If you’re excited to see Terminator: Dark Fate this week, chances are you’ve seen the first two films starring Sarah Connor. And chances are, when given a say, you prefer to watch T2: Judgement Day over its progenitor. Which is a shame, really. Because The Terminator is a rare film, particularly where its protagonist is concerned. Sure, it has its very cheesy moments, and isn’t quite as exciting as Terminator 2. But it’s special because it allows Sarah Connor something that male heroes are typically always given and female heroes are nearly always denied: An origin story.
Not in the “how did they become super/an action hero/reincarnated god” sense, though. What I’m talking about is that very first step when the hero is fresh and green and not too bright. When they’re haven’t been trained into competency via years of war and suffering, before they get the Chosen One rant, back when their lives are relatively normal and pretty boring. Sarah Connor gets that chance. And because she gets that chance, we actually get to watch her complete the journey as she morphs from Normal Person to Badassery Personified. That’s always more fun than meeting a character after they’ve already leveled up.
In most narratives, when a woman is allowed to be incredibly naive it’s because she’s serving as cannon fodder in a horror setup—the girl the audience yells at because she’s running down the hall toward a killer when she should know better. Her mistakes are frustrating, or they’re nearly laughable. But Sarah Connor isn’t laughable. She’s just some woman who has no reason to suspect that a killer robot from the future has arrived to murder her. She has a terrible job and a fun roommate and needs to pay electric bills, and then one day Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up and kills everyone she knows because he’s trying to track her down. And Sarah Connor freaks out because… that’s a totally reasonable response to being hunted by a super-bot.
A lot of first adventures or origin stories show us the hero’s transformation right before our eyes. Training programs and failed experiments and suiting up in armor or spandex, we watch as they struggle to get it right over and over. It can be fun—who doesn’t love a good montage?—but also results in most of these movies being awkwardly similar. Sarah Connor doesn’t get it together over the course of some jump cuts at the gym. She’s permitted space to be inexperienced and to feel human emotions about how impossible her situation seems. When she makes a mistake (like contacting her mother and accidentally letting the T-800 know exactly where she is) you feel for her because she doesn’t know the rules of this game. This entire premise is unfair, and film doesn’t pretend otherwise.
Sarah Connor’s origin feels real and grounded in a way that most (super)hero stories never manage. She doesn’t have wealth or fame. She doesn’t get dosed with super juice. She doesn’t find out that she’s an alien, or a princess, or a shapeshifting dragon. Sarah Connor rents a home in Los Angeles with her pal Ginger, has an inadvisable haircut, is trying to get through college, and sucks at waitressing. She can’t find a date who isn’t a creep. She stays at home when other people go out because her life is just kinda meh. Not horrible, not full of lessons made to inform her destiny, just… what happens when you’re a college kid who isn’t expecting much from life. As it goes, she’s easier to relate to than even Luke Skywalker’s humble beginnings—the kid may be a farmboy, but he takes to using the Force without much surprise or difficulty. Sarah Connor learns how to build a pipe bomb, and that’s about it.
One aspect of The Terminator that is genuinely ridiculous is the love story between Sarah and Kyle Reese, the guy sent back in time by the human Resistance of 2029 to keep her safe from Skynet and their AI operatives. Reese has an obsessive crush on Sarah due to a picture that John Connor—Sarah’s son, the leader of the Resistance—gave to him. They don’t know each other at all, but Sarah is forced to rely on Reese for the sake of her survival, and that leads to some flirting and eventually to sleeping together, which leads to Sarah realizing that Reese was meant to be John’s father. For all that the love story is underwhelming, it actually makes sense within the context of the film; Reese has never known a world that allowed time for dating or relationships, so he’s not great at them. Sarah is in fear for her life, and is desperate to cling to anyone who can be deemed trustworthy. The narrative is completely aware that the romance is a means to an end, and treats it that way.
But it’s in her exchanges with Reese that Sarah is allowed to be honest about how unprepared she feels for the sudden responsibility of being a world savior. We get moments of vulnerability from her that aren’t bound up in big picture thinking. When she tells Reese that she’s pretty sure he has the wrong person, she cites the fact that she can’t balance a checkbook, that she’s not tough or organized. And when he compliments her field-dressing of his wound, she summons a sad smile and replies “You like it? It’s my first.” She’s accepting that this will be the first of many first-aid emergencies in her future, but she’s not happy with it. Sarah’s not guileless, but her tendency to focus on smaller things that are right in front of her lets the audience know what she’s grappling with. Making decisions that effect the future of humankind isn’t something that she’s capable of reckoning with yet.
But the film has to end on one essential thought. Sarah Connor has to take up that mantle, and she has to commit to it with ever fiber of her being. She has to let go of every glimmer of a normal life and work toward this goal of training and parenting the kid who might stop the monsters. So Reese doesn’t last long, and then it’s just Sarah Connor, in a Cyberdyne factory, forced to outrun her worst nightmare all alone. She doesn’t have anyone left—not family, not friends, not Reese—and if she loses out now, her entire species is probably toast.
