The Terminator: 10 Behind the Scenes Stories of a Sci-Fi Masterpiece

Here 10 Terminator behind the scenes stories.

The Terminator Came to James Cameron in a Dream

“The Terminator came from a dream that I had while I was sick with a fever in a cheap pensione in Rome in 1981. It was the image of a chrome skeleton emerging from a fire. When I woke up, I began sketching on the hotel stationery," the film's writer-director, James Cameron, told the British Film Institute.

“The first sketch I did showed a metal skeleton cut in half at the waist, crawling over a tile floor, using a large kitchen knife to pull itself forward while reaching out with the other hand. In a second drawing, the character is threatening a crawling woman. Minus the kitchen knife, these images became the finale of The Terminator almost exactly.”

The Terminator Script Didn't Grab Arnold Schwarzenegger at First

The terrific new book The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood's Kings of Carnage, written by Nick de Semlyen, reveals that Schwarzenegger was not initially impressed by the Terminator script.

"Still, urged to take a good look at the script by his girlfriend Maria, who had been hooked by it when it arrived at their home, he agreed to meet its writer -director for lunch," de Semlyen writes.

Maria, of course, was Maria Shriver, to whom Schwarzenegger was married from 1986 to 2021.

Arnold Schwarzenegger Was Originally in the Running to Play Kyle Reese

When Schwarznegger was first approached about the film, he was in the running to play the heroic Kyle Reese, the role that ultimately went to Michael Biehn.

“It was a total coincidence because I didn’t even try out for Terminator,” Schwarzenegger once told Howard Stern. “I was trying to be Kyle Reese, and during the lunch when I met with James Cameron, the director, I kept talking all the time about The Terminator.”

OJ Simpson Could Have Been The Terminator

Studio chief Mike Medavoy wanted the Buffalo Bills star in the role of a cold-blooded killing machine.

We'll let you handle the joke here.

Medavoy later explained to EW: "At the time, O.J. Simpson had one of those commercials for Hertz where he jumped over a counter and ran to get a rental car. It was all of that athletic stuff, which I thought the Terminator should have."

Arnold Schwarzenegger Says 131 Words — Total — in The Terminator

Three of them, of course, are "I'll be back."

Don't believe us? Watch this.

Linda Hamilton Wanted to Do Shakespeare

"I was going to be a Shakespearean actress when I came out of the Strasberg studio in New York. And so I wasn’t as excited about The Terminator as my people were," Hamilton told EW. Maybe I was a little snobby. I thought, 'Oh, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m not sure about that.'"

But later, when she watched him work, she remembered thinking to herself: “Hmm, this might work.”

She added to EW: "There was something so utterly robotic and terrifying about him. I realized that we were doing something new here, and all of the sudden I believed."

Sarah Connor's Age

The movie never mentions Sarah Connor's age. Though different Terminator movies have since given her different dates of birth, the original film's script states that she is only 19 years old.

Specifically, it says she "is 19, pretty in a flawed, accessible way," whatever that means.

Could have just left it at "pretty."

Shooting During Shooting

James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Biehn blew off steam during the shooting of the movie by... shooting.

Here they are at a shooting range with John Milius, who directed Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian.

The Terminator Was Defeated by Ralph Macchio, and Nerds

The film did fine at the box office, but it wasn't in the Top 20 movies of 1984 — it ranked No. 21 domestically, behind movies like Revenge of the Nerds, Breakin', Bachelor Party, and Red Dawn. The top movie of 1984?

Domestically, it was Ghostbusters, followed by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, and The Karate Kid. (Internationally, Beverly Hills Cop was the No. 1 movie, followed by the others listed, in the same order.)

Yep: The Karate Kid trounced The Terminator. But no one was complaining, because The Terminator was made for just $6.4 million, and earned $34 million domestically, and $38 million total.

It Found Its Audience on VHS

The Terminator quickly gained a VHS following: It was the No. 2 VHS rental of 1985. (Though again lost to that infernal Ralph Macchio, whose film The Karate Kid was No. 1.

Partly because of the original film's huge home-video following, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, was No. 1 at the 1991 box office. And a franchise was born.

Thanks for Reading These Terminator Behind the Scenes Stories

You might also like this list of the Best Arnold Schwarzenegger Movies. We ranked The Terminator pretty high.

Main image: The Terminator.

All images from Orion pictures except where noted.