It's Really Not That Good As People Remember It.

Rating: 6/10 (17 December 2017)

Among many of Arnold Schwarzenegger's early action films, this has to be the most overrated one, and it's entirely not Arnie's fault. Ironically though, this otherwise B-grade film is responsible for propelling Arnie to A-list status.
Which in hindsight, is probably the only beneficial result of this otherwise mediocre film. Mediocre as in the story is weak, the dialogue is terrible, the acting is embarrassing, the production is poor, the direction is choppy, the editing is sloppy, and the special effects is cheesy and dated.
While the film tries poorly to make too much out of a bulimic script and story, Arnie does much by doing very little. His mere presence - such as the way he poses as he shoots down people - is a dominating display, without saying a word. That's why we love Arnold; not because of his acting (because really he can't) but because his physicality is impressive. Arnold carries this whole mess, even in scenes where they replace him with animatronics.
I think by now, people have finally realized how much of a hack James Cameron is. Really guys, his films aren't that great, they're good sometimes but they're not great; not Avatar, not Titanic; no. Cameron is basically, a more competent version of Michael Bay; a lot of style, not a lot of substance but I can admit that Cameron has a good grasp of what the public would want to watch in the current year.
The Terminator is such a film. in 1984, the show on screen that a killer robot could quite possibly travel back through time and killing humans, is a novel idea - at the time. But at this time, science and technology were not pervasive in the collective conscientiousness of the public. That is to say, you could get away with a lot of plot-holes and this film had lots of it.
The future resistance fighters already knew that it was near impossible to kill a cyborg one on one and yet, they just send one guy - ONE GUY - to guard Sarah Connor? Why didn't John Connor just send the entire squad present? Also, when Reese was detained in the Police Station, regardless of whether they think he is crazy, he had vital information to identify the man who is targeting Sarah Connor - what he looked liked etcetera - and yet, the police didn't question him on that. Strange no? I mean really, a police lieutenant wouldn't make such a blunder.
That's not all, everything about this film is off. The sound isn't quite right, the cinematography isn't quite right, some scenes were unnecessary, the action is not very good for Arnie's standard, the production set isn't quite right, the animatronics isn't quite right, everything is just off. In spite of all this, it's not a terrible film; it's just not that good.
Really, I think Conan the Barbarian, Commando and even Terminator 2 are better Arnie films than this.