Predator

In the late 80s, Predator would have been the perfect film everyone was asking for. This movie has a few big names such as Arnold Schwarzenegger playing ‘Dutch’ and Carl Weathers playing ‘Dillon’, but even with them, the movie still feels compact in a good way. In a Guatemalan jungle, Dutch, an experienced soldier and his militia including Dillon, a long time friend, tear through soviet guerrillas to retrieve secret soviet documents. The scene that shows the team gunning down a ton of people is easy to follow and more exciting than many other film’s action scenes are. As this scene takes place, it creates a scene of invulnerability for the team, even though, they are about to be almost entirely wiped out by the predator, which further reinforces the power that the predator wields. Among the scenes of the team making their way through their mission, there are a few shots of the predators perspective from above with a thermal view that make us wonder what it is that has that ability. It’s in fact, quite a while until we even see the predator at a full body shot, and even that is just for a split-second. When there finally is a shot with a good look at the predator, it looks terrifying, the design is great and gets better the more you look at it. The kills done by the predator are great, especially the one where he kills Dillon with the iconic dismembered arm still shooting shot. There are a few surprising moments that no one expected. Of course, It wouldn’t be a film starring Schwarzenegger without memorable lines, and this film is no exception, from “Get to the chopper!” to “If it bleeds, we can kill it.” This film is great.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day

There is a rare time in cinema when a sequel is (arguably) better than the original, this film is not an exception. This time the crew had a whole lot of money, and they weren’t going to waste it on just making the film more flashy, they put it into every vital part of a film and it certainly shows. The liquid metal terminator 1000 played by Robert Patrick is a big creative step up from just another robot attacking, though the CGI on the liquid metal part of the terminator is a bit worse than modern standards, it isn’t very distracting. This is one of the few films with a child actor (John Connor played by Edward Furlong) that the character doesn’t annoy me, and him teaching the terminator (played by the returning Arnold Schwarzenegger) how to fit into society has some hilarious scenes that shine a bit of light on an otherwise dark movie. This movie is probably more iconic than the original, and it has some very cool scenes, like the flipping of the shotgun to reload it while on a motorbike which they actually had to modify the shotgun for. The film does sometimes feel a little long, but never boring, mostly because the T-1000 just doesn’t die. Everything has an understandable meaning, like when the T-800 wasn’t supposed to kill anybody but Arnold wanted him to not make that a choice from the terminator and so they made that John Connor’s choice, why does the terminator obey Connor? It was sent by Connor from the future. Everything has a sensible explanation, except for why miles (Joe Morton) would agree to destroy his life’s work just because some people told him that he needed to or else the world would end. Otherwise this movie is brilliant.

The Terminator

There aren’t many movie franchises quite as quotable as The Terminator Franchise and it all started with this film. Possibly Arnold Schwarzenegger’s most iconic role, the terminator is a cybernetic organism sent from the future to kill Sarah Conor (Linda Hamilton) because unbeknownst to her, she will give birth to the man to lead humans to victory in the upcoming war against machines. James Cameron was not given a whole lot of money to make this film, in fact, he used to have to eat day old Big Macs from McDonald’s on the set, but that is obviously not him today as he has made the world’s most profitable movie, twice. Since this movie had such a low budget, a scene that shows the terminator fixing his eye is very fake looking, but at least it wasn’t a mess of CGI and they actually used a real model for the head.The movie is a nice 80s action, sci-fi hit, and because it’s from the 80s, the soundtrack is a little annoting, but it’s not too bad. There is a scene in which Sarah Conor and Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) are having sensual moment, kissing and what not, and it cuts almost directly to the terminator making his way over to kill them, which didn’t flow very well and took me out of the movie, but that’s pretty much the only part of the movie that bothered me really. Schwarzenegger was the perfect actor for this role, big, strong and intimidating, just as a terminator should be. He goes around shooting a bunch of people with shotguns and looks cool while doing it, and he originally wanted the part of Kyle Reese but decided being the bad guy in the film would be cooler, and it certainly was. This movie is fantastic.