Breathing: An essay on Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese and the Real TERMINATOR movies (T1 and T2)
I’ve stumbled across several tributes to The Termimator/T2 Judgment Day on Youtube with either one of 2 Kate Bush songs provided as a backdrop: “Running Up That Hill” or “Breathing”. “Running Up That Hill”, if I’m not mistaken, was the song that broke KB out in America, and to date is her highest charting song. This single also came from her most successful album from her earlier days, “Hounds of Love”, The song “Running” has a theme about two people wishing they could imagine the other’s pain and suffering, wishing they could trade places with each other. It’s an okay use of song meaning married to movie plot, but to me, it doesn’t come near to capturing the broken heart that symbolises the relationship between Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese the way “Breathing”, Kate Bush’s 1980 nuclear disarmament anthem, (from “Never For Ever”), does. After seeing at least 2 others, I ended up making my own tribute to the first 2 Terminator movies using “Breathing”, and while I give respect to the late Anton Yelchin for trying to PAY respect, I don’t give a toss about the 2015 reboot starring a “woman” who rather looks like a 12 girl, playing opposite yet another Hollywood bodybuiilding twat. Neither of these “actors” can do justice to this classic cyberpunk story that contained the surprising profundity of a friendship built over just 24 hours that evolves into a confession about something we all do from time to time: fall in love with the mere image of someone in a photo. Yet in this case, it’s not just a pretty girl, but a hero, a legendary public figure, the person who trained her son to lead humanity into battle against an enemy who needs neither food nor rest.
I saw the first film at the impressionable age of 14, back in ‘84 or 85, and it’s the first film that made me ponder HARD questions. It also introduced me to 2 wonderfully complex heroes, heroes I’d NEVER seen before. Before Terminator 1, I was mostly untouched by movie heroes, but being a panromantic asexual (you’ll see more about this a few paragraphs from now) I fell madly in love with both protagonists: A college kid/waitress living in the shadow of the Cold War (and ignoring it, like we all did, because really, what else could we do?) whose humdrum life is jolted one May afternoon by news reports of women with her name being savagely executed in their own homes, and then abruptly turned topsy turvy when a screaming, disheveled lad semi-abducts her from a nightclub after a bloodbath shootout occurs. The college kid, Sarah Connor, cannot believe her eyes, a large man had been pointing a laser sighting between her eyes just seconds before the trenchcoat-wearing kid began to deafen the crowd, blasting the giant man away from her with a sawed-off shotgun. But the man didn’t stay down. He got up! And attempted to kill her again. And once again, that crazy little blonde, that bad-ass bitch with the shot gun, blew the hulking would-be killer out the fucking window. Truly one of my favourite moments in cinema to this day. I can’t help but cheer when Arnold Schwarzenegger is dwarfing Linda Hamilton, helplessly pinned by the deadweight of one of the Termie’s victims, about to have her life snuffed out, and just in the nick of time, Michael Biehn, perhaps half the size of Arnie blows the motherfucker away again! “Look at that little badass bitch! God damn he is kicking that somebitch’s ASS!!!!” I want to scream, but usually either nobody is home or it’s past the time when everyone else in the house is asleep. And gone are the days when me and my bro sat and watched this movie by the hour, quoting it line by line. Poor ______. Obviously, he never did know what the movie was truly about. Whether she’s ever seen the Terminator or not, Kate Bush has a better idea than my brother. I love Arnold as much as anyone, but my brother was trying to convince me that GenySHYT was a good movie and when I watched that steaming pile of coyote shit, I went into a rage that helped me invent a youtube channel. I can’t believe my brother has become so desperate for Terminator movies that every suckfest since T2 qualifies as “watchable.” Alright enough about soulless assholes who make movies that don’t even respect the source material. Fuck GenySHYT.
