What do you think?
Rate this book
BFI Film Classics
The Terminator
Sean French places The Terminator in the context of the exploitation films in which both Cameron and Schwarzenegger learnt their craft. He argues that The Terminator's visual flair, stylised acting and choreographed violence are so compelling not so much because they offer intellectual rewards but because they traffic in the darker, more visceral pleasures of movie-going.
81 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 27, 1996
2 people are currently reading
138 people want to read
About the author
Sean French
29 books35 followersHalf of the husband/wife writing team of Nicci French. He studied English Literature at Oxford University. He has been a film critic and biographer.
Nicci Gerrard and Sean French also write separately.
Nicci Gerrard and Sean French also write separately.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 5, 2025
I went to see The Terminator in the cinema when it first came out. I didn’t know what to expect and the opening scene, supposedly showing Los Angeles in 2029, was clearly made from toys which the camera had tried to scale up. At that point I was thinking “This is going to be crappy,” but I could not have been more wrong. The film joined Mad Max, and El Mariachi, in a group of ultra-low budget films that really took off. Each became the subject of big money remakes/sequels, none of which, imo, were as good as the original.
Like most of the books in this series, this one is short - 80 pages. We had a bit of a storm here earlier that caused a power cut for about 5 hours, so without much else to do, I read it on my Kindle using battery power. “It’s an ill wind that blows no good”, as they say.
I thought this was a good entry in this variable series. Part of the discussion was on how so many people identified with The Terminator, an emotionless android who kills twenty-seven people in the course of the film. Some of the answer is surely to be found in the casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Prior to the film he was regarded as no more than a musclebound goon with an unpronounceable name and an accent no-one could understand. The movie revealed his charismatic qualities, which he subsequently used to pursue his successful political career. It made him a star. The book contrasts him with the movie’s ostensible hero, Kyle Reese, played by Michael Biehn. It was his first “leading man” role, and he never got another one. There are also some persuasive insights into the appeal of the Terminator character from James Cameron, but since the book itself is only 80 pages, I’ll resist the temptation to retell everything in this review!
The book touches on Terminator 2, which I thought was a decent enough film without having the impact of the original. I’ve never seen any of the films in sequels 3-6, and the book doesn’t recommend watching them.
As the author says, Schwarzenegger’s Terminator deserves to be considered as one of the great mythic creations of the cinema. I always think it must be hugely satisfying for a writer/director to be the creator of such a long-lasting character.
Like most of the books in this series, this one is short - 80 pages. We had a bit of a storm here earlier that caused a power cut for about 5 hours, so without much else to do, I read it on my Kindle using battery power. “It’s an ill wind that blows no good”, as they say.
I thought this was a good entry in this variable series. Part of the discussion was on how so many people identified with The Terminator, an emotionless android who kills twenty-seven people in the course of the film. Some of the answer is surely to be found in the casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Prior to the film he was regarded as no more than a musclebound goon with an unpronounceable name and an accent no-one could understand. The movie revealed his charismatic qualities, which he subsequently used to pursue his successful political career. It made him a star. The book contrasts him with the movie’s ostensible hero, Kyle Reese, played by Michael Biehn. It was his first “leading man” role, and he never got another one. There are also some persuasive insights into the appeal of the Terminator character from James Cameron, but since the book itself is only 80 pages, I’ll resist the temptation to retell everything in this review!
The book touches on Terminator 2, which I thought was a decent enough film without having the impact of the original. I’ve never seen any of the films in sequels 3-6, and the book doesn’t recommend watching them.
As the author says, Schwarzenegger’s Terminator deserves to be considered as one of the great mythic creations of the cinema. I always think it must be hugely satisfying for a writer/director to be the creator of such a long-lasting character.
July 3, 2012
The BFI series on The Terminator discussed very interesting ideas about James Cameron's movie idea. James Cameron was really under the pressure of not having the kind of budgets he is used to having today so with that constraint came this amazing film that he was still able to make.
