised such components, but didn’t have the money to build them.

EXT UNIVERSE: how has the technology of Skynet been portrayed in the sequel, novels, and games? How does it all compare to classic time machines?

TIMELINE: watching Sarah and the cops watching Reese on the monitor – watching him lose his cool. That shot of him staring right into the camera was a Biehn improv. Hamilton’s big-eyed reaction shots are equally priceless: both sad (she was beginning to like this guy) and terrified.

STYLE: this is an early example of Cameron screens within scenes layering that would really be put into action for Aliens. We are seeing a master’s style take shape, indeed take flight.

TIMELINE: Sarah is offered some body armour – as if she were wrapping herself up like a Terminator.  “You’ll be perfectly safe,” soothes Traxler, “we’ve got thirty cops in this building.” Only thirty?

CHAPTER 9: FLESH OVER METAL  

CLIP: Battered and bruised from a car chase, the T-800 takes a time out for a little self-care. The self-surgery sequence in the flea-bitten motel.

A glimpse inside a Terminator.

Essential to the first film’s visceral power was a projected realism. Even on a B-movie budget ($6.4 million), and with producers still badgering him to scrimp and save, Cameron was not willing to compromise on bringing the T-800 to life. He couldn’t bear the idea of not showing what was underneath living tissue. Our first chance to recognise the inhumanity at work comes with the self-surgery sequence, peeling back the skin to show metal pistons. Stan Winston’s technical genius, modelling prowess and indefatigable drive made him a spiritual brother to Cameron. His contribution was the quintessence of the saga – that irony of art imitating artificial life (he was, to an extent, building a Terminator from scratch). This is Winston’s story too.

Elements to Explore

TIMELINE: meanwhile the T-800 is getting-in a little self-care. The self-surgery sequence in the flea-bitten motel

We come to grasp how this is a film of great ingenuity and guile. Cameron was determined

THE STAN WINSTON STORY PART I. How Winston and Cameron met, two likeminded visionaries, who had to find a way.

              SIDEBAR: KNOW YOUR TERMINATOR

• EXTENDED UNIVERSE: a witty, graphically-driven guide to the various models of Terminator devised by the entire franchise, from the T-800 to the T-1000 to the T-1000000.

STYLE: the influence of silent cinema (especially Buster Keaton) on the whole of The Terminator.

TIMELINE: scrolling through his options, the T-800 sees off a janitor by finding the right retort from his files: “Fuck you. Asshole.”

The Terminator grows more antiheroic. Audiences cheered him on.  

DESIGN: old school rules – the computer interfaces of 80s sci-fi.

CHAPTER 10: HE’LL BE BACK (focus)

CLIP: the T-800 arrives at the desk of the busy cop station, asking to see Sarah Connor, eyes veiled in magnificent shades (logically to conceal his recent repairs). The cop denies his wishes. She’s busy giving a statement. A sense of calculation, irritation, another database of choices. Then a simple, honest statement of intent: “I’ll. Be. Back.”

Cinematic immortality can’t be pre-planned, though Cameron always sensed the line was a kicker. Did one-liners even exist in 1983? The scene increases the dark, comic sensibility, building to the punchline of a car driven through the front door of a police station. The line would follow Schwarzenegger throughout his career, a calling card that would make him millions  But let’s not neglect the filmmaking: after the Tech Noir, it’s more carnage, the electricity yanked, the Terminator rampant. Bodies everywhere. That noir-like loneliness has such force in the films – Reese and Sarah have nowhere to turn but themselves.

Elements to explore:

TIMELINE: Sarah and Reese have fallen into the hands of the disbelieving cops.

CASTING: Lance Henriksen and Paul Winfield as the wry cops. Henriksen’s role was to make up for losing out on the big role – but he has an unusual charm in this precinct.

SIDEBAR: CARPENTER’S SON

• Ever noticed how much Cameron not only followed the business plan of Carpenter, but followed his movies too?

• The slasher rules of Halloween; the influence of Snake Plissken on the Terminator, and right about now the gun fight of Assault on Precinct 13.
  We can even trace the multiplicity of The Thing in the shapeshifting of T-1000 in T2.