Smelling like a wino’s liquour and pish no doubt, the lad doesn’t ask, he simply tells Connor, “Come with me if you want to live.” Little does she know that she HAS to live, or it’s all for naught. Over the next several hours, torn between thanking her smelly, bug-eyed “captor”, named Kyle Reese, a sergeant in a futuristic military unit called Tech Com, and trying desperately to escape his insane rantings about how both the large man and himself are from a future dominated by sentient machines. The large man who had tried to murder her is in fact “not a man...machine...cyborg...cybernetic organism...” He talks about a company called Cyberdyne Systems, and a computer named Skynet that took control of all of the world’s machines. He goes on to explain that these sentient machines became “awake” and decided that all humans were a threat, not just the “Reds” as it were. Thus, the machines launched enough ICBMs to cause decades of disease, starvation, and skies that are always blackened by the fallout and pollution that smothers the sun. Like it or not, depictions of a determined band of survivors pulling together after nuclear attack, whomever hits the switch first, even a sentient military computer, are most optimistic when compared to movies like 1983′s The Day After (network televisions highest rated movie to date) and The Day After is like a cute little game of CandyLand when compared with the BBC’s offering Threads, a harrowing docustyle drama released the same year as the Terminator, 1984.
But back to Connor and Reese. When he shows her a strange bar code burned into his skin, an eerie callback to Nazi Germany Kyle describes how “Some of us were kept alive to work, loading bodies.” As in the deathcamps of Hitler’s reign of evil, the sentient machines are murdering the humans that did not die by nuclear emolation or fall-out related cancers, and Kyle was one of many unfortunates who had been forced to cremate numerous bodies night and day. The film Threads suggests that within a decade, perhaps 2, of a nuclear strike, human numbers would dwindle down to those of medieval times. “We were that close to going out forever,” says Kyle. Then Sarah, who is leaning in closer, more fascinated with every passing moment is astonished when the boy whispers the name of the man who changed everything by rallying people together to fight the impossible enemy: John Connor, the son she has not yet borne. None of this backstory ever feels forced, as it is intercut or just plain in the middle of amazingly choreographed car chases and gun battles. Ah...Did I say Brad Fiedel’s score is delicious??? Okay, Brad Fiedel’s score is delicious! I love every piece of music in this film. Right after this scene I just described, where Sarah learns she’ll one day have a kid who she’ll train to save the human race, there is a piece called “Garage Chase”. I just love the screaming synth, like the screaming of tyres, the clapping of electronic drums solidifying the urgency, the sense of death nipping at their heels, the abrupt discordant “yells” of another synth, feeling like the dodging of 2 gazelles attempting to confuse a particularly determined, ruthless cheetah.
Sarah and Kyle’s relationship is still in its infancy when they are detained by police and Kyle is cuffed and evaluated by a shrink at the station. Even after all she has witnessed, Sarah, tired and devastated by the murders of 2 good friends by the cyborg, is willing to believe whatever it will take to restore what’s left of her former life. The police show her a bulletproof vest, talk about the effects of PCP, and tell her that Kyle is probably schizophrenic, delusional and extremely dangerous. They offer her a couch to rest on until her mother arrives to take her home, and she’s relieved. Soon the nightmare will end.
The cruel joke’s on her, as the towering cyborg invades the station, immediately employing every weapon he has been able to procure, murdering every cop in his path, every cop a victim who has no idea what the assailant is. Kyle is handcuffed in one room, separated from Sarah, whom he has sworn to protect. Sarah is in another room, taking cover under a desk. After a long, long time of explosive gunfire and agonised screams, someone breaks open the room to where Sarah is hiding. It’s not the monolithic monster, but Kyle, whose endless supply of savvy has helped him to get out of the handcuffs. They get a gun from one cop who, like Sarah, was back and forth on whether Kyle had all his marbles. Then after seeing more than enough, was convinced. The 2 youngsters spend the night in an underpass. When Kyle offers Sarah a little human warmth after she had to leave her jacket at the station, she is shocked to find he is bleeding from a gunshot wound. She gains her first “field training” as a medic when she dresses both the bullet wound in his arm and the rather horrendous bite she inflicted earlier. Sarah notices Kyle doesn’t talk a lot, so she keeps trying to initiate conversation. She’s sorry she did so when she asks about his coming through time, because he begins “hero-worshipping” her, calling her a “legend”. She is exasperated, snapping at him, “I didn’t ask for this honour, and I don’t WANT it!” Undaunted and a little annoyed, he recites a message to her that the yet unborn made him learn by heart. Sarah finally drifts into an exhausted sleep and it seems as though we are witnessing a combination of her nightmare about Kyle’s experiences of post-apocalyptic warfare and Kyle’s recollection of once having a picture of Sarah Connor. When Sarah’s mind can take no more of children being slaughtered by an infiltration unit’s plasma cannon, she jerks awake in Kyle’s arms, interrupting his attempt to brush a lock of hair away from her face, the first human gesture we’ve ever seen him do, and the very first tiny hint we get that he cares more about her than we realised. First impressions die hard..
