THE TERMINATOR ( 1984 )

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: James Cameron

SCREENWRITER: James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd

FILM STARS: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, Paul Winfield, Lance Henriksen, Rick Rossovich, Bess Motta, Dick Miller, Franco Columbu, Bill Paxton

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Shaun Hutson

TYPE: Novelization

PUBLISHER: Star

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1984

COUNTRY: Australia

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1984

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Sci Fi

WORDS:  The Terminator.

A low budget-ish B action film that became a runaway success.

Budgeted at $6.4 million it made $78 million (US dollars).

It led to five sequels, two television series, two web series, comic books, video games and novels.

It made a big star out of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It put writer director James Cameron on the map and made him bankable.

It made a big budget action producer out of producer Gale Anne Hurd.

It created catchphrases – Schwarzenegger’s line “I’ll be back” became a catchphrase and was voted the 37th-greatest movie quote by the AFI.

In 2008, The Terminator was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

A terminator cyborg assassin from the future is trying to kill a diner waitress whilst a cop from the same future is trying to save her. Whether she lives or dies will have severe repercussions on the future.

Okay, intellectually I have problems with time traveller films but as entertainment I do accept them even though the Grandfather Paradox (or “consistency paradox”) is ever present – that is changing the past eliminates the reason for traveling back, making the change impossible. If you change the past, you prevent your own trip, meaning you couldn’t have changed it, creating a self-contradictory loop. As long as you don’t take it seriously (and I don’t) once you are on this ride you forget everything else. The sequels all became more serious and with the exception of Terminator 2 (1991) they became increasingly less fun.

As AI has become a thing the Terminator film (especially its sequels) with its dystopian future and the rise of the machines seems to have taken on more gravitas than needed. The Terminator robot in the film has become the dominant visual representation of AI risk. The “rise of the machines” is a concern that has fallen into the real world. (though, when looking at aged care, health care, work safety I for one welcome the rise of the machines. Well, as long as they are tools, thinking or otherwise. Why is every future dystopian? Perhaps the robot machine is as good or bad as the person programming it. Even sentience does just drop down out of the sky or come out of nowhere). The film has had an impact outside of the film world.

Gravitas acknowledged but the film is a chase film gussied up. It has great action set pieces and pacing that does not let up. This is made more impressive when you know that this film was made on a modest budget. $6.4 million may sound like a lot, especially for 1984, but when compared to the budgets of other 1984 films  – The Karate Kid ($8m), Amadeus ($18m), Bachelor Party ($7m), Beverly Hills Cop ($13m), Broadway Danny Rose ($8m), City Heat ($25m), Conan the Destroyer ($18m), Dune ($40m), Firestarter ($12m), Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan ($30m), Gremlins ($11m), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ($28m), Purple Rain ($7.2m), The Razor’s Edge ($12m), Rhinestone ($28m), Sixteen Candles ($6.5m), Splash ($11m), The Woman in Red ($9m) etc. you can see that The Terminator gets a lot of errrr bang for its buck.

The leading actors are great (though, perhaps inexplicably, only Schwarzenegger became a big star) and the supports are just as good (any film with Lance Henriksen is made instantly better). In small roles you have Rick Rossovich, Bill Paxton and Dick Miller (its always fun playing pick the later (or former) “star”). Does actor spotting interrupt the momentum of the film for me? Not, my brain can do two things at once..

Cameron’s direction from his script concentrates on the action and the character. There is no room for scenery or local colour. The film became one of those roller coaster ride films (Die Hard (1988), RoboCop (1987), Predator (1987), Aliens (1986), Lethal Weapon (1987), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), and 48 Hrs. (1982)) that defined the 1980s and, rightly or wrongly, influenced all action films that came after.

The Terminator soundtrack was composed and performed on synthesizer by Brad Fiedel and it has the mechanical, industrial, atmospheric analog synth tones which conjure up the ominous future from which the terminator comes.

Cameron’s script (which producer Gale Anne Hurd contributed to though Cameron stated that she “did no actual writing at all”) was inspired by (it seems) television 1960s television shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits as well as (perhaps) the recent dystopian sci fi films like Mad Max 2 (1981), Escape from New York (1981), Blade Runner (1982) and probably because he was working on in Rome on his Piranha II: The Spawning (1982) the Italian and European sci fi B trash being made at the same time like 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982), The Exterminators of the Year 3000 (1983), The New Barbarians (1983).

It may be Cameron’s script but (the great) sci fi writer Harlan Ellison sued for plagiarism. He “stated that he “loved the movie, was just blown away by it, “but believed that the screenplay was based on a short story, “Soldier from Tomorrow”, and an episode of The Outer Limits, “Soldier”, he had written, and threatened to sue for infringement. Orion settled in 1986, gave Ellison an undisclosed amount of money, and added an acknowledgment credit to later prints of the film. Some accounts of the settlement state that “Demon with a Glass Hand”, another Outer Limits episode written by Ellison, was also claimed to have been plagiarized by the film, but Ellison explicitly stated that The Terminator “was a ripoff” of “Soldier” rather than of “Demon with a Glass Hand.”

Cameron was against Orion’s decision and was told that if he did not agree with the settlement, he would have to pay any damages if Orion lost a suit by Ellison. Cameron replied that he “had no choice but to agree with the settlement. Of course, there was a gag order as well, so I couldn’t tell this story, but now I frankly don’t care. It’s the truth.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator

The novelisation is by Shaun Hutson. This is the UK novelization version of The Terminator. The US version is written by a completely different author(s) – Randall Frakes and Bill Wisher- who, I think, wrote their novelization after the film was completed.

As with other novelizations, we have no idea what version of the script the author had to work with, if anybody had already been cast before they started writing, or whether they had any access to the scriptwriter, director. or anyone else on the production team for background.

The novelizor (?) brings their own technique and sensibility to the novelization. How much depends on how much background they were given outside the script..

Hutson’s novel adheres very closely to the finished movie though there are the usual scenes (or locales) that don’t feature in the film. Shaun Hutson (born 1958) is a British novelist in the horror and crime genres and he brings his horror sensibility to the novel, the violence and gore are amped up rather spectacularly. There is some back story of course and in the book we get more on ancillary characters like Traxler and Vukovich (played by Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen in the film) which is a bonus. Otherwise there are scenes and its and pieces of small business that will let the trainspotters discover but which don’t stray from the main story in any big way. Though I do note Hutson uses “I’ll come back” instead of the iconic “I’ll be back”, which may be because Arnold changed the line during shooting.

See the film, read the book if you are a big fan.

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