What if a killer machine from the future was sent back in time to kill the mother of mankind’s only hope? And what if he had an Austrian accent for some reason? Well, we find out in James Cameron’s The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the titular Austrian killbot, Linda Hamilton as the unlucky mother of mankind’s only hope, and Michael Biehn as the time-travelling protector/impregnator or the mother of mankind’s only hope. 
The Terminator is a less of a sci-fi flick and more of a chase movie that involves robots and time travel. In the future, machines have taken over the world and a guy named John Connor leads mankind in a war against them. The machines send a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to John Connor, with the goal of wiping out their main enemy before he’s even a fetus. Future John Connor takes offense to this attempt at preemptive abortion attempt and so he sends back a soldier named Kyle Reese to protect his mom. The Terminator and Kyle both arrive in 1984 Los Angeles and both try to find Sarah Connor before the other one. Kyle finds Sarah just in time and saves her from the Terminator, and he tells her about the future and that the Austrian that tried to kill her is actually a robot assassin. 
The Terminator comes back and there’s a car chase and they escape again. Kyle and Sarah get picked up by the LAPD. And then the Terminator comes back and Kyle rescues Sarah again and they go to a hotel. They make bombs and have sex and then the Terminator comes back again. And there’s another car chase. The Terminator gets caught up in an explosion and stops looking like an Austrian tourist and more like a shiny metal robotic skeleton. Sarah kills the Terminator and drives off to Mexico to begin the rest of her life as the mother of mankind’s last hope. 
This is the start of the best franchise about time-travelling killer robots from the future. It wasn’t Arnold’s first movie, and it wasn’t James Cameron’s first movie, but it was the movie that made them household names. Arnold Schwarzenegger became a star, even though he hardly says anything and half the time his character is onscreen it’s a phony looking dummy or a robotic exoskeleton. The action scenes are still exciting, but the special effects are laughable. Stop-motion robots aren’t menacing. It makes the film seem very dated. The story makes up for it though. It’s a cheesy B-movie in a lot of ways, and that adds to the retro charm. James Cameron can make an exciting action movie without much of a budget. And when he has a budget, he makes some of the biggest films of all time. This guy knows how to manipulate an audience. I don’t know why a robot needs a laser site though. 
This movie gave us James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Terminator 2. For that, we must always be grateful. It also gave us “I’ll be back”… one of the greatest movie lines ever. One way to tell the significance of a movie is how often people quote it. Even today, jerks across the world spout that line before they embark on a beer run. Cheesy special effects can’t deter an interesting story and a master storyteller with an Austrian puppet from creating a cinematic icon. The Terminator is a classic.
Critically Rated at 12/17
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