Ultimate Dolph

Gosh, now that I see the result I know that I should have gone for The Terminator. It's always amazing that people prefer the second part. True, the first one was cheap and had lousy effects, but the dark atmosphere is unmatched and the story is really good. T2 is so mainstream compared to T1.

I chose Aliens though. I like T1 better from the audience's perspective, but Aliens is the better directorial work (I guess). On the other hand, it's amazing what he created with T1's small budget. I should have voted for T1 probably. It's jut too hard to pick one.

T2 might be mainstream but it's the best you can do for mainstream, and I'm not talking just about the action and SFX but with a serious take and tone on his subject with also the emotional core that goes with it. I don't think Cameron went the easy way (and someone like him never does).

I still think T1 is his best. It's amazing what scale he got on such a small budget. Arnie's never been better, and Biehn is a badass. Linda Hamilton's hairdo is awesomely huge! There's a rawness about it, it was often guerilla film-making because of the low budget. It's one of those, like many great directors in the lower budget pasts, where Cameron shows his most ingenuity.

I just kinda love the fact that T1 is B-movie material, a bit of a horror-action flick almost in a way following Jason, Myers and whoever, at the time, with this unstoppable killing machine. The distributors would have been thinking this was just another film to ride the Jason/Freddy horror wave. But even though it was a B-pic, such care is taken over it, to make the film feel bigger than it is, to make the action big, and to light it as if it's a big budget star vehicle. I love the look of this film, the lighting, and it's mostly night shoot down to the budget, but it works very well.

I also think that slo-mo shot of Arnie working his way through the crowd at Tech-noir about to shoot Sarah Connor in the head, before Reese intervenes, is one of those "perfect" movie moments. The timing, the music, the extras doing "the 80's dance."