Reese is sticking to his crazy story, so they bring in a shrink to evaluate.

THEME: science-fiction and madness. How Cameron tests the waters of sanity.

CASTING: Earl Boen takes a bow as goofball sceptic Dr. Silberman (note the ironic name, does it deliberately rhyme with silver man?) – he would become a regular.

That scene and that one-liner, how one of the most famous moments in American cinema arose from out of a tricky line reading.

Two takes on the tricky line reading. Cameron unrelenting, Schwarzenegger grouching over those troublesome contractions. The result felt more machinelike than ever.

The iconic scene, as recalled by the actor who played the desk cop Bruce M. Kerner (who also happened to be the executive in charge of production.)

              SIDEBAR: MAN OF FEW WORDS

• A montage showing how landing a percussive one-liner defined Schwarzenegger’s career from Commando to T2 to his run for governor.

• Also: how enter into a discussion of how one-liners became common currency.

In all of the mayhem, Schwarzenegger never breaks the physicality of his character” the rigid back, the slow turning neck, an automatic rifle in each hand.

TIMELINE: Reese and Sarah flee the burning building.

CHAPTER 11: A ROMANTIC NIGHTMARE

CLIP: a momentary respite in a motel room, slightly better than where the Terminator is staying. The scene proves pivotal for the entire saga. Sarah and Kyle know they are in love. He will become the father of the future, and his own best friend John Connor.  

Patching up Reese, taking stock, falling in love, realising that you being sent back in time shaped the very future you were sent from: people can go mad thinking about this. While the time twisting gets knotty, the scene is steadied by the emerging love story. Cameron called it a “romantic nightmare.” It speaks to the universality of his films that they are all love stories. And his human actors work wonders in building a convincing bond within hours of meeting (it serves as inspiration for the accelerated love story in Titanic). That bond increases the sense of peril. So much more is now at stake.

Elements to explore:

TIMELINE: a natural at battle dressing, Sarah is showing her skills.

What was Hurd’s influence, especially on the character of Sarah Connor.

THEME: Sarah’s trajectory comes to the fore – from victim to warrior. Something doubly interesting when looked back from the vantage point of who Sarah becomes in T2.

              SIDEBAR: HEART OF THE MATTER

• A discussion of how, starting with T1, all of Cameron’s films (and his career) evolve into love stories.

• The different relationships revealed in his films, from the brotherly love and mother-daughter bonds within Aliens to the marriages of The Abyss and True Lies, to the passion and tragedy of Titanic.

More of Cameron’s distinctive ironies: a love scene delivered over patching up bullet wounds then while jerry-rigging explosives.

TIMELINE: “I love you, I always have.” Weird thing to say about your best friend’s mom.

CHAPTER 12: CUT TO THE CHASE

CLIP: no time for love anymore, we are on the grey-green streets, swept up in the chase that will propel us through to the end. A wounded Reese and Sarah, reduced to fleeing on foot, try to outpace the battered T-800 at the wheel of an eighteen-wheel tanker.

This is arguably the film’s signature sequence, and the purest expression of Cameron’s talents. It is all about motion. Effectively, the T-800 has extended himself into the size of a tanker. The camera and editing never rest. The variety of stunts is quite extraordinary given the level of budget they were working with.

Elements to explore:

STYLE: the power of the chase; the methods by which Cameron creates motion. And simply how brilliant he is at it.

The tanker is a motif, and personal reference to the director (who drove heavy trucks as a job, not so long before), foreshadowed by the toy truck crushed by the T-800’s car at the beginning of the film.

The parallels between the Future War vehicles and present day juggernauts

Life on set: how tough was it assembling these chase scenes for the actors?

And for the crew.

STYLE: time to talk score - Brad Fiedel’s drums, anvils, synths, and the driving music of The Terminator films. So vital to that inner momentum of both films. It could be coming from inside the Terminator.

DESIGN: the model work behind the tanker.  

Cameron had to fight for his finale, Hemdale and Orion felt it was easy enough to finish the film with the T-800 consumed in the tanker crash.

TIMELINE: blowing the tanker with a pipe bomb. The end? Far from it.

