It's difficult to imagine anyone but the Governator playing the namesake of James Cameron's breakthrough blockbuster, which pits Sarah Connor ( Linda Hamilton) and a time-traveling soldier ( Michael Biehn) against a relentless cyborg assassin (Schwarzenegger) who slaughters without thought or remorse.
The "unkillable killer" is a given by this point in genre filmmaking, but the sci-fi staple — think of The Day the Earth Stood Still's Gort — cemented its place in modern action cinema with Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man whose massive, marbled physique may as well have been carved in another dimension. It's difficult to imagine anyone but the Governator playing the namesake of James Cameron's breakthrough blockbuster, which pits Sarah Connor ( Linda Hamilton) and a time-traveling soldier ( Michael Biehn) against a relentless cyborg assassin (Schwarzenegger) who slaughters without thought or remorse. It's thin gruel, but Cameron's eye for carnage is as poetic as his humor is wry. It's chaos that winks, a blueprint for many a cinephile's favorite era of action filmmaking.