That Terminator is out there! It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop… ever, until you are dead!
Welcome to Terminator Month, where every week we explore the franchise that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a household name. In Week One, we learn to assemble pipe bombs in a seedy motel with screenwriter Matt Goodman, as we look at the movie that started it all: 1984’s The Terminator.
In the year 2029, the post-nuclear war against the machines has finally been won by a small human resistance. But the machines have one last gambit. They’ve sent the perfect mechanized killing machine back to the year 1984, to kill a young waitress named Sarah Connor before she can give birth to the leader of the human resistance. The final battle for humanity will not be fought in the future, but in modern day Los Angeles.
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Hm, I listened to the episode right off, but only now realized (just as the second one had been released) that I didn’t leave a comment.
Great episode, as usual – I was actually wondering how you guys were going to cover the Terminator franchise, i.e., piecemeal like everything else or all together – and now I have my answer.
By the way, I feel compelled to add my two cents about your discussion on whether this is an Arnie movie or not. I think it is, it’s really one of the quintessential ones. While I understand the argument that Arnie is a) the villain in this one, and b) doesn’t even appear in the last 20 or so minutes, I still think that Terminator, even more than Conan (the Barbarian), pretty much showed everyone that Arnie could carry an action movie by the force of his presence alone, plus a few well-delivered quips.