I admit, while perhaps a few of the so called “terminated scenes” could remain so, I would love for James Cameron to restore most of them. I used to think all but one could be scrapped. The one I absolutely think should be put back in is called “Sarah Fights Back”. But it should rightly be called, “Sarah Fights Back/Kyle Breaks Down.” This would be the beginning of what I have always called, “From dichotomy to cohesion” or more simply, they became like twins. At the first, Sarah Connor was gentle, timid, unaware, dare I say ignorant of things going on. Just a kid getting through life. Hoping for a hot date with a guy who owns a Porche. Kyle Reese was hardened, unsocialised, aware of nothing but violence, terror, hiding from death, almost inhuman because he lost family and friends constantly. Fighting was all he knew. It was his life. In the middle of the film, the 2 characters experienced tremendous development towards cohesion and becoming the same kind of person, each with each other’s traits. It isn’t good to ignore life around you, but it also isn’t good to react to violence and death by shutting yourself down emotionally. Sarah finds Cyberdyne Systems Inc. in the phone book and tries to persuade Kyle to help her blow the place up, thereby preventing the invention of Skynet. Kyle resists the strategy, saying it’s tactically dangerous. Sarah is angry, believing Kyle arrogant, declaring, “I’m not your military objective. I’m a person!” They get into a pretty intense fight in which Sarah punches Kyle and Kyle almost robotically draws the gun on her. Outraged, she curses him out. She’s sick of being chased and she wants to be proactive in getting rid of this nightmare. The Terminator came back to erase the existence of her son by killing her. It stands to reason that she should have the right to erase the existence of the war that has destroyed Kyle’s life by blowing up the company that caused it, yeah? Kyle sees eye to eye with Sarah, but not before stopping Sarah’s speech dead by suddenly whispering, “I don’t belong here. I wasn’t meant to see this.” He indicates the trees, grass, waterfalls...all green, healthy, alive. Where he comes from there is no life. The innumerable chemicals and contaminants have destroyed everything, leaving a charred, blackened wasteland blanketed with vistas of human skulls. He’s now in a world that has not yet died, yet he grieves as though it has. “It’s gone!” he sobs. “It’s all gone! It’s gone!” Sarah softens again. “We can change it, Kyle.” And knowing he’s replaced her murdered best friend Ginger, she uses the same affectionate nickname. “Come on, Kiddo. What do you say?” Another good reason to restore this scene??? Sarah says the famous phrase, “There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.” The mantra was said several times in T2, and viewers asked, “When the hell was THAT said before?” Without further extended rambling about the deleted scenes, I will say that some important moments were also lost when Sarah and Kyle are in the motel and she is saying “I just want this to be over. I want it to be over for YOU too,” while they are making the pipe bombs. The “Wholesome Sarah”, the “Tickling” thing, a couple of the cops driving around scenes, and the badly acted part with the guys finding the cyborg’s arm can be left out, but Traxler, the one decent cop played by beloved actor Paul Winfield (Sounder, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan) had a couple of valuable scenes that need to be put back in too, thank you very much.
