I can't really discuss "The Terminator" without also discussing "Terminator II." Arnold Schwarzenegger plays essentially the same character in both films, but in Part I he's a (really) bad guy, and in Part II he's the hero. It's a time travel story in which a humanoid robot from the future arrives in the present to murder a woman so she'll never give birth to a child who is destined to grow up to lead what to all appearances is an incredibly unsuccessful fight against humanoid robots in the future. And that's just the first film. In the second film the child is already born and another humanoid robot from the future, a spooky shape-shifter this time, arrives in the present to murder the kid, but a third humanoid robot (Arnold II), programmed this time to do good deeds, follows the bad robot to the present and tries to protect the kid and rescue the kid's mother who is in an insane asylum because she keeps insisting that robots from the future are trying to kill her. Did you get all that? I'm a sucker for a good time-travel story, and the next time this one's on TV, I'll be back. This is first-class science fiction it's entertaining and it makes me think. (I also really liked Arnold in "Total Recall," but I can never really work up an interest in watching it again because I can't make up my mind whether the story is taking place in the real world or in a brain aneurysm.)
Review of The Terminator
