Cyborg 2087 - the TRUE ancestor of the Terminator franchise

[UniSol GR77]

I've finally watched this movie.
It costed just 100.000 dollars in 1966. It had an extremely low budget. It had few special effects, the sets were poor, the direction and the cinematography were TV-like.

THAT SAID, the lead character was part Kyle Reese, part Uncle Bob.
There was time travel, and there were two Terminators ("Tracers" in the movie) programmed to find the lead character, GARTH A7, in order to kill him before he would alter the past and change the timeline!

Michael Rennie was very charismatic as Garth A7. He's a great actor.

No action pieces, except for the long and excellent final fight between GARTH A7 and the Tracer, which truly reminds of the T-800 fist-fighting with the T-1000.

Harlan Ellison was 100% wrong, Terminator was or seemed hugely inspired by this, not by his 2 Outer Limits episodes.

[kylor]

To add to that and give a little backstory: The Terminator was inspired by director John Carpenter, who had made the slasher film Halloween (1978) on a low budget. Cameron used a fever dream he had while sick in Rome as a "launching pad" to write a slasher-style film. Cameron's agent disliked the early concept of the horror film and requested that he work on something else. Apparently, a direct quote from Cameron was supposed to appear in a magazine called Starlog where he claimed that "“I ripped off a few Outer Limits segments." and "ripped off a few of Ellison’s short stories" to put the script together for The Terminator.

You can find the full info on those quotes here: https://electricliterature.com/was-1...lison-rip-off/

Worth noting if nothing more.

[UniSol GR77]

Originally Posted by kylor

Apparently, a direct quote from Cameron was supposed to appear in a magazine called Starlog where he claimed that "“I ripped off a few Outer Limits segments." and "ripped off a few of Ellison’s short stories" to put the script together for The Terminator.

So weird, because Cameron always danied that.

[kylor]

Originally Posted by UniSol GR77

So weird, because Cameron always danied that.

It goes into more detail at the link I provided, but I'll put it here as well:

Purportedly, the editors of Starlog were asked (forced?) by one of James Cameron’s assistants to alter the piece before it went to print. Still, it’s widely acknowledged that the studio paid Ellison something in the range of 65,000 as a settlement.

This controversy can be quickly “explained” by watching the video at this link. Other than one or two blog posts (here and here), this is pretty much the only documentation you can find online, or at least the only one that anyone cites. The funny thing about this video is that it seems spliced together by a fan using footage taken from an old Canadian sci-fi commentary show. I’m not dismissing the validity of the information in the video (at all), but there is a tone to it that has a familiar conspiracy-theory vibe in which people with the “real story” are gleefully sticking it to the man. Personally, I’m more on Ellison’s side (full disclosure, I’ve interviewed him twice) but there’s still something about this dust-up that’s strangely compelling. Mostly, because it’s not and and dried. Ellison certainly didn’t own the simple idea of time-traveling soldiers, and if we think about art as appropriation for just a second in a David Shields kind-of-way, it seems like Terminator couldn’t possibly be a rip-off of these two scripts, or of one short story. Even by Ellison’s own admission, the problem wasn’t the intellectual property, but rather the hubris.

I have no opinion on this either way, as I haven't researched into every detail to get the full picture of the situation. Just putting it out here because I find it interesting and it might be knowledgeable to others.

[UniSol GR77]

That said:

1- Ellison did not invent the time travel concept, or the "soldier from the future" idea.

2- Having a cyborg from the future programmed to kill the mother of the future leader of the Resistance is an original idea. As well as the way in which Cameron depicted the circular loop/predestination paradox.

3- Having an android endoskeleton embedded into a "casing" of organic tissue, thus forming a "cyborg", was a totally unique and original take on the subject.

4- If memory serves me well, even that specific post-apocalyptic future was an unique take, at least they way it was depicted on-screen.