Though I reside in a female vessel at present, I am an asexual/agender, which means I have never voluntarily been able to identify as either of the traditional genders. I spent my toddlerhood enamoured with wearing boys’ clothing and my favourite faerie story was Peter & The Wolf, not Snow White or Cinderelly. As any asexual reading this might understand, sex scenes are hard for me to deal with. I don’t understand sex for the most part. Not meaningless casual sex anyway. I usually roll my eyes as a cover for the anguish I feel. Women were exploited heavily in the ‘70s and ‘80s, only there for graphic sex scene in male driven stories. I grew up in a very “double standard” home as well, and my relationship with my dad is gone now, for my own good. Anyway, the “sex” scene in THIS movie felt different. At first, seeing both of my new heroes freshly showered (take courage fans, in the novel, Kyle had purchased some new pants while he was out buying stuff for plastique, so those pishy bum pants went into the rubbish!), their hair clean, and both of them sitting by a window talking quietly, I felt the familiar feelings of dread, like, this movie was so great, and now, here is the obligatory sex scene. Closeups of their beautiful faces, both exhibiting masculine and feminine characteristics. Biehn is almost angelic with large green eyes, resembling an anime character from a twisted Miyazaki production, while Hamilton’s got this amazingly gorgeous butch yet soft quality that is impossible to resist. Still, DREAD...DREAD...this can’t go well...this is the ‘80s, right?
But I remembered, “Kyle Reese just revealed that he had never had anyone special back in his home world, that the only girls/women were fellow soldiers.” Well, that’s different. When in all of ‘80s macho shit Stallone, Willis, and yep, Schwarzenegger movies had the male hero ever admit to being a virgin? This is as refreshing as a glass of lemonade in July. Years later, the novelisation would straight up flat-out say that the Tech-Com military personnel are akin to today’s child soldiers. They kill dozens of people (in this case machines) before they lose their Vs, marry, have kids, etc., if they’re not killed of course. As he tells Sarah he’s always loved her, and pretty much volunteered to come to 1984 to meet her and protect her, he has this little smile on his face. Sarah is weeping, touching the poorly healed burns on his back, pitying him, but he turns to face her and he’s smiling. “John Connor gave me a picture of you once. It was very old. You were young like you are now...” And he describes it, and his eyes are sparkling and his mouth is smiling ever so slightly. I realised he’s describing the way Sarah is smiling. Just a little sadly. And he’s smiling the exact same way. After these huge revelations, no more smile. He suddenly becomes shy, flustered and upset with himself that he gets up from the floor and starts putting the pipe bombs into the rucksack really carelessly. I and others I’m sure had a chuckle at this. He’s going to blow himself and Sarah to the moon before the cyborg gets the chance! Sarah has been reduced to tears by yet another confirmation that Kyle has lived in horror his entire life, What happens next is a LOVE scene, beautifully acted, passionate in its sincerity, filled with joy and absent of guile. Watching it to this day, I don’t feel confused, or angry, or unclean. I feel happy. I feel happy that Sarah’s finally found her soul mate, someone who really loves her. A real person who has done real things to show it, not just say it. He’s not the schmuck with the Porche who stood her up. He’s the other half of her soul. And I’m happy for Kyle, because for once in his life, he’s not hiding, fighting or watching people die. And he’s not afraid, angry or in mourning, over a lost life or a lost world. For once, he’s happy. For perhaps a half hour of this 24 hour period on the earth before he dies, Kyle Reese is happy. He doesn’t live long after Sarah deflowers him, but while you’re cursing the fact the Kyle dies, remember, he wanted this. He volunteered. He didn’t know he would change so much, that Sarah would change him so much. He didn’t know that he had changed her so much as well. She had taught him to be more human and less robotic. He had taught her to reach deep into herself for the strengths she didn’t know she possessed. They had become twins, each of them fighters who refuse to go down until there is nothing left to fight with, each of them caregivers who will nurture and protect the things that are important.