What made this movie so amazing to watch was the fact that James Cameron paced the movie within the first hour fast enough to keep audience members on edge, not knowing what was coming next but also giving them more than they had come to expect from it. The idea that there is a machine after her to kill her because of events that haven't happened yet are what keep the audience engaged because James knew that ever action in the movie had a reaction in the end.
The design behind how the movie worked was also based on the fact that Cameron had worked so hard on films before that he basically knew how every position on a film crew worked. He understood everyone's roles so he knew what he needed and where everyone should be. Almost like a mathematical equation of setting up the pieces in order to execute the idea. His years at the Roger Corman film institute gave him the experience of creating cause and effect with such great detail that, despite it's small budget, he was able to get the look and feel that he wanted from everything.
It was also the casting of a semi-famous actor that helped bring the attention to the film that he needed but more so, it gave the look of the terminator exactly what he was after, this straight-faced killing machine that was larger than everyone else.
The success of the terminator was also in part to the fact of the type of grimy looking worlds in movies at that time. There was the post-apocalyptic worlds that made up what the future of the world would look like. James Cameron films have always been about the idea of man's struggle with himself to control the very things that he created.
If you are interested in learning more about the impact that The Terminator had on films at the time and in the future, this is a book to read that will have you understanding just how different films would be today, had this movie not been made.
What made this movie so amazing to watch was the fact that James Cameron paced the movie within the first hour fast enough to keep audience members on edge, not knowing what was coming next but also giving them more than they had come to expect from it. The idea that there is a machine after her to kill her because of events that haven't happened yet are what keep the audience engaged because James knew that ever action in the movie had a reaction in the end.
The design behind how the movie worked was also based on the fact that Cameron had worked so hard on films before that he basically knew how every position on a film crew worked. He understood everyone's roles so he knew what he needed and where everyone should be. Almost like a mathematical equation of setting up the pieces in order to execute the idea. His years at the Roger Corman film institute gave him the experience of creating cause and effect with such great detail that, despite it's small budget, he was able to get the look and feel that he wanted from everything.
It was also the casting of a semi-famous actor that helped bring the attention to the film that he needed but more so, it gave the look of the terminator exactly what he was after, this straight-faced killing machine that was larger than everyone else.
The success of the terminator was also in part to the fact of the type of grimy looking worlds in movies at that time. There was the post-apocalyptic worlds that made up what the future of the world would look like. James Cameron films have always been about the idea of man's struggle with himself to control the very things that he created.
If you are interested in learning more about the impact that The Terminator had on films at the time and in the future, this is a book to read that will have you understanding just how different films would be today, had this movie not been made.
October 8, 2013
It's that time of year--October, when I want to curl up with a bunch of scary movies and/or scary books (like The Little Stranger or We Have Always Lived in the Castle) or, maybe the best-case scenario: scary books about scary movies. So I'm plowing through the BFI Modern Classics series like there's no tomorrow. Which, when you're talking about The Terminator's Ouroboros-style time travel apocaspectacle, is kind of an open question.
I grew up watching two movies on repeat in a dark room on summer days: The Terminator and Aliens. I'm not a big James Cameron fan these days--I stopped watching his stuff around The Abyss, and skipped Titanic and Avatar completely. But I feel vindicated by French's argument that Cameron's early films were better than anything he's made since he became Hollywood royalty. They may not have had the budgets, but they had a vitality and energy and black humor that seems totally absent from his later stuff.
I didn't know this, but Cameraon came out of New World Pictures, Roger Corman's wonderful school of schlock, where he learned how to do everything related to making a low-budget movie that people would pay to see. But he didn't just know schlock. He also knew Metropolis and Un chien andalou, and French points out how those headier influences show up in movies like The Terminator alongside the AK-47s and the stop-motion monster endoskeletons. Somehow while I was watching Schwarzenegger dissect his cyborg eyeball, I never thought of Buñuel. But it's there, just as Fritz Lang is there when the Terminator goes through its fiery transformation to full robot form.
