Introduction
The Terminator is one of the tensest, sci-fi films ever created and an attraction in the genre. In the year 2029, fights rage between the super intellectual machines that reign the world and the last traces of humanity. In late-20th-century Los Angeles, Sarah Connor suddenly finds herself followed by an unstoppable killer ‑ a Terminator sent from the future to kill her and her un-conceived son, John Connor, the future head of the human resistance.
“The Terminator” is an imaginary character depicted by Arnold Schwarzenegger — a cyborg, originally imaged as a programmable killer and military penetration unit. “The Terminator” protagonist first appeared in the 1984 film of the same name, directed and co-written by James Cameron, and its follow-ups. The first movie in the sequence features only one cyborg: the one depicted by Schwarzenegger, although a second Terminator is pictured in a future flashback scene and is played by Franco Columbus. In both follow-ups, Schwarzenegger’s Terminator is ditched against other Terminators.
In the sequels, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Schwarzenegger reprises the role, but with a twirl: Schwarzenegger is the hero but not the criminal, playing a dissimilar but visually indistinguishable cyborg in each of the movies of Terminator. Within the Terminator world made by Cameron, Terminators of the same “replica” share identical features. In the manufacture of the films, this has permitted multiple Terminators to be played by Schwarzenegger. In the background of the stories, this plot apparatus offers a certain permanence for the human temperaments, by utilizing their emotional knowledge with particular features.
At various times, the character is given more precise descriptions such as model and series numbers, in attempts to define Schwarzenegger’s role from other Terminators. Nevertheless, this is done with some discrepancies. No ultimate canonical clarification is present in any of the films which elucidate exactly the various numbers assigned to the character symbolization.
Coding
The character is coded by the means of the surrounding people, occasions, and adventures. Terminator is claimed to defend a boy, who will become the savior of all humanity is not so far future.
From the beginning of the movie Terminator embodies the very rudeness of the machine, and the rudeness of mechanics in general: he can not be stopped, he moves to his aim, he forces his way through. He needs to start the car – he tears away the panel to get to the wires. To get into the building he breaks in. He is soulless and mechanical.
But John Connor regards him not as a machine (as Terminator is not a machine in its general meaning), but as the alive creature. He makes Terminator “swear” that he will not kill people, teaches him to behave more humanly in teenager’s viewpoint – use slang instead of machine commands like “canceled”, “aborted” and so on. Terminator, as a machine able to study, undergoes informational hunger and asks John why people cry. John explains as he can, and by the end of the movie, when Terminator needs to self-eliminate, which is the task of a high priority, cyborg tells that he has realized why people cry, but will never be able to cry himself.
It is known, that Terminator feels damages, and considers that it is like pain, he can not self-eliminate, but he is able to hold back the program of self-preservation.
Almost all of his deeds may be explained by the set algorithm of action, but in spite of that Terminator is imagined as an animate creature by the audience, a creature that is able to act and think freely.
In one of the scenes, where Terminator moves towards the shooting policemen, who did not swear not to kill the opponents, the contraposition of man and cyborg is given totally vice versa. A man is not able to kill the robot, but nothing prevents him from attempting to do that, but a robot is able to kill a man easily, but the program prevents him from doing it. Terminator is presented here as more moral than people themselves.
Other characters
The other characters, who surround Terminator add to his protagonist image, and shape the plotline of the movie:
Sarah Connor: Long gone is the timorous, frail waitress aiming to come to grasps with her role in the prospect. Instead, Sarah has turned to be a battle skilled fighter. While imprisoned in a mental institution she has been divested of access to her son. Eventually, she is freed and travels with her son John, and his guardian a terminator sent from the future to defend him. Sarah has a weapons cache, gets in touch with military guerillas, and lives to teach her son for his potential role as a manager.
