Countdown to Salvation: Terminator (1984)

As I have mentioned in the past, I am a HUGE Terminator fan. In my youth Terminator 2 was, in my opinion, the be all and end all of movies. I ate everything I could abotu the movie and digested it whole. And remember, this was in the time before the autio commentary. I had to actually pick up a book and *READ* about it. So, over the weekend I watched all three Terminator movies (yep, even the abomination that was 3, although I now have a different perspective on it…).  This was an awesome experience for me since I haven’t seen them in quite some time.

I’ve seen bits and pieces of Terminator over the years, but I haven’t sat down and watched the whole thing in many years. It’s important to do, even with the iconic movies. Watching this movie again was like coming home. As an adult it was easier to see the many layers of this film. On the surface it’s an action movie that borders on horror. Underneath it’s a story about how humanity can really come together to fight a common foe. It’s a story about the post traumatic stress disorder that soldiers live with. It’s about survival and, most of all, it’s about love. Better yet, watching this movie again put into perspective just how brilliant the character development was on Sarah Connor in Terminator 2. Clearly sometime in the post-natal phase Sarah, essentially, becomes Kyle.

Speaking of Kyle, I fell completely head-over heels in love with him all over again. He’s at once tough as nails and soft as putty. The fact that he fell in love with a picture of Sarah, who was thinking about him at the time (although he had no way of knowing that), from a picture is incredible. What this watching also gave me though, was that Kyle didn’t just fall in love with Sarah, he fell in love with what she represented: hope, love, kindness and, most of all, a normal life. And for just a few moments, Sarah really did make Kyle feel normal. Awesome, right?

Last but not least, I have a confession to make: I’ve seen this movie a lot and for some reason it never occurred to me that when Kyle was telling Sarah that there was never a woman in the future… it never occurred to me that the man was  a virgin! He had sex *once* in his lifetime and it resulted in mankind’s new human leader. Well duh, Trista.

Oh, and I still can’t watch that scene where Arnie takes out his EYE, but I CAN still laugh as he stalks through the movie in the punk club outfit he rolled off Privae Hudson. Ooooh. So terrifying. And yet, somehow it was.