Interesting facts about the film "Terminator" that you may not have known
On January 11, 1985, The Terminator premiered. Over the third century that has passed since the release of the first science fiction action film in the series, the history of its creation, interesting moments from filming and incidents from the set have been discussed countless times. However, there are always facts that have hardly been mentioned. Let's remember some of them.
If you believe the author of the idea of "Terminator" James Cameron, then the idea for the film came to him in a dream. During the filming of the sequel to Piranha, he became very ill and had a fever. In a dream, under the influence of high temperature, Cameron saw a steel robot with a knife in his hand, emerging from the fire.
Jumping out of bed, the director immediately sketched his nightmare. After returning to the USA, he firmly decided that the dream would become the basis of a new big project. He did not yet know how to realize his plan, since before that nothing like this had existed in the world.
The plot could have been expanded in the future, but for the unknown Cameron, who was miserably kicked out of the filming of Piranha, even the very idea of finding funding for such a project was absurd. But he came up with time travel, which allowed the film to be moved to the present day, which greatly simplified the task.
After this, the plot of the film was born. Cameron's first wife worked as a waitress and many believe that it was she who became the prototype for Sarah Connor. When working on the plot, the author was inspired by the works of his favorite science fiction writers Philip K. Dick, Larry Niven and Harlan Ellison.
It is also worth remembering that Ellison later sued the creators of "Terminator", claiming that the plot was stolen from him. In this matter, the writer achieved some success - he was paid a certain amount of money and was given a mention in the credits of the film: “Recognition to Harlan Ellison for his work.”
Many have heard that one of the main contenders for the role of a robot killer from the future was the controversial actor and athlete O. J. Simpson. But few people know that before Schwarzenegger appeared, Lance Henriksen was also seriously considered. You can also find information that Mel Gibson and Jürgen Prochnow were among the contenders, but this is not certain.
Initially, Cameron did not intend to make the Terminator a prominent figure. According to his plan, the robot was supposed to be an inconspicuous figure of small stature, capable of getting lost in the crowd. This was logical, from the point of view that the killer had to infiltrate the human community.
Lance Henriksen, with whom Cameron became friends on the set of Piranha, according to the director, fit perfectly into the concept of the original plan. Several sketches were even created with Lance as a killer robot. There was also a small but impressive performance for investors.
Herniksen was made up, with cuts on his face and his teeth covered with foil, after which he broke into the office of the Hemdale company, which was supposed to provide money for the filming of the future masterpiece. The brutal guy in a leather jacket made a strong impression on the audience and Cameron received the money.
But, despite this, investors did not want to risk their money and demanded that an actor better known to the audience be involved in the filming. Cameron was recommended to find a rising star even to play Kyle Reese. At this moment in the history of the film, Arnold Schwarzenegger appears, whose candidacy was proposed by one of the producers.
Schwarzenegger was already a fairly famous actor at that time, but Cameron really didn’t want to cast a 35-year-old bodybuilder with a German accent for the role of 22-year-old Reese. He went to meet Arnie, intending to use any leverage, even scandal, to prevent him from appearing in the film.
As it turned out, Schwarzenegger was not very interested in participating in Cameron’s project, but if he saw himself in the film, it was exclusively in the role of the Terminator himself. The director, seeing the actor, immediately sketched a sketch with him in the role of a robot and the issue was immediately resolved in favor of Arnold.
At the time of filming, Schwarzenegger had just received US citizenship. He spoke with a terrible German accent, which, to some extent, is still present in the star's speech. Despite the fact that the Terminator had a laconic role, he still had to speak on camera.
There is evidence that it was the iconic phrase “I’ll Be Back” that was most difficult for the actor. By the way, it originally sounded like “I'll Come Back” and history is silent about who decided to change it. Schwarzenegger was worried that it would be difficult for him to pronounce the phrase and suggested changing it to “I'll Be Back.” He motivated this by the fact that “I'll Be Back” does not sound masculine enough. In response, Cameron flared up and advised the actor not to teach him how to work on the script.
Iron Arnie had to come to terms with it and spent a lot of time practicing how to pronounce this key phrase. They say that the experience gained during these rehearsals greatly helped the actor in the future. In the film, Schwarzenegger himself spoke only 16 lines, in which only 70 words were used.
