Forty Years Ago: The Terminator Makes a Killing

Arnold Schwarzenegger was already an iconic figure in October of 1984. He’d won the Mr. Universe bodybuilding contest five times and Mr. Olympia seven. He’d been a focus of the documentaries Pumping Iron and The Comeback. And he’d made five movies, including Conan the Barbarian and its sequel, Conan the Destroyer. For normal humans, that would be a career bio, but for Arnold, it was a prelude. That October, a science fiction film would push both Arnold and a gifted young director into the stratosphere. That film was, of course, The Terminator.

Director James Cameron got his big break like many talents of the time did: working for Roger Corman. The B-movie master launched myriad careers, creating space for the likes of Jack Nicholson, post-Opie Ron Howard, John Sayles, and countless others. By 1977, Cameron had already studied physics and read numerous papers on film technology and special effects. When he saw Star Wars, he quit his day job to try to work in movies. Cameron made a science fiction short, Xenogenesis, in 1978 and got work as a production assistant on The Ramones movie, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. After that, he went to work in effects for Roger Corman studios, making miniature models for the films.

Battle Beyond the Stars trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Roger Corman [Official YouTube Page])

Cameron was working on models for Battle Beyond the Stars when the art director was fired. Corman was already impressed with Cameron’s work, and the young model maker soon essentially took over the tasks of art director, production designer, and special effects producer. Though the film was a low budget affair, Cameron used every trick in his arsenal to make it look great. Two of Cameron’s recurring future collaborators worked on the film as well: Actor Bill Paxton was employed as an on-set carpenter, and James Horner composed the score. Battle Beyond the Stars was moderately successful, and much of the praise the film received pointed to work done by Cameron.

Corman gave him the director’s chair for Piranha II: The Spawning. However, Cameron alleges that he was in charge for less than three weeks before an Italian producer pushed him out. The resultant film is not something that Cameron likes to claim, though his name is still on the movie as director. For years, he said that he considered his first “real” directing job to be his next movie, The Terminator, but he did admit to it being his debut in a 2010 interview with 60 Minutes.

According to Cameron, he was sick in Italy while work on Piranha II and had a dream about a metallic killer. That inspired his Terminator concept. Cameron’s friend Bill Wisher helped on the screenplay, receiving an Additional Dialogue credit (Wisher would officially co-write the sequel). Producer (and Cameron’s future second wife) Gale Anne Hurd contributed edits and received a co-writing credit. Former Corman co-workers of Cameron and Hurd had gone on to work at Orion Pictures, and Cameron was able to secure distribution if another entity picked up the financial backing. Hemdale Film Corporation chair John Daly agreed to hear Cameron’s pitch. Cameron made a show of it by having his actor friend Lance Henriksen burst into the room first in an early version of the Terminator costume. Henriksen sat silently until Cameron came in and revealed the gag. Daly was excited by Cameron’s work and pitch, and put together a deal involving Hemdale, Orion, HBO, and other production houses to get the movie made.

The Terminator trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers)

When casting began, one of Orion’s co-founders pitched Arnold Schwarzenegger for the part of Kyle Reese, the heroic soldier from the future. Cameron didn’t like the idea because, given Arnold’s rising profile, he’d have to find someone more menacing or of greater star power to be the Terminator. He met Arnold determined not to cast him, and left convinced that Arnold should be The Terminator. It’s funny in retrospect, but even though Arnold signed on, he wasn’t wild about the picture. The Terminator only has 17 lines of dialogue in the entire movie. However, when Arnold started to see the edits come together, he knew Cameron had done something special. The part of Reese went to Michael Biehn, and the role of Sarah Connor went to Linda Hamilton. Cameron’s Corman buddies Paxton and Henrikson were cast in minor roles.

Cameron was already skilled in special effects, but he also recruited an established master to help create the Terminator. Makeup artist Stan Winston, who had already proven his genius on 1982’s The Thing, collaborated with Cameron to sketch out the cyborg design. It took six months for Winston and his team to create and build the puppet apparatus used for the “unskinned” Terminator in the film.

Observers were skeptical about The Terminator’s chances for box office success. Even personnel at Orion had their doubts. However, the movie opened at #1 at the box office in its first week. Audiences flocked to the action-packed film that included elements of science-fiction, horror, and, occasionally, humor. The critics who loved it really loved it, praising the effects, pacing, and performances. Most of the negative criticism focused on the amount of violence, but there was general agreement that Arnold had cemented his place as an action star. He brought physicality and menace to the role, and had one scene that gave him his everlasting catchphrase, “I’ll be back.”

