The Terminator as Chick Flick
James Cameron’s Sci-Fi Classic Doubles as Coming-of-Age Tale
Robots and time travel set the scene for a tender love story set against a backdrop of impending nuclear annihilation.
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Zoom in on: Mousy single working woman, living her life, just getting by. With good friends, an iguana, and a rotten love life, she’s a pushover in a lousy job. She’s a very regular girl, not someone who really stands out. She doesn’t even have a car, she drives a Vespa for God’s sake. Nothing particularly exciting has ever happened to her, until one day...
“Come with me if you want to live.”
It’s eerie at first, titillating even – two women murdered in cold blood, two women with nothing in common, except their name – her name, Sarah Connor. Kinda freaky, enough to make you a little jumpy maybe, but not much else – until suddenly bullets fly, glass shatters, and a tall, blond, gorgeous stranger saves your life, steals a car, and you’re on the run from a conscienceless killing machine whose sole purpose is making you dead.
Everybody you love and most of the cops in L.A. have been murdered, and you’re forced to rely on this gorgeous stranger, with whom you must learn how to make bombs, share close quarters and who, by the way, worships the ground you walk on and gave up everything to travel through time to meet you (granted, "everything" was a war-ravaged, post-apocalyptic nightmare, but still, it was home).
Zero to Hero
Fate, or maybe the lack thereof, brings Sarah the love of her life and certainly the best sex she’s ever had. Her life is transformed from ordinary to extraordinary in a few shotgun blasts, and it never changes back; it has become an adventure.
The fate of modern civilization lies in her hands – or more specifically, her womb – and though tragedies larger in scope lie ahead, her own personal loss of love is the tragedy we share with her. While there is great satisfaction in her physical transformation in the sequel, by Chick Flick standards the greatest satisfaction is in this romantic, adventurous premise and its development.
“I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you.”
The Terminator bears the mark of most great stories and very few action films: a simple story in which the characters take us on their journey of self-discovery. It’s about Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese falling in love under dire circumstances. He doesn’t reveal his feelings until late in the story, when he is firmly established as an intense, semi-maniacal, duty-bound soldier, so it’s a surprise to see a vulnerable side of him, to discover that tough guys need love, too.
The Tough Chick Within
The Terminator also bears the mark of most great Chick Flicks: a garden variety girl-next-door type is whisked away from her hum-drum life into a world of excitement, intrigue, and danger. Most importantly, romance ensues.
We are Sarah Connor in this movie. We identify with her because we’re witnessing the birth of her inner tough chick, the one we all know is lying dormant within us. Can we do chin-ups on our overturned bed frame? Probably not, but we can run like a girl any day of the week, whether or not there’s a skeletal robot chasing us down.
