We don’t often cover well known films here at the Definite Article blog but I recently saw ‘Terminator : Dark Fate’ and wondered how the original held up. Rather than go over the well worn plot let’s have a watch along and see what we remember and what we pick up with the benefit of hindsight.
The film opens with a desolate Los Angeles 2027. I remember being impressed with this as a 14 year old but now the HK’s (Hunter Killers) look jerky and on wires. It’s clearly model work with the advances of HD TV showing up the cheap effects for what they are. You do get the tank going over a load of skulls which looks pretty good, so good in fact that it’s used in every subsequent film.
Arnie appears in a flash and does some flashing of his own as his tight buns are on display for all to see. He meets up with some hoods including a young Bill Paxton (or is it Pullman?) who all get suitably beaten up and stripped of their tough guy clothes.
Elsewhere Michael Biehn appears with a thud in a scene later nicked by the ‘Mr Bean’ TV show. He has a harder time finding gear and ends up with some smelly tramp trousers that he wears throughout the film. He gets the girl too, so don’t knock the smelly strides.
We meet Sarah Connor who has a terrible moped and is an even worse waitress. She has a hot date lined up but this soon gets cancelled - It’s James Cameron on the ansafone! - so she heads out to the cinema to leave her brunette friend Ginger alone with her boyfriend. Say goodbye Ginger!
Arnie has been busy clearing up the other Sarah Connors and soon zeros in on ours. I liked the ‘Tech Noir’ night club with it’s futuristic vibe that looks so dated now. The revellers look like they are on a Duran Duran video shoot and it costs a massive $4.50 to get in. There are other, now failed, future nods throughout the film like a radio ad for Laser Discs - might be worth a few quid on eBay I guess.
Arnie tracks his quarry by way of the phone book - you’d think that coming back from 2027 he’d have Google Maps built in but I guess there was no wi-fi in 1984! There is a funny scene in a gun shop with Dick Miller rubbing his hands at Arnie’s massive list of purchases - sadly he only gets a bullet, and it’s one of his own. Arnie nearly gives himself away asking for a plasma rifle - do your research cyborg!
We get the now classic ‘if you want to live come with me’ line as Reece hooks up with Sarah and they start the chase with Arnie that lasts the rest of the film. The pacing is good and the 100 minutes flies along - probably because you are anticipating the next good bit having seen it 20 times before.
Reece eventually convinces Sarah that he’s a soldier from the future and that she’s the mother of the resistance leader. Wonder how many times that line has worked for seedy men in the years since? Reece and Sarah get it on and Reece reveals himself to be a boobs man. She’s told not to ask who her son’s father is but you’d have to be a house plant not to guess it’s Reece who’s doing the old ‘impregnate them then die to get out of child maintenance’ routine.
The two make up a pile of pipe bombs using some household ingredients. I wonder if that’s where the Unabomber got his recipes? It dates the film a bit when a bloodied guy in a trench coat can buy up a shop’s full supply of ammonia and moth balls and not have Homeland Security immediately on his ass.
Arnie shows up having mimicked Sarah’s mother - a trick we’ll see again and again in the franchise. I liked that the dog remembered to bark when Arnie left. Small things like this and Kyle having the bite make up on his hand in later scenes showed a good eye for detail.
The pipe bombs prove mostly rubbish as they just explode in a big puff of smoke, but the climatic chase is well done and it was fun to see Arnie get flattened by a big truck after driving over a toy one himself near the start of the film.
Arnie gets exploded but comes back as a skeleton and then as a torso. His persistence is admirable but it’s not as great as the franchise’s which insists on making the same film over and over.
There were shortcomings here but it was made on the cheap and as an original offering it is the best of the bunch. ‘T2 : Judgement Day’ is better as a standalone film but it covers virtually the same plot points as this verbatim.
The Arnie model work looks really fake as do a lot of the miniature scenes - water and flames always give away the small scale. It’s hard to be harsh though as this set the template for every sci-film made since. ‘Terminator Dark Fate’ was decent but it was just another rehash of this.
The acting was OK apart from Arnie who was just himself. It did beg the question that if the Terminator can mimic any voice why has it got ‘Hard to understand Austrian’ as it’s default?
Still good stuff and well worth a re-re-visit.
THE Tag Line - You’ll Be Back (Again) 80%
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