Prolific writer Harlan Ellison also loved the movie, but found it a little too familiar. Ellison threatened to sue over similarities to “Soldier,” an episode of The Outer Limits that he had written about two enemy combatants from the future who do battle in the past. Over Cameron’s objections, Orion settled, and a credit for Ellison was added to later prints of the film and home video releases.

Despite the Ellison hiccup, Cameron and Schwarzenegger had carved out prime spots in Hollywood. While The Terminator was being made, Cameron had already been approached about a sequel to Alien. He would write and direct Aliens in 1986. Starring original cast member Sigourney Weaver alongside Cameron regulars Biehn, Paxton, and Henriksen, it was a massive hit and is widely regarded as one of the finest action films ever made. Arnold went on an insane run of 1980s box office successes, reeling off hits like Commando, Predator, The Running Man, and Twins with seemingly ridiculous ease.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers)

Cameron, Schwarzenegger, and Hamilton reunited in 1991 for an almost inevitable sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (colloquially known as T2). T2 was a bigger hit than both the original Terminator and Aliens, taking the #1 spot at the box office for the year. Like Aliens, it’s seen as one of the best action and science fiction films ever, as well as one of the greatest sequels; the movie flipped the script by having Arnold play a new, heroic Terminator who is sent to the past to protect young John Connor from an advance robotic assassin, the T-1000 (played by Robert Patrick). Cameron shoved the art of moviemaking further into the future with the computer effects used for the morphing T-1000. T2 won four Oscars (Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Makeup), giving it the distinction of being the first sequel to win an Oscar when the original film had received no nominations.

The rest you know. The Terminator has continued as a franchise, running off four more movies, a TV series, a web series, and an anime-style series that premiered in August. Arnold continues to be one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history (as well as having a stint as the governor of California). He currently stars in the Netflix action-comedy series, FUBAR, the second season of which completed filming in August.

Cameron would continue to elevate the art of filmmaking, marrying eye-popping visuals to crowd-pleasing stories. Avatar (#1), Avatar: The Way of Water (#3), and Titanic (#4) are three of the of the four biggest box office moneymakers in history. He also took Oscars for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Film Editing for Titanic. Cameron and his brother Michael also hold a number of patents on film equipment that they developed for underwater shooting, as well as other digital filming innovations, like the head rigs used for performance capture.  He is currently prepping the third Avatar film, Fire and Ash, for 2025 release.

By the Numbers: Purple Rain Reigned Supreme 40 Years Ago

Prince was only 24 years old in 1982 when he partied like it was 1999. That multi-platinum double-album announced Prince as one of the biggest stars of the early 1980s and made him one of the (at the time) rare Black artists to receive frequent airplay on the nascent MTV. Just two years later, Prince returned with a new album and a new movie to go with it. Both were called Purple Rain, and that one-two punch cemented Prince as a superstar. Here’s the story by the numbers.

A Two-Pronged Project

Purple Rain trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers)

The genesis for the album/film project came from Prince himself. Following the impact of 1999, Prince told his manager at the time, Bob Cavallo, that renewal of his contract would depend on whether or not Cavallo could find the artist a movie to headline. When multiple studios stonewalled his efforts, Cavallo decided that he would produce the movie himself. Using Prince’s plot outline for the story, Cavallo hired William Blinn to write a screenplay. The creator of Starsky & Hutch, Blinn had won a Peabody Award for the classic Brian’s Song and Emmys for Brian’s Song and Roots, in addition to being a multiple nominee for his work on the Fame TV series. Film editor Albert Magnoli landed his first directorial gig with the film; Magnoli made some significant revisions to the screenplay, reportedly making the story less dark in nature.

