The Terminator hunts down box office gold on October 26, 1984


Today, we cast our collective, slightly bewildered gaze back to the rather unassuming date of October 26, 1984. A day that, like many Fridays, likely began with a quiet sense of impending weekend and ended with...well, something entirely different for those who ventured into a darkened cinema. 

Picture, if you will, the Earth in 1984—a planet blissfully unaware that legwarmers were not the pinnacle of fashion and that shoulder pads were staging a hostile takeover of wardrobes everywhere. Into this sartorially confused world strode a film directed by one James Cameron, a man who, if not actually in possession of a time machine, certainly behaved as though he’d borrowed one from a careless acquaintance. The Terminator was not merely a movie; it was a narrative juggernaut, a cybernetic fairy tale wrapped in a leather jacket and armed with a shotgun that didn’t so much fire shells as it did existential dread.

Now, films had, for some time, featured what are known as "robots." These were, as a rule, either clunky, benevolent machines designed for space-age housework or, alternatively, they were simply human beings in ill-fitting costumes that seemed to be experiencing some kind of severe digestive distress. They were harmless.

The Terminator, however, was a different proposition entirely. It was a cyborg, which is to say, a very cross machine wrapped in a quite convincing, if somewhat muscly, layer of human flesh. It had been sent back in time to kill a woman named Sarah Connor, not for any particular reason that was her fault, but because her unborn son was going to, in a few decades, be a tremendous nuisance to a highly advanced and murderous computer system called Skynet.

What made this particular cybernetic assassin so troubling was its relentless nature. It was, and this cannot be stressed enough, utterly unstoppable. It was less a villain and more an impending weather system of destruction. It moved with the same implacable logic as a tax form, yet with infinitely more lethal intent.

This, you see, was a rather novel concept for the human race. Humanity had spent millennia being hunted by things that, with enough luck and a bit of a run, would eventually get fatigued or bored and find a nice nap somewhere. This machine, however, had no concept of a nap. Its programming was simple: find Sarah Connor, terminate Sarah Connor, and then, presumably, have a very quiet, metallic think about the efficiency of its approach.

The film, on the whole, was a tremendous success, primarily because it tapped into a subconscious, and until then unexpressed, human fear: the fear that the quiet efficiency of machines might one day be turned against us. A fear that, quite frankly, remains a completely and utterly reasonable one.

So, next time you hear a strange whirring sound or encounter someone who seems remarkably unconcerned by the concept of "pain," spare a thought for that fateful Friday in 1984. It was the day we learned that sometimes, the future isn't just coming; it's coming for you, and it brought a shotgun.

Good day. Or rather, good until the day the machines rise. Just a thought.

Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

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