Everything Is Brilliant In Another Hit For Arnie

Rating: 9/10 (9 July 2016)

Continuing my plan to watch every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie in order, I come to his second movie of 1984 The Terminator.
Plot In A Paragraph: A cyborg (Arnie) is sent from the future with one mission. Kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) a young woman whose life will have a great significance in years to come. Sarah has only one protector, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) also sent from the future.
To those that say Arnie can't act, I say watch this movie. He is TOTALLY believable as a non human!! I say that in jest of course, but it is his best performance thus far.
He never could have took the role if Dino De Laurentis didn't release him from his 10 year Conan contract. He agreed, but asked Arnie to keep making Conans as long as they were profitable (Thankfully after the lukewarm reception to Conan The Destroyer, Dino never wanted to make another) and to make an action movie for him when he had a script. Arnie agreed, and was free to make other movies away from Dino.
The $750,000 Arnie was paid for this was less than the $1,000,000 he was paid for the last Conan movie, but boy does it pay off. James Cameron is a genius, how all this came out of his head is amazing, and this is only his second feature film is beyond me. It's scarily brilliant. Everything is brilliant. The script is brilliant, the casting is brilliant, the performances are brilliant, the way it's shot is brilliant, Brad Fiedel's score is brilliant, Stan Wilsons special effects are brilliant, everything is brilliant.
I've already praised Arnies performance, but Michael Biehn is also brilliant as the battled scarred, but brave Kyle Reece and Linda Hamilton is excellent as Sarah Connor too. I can't fault a single performance in the movie.
A few dodgy effects here and there, and the implausibility of the plot (I still can't get my head around how Kyle can be John Connors Dad lol) are not enough to ruin anything.
In his autobiography Total Recall, Arnie talks about how the role of the Terminator only having 18 lines worried him, he worried people think he was either avoiding speaking parts, or worse, most of of his dialogue was edited out because it wasn't working.
He also discusses how bad the promotion was for this movie. They had it as a standard B movie, he says how Cameron begged them to change the strategy of it, but they would not listen to him!! They were only interested in promoting Amadeus. The movie succeeded because of solid reviews and good word of mouth.
The Terminator grossed $38 million at the domestic Box Office making it the 21st highest grossing movie of 1984. Surprisingly neither was enough to beat Conan The Barbarian as a career high for Arnie at that point.
In a way, it's lucky for Arnie, Terminator wasn't a giant blockbuster, as he may have been typecast as a bad guy. As it was, he did a favour for Dino.