An Eye for Detail in THE TERMINATOR (1984)

I suppose I knew Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) was a sequel, but for all intents and purposes in my eight-year-old mind, that was definitively the only entry in the killer robot from the post-apocalyptic future saga that I cared much about. It was cool, funny, and starred a kid that I could relate to. Hell, what more could I ask for? 

So it was, by the time I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger don his shades for the first time in T2’s predecessor, I had a very different expectation of what the Terminator franchise might deliver. I was much older and much wiser— old enough, in fact, to not need a fellow pre-teen to anchor my emotional investment to. Indeed, I was ready to experience the grittier, more homegrown version of what the one hundred million dollar sequel originally offered to me. 

More attune to something like Halloween (1978) than the giant budget behemoths its successors would play alongside with, The Terminator (1984) is a dark, gritty, and damn mean science fiction thriller. The action and choreography is undeniably impressive but it also feels like its happening under the table. There’s a rawness, a dangerous quality that enables the fantastical elements of the film to come as close to reality as a movie about time-traveling machine assassins ever could. 

This is a film where every creative element works in tandem with one another to craft a successful whole, from James Cameron’s razor-sharp direction to Linda Hamilton’s heartfelt performance as the doomed Sarah Connor, not a single individual misses the mark. Still, it’s Schwarzenegger’s T-800, haunting the film at every turn with his merciless drive to destroy, that propels the narrative forward regardless of whether he’s onscreen or off. Even though he plays what is essentially the same character in the sequel, it was astounding how subtly different and terrifying he was in the first installment. 

Of course, what ties all of the elements together, carrying the film to the classic status it’s known for, is Stan Winston’s astounding practical effects. Countless examples of the film’s successes jump to mind when considering Winston’s contributions, but one in particular stands out when I think about how his practical work enabled the performances and world-building so palpably realized in the film. It’s a simple, fairly quick moment, where the T-800 removes his damaged biological eye, masking his true, robotic self with the iconic sunglasses his character would become so well known for wearing. 

An example of how effects work, blocking, editing and performance can come together to create the brand of suspension-of-disbelief all genre films of this sort strive for, the scene is a marvel of its time and one of the film’s best quiet character moments to boot. 

From its simplistic, technical origins on the page to its expert execution onscreen, these several minutes in which the Terminator grooms himself in the bathroom are some of the most memorable in what is an already unforgettable film. More than that, they would set expectations for the kind of innovative and striking effects work that the franchise as a whole would go on to deliver. 

THE SCENE 

The T-800 washes his face and examines his eye. Using a small knife, he digs out the damaged organ and drops it into the sink where it floats listlessly in the bloodied water. He dabs at the hole in his face with a towel, wiping away the blood and revealing a metallic eye, marked in the center by an expanding and contracting red light. He puts on sunglasses, concealing the bloody hole in his face. He checks his hair and leaves the bathroom. He retrieves his weapons from the room adjacent and exits through the window. 

THE SCRIPT 

Excerpt taken from the script ‘The Terminator’ written by James Cameron & Gale Anne Hurd. 

THE SCREEN 

E.C.U — TERMINATOR, in profile, showing his lacerated eye. 

The scene opens on an old faucet in what appears to be a decrepit bathroom, given the stains and decay visible in the background. The next image is a medium close-up of the T-800. He’s bent over and flushing his eye. He turns off the water and rises, his damaged eye not visible in frame until the camera moves to the mirror. He touches the wound, examining it intellectually rather than reacting in pain. As the script notes, He is close to a mirror, practically touching it, staring intently. 

Most everything in this sequence is captured in close-up, causing the space and the actions within it to feel tight and confined. Visually, this strategy also allows for the upcoming practical effects work to be more seamlessly spliced in, making for a less distracting shift in the edit. 

True to form, the next shot is as annotated in the script, MACRO — X-ACTO KNIFE lying on the dresser. The frame follows suit, cutting to a close up of the T-800’s face as he gently places the knife into his bloodied eye: 

With a smooth motion, the knife point enters the eyeball and cuts away the ruins sclera and cornea, as well as part of the damaged eyelids.

In the film, Cameron injects a few cutaways into this sentence. The frame moves from a straight-on shot of the Terminator’s actions to a profile shot from the side, mirroring the one that began this scene. A shot of the water-filled basin follows this, blood dripping into it and dissolving into the progressively reddening liquid. With several loud squelching sounds, the eye finally emerges as a red, glossed over mass that the machine lets fall into the basin with a wet plop. 

