Before Titanic, Aliens, True Lies, the Abyss, and (obviously) T2: Judgement Day, there had to be an arena for James Cameron to get his feet wet. That's right, Pirahna 2. But after that, Cameron managed to fandangle funding to shoot a complex action-thriller involving time-travel, killer robots, romance, and the end of the world as we know it... (all, apparently, based on concepts from Harlan Ellison). The result, Terminator, has become a standard for what science-fiction should be: exciting, frightening, intense, and just damn cool.
According to the film, (released in 1984) in 1997, the world experiences nuclear armageddon, leaving only a handful of survivors. They are soon dominated by a superior robotic intelligence which survived the big blast. Humans are hunted and enslaved by mechanical masters, and it's not until they begin to revolt that the robots actually percieve a threat. The Terminators, years later facing ultimate destruction, send one of their owb back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, the mother of the revolution's leader. The revolutionaries also send one of their own back in hopes of stopping the android. Sarah and the stranger from the future eventually fall in love as they are relentlessly persued by the massive mechanical monster, and everyone from cops to bikers are killed in the cross fire. The entire city becomes a war zone, but Connor prevails, destroying the creature, and possibly capable of changing the horrible future to come.
A dynamic atmosphere surrounds the movie, there's a feeling of something much bigger going on than just what is shown. This makes up for any faults in acting, script or special effects (which are really good for their time). Superior storywise to it's 1992 sequel, it still holds up today as a classic in cinema.