John Connor is a 10-year-old boy who has been getting into a problem with the law for lots of years. His real mother Sarah is in a mental institute, and his stepparents can not seem to remain him in line at all. John in the prospect will be the head of a great human confrontation against mechanism rule. John is aimed for annihilation by a robot sent from the future. Another robot John himself sent from the future to defend a younger description of himself in the past. John is good with processors, hacking, and is comparatively knowledgeable of the technologies and methods he may need in the prospect as a great armed manager.
T-1000 is an almost inexorable Terminator example. Its assignment is to murder young John Connor who in the outlook will lead humankind to victory against the robots. The T-1000 is an extended prototype created of liquid metal. It can imitate anything it examples entailing people and objects. The T-1000 takes the shape of Sarah Connor, John’s Stepmother, and some other characters in an effort to find John. The T-1000’s only real weakness is rapid temperature changes as the T-1000 can repair and return to a defaulting state when injured. The T-1000 is slowed down with liquid nitrogen which freezes him, but ultimately molten steel is used to melt the T-1000 and make it fade away.
Angles and lighting
Camera angles and lighting used in picturing the image of Terminator only highlight his power and high invulnerability. The lighting emphasizes his willful face and powerful silhouette. Zooming is never used to shape his image, as he is too giant for an average human, so it is not necessary to highlight his size. Actually, the lighting and angles do not differ from the ones used for the other characters, except the appearance of T-1000 in the beginning, when the camera slowly approaches him after chronoportation.
Costuming
Costuming is not significant for the characters, but it was necessary to point out the coolness of the Terminator’s image: powerful and slightly frozen guy. That is why the image of a biker in a leather coat and high jackboot is the most suitable.
Genre
That Judgment Day — prefigured in a dream sequence that contains the most terrifying, hallucinatory nuclear- Armageddon imagery ever filmed, outside of documentary footage — is what Sarah acts decisively to avoid. Instead of impotently accepting the fate of the Earth, she chooses to rewrite history as she goes along — and in doing so faces her own ethical dilemma, her own day of judgment.
Along the plot sequence, there’s a scooter, motorbike, and semi-truck chase by the means of some labyrinthine LA river channels that join the positions of the great ones in Bullit. But what’s going to waft most people absent about Terminator 2 will not be its pursue sequences or its bright time-travel plot or its peacekeeper message, but it’s a scoundrel.
The shape-modifying liquid-metal T-1000 is not quite like something else that has ever been understood on-screen ‑ probably because the computer and film equipment to make him hasn’t survived until now. This guy is really state-of-the-art in the particular consequences subdivision. The T-1000 is a chameleon murdering machine that looks like a human most of the time but can also presume the form and thickness of solid things. Bullets may blow holes right through him, but he closes up again in seconds.
Genre deliberations sideways, Terminator 2 is merely the most visually dynamic and inventive American movie to come out.
References
The movie itself does not contain references to other texts or films. But lots of sci-fi novels emphasize the theme of Humanity vs. Machine struggle.
So, in “The Last Action Hero” there is a parody on the poster. Sylvester Stallone is sitting on a bike with a rifle instead of Arnold. Moreover, in some episodes, it is possible to see Robert Patrick in the image of T-1000.
Robert Patrick also appears in “Wayne’s World” movie. He shows a childish photo and asks “Have you seen this boy?”
The basis for both “Terminators” may be regarded as “space odyssey 2001” by Stanley Kubrick, where the impotence of a human against the artificial mind is shown.
Lots of images are taken from Bible: for instance the scenes of Apocalypses or the scene of a nuclear attack. T-1000 is like a devil, who incarnates in various human images, and finally crashed down to the Fire Lake.
Conclusion
The movie represents the imagination of military machinery as the evil itself, which is able to eliminate humanity. Scenes, where cyborgs and automatic tanks crush heaps of burnt human skulls are rather impressive. Another episode shows Judgment day – another prophetical vision by Sarah Connor. The nuclear bomb explodes, the air heats and people blacken because of the heat. When moaning falls silent the shock wave tears out the trees, destroy buildings, and blows away the ash.