Again, the film follows tightly to the page as he grabs a towel and dabs at the eye socket from the same close-up, profile perspective, clearing his true eye’s path for vision. Here the film jumps to a straight-on shot of the T-800, still dabbing his eye. Then a second jump cut to a slightly different angle, the head now a false one as the towel is pulled away. 

Revealing the faintly glowing lens mechanism, suspended in a chrome socket by tiny servos. The eye whirs quietly as it tracks.

The eye glows red in the shot and then another cut takes us to an extreme close up of the eye. The thing moves around in its metallic socket, whirring and motoring mechanically as the light alters its size, presumably adjusting to the light in the room now that it has no filter through which to see. 

The script then calls for a SEQUENCE OF SHOTS which intended to showcase various repairs. The montage showcased the T-800 as it stitched up an abdominal wound, gloved a damaged hand, and placed a cap over its blistered scalp. He was to change clothes as well, providing a slightly deeper window into the sort of awareness the machine had regarding its physical appearance in the world at large. 

The film instead opts to forgo the remainder of repairs, focusing on the loss of the eye and his strikingly stoic examination of himself in its wake. An over-the-shoulder close-up shot holds on the machine still staring at himself in the mirror, sizing up the gaping hole in his face. Another extreme close-up follows his hand as it picks up the sunglasses and the same over-the-shoulder shot fills the frame as he raises them and puts them on. A close-up profile shot transitions back to the actor instead of the prop head, now wearing the sunglasses and analyzing his face again in the mirror. 

As it says in the script, C.U. — TERMINATOR, contemplating his reflection in the mirror.

With the final added touch of the T-800 gently brushing his hand against his hair as though intent on fixing it but ultimately changing nothing about its appearance in a surprisingly vain, human way, the Terminator leaves the bathroom. He retrieves his weaponry from the room adjacent and exits through the window. 

While the plot was not progressed in this scene nor any new information revealed, it feels necessary to the T-800’s character. After all, its the combination of his artificial humanity and infused emotionless calculative abilities that make him such a terrifying threat and suggest both the best and the worst that humanity might be capable of. 

THE BLOODY CONCLUSION 

“With these puppets,” Stan Winston said in the book The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston Studio by Jody Duncan, “we were going much further than creating actor dummies. We were creating replicas of an actor that would be scrutinized by the camera, so they had to be absolutely realistic looking,” (Duncan, 2006, p. 49). 

The Terminator was released the year I was born, so, naturally, it took some time for me to catch up with it. Of course, by the time I did, I was well aware of the film’s cultural impact by proxy of its franchise power. T2 was a defining summer movie of my childhood and established an expectation in my mind of what the movies under the Terminator umbrella could and should be.  

And then I caught up to the original. What I found was somehow completely in line with its subsequent franchise offerings but also more grounded in its filmmaking. A movie that felt big in scope and idea and yet far more homemade. Sure, it was a multi-million dollar movie, but it managed to be so without sacrificing the charm of something a bunch of friends threw together in their basement. 

The script is written with a technical eye, painting an almost cold and calculated picture of what was to come onscreen but providing the ideal blueprint for the filmmakers to follow. This lended to the success of every practical aspect of the film, perhaps most strikingly in the effects department. Be it the uncanny miniature work or animatronics and puppetry on display throughout, it’s the practical effects that often steal the show in The Terminator. 

For me, this work is crystalized in the hotel bathroom where the T-800 removes its impaired eyeball. A fantastic marriage of the script and the screen, the effects work here took practical effects to a new level and crafted a seamless viewing experience that brought the T-800 to deeply unsettling life. In her aforementioned book, Stan Winston talks about crafting this sequence, after having been inspired by the decades-old Lincoln attraction at Disney Land: 

“It had been done before this, but usually as a throw-away effect, something seen only in very quick cuts. It wasn’t something featured for a long time in a scene, not something with eye and head movement. We were pushing the envelope again, taking the art of prop dummy-making and crossing it with animatronics and radio control. By pushing that envelope and crossing those techniques, we created lifelike, animatronic puppets that replicated an actor, “ (Duncan, 2006, p. 49). 

The best films are often collaborative efforts, crafted by filmmakers as opposed to the word in the singular. The Terminator is a grand example of that type of creativity, ushering in ingenuity and innovation that spans beyond budget and narrative, landing squarely in the camp of artistry.  

My young mind may not have been able to grasp anything beyond the reach of T2’s awesome power, but I’m very grateful my later years brought me to its predecessor. While the sequel may have had all the money and power that Hollywood had to offer at its disposal, the original had something equally as valuable: creative geniuses looking to prove themselves. 

And if this scene, the movie surrounding it and the franchise as a whole proves one thing, it’s that they succeeded. But, I suppose, even my eight-year-old self knew that.