The song, Breathing. As author Neil Gaiman put it, “It’s a foetal song. It’s a song about a reincarnated foetus, coming ‘round again, terrified of a nuclear war, terrified of the radioactivity outside, terrified that we won’t be able to breathe...” The notion that this unborn child is reincarnated, and especially the lyrics, “I’ve been out before but this time it’s much safer in,” cause me to imagine that this could be a song from the POV of Kyle Reese. After all, he died in 1984 and Judgment Day took place in 1997. Then he is born sometime around 2008. Remember, he says he didn’t “see” the war, he “grew up after.” The voice of Kate Bush portraying a foetus is childlike, haunting, conveying the eerie knowledge of a past life, or perhaps more than one past life. In the centre of the song, wherein “pop: songs normally would be some flashy guitar solo, in the Queen of Prog’s “quiet bridge”, we hear a choir of synth voices under the cold, clinical voices of those who accomplished their terrible feat during the Manhattan Project, boasting about the destructive power of their creation, discussing their eagerness to “test” their product’s various strengths. The song ends on a question: What will we do without? And a declaration: We are all going to die without! What? Air. For breathing.
Kyle has seen the world after nuclear apocalypse. He has also seen it before. He has told Sarah Connor the truth about what’s to come. They are the first and last to accept this grim truth. Except perhaps for Traxler, who has most likely died.
The Terminator Franchise should never have become a franchise. Because clearly, this story was never about “awesome robots, 20 foot tall harvester robots, robo-snakes, sexy Terminatrixes with inflatable boobies (blech! THAT was exploitation!), and pussified John Connors (both Nick Stahl’s badly written crybaby Connor and Christian Bale’s temper tantrum throwing diva Connor”). And no matter how much it bragged about how great it would be compared to those “old dated ‘80s”, FUCK YOU GENISYS. I just had to say it one more time. You know, for hate’s sake and all that what. The TERMINATOR and T2 JUDGMENT DAY is one story, about a nuclear war, a war against AIs hellbent on destroying humanity, a man who rallied humans to fight back, and a pair of heroes who attempted to change the future and who changed each other in the processs.
I want to (almost) close with another comment on music. Not Kate Bush this time, but the wondrous Brad Fiedel. It’s a piece I never noticed before, or perhaps with improved sound quality with DVD and Blu-ray releases they were able to augment it. After Kyle is killed, and months later, Sarah is alone with only her new Alsatian companion Max, and the precious cargo inside of her, the gift Kyle left behind and will never know about it. She’s driving through the desert, about to cross the border into Mexico. She needs some petrol, and stops to fill the tank. You can hear these sweet voices and bells chiming. I’d never heard it before, ever in previous viewings of this movie. It was unlike any of the other tracks as far as mood. The only thing that came close was perhaps the love theme, which was simply the theme that seems to play whenever Kyle was the focus of the scene, or just the theme of the movie in general, only in human piano instead of metallic synthesisers. These voices seemed to cry from the heavens as Sarah drove her vehicle. Are they angels celebrating the arrival of a young “saviour”? Are they ghosts, mourning the countless billions who will be incinerated in the blast? Whoever they are, when you hear them, you can feel the broken heart lingering long after the credits have rolled.
And you understand exactly why this was never a B movie, and that James Cameron is the kind of director always destined for success. A good director knows exactly what he wants, shot for shot. He knows the story inside and out. He knows the characters he’s created, and he knows his “baby” is not just some B movie garbage. In spite of the meagre budget he was allowed, he turned chump change into platinum. The 1979 phenomenon Alien was dismissed as a piece of B movie rubbish too, and look what happened there. Remember, even in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, movies that we now call masterworks were often “panned” by the so called expert critics of their day. The Terminator was quite a success in theatres and with critics too. You’ll find a miniscule minority who think it old and outdated, but they’re usually the ones who miss the point of the damn story to begin with. To those of us who loved it from the beginning and will love it until the day we die, it’s a timeless love story and a terrifying fight for survival. That’s what it’s about. Besides, how would a crappy B movie be selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry, and hailed as “culturally and historically significant”?
End
Copyright c. 2017 Laura Susan Johnson