The end of The Terminator is maybe more entrancing than any other finale in the franchise for that reason. It has more in common with a horror film than a sci-fi action flick. Sarah Connor, the final girl who has to make it through for so much more than the sake of her own life, crawling away from two glaring red eyes. Her leg is broken, she’s barely fast enough, but she pulls it all together to crush the T-800 into scrap parts. You can see the moment where the unflinching hero of Judgement Day is born, and it’s right when she says “You’re terminated, fucker.” It only took a span of days to rip her normal, unremarkable life apart, but we get the chance to take the entire journey with her, to sit in her emotions and think about how it would feel. It’s just as fast as most “Chosen One” narratives tend to be, but it doesn’t feel rushed because we are with her for every terrifying second of that ride.
There are a few more heroes who get this treatment, but they are rarely women. Black Widow has a few muddled flashbacks in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Captain Marvel gets flickers of her past in formative moments. Wonder Woman gives us a brief introduction to Diana’s home and the women who raised her. Rey doesn’t get much time to wrestle with her budding Jedi abilities before heading off for training. We get brief hints of where these women came from, of how it feels to take everything onto their shoulders. But Sarah Connor gets to muddle through it. She gets to wear weird tie-dyed t-shirts and shiver when she’s cold and decide whether or not she can accept the idea of time travel and unborn sons and machines that will always find her no matter where she hides. She gets to present herself as wholly unqualified, and she gets to screw it up, and she still makes it out the other side to fight another day.
We need more heroes who start from Square One. More stories about women like Sarah Connor. Without The Terminator, T2 has no resonance. It’s just a story about a very cool, very capable woman who comes out of nowhere. The fact that we can see how she arrived at that point ten years later (and beyond) is why she matters.
Emmet Asher-Perrin loves Sarah’s ridiculous haircut. You can bug him on Twitter, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
I actually rewatched both Terminator and Terminator 2 last year as part of a run of classic sci-fi movies.
Somewhat to my surprise, I came away feeling that the original is actually the better movie of the two, contrary to my feelings when I was younger. It has a feeling of coherence that I think the sequel lacks — in Terminator, the whole movie is about the terminator hunting for Sarah, and her flight from it.
Terminator 2 on the other hand, feels more disjointed, because the individual arcs (the T-800 finds John, they go to rescue Sarah, they go to assassinate Dyson, they go to get the chip from Cyberdyne) feel more divided. This isn’t helped by the fact that they cut back and forth between different viewpoints more often than in the first movie.
Don’t get me wrong, T2 is great, but I don’t think it’s as good as the original.
Agree, Terminator is the stronger movie. Reading this article crystalised some of the reasons why, for me. I really enjoy seeing Sarah’s journey towards who she will become. Thanks for writing this article, Emily – gave me chills and made me want to see it again right now!!
I liked pondering the fact that women don’t often get the messy origin stories that men get. Haven’t thought about that before – and I know part of the reason why I like origin stories is because it does show heroes in their raw and unformed state. Before they become all awesome, we get to see them in all their weakness and innocence. It’s why Spiderman is great and why I love Star Wars and even why Fellowship of the Ring is probably my favourite of the LotR trilogy (amongst other reasons). It’s helpful and inspiring to see a hero begin as someone like us. And we need to see this not just with men’s stories.
Appreciate you, Emily, as always. =)
I have never been a fan of Terminator 2, even when I saw it opening weekend. Terminator is very much a product of the Cold War, and T2 is very much a product of the fall of the Soviet Union. There were a lot of post-Soviet Union movies in the late 80s, early 90s and they came across as more satire of the Cold War era films than serious commentary. T2 has that same problem.
I really need to watch T1 again, I haven’t seen it since, 1989 or something like that. I saw T2 ages ago too, but for some reason, it’s fresher in my memory.
Another one here who prefers the first film. It’s taut, funny and tense and I loved the idea of weak and determined humans up against unstoppable machines. Never took to the ‘good’ terminator and didn’t watch any of the other films.
Yes, I like the first two movies quite a lot, but the first is a lean and mean thriller I enjoy slightly more than the big blockbuster action of the sequel. It’s too bad the sequels that followed them have gone after the big money and focused mostly on recapturing that epic T2 magic. You really want to make Terminator great again? Strip it down to the bare bones (the endoskeleton?) that makes the original so great.
T2 was good, but yeah, I love T1 the most. I don’t hate the following movies, but they are all weaker. I really liked how lost and unmoored John was at the beginning of the 3rd, as the life he prepared for is in a future that no longer exists. And I liked how screwed up the timelines became in Genisys due to how much they’ve fucked around with time (tip for screenwriters: don’t choose an actor who just finished a show about time travel to be in your movie about time travel as a twist…).
I just rewatched T1 and it really is a straight-up horror movie with a science fiction skin, as opposed to T2’s leaning heavily into action movie territory. I love them both, but I’m hard-pressed to choose, for one thing because I don’t think T2 would without having T1 lay the groundwork for Sarah Conner, in the same way that I don’t think Aliens would’ve worked as well had we not already seen Ripley survive the events of Alien.
