The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984, U.S.) is a science fiction thriller of the 1980’s that takes place in Los Angeles. A man named Kyle Reese comes back from the year of 2027 to save the mother of a war hero of the future John Conner. By the year of 2027, the world is ran by robots that try to wipe out the entire human race. The robot or Terminator comes back to kill her and will stop at nothing. The robots of the future show no emotion, pain, and have super strength.
The 1980’s was great decade for science fiction films. Following the successes of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) and George Lucas Star Wars (1977) it paved the way for other directors to make big science fiction blockbusters. James Cameron also produced the science fiction film Aliens (1986) another action packed blockbuster such as Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). Both these films are similar to the Terminator because of the amount of violence and action. Alien is also considered in the genre of science fiction.
“The emergence of the blockbuster represents a response that was very much bound up with political, economic and technological changes that began to occur during the late 1970s and early 1980s” (1).
An example of this is the development of cable television and home video. This opened up two more sources of mass media that the film studios could use to advertise and expose their big blockbuster films to everyone. Other popular science fiction blockbusters of 1980s included E.T., (Steven Spielberg, 1982) Back to the Future, (Robert Zemeckis, 1985) and Robocop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987).
Science fiction is defined as “a branch of literature that deals with the human response to changes in the level of science and technology” (2). The Terminator is considered to be a science fiction film for a couple of reasons. Kyle Reese and the Terminator come back from the year 2027. Here they show what the world is like after humans trusted computers to solve all there problems after a nuclear war. The computers or robots eventually took over the human race and tried to exterminate them. Spaceships and lasers are shown to be the military equipment used by both the robots and humans. They created the earth to be a giant battleground and was in complete ruins. This picture depicts what the future appears to be.

Another way this film is science fiction is the idea of robots or machines that are superior then humans. They are able to repair themselves and have intelligence much greater from humans. An example of this would be when the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is repairing his wounded eye.

The Terminator could be considered or can relate to three different genres of science fiction. They include Machines/Humans, Technology/Society, and Time/Space Travel. It has all the qualities of these three genres incorporated in the film and I thought that was very interesting.
Even though I knew Terminator was released in 1984, there are many ways in which you could already tell before finding this out. One is the type of music that James Cameron chose to use in the film. If you are familiar with music, it’s quite obvious. Another way would be the hairstyles and clothing that the characters wear, especially the women.

The Terminator was one of the most action packed science fiction films of the 1980s and helped pave the path for others in the future. Since this 1984 blockbuster there have been two more Terminator films made and have a television series that is shown on FOX.