Trailer
Plot summary
In 1984 Los Angeles, a man materializes in an alley in a flash of light and takes clothes from a group of punks. He robs a gun shop, finds the addresses of several women named Sarah Connor and kills them. A waitress with that name sees news reports of the murders and notices a scarred stranger following her. The stranger is Kyle Reese, a soldier from a future in which Skynet, a computer network, launches a nuclear war and machines hold survivors in extermination camps. Sarah's future son, John, would lead the resistance. Skynet sent a cyborg assassin, the Terminator, back through time to kill Sarah before John can be born, and Reese came to protect her.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Terminator (1984)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- James Cameron said the idea for The Terminator came from a dream he had in Rome, where he fell ill during the release of Piranha II: The Spawning, of a metallic torso holding kitchen knives dragging itself from an explosion.
- To help sell financier John Daly on the film, Cameron had his friend Lance Henriksen crash the pitch meeting dressed as the Terminator, with a leather jacket, fake facial cuts, and gold foil on his teeth, kicking open the office door and sitting down uninvited.
- Before Schwarzenegger was cast, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson both turned down the role of the Terminator, and Orion co-founder Mike Medavoy even suggested O. J. Simpson, whom Cameron rejected as unbelievable as a killer given his affable public persona.
- After meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger for the role of Reese, Cameron decided he was wrong for that part but told financier John Daly, "he'd make a hell of a Terminator."
- Schwarzenegger wanted to change his catchphrase "I'll be back" because he struggled to pronounce "I'll," but Cameron refused to let him say "I will be back" instead, so he practiced until he could say the line as written.
- Despite becoming the film's most iconic figure, Schwarzenegger speaks only seventeen lines of dialogue as the Terminator, fewer than one hundred words in total.
- Cameron sold the film rights to producer Gale Anne Hurd for one dollar, on the condition that she would only produce it if he was allowed to direct.
- Writer Harlan Ellison threatened to sue, believing The Terminator's script was based on his own story "Soldier from Tomorrow" and his Outer Limits episode "Soldier"; Orion settled in 1986 with an undisclosed payment and an acknowledgment credit added to later prints.