French also notes how casting Schwarzenegger changed the tone of the film from straight-up grim and gritty to something almost campy at times, overblown and blackly funny. Poor old Michael Biehn, who played the supposed hero of the movie, was immediately overshadowed by Schwarzenegger's implacable man-robot (who speaks only something like seventy words in the whole movie.) Schwarzenegger's career is sort of fascinating on its own terms, especially compared to other actors who might have followed similar arcs, like Rutger Hauer and Dolph Lundgren. His charisma is hard to pin down and has nothing to do with acting ability (he has little to none), but by the time the sequel rolled around, Robert Patrick's liquid-metal T2 was carefully deployed so as not to overshadow Schwarzenegger's older-model cyborg in turn.
French notes how carefully the sequel reflects the first movie--lines are repeated and reversed, scenes recur, situations are revisited. It's all in keeping with the time-travel plot line, which is far from original but which is executed with a low-budget vigor that propels us merrily forward. As Cameron himself has pointed out, nobody really expected Terminator to be any good. (Including him.) The fact that it was good--that it used its tiny budget so wisely and gave the viewer his or her money's worth in atmosphere, effects, guns, gore, and black humor--is one reason it makes it into the BFI series. And one reason I spent so many hours in front of our old VCR, re-watching it. At least, that's what I like to think.
I grew up watching two movies on repeat in a dark room on summer days: The Terminator and Aliens. I'm not a big James Cameron fan these days--I stopped watching his stuff around The Abyss, and skipped Titanic and Avatar completely. But I feel vindicated by French's argument that Cameron's early films were better than anything he's made since he became Hollywood royalty. They may not have had the budgets, but they had a vitality and energy and black humor that seems totally absent from his later stuff.
I didn't know this, but Cameraon came out of New World Pictures, Roger Corman's wonderful school of schlock, where he learned how to do everything related to making a low-budget movie that people would pay to see. But he didn't just know schlock. He also knew Metropolis and Un chien andalou, and French points out how those headier influences show up in movies like The Terminator alongside the AK-47s and the stop-motion monster endoskeletons. Somehow while I was watching Schwarzenegger dissect his cyborg eyeball, I never thought of Buñuel. But it's there, just as Fritz Lang is there when the Terminator goes through its fiery transformation to full robot form.
French also notes how casting Schwarzenegger changed the tone of the film from straight-up grim and gritty to something almost campy at times, overblown and blackly funny. Poor old Michael Biehn, who played the supposed hero of the movie, was immediately overshadowed by Schwarzenegger's implacable man-robot (who speaks only something like seventy words in the whole movie.) Schwarzenegger's career is sort of fascinating on its own terms, especially compared to other actors who might have followed similar arcs, like Rutger Hauer and Dolph Lundgren. His charisma is hard to pin down and has nothing to do with acting ability (he has little to none), but by the time the sequel rolled around, Robert Patrick's liquid-metal T2 was carefully deployed so as not to overshadow Schwarzenegger's older-model cyborg in turn.
French notes how carefully the sequel reflects the first movie--lines are repeated and reversed, scenes recur, situations are revisited. It's all in keeping with the time-travel plot line, which is far from original but which is executed with a low-budget vigor that propels us merrily forward. As Cameron himself has pointed out, nobody really expected Terminator to be any good. (Including him.) The fact that it was good--that it used its tiny budget so wisely and gave the viewer his or her money's worth in atmosphere, effects, guns, gore, and black humor--is one reason it makes it into the BFI series. And one reason I spent so many hours in front of our old VCR, re-watching it. At least, that's what I like to think.
January 23, 2022
I had expected more insight or insider information. It’s probably a fine book if you came in knowing nothing about The Terminator, but I knew a bit. I picked up a few tidbits. It’s short.
October 8, 2015
Ah the glory years of James Cameron. We explore just what made the original Terminator so great, including why you find yourself liking The Terminator more than the protagonists, how this role transformed Arnold's career in the luckiest of ways - Cameron being a fan of Blade Runner was interested in some foreigner like Rutger Hauer, and with few lines of dialogue his accent and inability to act actually helped - and skyrocketed both director and lead to the top of the late 80's and 90's in blockbuster entertainment.
July 30, 2016
An meta-intellectual examination of The Terminator that proves to be entertaining but also very astute.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews