The Terminator
The Terminator
In the post-apocalyptic future, reigning tyrannical supercomputers teleport a cyborg assassin known as the "Terminator" back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, whose unborn son is destined to lead insurgents against 21st century mechanical hegemony. Meanwhile, the human-resistance movement dispatches a lone warrior to safeguard Sarah. Can he stop the virtually indestructible killing machine?
MetalRevenant reviewedMarch 14, 2025
The violence it enacts feels surreal because, from the viewpoint of the human characters, it is stripped of ordinary motivation or morality. This marks a significant shift in cinematic depictions of violence: it is not just extreme violence, but violence driven by an entity whose sole directive is the systematic extermination of a target. That cold, unwavering purpose amplifies the sense of horror, making the Terminator’s brand of destruction feel inescapable and beyond the usual bounds of human aggression.