It pursues them into a factory, where Reese activates the machinery to confuse it. The Terminator, now bloodied and badly damaged, hijacks a tank truck and attempts to run down Sarah, but Reese slides a pipe bomb into the tanker's hose tube, causing a giant explosion that burns all the flesh from the Terminator's endoskeleton. Sarah knocks the Terminator off its motorcycle but loses control of the truck, which flips over. In the ensuing chase, Reese is badly wounded by gunfire while throwing pipe bombs at the Terminator. She and Reese escape the motel in a pickup while it pursues them on a motorcycle. The Terminator locates Sarah by intercepting a call intended for her mother. Reciprocating his feelings, Sarah kisses him and they have sex, conceiving John. Reese admits that he has adored Sarah since he saw her in a photograph John gave him and that he traveled through time out of love for her. Reese and Sarah escape, steal another car, and take refuge in a motel, where they assemble several pipe bombs and plan their next move. It attacks the police station, killing police officers while hunting for Sarah. Police apprehend Reese and Sarah after another encounter with the Terminator. The Terminator is an efficient and relentless killing machine with a perfect voice-mimicking ability and a durable metal endoskeleton covered by living tissue that disguises it as a human.

On the verge of the resistance's victory, Skynet sent the Terminator back in time to kill Sarah and prevent John from being born. Sarah's future son ( John Connor) will rally the survivors and lead a successful resistance movement against Skynet and its army of machines.

The pair steal a car and escape, with the Terminator pursuing them in a stolen police car.Īs they hide in a parking lot, Reese explains to Sarah that an artificially intelligent defense network known as Skynet, created by Cyberdyne Systems, will become self-aware in the near future and trigger a global nuclear war to exterminate the human species. It tracks the last Sarah Connor, its actual target, to a nightclub, but Reese rescues her. The Terminator systematically kills women bearing its target's name, having found their addresses in a telephone directory. The genuine human is a soldier named Kyle Reese, intent on stopping it. The cyborg is an assassin known as a Terminator, disguised under a male human appearance and programmed to hunt and kill a woman named Sarah Connor. In 2008, The Terminator was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.Ī cybernetic organism and a man time travel separately from 2029 to 1984 Los Angeles. The film's success led to a franchise consisting of several sequels, a television series, comic books, novels and video games. It is credited with launching Cameron's film career and solidifying Schwarzenegger's status as a leading man. The film's special effects, which included miniatures and stop-motion animation, were created by a team of artists led by Stan Winston and Gene Warren Jr.ĭefying low pre-release expectations, The Terminator topped the United States box office for two weeks, eventually grossing $78.3 million against a modest $6.4 million budget. Filming, which took place mostly at night on location in Los Angeles, was delayed because of Schwarzenegger's commitments to Conan the Destroyer (1984), during which Cameron found time to work on the scripts for Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and Aliens (1986). Originally approached by Orion for the role of Reese, Schwarzenegger agreed to play the title character after befriending Cameron. He sold the rights to the project to fellow New World Pictures alumna Hurd on the condition that she would produce the film only if he were to direct it Hurd eventually secured a distribution deal with Orion Pictures, while executive producers John Daly and Derek Gibson of Hemdale Film Corporation were instrumental in setting up the film's financing and production. received an 'additional dialogue' credit.Ĭameron devised the premise of the film from a fever dream he experienced during the release of his first film, Piranha II: The Spawning (1982), in Rome, and developed the concept in collaboration with Wisher. The screenplay is credited to Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd, while co-writer William Wisher Jr. Kyle Reese ( Michael Biehn) is a soldier sent back in time to protect Sarah. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, a cybernetic assassin sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor ( Linda Hamilton), whose unborn son will one day save mankind from extinction by Skynet, a hostile artificial intelligence in a post-apocalyptic future. The Terminator is a 1984 American science fiction action film directed by James Cameron.

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