Talk:The Terminator

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The Terminator has been listed as one of the Media and drama good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

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Date	Process	Result
October 7, 2010	Good article nominee	Listed

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Neo Noir

Has Terminator got enough hallmarks to be defined as a neo-noir film?Internet Informant (talk) 05:29, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Neo-noir article makes no mention of Terminator (or James Cameron), but does include a See Also to Tech-noir. If you can find sources to support the inclusion, then yay, but as it stands there's nothing to justify the genre. Chaheel Riens (talk) 05:43, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech-noir is the name of the discotheque in the film. Drsruli (talk) 07:04, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Tech-Noir" is certainly a term that has been retro-actively applied to several films and has origins in this. From this and " Razzamatazz Buckshank's journal article, I am tempted to create a "style" section in this article as it appears to be a continued point of interest for readers and does seem to have significant study since the films release in academia. Andrzejbanas (talk) 13:42, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Famous Lines

First instance of "Come with me if you want to live." Drsruli (talk) 07:04, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What about it? Without further context, its hard to discuss. I believe The Terminator franchise article has bit more context, and "I'll Be Back" has its own article (!). We probably could have some section in the legacy of this article about how its more popular lines have entered pop culture, but from this sentence, I'm not sure what you are requesting specifically. Andrzejbanas (talk) 13:40, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Slasher horror film+Serial killer film?

James Cameron stated that John Carpenter's Halloween (the movie that invented and codified the slasher film and is also very much a serial killer film) as a major influence on the film, and many film critics have pointed the similarities between the two, it would be appropriate to categorize the Terminator as a slasher film and a serial killer film. https://responsejournal.net/issue/2021-11/feature/mechanical-monster-cyber Razzamatazz Buckshank (talk) 00:11, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some discussion or just edits have been made to try to include these in the past, while they have similarities, Terminator in most research I did when I expanded the article at most made some mild comparisons to Halloween, but I don't recall any describing it as this genre. So per MOS:FILM standards on genre, I don't think we should include it. Andrzejbanas (talk) 02:25, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry on reading your journal you shared @Razzamatazz Buckshank:, there are valid points. I mis-read your link as part of your user-name on my phone. While it does make interesting cases, it does also state that "this paper defends The Terminator as a horror film, elements of science fiction and action clearly prevail in the movie’s storyline". So this is where things grow complicated. I think if there was more specific genre analysis in the article, we could maybe find a way to include this without just saying "terminator is a 1984 American science fiction slasher action serial killer film" with a dozen citations next to it, but I think some better approach would be some genre analysis applied, thought this could be a bit overkill for something as generally not so debated as The Terminator. Andrzejbanas (talk) 12:18, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, well, I was directed to this talk page to settle this ongoing dispute by an admin: do we or do we not think it's appropriate to categorize Terminator as a horror film at the bottom of the page? It was done before, but after it got removed by some other users these past few days I've been quite alone in wanting to re-add the categories back even though I wasn't even the one who put them there in the first place.

I will just copy some of what I wrote on their talk page previously:

There's no real explanation from either of these users why they think it's warranted to remove the categories in the first place as they continually ignore my comment that it's already mentioned in the article body with a source provided, and that part has remained untouched by either of them which makes me suspect they didn't read the entire article and were thus probably unaware of that section entirely. Terminator 2 not being a horror film is also completely irrelevant when talking about Terminator 1 being one and is quite frankly pure whataboutism. T2 still has horror elements but not to the extent it can be called one (in my opinion at least), they're not the same movie just because one is a direct sequel, but that's really irrelevant here like I said. The Terminator#Genre has a small section on it which sources the article provided in the first post by Razzamatazz Buckshank and then it appears to have been added to the article body by Andrzejbanas subsequently.

The general consensus is that it's a sci-fi action movie like I stated in my edits and like it's stated in the "genre" section of the article, but I'd just like to point out that James Cameron himself has never hidden the fact that his intention with the first Terminator was always to make a "last girl"/slasher horror film, but since we're not allowed to use WP:PRIMARYSOURCES either I didn't bring it up before, but it was always intended to be viewed as one and so that's why in recent years it seems to have received a bit of a critical re-evaluation: https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/terminator-james-cameron (this particular interview is from 2021)

There was also a recent interview from Cameron commemorating the 40th anniversary of T1 back in December of last year where he also confirms it and while I know it can't be used as a source either, this is more just to hammer the point home that from a filmmaker's perspective at least it's not totally wrong to see it as a horror film too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OnDUpjNqiw&t=1556s

I've also found a few other articles that also talks about how T1 is a horror/slasher so the source that ended up used isn't the only one, although it is the only one that analyses it to that extent that I could find, but again it's not strictly the "general consensus" which is why it seemed appropriate to just add horror as simple categories on the article in the first place instead of in the lead sentence. I think I've made my own stance quite clear on the matter and even though I hoped this had already been settled last year, I will respect whatever consensus is reached now. I do urge everyone involved to please remain neutral regardless of what one might personally think if this movie fits under their own definition of what a horror film is or not. There are secondary sources to back it up on top of the primary ones at the very least, and the one that was used as a source is a pretty good analysis on its own and was found to make strong points in favor of Terminator's status as a horror movie. Memez24 (talk) 12:52, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Genre discussion

As genre has been brought up time and time again, I've tried to add some clarification for the genre within the article. I've used the sources mentioned above and felt that as the discussion of horror film traits and also the whole "Tech-Noir" thing should be evaluated upon. Andrzejbanas (talk) 18:42, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's real.

I came back to the article to see who authored the screenplay back in the 80s thinking to myself, "before machine learning, before powerful robotics and drones or anything like that... how on earth could they have known this would come true?" It _feels_ like the article is incomplete now without some coverage on how forward looking this was, 40 years before this is coming true in every aspect of our lives. 147.161.198.116 (talk) 05:35, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]