Too Many Songs to Count

“Purple Rain” (Uploaded to YouTube by Prince)

Prince and his band the Revolution started working on the album in July of 1983, three months before shooting started on the film. All of Prince’s previous albums had featured just him as the primary musician, but this time the credits read “produced, arranged, composed, and performed by Prince and the Revolution.” One song that would appear on the soundtrack, “Baby I’m a Star,” had been written by the end of 1981; it was one of three songs for the album and film that was recorded live at a show at Minneapolis’s First Avenue club (also a principal setting in the film) in August of 1983 (along with “I Would Die 4 U” and “Purple Rain”). During production, Magnoli’s request for another song that would reflect the parental conflict that was so present in the film led Prince to write and record “When Doves Cry” in less than a day. Those four songs joined the other tunes written specifically for the project: “Let’s Go Crazy;” “Computer Blue;” “The Beautiful Ones;” “Darling Nikki;” and “Take Me with U.”

“Jungle Love” by The Time (Uploaded to YouTube by The Time)

In addition to the nine songs that would make up the Purple Rain album, Prince was also busy writing, co-writing, producing, and/or performing on the film’s songs by Morris Day and The Time and Apollonia 6, sometimes under a variety of aliases. Prince co-wrote both The Time’s “Jungle Love” and “The Bird,” on which he also played synthesizer and guitar, respectively. Those two songs would feature on The Time’s album, Ice Cream Castle, which would be released between the Purple Rain album and film. As for Apollonia 6’s “Sex Shooter,” Prince wrote and produced it in addition to handling drum programming and playing synth. The self-titled Apollonia 6 album would be released in the fall of 1984.

A Couple of Dozen Musicians

With the exception of veteran actor Clarence Williams III (as the father of Prince’s character, The Kid) and Italian horror royalty Olga Karlatos (as The Kid’s mother), the majority of the cast was simply made up of the musicians from the various bands playing fictionalized versions of themselves. Prince associate Billy Sparks played First Avenue boss Billy. The Revolution included its then current membership: Wendy Melvoin (guitar); Lisa Coleman (keyboard); “Bobby Z” Rivkin (drums); “Doctor” Matt Fink (keyboard); and Mark Brown (aka Brown Mark, bass). Dez Dickerson, who played guitar on the 1999 album, appeared fronting his band, the Modernaires. Back-up singer Jill Jones played herself. The totality of the then-current version of The Time appeared, including Morris Day (lead singer), Jerome Benton (valet, etc.), Garry “Jellybean” Johnson (drums), Mark Cardenas (keyboard), Gerry Hubbard Jr. (bass), “St.” Paul Peterson (keyboards), and Jesse Johnson (guitar). In addition to the main role played by Apollonia Kotero of Appolonia 6, bandmates Brenda Bennett and Susan Moonsie played themselves.

First Album, Then Movie

“When Doves Cry” (Uploaded to YouTube by Prince)

The Purple Rain album started hitting stores on June 25, 1984, but lead single “When Doves Cry” had been sent to radio in May. “Doves” began to rocket up the charts, driving interest in both the record and film. By July 7, it was Prince’s first #1 song in America; it would sit atop the Hot 100 for five weeks, still holding the spot when the movie opened on July 27. Second single “Let’s Go Crazy,” released the week before the movie opened, hit number one by the end of September.

Purple Rain’s arrival in movie theaters did the seemingly impossible that summer; it dislodged Ghostbusters from the #1 spot at the box office after seven straight weeks of record-breaking domination. Though Ghostbusters would reclaim the top a week later, Rain was set for a healthy run that would see the film earn 10 times its $7 million budget. While it didn’t crack the Top Ten moneymaking films in a record-shattering year that included Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Purple Rain did take the 11th spot.

“Let’s Go Crazy” (Uploaded to YouTube by Prince)

But the album proved to be the true juggernaut. Powered by five hit singles, Purple Rain took #1 on the album charts in August and didn’t let go for an astonishing 24 weeks. To that point, only The Beatles and Elvis had managed the trick of having a #1 film, song, and album simultaneously, but Prince and the Revolution joined that company. The album’s initial chart run was 122 straight weeks overall. The album is certified to have sold over 25 million copies worldwide, making it one of the all-time best-sellers. At the 1985 Academy Awards, Purple Rain took home the Oscar for Music (Original Song Score).

Five Solid Hits, Plus Three

All told, Purple Rain generated eight hit songs between the title album, Apollonia 6’s eponymous entry, and The Time’s Ice Cream Castle. In addition to “When Doves Cry” and “Let’s Go Crazy,” Prince scored with the title track (#2), “I Would Die 4 U” (#8), and “Take Me with U” (#25). The Time’s “Jungle Love” hit #20, and “The Bird” cracked the Top 40 at #36. Apollonia 6’s “Sex Shooter” only made it to #85 on the Hot 100, but it did much better on the U.S. R&B Chart (#19) and the Dance Chart (#32).