To me it’s no contest. I loved T2 when I was younger as time went on I’ve rather gone of it in favour of the original. Maybe it’s time I gave it another go but I much prefer the cold machines of Terminator over the more human seeming Terminators of the sequel.
Everyone commenting on preferring the original movie vs T-2 seems to be dancing around one of the key differences between them.
In T-2, it’s two machines from the future fighting each other. Sarah’s there, almost a machine herself for most of the movie until her facade finally breaks when she spares Dyson. It can be fun watching machines, or kaiju, or monsters, fight each other, but it’s harder for us to idenitfy with them.
In the original, an ordinary human, one of us, is fighting the machine. We are increasingly living in a world where it seems like the “little guy”, someone with no power, can’t really affect anything. Seeing Sarah Connor encounter that kind of power and, as Emily wrote, “level up” to face it, gives us an entry into the movie. I think, over time, “The Terminator” will remain a touchstone (clunky 80s artifact that it is) while T-2 and all of its sequels will dissolve into a sameness as “the movies that came after the first one.”
@8 hoopmanjh
You’re right, of course. The original Terminator movie, like the original Alien movie, were horror movies. Their sequels, all of them, were action movies. It’s a different form, serving a different function.
Sometimes, I think, maybe the shift in taste from T-2 to the original is simply a product of our current times? Maybe we need horror stories more than action these days?
Then I look at the MCU and think, nah, I’m just getting old.
I don’t think T2 will fade into a mass with the other sequels, it’s still a great action movie.
My teen self votes for T1 and Linda Hamilton. And my old VCR…
I will forever be more attached to the first Terminator movie for many reasons, but I hadn’t really articulated before how Sarah is one of those reasons
@11 — Alien 3 at least tried to lean back into horror, to greater or lesser effect, but yes, every Terminator movie from T2 onwards has been straight action. And that’s also a good point that every Terminator movie from T2 onward has been machine vs. machine, with humans directing one side and/or kibitzing.
T1 was much better in my opinion. It was basically a love story with time travel and a mind bending sci-fi premise. But while we are at it do not forget Ellen Ripley
The Youtube Original show Impulse is doing a set up like the original T1. Young girl, bad situation, some crazy stuff is about to happen to her (but with a super power,) lots of gut wrenching emotional struggle. It’s very real and raw. Not exactly a Sci-fi Horror but a far more realistic origin story for a hero in a sci-fi setting. Marvel and DC could take some lessons from it.
Speaking of Ellen Ripley, there’s a few odd connections between her and Sarah Connor: They’re both tough mothers, both up against impossible odds, both in James Cameron movies, and both must drag an injured Michael Biehn character in the third act!
I really like the ending of T3. The couple is holed up in the derelict nuclear bunker with the eagle on the wall and the old computers rotating their dusty tapes and the bombs come down. Still after everything that went down three movies ago, the bombs come down and the human race is wiped out despite everything.
I find it quite melancholic.
“has an inadvisable haircut”
The 80’s in a nutshell… Also, shoulder pads
I also agree that T1 is the better movie. And even though it was a downer, the ending was better. It really captured the sense of foreboding, of knowing that the end of the world was coming.
Gas Station Attendant: He said there’s a storm coming in.
Sarah Connor: I know.
The Terminator and T2 are such different movies, that I’d be hard-pressed to choose a favourite or say which is the better movie.
As others have already pointed out, the first is a horror movie with a sci-fi bent, while the second is an action blockbuster.
That said, if you’re proceeding on to T2 after The Terminator, you owe it to yourself to try (really, really) hard to pretend that you don’t know Arnold’s the good guy. The first 1/3rd of the movie works very hard to reproduce T1’s horror tone (ie arrival of a violent T800 and an apparent human, both closing in on a Connor), then very purposefully kicks that away and instead blows everything wide open.
It’s incredibly well done, but hard to see, because the twist was so deeply spoiled even before theatrical release.
@22, and we see Sarah’s reaction in slow motion in both before we see the Terminator standing before her. In the first, she’s got the deer in a headlight blank stare as she slowly looks up to see the gun in her face, but in the second we see what is obviously a hard bad-ass character that Has Seen Some Shit collapse utterly terrified of the thing she most fears in the world striding towards her. Great bits of acting on Linda’s part. I saw the new one on Sunday, and she’s got another great reaction (not a spoiler, since part of the scene was in a trailer). Spoiler here, however: there’s two scenes, one with a much younger Linda, Arnold, and Edward, where it is his reaction we see first and she immediately starts shooting without hesitation. I liked the new one quite a bit, it’s more of a return to what made the first two great.
My biggest regret as regards T2 is that when I saw it (in its original theatrical run), I had already had large parts of it spoiled by reviews and/or previews — not just the thing where Arnold is on our side this time, but a lot of the T1000’s specific tricks (like impersonating a tiled floor).