Since the actor’s fee was 750 thousand dollars, it is easy to calculate that he was paid approximately 10 thousand dollars per word. For the sequel to "Terminator", where Schwarzenegger had to speak 700 words, he was already paid 15 million dollars, or 21 thousand dollars per word.
Today, Schwarzenegger's fee for participating in the first Terminator is puzzling. But it should be remembered that filming a full-fledged film cost only 6.5 million dollars, that is, as much as they spend today on a 30-second commercial in the Super Bowl final. Even for the early 80s, this was very little money and you had to save on literally everything during filming.
The final scene of the film was supposed to be an episode with an explosion of a fuel tanker, in the background of which the main characters embrace each other. The film's producer, John Daly, liked the ending, but Cameron himself was not at all happy with it. “Fuck you! The film isn't over yet! (The film is not finished yet!) - the director said during a discussion of the ending and did it his way. The film's producers did not forget this and annoyed Cameron by cutting the film's advertising budget as much as possible.
To save money, we had to film using not entirely legal methods. Schwarzenegger recalled how he was once put into a film crew minibus and dropped off on a deserted street, not far from a lone parked car. The director told him:
It later turned out that the scene had to be filmed without the consent of the city authorities, since there was simply no money for it. The scene was filmed in such an informal and risky way and everything went off without frightened passers-by or police intervention.
Another interesting incident occurred during the filming of the scene in which Sarah Connor's SUV drives off into the distance. For the scene, they chose a desert area where not a soul could be found. But as soon as everything was ready for filming, a police car appeared out of nowhere, and the officer who got out of it categorically demanded to see permission to film.
A way out of the situation was found unexpectedly. One of the film participants told the police officer that he was filming a course project for a film school. The law enforcement officer took the position of the “poor student” and did not create obstacles for filming. Moreover, the policeman even volunteered to help the film crew, making the day particularly productive.
While working on The Terminator, the plot of the film was constantly being refined. Some points were added, others were changed, and some had to be abandoned altogether. For example, they decided to remove scenes from the film where the killer robot... eats. It was originally planned that in order to maintain a human bodily shell, the Terminator needed to eat.
The subplot related to the death of Kyle Reese's partner during an unsuccessful time travel was also removed from the film. But the overall concept of the film was still preserved, despite constant attempts to interfere with the producers and a meager budget.
During editing, Cameron himself made a strong-willed decision to cut out some scenes. The episode in which Reese and Sarah Connor decide to blow up the Cyberdyne Systems building to prevent future war was removed. Another deleted sequence shows a worker finding the processor of a destroyed Terminator.
At this point it also becomes clear that the film's denouement takes place not in an ordinary factory, but in a plant owned by Cyberdyne Systems. It later became abundantly clear that this change was entirely justified.
Few people know that “The Terminator” is closely related to James Cameron’s next high-profile project, “Aliens.” Most likely, without a film about a robot from the future, the saga about alien monsters would not exist at all.
Filming for The Terminator was scheduled to begin in Toronto in the fall of 1983. But producer Dino De Laurentiis, having involved lawyers, found a loophole in Schwarzenegger’s contract and took the actor away to his project “Conan the Destroyer.” Because of this, an impressive window of almost nine months appeared in Cameron's work schedule.
As a man of action, Cameron could not sit idly by and decided to use the unexpected vacation to write some script for sale. Just at this moment, the director met with producers Walter Hill and David Giler, during which one of them mentioned Alien. As a result, Cameron began working on the script, which turned out to be very good.
At first there was a treatment that the customers liked and Cameron was given the go-ahead to write a full-fledged script. He was also promised that if “Terminator” turns out to be successful, then a new film will be made only with the participation of the director. As we already know, “The Terminator” turned out to be just a great picture and Cameron got the job of directing the sequel about aliens.
The script for “Aliens” even came into contact with the plot of the director’s previous film. In one of the scenes of the film, the android Bishop, played by Lance Henriksen, reports that the bad robot Ash from the first part of the film was created by Cyberdyne Systems. Cameron later changed the company's name to eliminate any similarities.