CHAPTER 13: THE ENDO RISES

CLIP: flames, what is left of a tanker, blown to pieces. Kyle and Sarah think it’s over, that they have won. Wreckage stirs, and the T-800, his flesh coating burned away, rises in his beautiful skeletal form.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll clock this as the film’s attempt to visualise Cameron’s initial dream. The crawling aspect has been postponed until the very end, but here he is, that death’s head cyborg out of the flames. Schwarzenegger has now left the set, his replacement is his alloy endoskeleton with burning red eyes. The monster in his true guise. Cameron was determined to finally reveal what lies beneath the skin of a Terminator. Not be shortchanged like in Westworld, where Yul Brynner’s face was prised open to show a handful of diodes as if he was no more than a transistor radio. He wanted to show us the machine beneath Schwarzenegger’s beautiful skull.  

Elements to explore:

DESIGN: a description of the journey to the final look of the endoskeleton and how much of it came direct from Cameron’s imagination. Were there any inspirations here: Ray Harryhausen’s skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts,

THE STAN WINSTON STORY PART II: how Winston and his team made the “endo” live. They were two scales of endoskeleton: the smaller stop-motion variation (which has dated), and the full-scale, upper-torso puppet version, slung onto the operator’s shoulders.

STYLE: the prevailing charm of the old-school effects. Why we love The Terminator for the fact it isn’t slick and CGI’d.

The imagery is a portent of the future wars: fragged metal, fire, mechanised death.

SIDEBAR: THE UNKILLABLES

• How the not-dead-yet ending became a tradition to which The Terminator belonged. Films such as Carrie, Halloween, Alien, and anything the contributors care to bring up.

• This extends into a discussion of cinema’s fascination with (almost) unkillable foes in comparison to the T-800 :from Jason to xenomorphs to the Thing (a prelude to the T-1000) to the aliens, say, in The Edge of Tomorrow. We’ll have some fun.

• SCIENCE: how plausible are any of them?

• THEME: It’s about the insurmountable odds put before the protagonists that matters. Figuring it out.

TIMELINE: The death of Kyle Reese.

CHAPTER 14: FACTORY SETTING

CLIP: the Terminator, or what’s left of him, his legs long gone, crawls after Sarah. Eyes burning red, unrelenting to the end.

Filmed in the unlikely setting of the Kerns Jelly Factory in the City of Industry, the film switches into heavy metal mode, both through a cyborg stripped own to its chrome chassis and the surrounding a riddle of presses and platforms – a hint of a thousandfold video games to come. He had shown a work-in-progress to his bosses before his ending was in the can – and they told him to stop there. End on the burning tanker. Not for the last time, he publicly faced them down. And won. He was right of course, we need the catharsis of Sarah crushing the beast in a metal press. We need to feel genre finally taking the upper hand.

Elements to explore:

THEME: The industrial setting, a factory floor, underlines the theme of machine power.

Life on set: memories of shooting their climax. Getting a real sense of Cameron’s dedication, which bordered on a mania. A need almost to live his film. “You have to go all the way,” he said. It was a mantra for life.

Everyone said, the one person he pushed the most was himself.

STYLE: the look and feel of the film is now more explicitly science fiction, with a robot (okay, the inner frame of a cyborg), chasing Sarah through the metal maze of a production line.

But this meant not having his magnificent heavy, Schwarzenegger, for the last phase of the film – do we feel his absence?

TIMELINE: She slams the press down on her crawling enemy. “You’re terminated, fucker.” That is so satisfying.

Hamilton on a character reborn.

Hurd on how they finished on time and on budget. She spent her time, as she put it, protecting the film and protecting Jim.

But there were a few stolen shots, grabbed after principal production had officially finished. Including…

TIMELINE: the red of the Terminator eye fades out of existence.

CHAPTER 15: TAPE SEVEN, NOVEMBER 10

CLIP: a lonely, desert highway, somewhere near the Mexican border, a jeep pulls into a desolate gas station. Sarah is on her way to the future, a changed woman, a mother-to-be, relating her story into a tape recorder (technology still a crutch).

