There have been few films in history that are as iconic as this one and two household names that everyone recognizes were brought to the forefront because of it. There are a lot of crazy things that happened in order for this piece of movie history to have happened at all, and I think I speak for most fans when I say that I am very happy that they came together in the end.
The year was 1984
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Prior to this movie Arnold Sshwarzenegger had been in a few global films, but still had not yet achieved the status that we would later know of him in the late 80's 90's and 2000's. Conan the Barbarian, which I consider to be one of the greatest fantasy films of all time had been released at this point, but due to an "R" rating and the fact that Conan had only 24 lines in the entire film made him an icon of admiration due to his physique, but his limited English skills still hadn't made him properly A-list yet.
James Cameron on the other hand, was doing even worse. It is rumored that before he managed to sell this script and story to studios in Hollywood because he agreed to sell it for $1. Other offers were considerably higher, but they wanted someone else to direct it. The reasoning behind this was because Cameron had no directing experience at this point and while he had worked creating sets and minatures, as well as working in special-effects, he had no clout in directing circles. He has stated that while he was writing the script, he was living out of his car.
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This lack of experience lead to reluctance by Orion Studios to dedicate the amount of money towards the production budget that Cameron requested and parts of the film he ended up funding with his own salary. Seriously... look at that film today with a new set of eyes and with the knowledge that they made the entire thing for just over $6 million.
Virtually everyone who was approached for being in the film didn't want anything to do with it. Arnold was only excited about the film because he was auditioning for the role of hero, Kyle Reese - but Cameron did not want him for the role and instead tried to get Schwarzenegger to play the role of The Terminator. Arnold eventually agreed to do the role but had very little in the way of enthusiasm towards it because he wanted to play the hero. He was concurrently filming Conan the Destroyer and when he was on the Conan set and someone saw his "Terminator Shoes" they asked what they were for to which Arnold replied: "Oh just some shit film I'm in, it'll take a couple weeks."
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This doesn't mean that Arnold didn't take the movie seriously though and he went through months of weapons training for the role including being able to disassemble and re-assemble weapons blindfolded and in a very robotic fashion. He also needed to be capable of firing with both arms and this, as someone who fires weapons for fun, is something that is very difficult to pull off convincingly, even with replica prop guns.
James Cameron's original script also had 2 terminators coming back to hunt down Sarah Connor and that two humans were also sent back in time, with one of them dying in transit. The first terminator was going to be Arnold, but the second was meant to be a liquid, shape-shifting Terminator the likes of which would later be played by Robert Patrick in T-2. Cameron quickly realized that the technology that existed in 1984 as well as the paltry budget he was given would make this impossible. Thankfully, he completely changed the script to eliminate the 2nd terminator and of course would later use the idea in T-2, which is also a fantastic film.
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Arnold almost wasn't cast in the role at all either. Both Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone were approached for the role but neither wanted it. O.J. Simpson was also a suggestion but it was determined that he was "too nice and didn't have a killer instinct" for playing The Terminator... that's a bit ironic now, isn't it?
The fact of the matter is that if a ton of mistakes and casting "disappointments" had not occurred this film and therefore the potential future potential of both Cameron and Schwarzenegger could have taken very different paths... hell, we might not have ever heard of either one of them.
Instead, we ended up with one of the most iconic science-fiction films of all time that haunted all who saw it for long after the credits rolled. When it came time to make a sequel in the early 90's, studios were a bit more eager to work with Cameron as well as let him have complete creative control. They also slightly increased the budget, offering 15 times the amount of money that was offered for this one.
Although I was too young at the time to be allowed to see it in theaters, a neighbor friend who had parents with considerably more liberal ideas about what kids can be subjected to on a screen had it in his Betamax (yes, Betamax) collection and I was absolutely entranced.
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Even after they were finished with the film, Orion had little faith that it was going to do well and only pushed for one press premiere out of fear that the press was going to hand out bad reviews. Quite the opposite happened, and it went on to be one of the highest grossing films of the year and was rated as one of the "10 best" by Time Magazine.
Excellent review and insight into how this epic movie came into being, yes strange things happen in life. Arnie was made into a household name worldwide after this movie was viewed only 36 years ago....
@tipu curate
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I remember that I actually saw the second one before I saw the first one. I was too young when the original came out as well and my parents were pretty strict about no R rated movies up until a certain point. It wasn't until years later when I was quite a bit older that I finally got around to watching this one. Great stuff. I have always been a fan of Michael Biehn, the casting was perfect for me!