Double Recognition

The Library of Congress has enshrined both the movie and the album in, respectively, the National Film Registry and the National Recording Registry. Both met the criteria for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” In a record year at the movies and a year loaded with huge and historic albums by the likes of Tina Turner, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna, Prince didn’t just make a dent in the landscape; he was absolute monarch of the charts and briefly knocked out one of the biggest #1 films of the decade.

While the double success of Purple Rain was a peak moment for Prince, it’s only one snapshot in a life filled with hit songs, achievements, and accolades. With so many awards that it’s almost impossible to list them all, and his dozens of songs that he wrote for other artists, not to mention guest appearances, his presence was pervasive. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction was inevitable. And his more than 100 million albums sold made him one of the best-selling artists in history. For the summer of 1984, no one was ever bigger than Prince.

The Summer of 1984 Rewrote the Box Office Rules

The movie business has existed in a state of perpetual change ever since the first flickering image was presented onscreen by the Lumière brothers in Paris’s Grand Café in 1895. The ‘20s brought us sound and the ‘30s saw the arrival of the feature-length animated film. The ’70s emerged as a decade of success and disruption, with director-driven dramas, disaster films, and the devil vying for top dollars against boxers, Bond, sharks, and Star Wars. By 1984, the board was getting reset yet again as the year would be the first time that three feature films made over $100 million each on their way to a total take of $4 billion. Here’s how the summer of ’84 rewrote the rules.

1. Summer Started Early

Footloose trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers)

Though we’ve been conditioned since Jaws to think that the biggest moneymakers debut in the summer, or perhaps over the winter holiday, one of 1984’s top ten hits was released in February. That was Footloose, which would finish at number seven for the year despite the considerable list of movies that followed. It also helped cement another big truth about the ’80s that was particularly important when it came to selling movies. That was . . .

2. Big Soundtracks Drove Business

“Let’s Go Crazy” (Uploaded to YouTube by Prince)

1984 is notable for films that had absolutely massive hit soundtracks. In a few cases, the soundtrack albums far eclipsed the success of the films themselves. Hard to Hold, starring Rick Springfield, barely made back its budget, but the eponymous soundtrack album sold over a million copies in America and produced three Top 40 hits, included Springfield’s #5 classic “Love Somebody.” Another example was the soundtrack to Purple Rain by Prince and the Revolution; the Prince-led film made almost ten times its budget, barely missing the top ten grossing films list for the year, but the album was a monster: It sold 15 million copies in the States, sat at #1 for months on end, and produced four Top Ten hits (#1 “When Doves Cry;” #1 “Let’s Go Crazy;” #2 “Purple Rain;” #8 “I Would Die 4 U”). Interestingly, the film also supported two additional albums by acts who also appeared in the film: Ice Cream Castle by The Time and the self-titled Apollonia 6. Buoyed by their use in the film, both “Jungle Love” and “The Bird” by The Time cracked the US Top 40.

Among the other major music movers were soundtracks for Breakin’, Ghostbusters, Streets of Fire, Beat Street, The NeverEnding Story, The Woman in Red (which netted the year’s Academy Award for original song, “I Just Called to Say I Love You” by Stevie Wonder), Give My Regards to Broad Street, Beverly Hills Cop, Teachers, and Stop Making Sense (from the Talking Heads concert film of the same name). Every one of those albums produced at least one hit song, while Beverly Hills Cop had four (Glenn Frey’s “The Heat Is On,” Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance,” Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F,” and Patti LaBelle’s “New Attitude”). The compilation soundtrack album remained a major factor in selling a movie well over the next two decades.

As a coda to the key role music was playing in marketing, dance-oriented films were also huge in 1984. The 1983 success of Flashdance paved the way for Footloose, but Flashdance’s deployment of urban music and breakdancing also opened the door for films like Breakin’, its same-year sequel (Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo), and Beat Street. [Writer’s Note: It’s a crime that “Nobody puts Baby in the corner” from Dirty Dancing emerged as an iconic line from the decade while Breakin’s “Ozone! Street Dancer!” remains unappreciated.]

