Awesome / The Terminator

Goddayum!

• The Tech Noir scene. The T-800 gets the drop on Sarah, and is about to shoot her through the head, when Kyle Reese pulls out a Sawed-Off Shotgun and blasts him to the floor. Then the T-800 pulls out an Uzi and starts shooting up the nightclub. He almost gets Sarah again when Kyle manages to reload the shotgun and blast him out the front window. He then kneels down next to Sarah and tells her "Come with me if you want to live." Best Establishing Character Moment ever.
• The Car Chase afterward also counts. The T-800 jumps Out of the Inferno onto the hood of the car, punches through the windshield, and is about to kill Sarah when he's flung off by the sudden impact. When the T-800 catches up to them in a stolen cop car, Kyle has Sarah drive by leaning across the seats while trading shotgun shots with the T-800. Despite having just been told everything about the future, she barely hesitates and successfully avoids any crashes.
• The Police Station Massacre is one long Moment of Awesome for the T-800. He tells the officer at the front desk "I'll be back," and, true to his word, drives a car through the front of the building. He then goes in Guns Akimbo with an assault rifle and a shotgun, gunning down every single cop in his way. That one scene demonstrates just how terrifyingly effective a killing machine the Terminator is.
  • Despite their slaughter, the cops deserve a mention for trying to take him down. It shows you just how dedicated they were.
• The second Car Chase is remembered most for its satisfying conclusion, when Kyle shoves a pipe bomb up the hose tray of a gas tanker and causes it to explode, supposedly taking the T-800 with it. Sarah also deserves props for managing to stay ahead of the truck on foot for about thirty seconds.
  • Additionally, it's a small moment, but after they realize the explosion didn't kill the T-800 and start running again, she has the presence of mind to stop for a second and grab a dropped gun. The Sarah of a couple days ago might not have been able to do that.
• Kyle's Heroic Sacrifice definitely counts, when he pulls the same trick as he did with the tanker, only this time he shoves the pipe bomb directly into the T-800's chassis, blowing its legs off.
  • Even before then, with no guns or protection save for a metal rod, rather than save himself, he tells Sarah to run and challenges the T-800.
    Reese: Come on, motherfucker.
• Sarah gets a Moment of Awesome of her own after that when, after barely managing to crawl ahead of the T-800, who is still trying to kill her, she manages to trap it in a hydraulic press and pushes the button after saying: "You're terminated, fucker."
• A bit earlier, the heavily injured Reese collapses, and Sarah pleads with him to get back up. When it doesn't work, she switches to barking orders at him like a general. This is the moment when she becomes the woman who could raise the savior of humanity.
  Sarah: Move it, Reese! On your feet, soldier! On your feet!
• You have to give cred to Ginger's boyfriend, Matt Buchanan, for trying to fight the T-800 in only his underwear. He never gives up, even though he's predictably getting thrown around the room like a ragdoll until he finally dies.
  • The scene is way more awesome than the above makes it sound. Said boyfriend smashes the Terminator with a lamp, only to get thrown through a glass patio door for his audacity. Does he let that stop him? No. He gets the hell back up, even jumping over the bed to take another swing at the T-800. That gets him thrown into a mirror, but he gets back up again and tackles the Terminator like a football player - hard enough to drive it back a couple feet. It's only when he's thrown into a wooden dresser with enough force to break it on impact that he doesn't immediately get back up again. All this, after being woken up from post-coital slumber!
  • Also, listen carefully to the sound when Matt's dead body crashes through the door in front of Ginger. It kinda sounds like a gunshot, and as the Terminator comes through the door to shoot Ginger, it's already got the AMT Hardballer in its hand, which it then proceeds to shoot Ginger six times with (once in the back as she tries to run, and five more to finish her off). Since the Hardballer has a capacity of seven rounds, and we see the T-800 have to reload after killing Ginger, that would mean the unarmed Matt actually managed to cause the T-800 enough trouble that it had to resort to shooting him so he wouldn't get back up.
• Worth considering is that the entire plot of the movie happens because the Human Resistance, and John Connor who led them, were so badass that they already won the war in the future. The T-800 is not doing this as a casual social affair, this assassination is pivotal to Skynet's survival. Kyle Reese sums it up best to his police interrogators, that even if Skynet could have killed John in the future it wouldn't have mattered — humanity had already won the war. With its defense grid smashed, Skynet had no other choice but to send a Terminator back in time to erase John Connor's entire existence. The exact specifics are somewhat unclear on one issue: Whether Skynet was deleted/destroyed after the defense grid was smashed, or if Skynet was forced to live as an isolated, powerless program in some bunker computer until its power source ran out. But the point is, Skynet as an oppressive force against humanity was already stopped by 2029, making all of these time travel battles in the past necessary.

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