The Movie with THE Classic Arnie one liner

Rating: 8/10 (13 December 2013)

I have seen the sequel more times that I can remember, and still love it, but I felt that I should return to the original and have a look at what that movie is like. I remember the first time I saw The Terminator - I was in high school and it was the grossest movie that I had ever seen. I say that because there is a scene where Arnie cuts open his arm and pops out his eye.
The Terminator was little more that a B-grade horror movie with a sci-fi bent, but its popularity meant that a sequel was made which became a block-buster action movie. I will try not the mention the sequel as this is the movie that made it possible, and in some ways it is better. As an action movie, Terminator II rocks, but it is basically a remake of the first movie as the themes are very much the same.
Linda Hamilton is a happy young Sarah Conner who works at a fast-food restaurant and generally leads a pleasant life. Everything changes when some guy begins executing all of the Sarah Conner's in Los Angeles, and when she is about to be executed as well, her saviour Kyle Reese leaps out and saves her. Both are then chased around Los Angeles by an unmercilous killing machine before Sarah manages to crush it in a factory, though Reese has died in the process. During this time, Reese sleeps with Conner and conceives John Conner, the guy who leads the humans to victory in a war against the robots.
A lot of the things that I can say about this movie I have said in Terminator II because the themes are basically the same. It is a movie about how a life is saved through the death of another - Kyle Reese. It is about something that cannot be stopped, but it is stopped after Reese dies. I guess we know that Reese must die because he is in a place that is not his home, and he can never return. Okay, he loves Conner, but Los Angeles 1984 is not his home, and he cannot live here.
There is no struggle with this as the focus is more on the horror of having something after you that you cannot stop. It seems to reflect the horror of death - something that comes after us that we cannot stop. The only reason that Conner survived is that Reese, a battle-trained soldier, was sent back to save her. The only way we can flee the uncertainty of death, is to trust in Jesus, who was sent to save us. In a way this movie seems to reflect this.
The last thing that I must say about this movie is that it contains one of Hollywood's famous lines, and it is the line that made the movie - I'll be back - says Arnold Schwarzenegger to a desk sergeant before he drives a car through the door of the police station and shoots the place up. The fact that the Terminator droid is able to walk through a heavily armed police station and come out without a scratch simply shows how strong it is. Even then, Kyle is able to put a home-made bomb into his skeletal frame and blow it to bits.