For this assignment, I decided to watch The Terminator. At the beginning of the film, the information the audience gets is parceled out. However, it’s not shared through much dialog. I think that a lot of the key information was expressed through the action. For example, the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character hardly spoke throughout the entire film. Even so, the audience immediately new his role. He was looking for Sarah Conner, and they learned that when he searched through the phone book for her name.
We knew why he wanted her, when he started killing every Sarah Conner he found. Without anything being said, we knew his role was to terminate her. As the film went on, we discovered what the other man was doing there. He had arrived in the same way as the Terminator, and had even found Sarah in the same way, through the phonebook. A first assumption would be that he is the same, looking to kill her. We find out that he is there to save her. He parcels out information to her bit by bit as needed while defending her and helping her escape from the Terminator.
She learns why she is in such mortal danger. She is the mother to the future man who will help stop these machines from destroying humanity. There is never a point in the movie where one character talks on and on, and the audience is bored. This film is jam packed with action, along with the information you’d need to keep your interest. Each character tells exactly what is on their minds, and what is needed to be said. There’s no time for any of them to be indirect, they get right to the point.
Sarah Conner is seen as the victim at the start. She is being chased by a machine, whose sole thought and mission is her destruction. We see her cling onto her protector, Kyle Reese hoping that he will somehow stop this monster, and save her life. She tells him that she is no legend from the future. That there is no way she could be the mother of such a man, or teach him all of these things he would need to save humanity. She has no confidence in herself. However, throughout the movie we see her begin to change.
There’s a scene where the Terminator is about to crush Reese towards the end of the film. She pulls him out of the way, and saves him, as he’s been saving her. They escape, barely, and run. The Terminator catches up to them, and Reese yet again, needs Sarah’s help. She shows passion, and courage when she screams for him to get up, and helps him do so. Reese ends up partially destroying the machine, and ends up getting killed himself. Thinking that it’s over, the injured Sarah goes to check on Reese.
She discovers that he’s dead, and just then the machine reaches out to try one last time to destroy her. She fights back and scrambles to get away. She leads it into a trap, and then uses another machine to crush the Terminator. The words she says with strength in her voice are “ You’re terminated, fucker. ” The expression on her face, and the words she spoke, shows the audience that Sarah has changed. She’s moved from the victim, to being her own hero, and keeping her own existence intact so that she can give birth to the man, who will save the world.