Cameron concludes with the future uncertain on all counts. Maybe Sarah has won the day, but she’s not too sure. Within her grows the hope for the future. How much did the director already have an eye on potential sequels? He had so many leftover Terminator ideas that had not come to fruition for many reasons, but cost mainly. But he was already occupied with an Aliens sequel, and he had no appetite for dealing with his producers again. It was a lesson in so many things.

We notice that Sarah’s driving a jeep, a “Renegade”, wearing a headband (to match the one worn by Reese in the Future Wars), a cocked revolver in her lap - already on her way to the warrior queen of T2. She’s crossed many borders.

THEME: a time loop comes full circle. Putting on the record the fact John’s father is the best friend he will send back from the future. So does the John of the future consciously choose Kyle for the mission because of this? “God, a person could go crazy thinking about this.”

It’s a reminder that The Terminator is a love story.

STYLE: Fiedel’s score is stripped back to a piano for an elegy to Kyle.

A kid takes a Polaroid, hustles her for bucks. She kind of likes his chutzpah.

DESIGN: The wind picks up dust, traces of the coming storm. The heavy clouds on the horizon look ominous. How did they achieve the optical effect?

TIMELINE: The jeep continues on its way along the road to the future…

CHAPTER 16: IMPACT

CLIP: the trailer that was the first we ever knew of Terminators and Cameron. No one saw it coming. The film was marketed as almost a horror movie – a good move. It got the kids in. They were jumping.

When Cameron showed his film to Hemdale and Orion, they barely registered how good it was – one executive got up before the finale. He can still picture his silhouette against the screen. He had been arguing with his paymasters throughout post, but finished the film his way. The right way. It was about to erupt in cinemas, staying at number one for weeks. Kids couldn’t get enough. They would leave the cinema repeating the lines. “I’ll. Be. Back.” A cult, a phenomenon, a smash hit that changed everything. After that, everyone took credit.

Elements to explore:

TIMELINE: more from the trailer and marketing campaign.  

The distributor wouldn’t even screen the film for the press, until Schwarzenegger’s agent forced their hand – for one solitary screening. Critics bought in. It made Time’s top ten list for the year.

STYLE: How the tone of The Terminator influenced everything from Die Hard to Robocop. Smart-aleck but real. Genre made of metal.

Cameron looks back on a primitive (by his standards) but transformative film. He regrets some of the primitive effects, but knows its place in history.

How things began to change for Schwarzenegger.

How fans and critics are still swept up by its storytelling power. How it lives on.

INTERMISSION

We cut to black, a pause, the crunch of static, a flickering screen resolves into a montage: real world images of changing presidents, world events, and scientific advances give way to the changing face of movies, including a sense of the influence of The Terminator. Schwarzenegger’s career is going places: Commando, Raw Deal, Predator, The Running Man. Cameron’s career is hardly faltering with Aliens and The Abyss. This gives way to old interview clips of the director. The repeated question: are we ever going to see another Terminator movie?

We can feel the passing of years.

The sense of destiny.

The screen cuts to black again. Then into the graphic heading. And a clip…

GRAPHIC: PROMISES TO KEEP

CLIP: somewhere in the future, a high-tech production line comes to life. An endoskeleton is assembled amid a flurry of sparks. Skin is laid over armature, steam is expelled. The heartbeat of Fiedel’s score. The mechanism opens onto a familiar face. But his Austrian eyes glow red.

The story of the announcement trailer for a second Terminator film, as directed by Stan Winston. Which shows no footage from the film. Ostensibly because none has yet been shot. This is so bold, so confident.

Elements to explore:

EXTENDED UNIVERSE: How it works narratively (in-world) to show us a new version of the T-800 coming down the assembly line. The beautiful concept that the developing franchise could always reset with a fresh T-800.

STYLE: Production lines are a motif in this franchise.

The trailer goes out with the 1990 Schwarzenegger hit Total Recall. It was first anyone knew, or had dared to hope.

TIMELINE: Over the title, we hear that voice. “I’ll. Be. Back.” Audiences are cheering, high-fiving; bros are hugging, tears in their eyes. It’s really hard to concentrate on Total Recall.

INTO…

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