The Terminator

The sci-fi genius of James Cameron is a classic genre now. The battle for the future that is being fought today with Arnold Schwarzenegger in his best role. Each frame of film is soaked in a wonderful atmosphere and the tension could be cut by a knife. Iconic moments await on every corner and Cameron’s sense for detail is also incredible (the little joke about cigarettes, the close up of the careering truck). The screenplay is faultless and believable in the sense that it doesn’t contain anything too unreal. The special effects are excellent for the time and everybody’s acting, headed by Arnold, is immaculate. Just add the best theme music of all time and we get a unique movie experience. (19/11/2006)

Suffocating and adrenaline-fueled sci-fi that time's tooth can't seem to gnaw away. Arnold probably will never inspire as much respect and fear again. Moreover, without this series, temporal paradoxes and the entire science fiction genre would be completely different today. Ideas like the one about a robot that has to change the past in order to alter the future occasionally come up, but fitting them into the right screenplay is already a form of cinematic art. (02/04/2006)

After all these years, I prepared my raised eyebrows as a precaution, only to completely forget about them. Only Brad Fiedel's synth soundtrack has become brutally obsolete, but otherwise Cameron's cyborg is still doing great. While the effects tend to make you laugh, Cameron's unique sense of tension and impressive characters look like a metal skeleton over a pile of human skulls. Perfect camera work, great editing and very good actors led by Arnie, who acts like an unruly Nazi on a trip. The script doesn't try any big tricks, yet the story of saving the future is extremely impressive, and the insights into the apocalyptic age still have urgency and a pretty decadent mood after all the years. I can't find anything to criticize. The Terminator embodies the poetics of the 1980s in every way, and to this day it should serve as an insurmountable textbook of dramatic action spectacle for hit-makers. A clear gold fund, a film top class without compromise. (07/04/2005)

More than a legend. With Terminator, Cameron opened his iconic window of visual treats, which he has been successfully expanding and even improving ever since. The amazing storyline, set to the rhythm of depressingly pulsating music and properly lethal action scenes, doesn't give any room at all for all the general shortcomings such as verbosity or monotony, instead presenting a pure exhibition of zany effects, cool catchphrases and fun car chases that never ceases to entertain and at the same time doesn't allow us not to take it seriously. Arnold is iconic, Michael Biehn is likeable, and Cameron is a film terminator himself.... It's a pity that Lance Henriksen was underused, but the director paid him back in Aliens. 95% (19/04/2011)

After his debut in Piranha 2, where he was more of a puppet in the hands of an Italian producer, John Cameron found himself in Terminator and despite the low budget delivered a technically proficient action flick that is a perfect image of 1980s tastes, with the hard-bodies cult of the period, typical synthesizer sound and violence that is you no longer see in today's impotent times. (18/09/2015)