Cinema nostalgia: “Terminator” celebrates its… 40th anniversary (yes, yes)!

At a time when conversations about artificial intelligence dominate the debates, James Cameron is getting involved… just in time for the 40th anniversary of his Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton.

“I warned you in 1984, but you didn’t listen to me,” James Cameron joked during an interview with CTV News. But for the Canadian filmmaker, “it is artificial intelligence used as a weapon that is dangerous.”

In Terminator (available via Prime Video, Crave and Apple TV), the computer Skynet has taken over in 2029 and is trying to wipe out the human race. In order to quell the resistance once and for all, Skynet sends a cyborg into the past, the famous Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) whose mission is to liquidate Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), mother of the future John Connor, leader of the human resistance. But they send Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) to defend the young woman.

Some fun facts…

In 1984, computers were just beginning to be used by individuals and the technology was scary. James Cameron is therefore riding this wave by imagining the worst: a clear desire for machines to get rid of human beings (we will find this fear explored by the Wachowskis in At the matrix in 1999).

With a budget of US$6.4 million, the Canadian (who imagined the basis of the scenario after falling ill in Rome) first thought of hiring Sylvester Stallone or Mel Gibson as the Terminator. Finally, he is convinced by the physique of the Austrian bodybuilder with a strong foreign accent who struggles to say his 17 lines (or less than 100 words) of dialogue! The iconic phrase “I’ll be back” caused him so many pronunciation problems that he asked the filmmaker and co-writer to change it to “I will be back”… which Cameron categorically refused.

To give the impression that his movements are those of a machine, Arnold Schwarzenegger trains in the use of firearms daily for a month. And during the first two weeks of filming, he practiced disassembling and reassembling weapons blindfolded until his movements were automatic.

The makeup, notably that of Arnold Schwarzenegger, is the work of Stan Winston. The specialist, who will then work on the first three “Jurassic Park”, has a puppet Terminator made (which will require six months of work for a team of seven people) and creates casts of the actor’s face before chroming them . The cyborg’s endoskeleton was created by the company Fantasy II, which will film certain scenes using step-by-step animation (stop motion).

Success…

Released on October 26, 1984 and presented in 1005 North American cinemas, Terminator remained at the top of the box office for two consecutive weeks (much to the surprise of studio bosses) and raked in a total of US$78.3 million. The following year, the feature film was released in VHS and Betamax format and reached 4th place in rentals in video clubs.

Today, the franchise Terminatorconsisting of six feature films, a television series, a web series, an animated series, a card game, a role-playing game as well as a multitude of video games and amusement park rides has generated billions of dollars of income.