The Terminator (1984)

This is the tale of a robot that inadvertently causes his problem when he goes to the past to prevent it. The Terminator is an evil robot that goes back in time to kill Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor, the hero of his time, before he is even born.  John sends Kyle to the past to find his mother and stop the robot from killing her.  Kyle succeeds, and becomes the reason John exists in the first place.  So if the Terminator would not have gone back in time, Kyle would not have reason to follow it, and never met Sarah. It is like one of those Greek myths where the king tries to prevent his destiny, and his very actions cause his destiny.

The main thing I don't understand is the whole "naked time travel" thing. For the human, Kyle, it sort of  makes sense because it only allows him to bring himself, not any objects or futuristic weapons. Unfortunately this also means that he can't wear any shoes or clothes. Ok, I can see where this would be a problem. Not that I have any problem with seeing a naked man; I just don't want him to catch a cold being outside at night.

But what about the Terminator? Why does he have to be naked? He is simply made of layers. A layer of wires/cables, layer of metal, layer of flesh-like material (skin). Wouldn't clothing simply be another layer for him? Or couldn't he have been molded with clothes on, like some children's toys are? It seems unreasonable for him to have to be naked or to look completely human. I mean, this isn't an Asimov novel. And why does he need to go obtain weapons, couldn't he have some awesome built-in guns or lasers?

And why couldn't the Terminator just run over Sarah Connor with the truck? He just slowly follows her around as she desperately runs away. Seriously, all he had to do was speed up slightly and she would have been flattened like a pancake.

This film is fun to watch and is also very low budget. James Cameron said in an interview that he was living in his car when he wrote this. Sometimes good movies don't need huge budgets. I'll give this movie a 7/10. And I'll be back tomorrow with a review of The Terminator 2.