The Terminator Film Analysis

When I think of the 1980s, I think of a decade that produced exceptional music, entertaining television, and some great films that are still praised and relevant in today’s hard-to-impress society. About 35 years ago, films with short cinematic plots and cutting-edge cinematic effects started to gain popularity in the film industry, because they were easily marketable to a broad audience. Many popular films of the ‘80s were also violent, leading to concerns over which films were appropriate for certain age demographics, which I will be exploring later. Until the 1980s, action films were not a dominant genre. In the ‘70s, action movies typically focused on individualist police officers. It was the 1984 film The Terminator that helped to popularize the action film genre, setting the tone for all action films that followed it. Released in the same year as The Terminator, the film Gremlins helped ignite the trend of the Horror/Comedy genre. I will be analyzing the image text of …show more content…
Cameron turned this idea into a screenplay, eventually selling it to producer Gale Ann Hurd for only $1, with the agreement that Cameron would direct the movie (Breihan). Ever since its release, The Terminator has been a crucial part of pop culture and has helped set the tone for Action/Sci-Fi movies that came after. The Terminator didn’t just make a mark on the Action genre, though. It is just as notable in making a mark on Sci-Fi, as it reflects an important time in American culture. Science fiction has consistently articulated America’s response to media and technology, showing the dark sides of technology (Campbell 292). With the personal computer beginning to become popular around the same time that The Terminator was released, it only made sense that with technology on the rise, we were considering the potential dangers of integrating it so closely in our