3. Comedy Can Be King

Ghostbusters trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Ghostbusters)

If you looked back at the #1 moneymakers in the United States prior to 1984, rarely would you find pure comedies holding the top spot. Musical comedies, like Funny Girl or Mary Poppins, took the top on occasion, and Blazing Saddles came close in 1974, but you were much more likely to find action or historical epics or spectacle films at the top. In the U.S. in 1984, six of the Top Ten grossing films were comedies or comedic genre mashups. In fact, five of the six were genre hybrids: Splash (fantasy-based romantic comedy); Ghostbusters and Gremlins (both horror comedy); Beverly Hills Cop (fish-out-of-water cop comedy, but with some heavy action set pieces); and Romancing the Stone (romantic adventure comedy). The sole “pure” comedy was Police Academy (and while it did have the action piece of the riot sequence at the end, it’s mostly played for laughs, as opposed to the life-of-death stakes of the violent climactic shootout of Beverly Hills Cop). And of those six, two made more in the U.S. than third place Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: Beverly Hills Cop (over $224 million to date) and Ghostbusters (over $229 million).

You also have to note the “SNL effect” of the top two comedies. TV institution Saturday Night Live had been minting future talent for the movies for years at this point, and both Ghostbusters (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd) and Cop (Eddie Murphy) were led by SNL alums. In fact, every year of the ’80s had already featured a Top Ten box office comedy starring at least one SNL cast member (1980’s The Blues Brothers with Aykroyd and John Belushi; 1981’s Stripes with Murray; 1982’s 48 Hours with Murphy; 1983’s Trading Places with Aykroyd and Murray), and that pattern would hold through 1989.

For the record (every pun intended), we should also recognize that Ghostbusters and Cop each had one of those hit soundtracks we were talking about. The evidence is pretty clear that, in the Reagan Decade, building a film around an SNL breakout with a packed soundtrack yielded results.

4. Old/New/Old Rule: It’s Always Been About the Franchise

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers)

Two of 1984’s Top Ten films (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock) were entries in established franchises. However, six other entries would turn out to be franchise starters: Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, Gremlins, The Karate Kid, Police Academy, and Romancing the Stone. Arguments could actually be made for Splash! (which generated a sequel TV movie) and Footloose (which led to a Broadway musical and a remake). This hopefully puts to rest the notion that franchise fever is a recent thing.

Moreover, whether in theaters or on streaming, six of the eight of the 1984 movies had new entries in those franchises within the past year. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the continued Star Trek series on Paramount+, the animated Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai spin-off, Netflix’s Karate Kid continuation Cobra Kai, the forthcoming Beverly Hills Cop 4, and the recent Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny prove that the summer of 1984 still has a hold on the movie-watching public.

5. The Money Had Never Been Bigger

Beverly Hills Cop trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Paramount Movies)

Even with the juggernaut of success that was Return of the Jedi, 1983’s domestic box office didn’t quite crack $2 billion. But 1984 more than doubled that, breaking the $4 billion barrier for the first time. Ghostbusters, Gremlins, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom all surpassed $100 million during the year, Beverly Hills Cop broke it as its run continued into 1985, and The Karate Kid came close. It wouldn’t surprise you that Hollywood immediately tried to develop everything for sequels, especially since they thought that the biggest franchise of the past several years, Star Wars, had run its course (look, even Hollywood gets naïve). There wouldn’t be a year without a sequel in the Box Office Top Ten until 1993; and there hasn’t been a year without a sequel in the Top Ten since 1996. It’s fair to say that if you consistently, decade after decade, show up for sequels, franchises, and remakes, you’re going to keep getting them.

6. 1984 Provoked a New Rating

Red Dawn (1984) trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by MGM)

One final lasting change wrought by 1984 was the introduction of the PG-13 rating. There had always been a bit of a nebulous gulf between the PG and R ratings. As violent as the shark attacks were in Jaws, for example, that film netted a PG in 1975. However, two blockbusters in 1984, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins (coincidentally, both either directed or produced by Jaws director Steven Spielberg), pushed the limits of their PG ratings. Two violent scenes in particular drove the conversation: Mola Ram pulling out a man’s heart in TOD and Billy’s mom wiping out a group of Gremlins with her kitchen appliances. The MPAA decided to add a PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned) in between PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) and R (Restricted; no one under 17 admitted without an adult). Before the end of the year, action film Red Dawn would be the first movie to sport the new rating.