The Terminator is a classic in the science fiction genre, known for its brutal human versus robot combat, extremely humanoid antagonists, and of course the infamous "I'll be back" line. Now I wanted to know what inspired the desing of the first terminator. I wanted to know why the creator of this movie wanted him to look exactly like a human.
My interest in this piqued when I remembered the discussion on how C3-P0 from Star Wars was designed somewhat after the robot from Metropolis. Was he designed to go along with the plot? Was he modeled after some earlier android? I decided to do some research.
It turns out that the decision to make the terminator look like a human was purely so that the plot would make sense. The man who wrote the original screenplay for the movie said that his main inspirations were a couple of episodes from a science fiction show from the 1960's, neither of which had robots in them. I couldn't really find anything about inspiration for the terminator itself, and it seems like he was made to look human in accordance with the story line, where the terminators need to appear like just another human so that they can blend in when going after targets in the past. Anyway, sorry for the anticlimactic ending.
Good research, though. Do YOU get anything further out of his human appearance, after watching the movie? Is it necessary to the plot that he's able to blend in? Does it give us any deeper realization?
ReplyDeleteAt least it's easy on the special effects and costume budgets, right?