Welcome back to A SKIN-depth Look, and as you can see, we're now alternating ourlonger, more in-depth directors series with slightly less comprehensive topics. With James Cameron returning to theworld he created with this weekend's Terminator: Dark Fate, let's take a look back at the long nudity history of the Terminator franchise!
This series has had its ups and downs, though it'sundeniably been all downs since Cameron stopped directing these movies. Had this been likethe Alien franchise and they brought in a director on Cameron's level, it might have been a different story. Terminator 3's Jonathan Mostow's biggest prior credit was U-571, Genisys director Alan Taylor made one of the worst and lowest grossing MCU movies in Thor: The Dark World, and don't even get me started on Salvation's director McG. In other words, these men were no Ridley Scott, David Fincher, or Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
But let's talk about the good times first, back in 1984 when James Cameron and his producers rejected O.J. Simpson to play the title role in The Terminator because they found him too likable to be believed as a vicious murderer. Also, I won't be including the 2008 television seriesThe Sarah Connor Chroniclesas it had no nudity whatsoever.
The Terminator (1984)
Shot on a shoestring budget, even for the time, of $6 million, James Cameron used guerrilla shooting techniques to keep the film under budget—mostly involving him shooting scenes without proper permits. Cameron began his long working relationships with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, and of course, Linda Hamilton on this picture, giving us one of the seminal science fiction films of the 80s.
As lowly waitress Sarah Connor, Hamilton doesn't come off as your typical female sci-fi lead. Shemay not morph into a full-on badass until the sequel, but she's still a character with a lot of agency, determined to outrun whatever fate destiny has in store for her.Apart from the laughable notion that 28 year-old Hamilton is playing 18 year-old Sarah Connor, it's interesting to note that Connor is one of the only final girls in a mass-murderer movie to survive the ending after having sex. Typically it's the chaste girl who makes it out alive, but a freshly knocked-up Sarah Connor lives to see the sequel.
The psycho-sexual dynamics at play in Terminator have been analyzed before, but it merits repeating that, in the future, resistance fighter John Connor chose his most trusted lieutenant to bang his mom in the past so she could give birth to him. This raises all sorts of questions surrounding time travel logistics, but in the flow of the film it makes perfect sense.Like many films in this franchise, the first Terminator has far more male nudity than female nudity, thanks in no small part to a device whereinSchwarzenegger's cyborg and Biehn's Kyle Reesemust travel through time in the buff.
When the sex scene between Sarah and Kyle finally comes at the hour and twenty-two minute mark, it's surprisingly tender. Absent is the exploitative nudity of Cameron's previous film Piranha II: The Spawning, but it's also not without the ridiculously melodramatic flourishes he added to Titanicand Avatar's big sex scenes, where clasped hands are indicative of how intense their lovemaking is...
Between the imagery in Cameron's sexscenes andhis epically embarrassing photoshoot with former wife and producer Gale Anne Hurd, it's obvious that the man has a very chaste andstuntedview of love...
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Ranking alongside Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan as the greatest science fiction sequels of all-time, Cameron's T2 is sort of the perfect sequel, perfectlysubverting expectations of a sequel while simultaneously leaning into those tropes. T2alsodoesn't fall into the trap of attempting to course correct storytelling or logic gaps, which is the thing that bogged down and ultimately ruined all further sequels in the franchise.
Along with Genisys, this is also the only one of the feature films in the franchise with no female nudity—though both films have plenty of male nudity. During filming, Cameron drifted away from wife number three (fellow director Kathryn Bigelow) and ended up in the strong, loving, muscular arms of his leading lady, Linda Hamilton. A wiser man than I once said that it's obvious when a director is banging his leading lady because of how lovingly theyfilm them. This film is no exception as Cameron's camera lingers adoringly on Hamilton's absolutely flawless physique...
While Cameron had worked a similar badass female magic on Sigourney Weaver as Aliens' Ellen Ripley, he gives us the definitive female action star of the 90s in Hamilton's Sarah Connor. No longer the naïve damsel in distress from the first film, Hamilton vigorously and violently fights alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 to protect her son John (Edward Furlong). Perhaps thanks to the fact that he was indeed having an affair with Hamilton during filming, he also manages to make her simultaneously sexy as hell, strong, and dominant.
Save some cgi-boobs during the T-1000 (Robert Patrick)'s death, all the nudity in T2 is of the male variety, so let's move right along to the first Cameron-less sequel, featuring the first female Terminator—surely a great sign for the guys in the audience.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
Enter the TX or Terminatrix, played by Kristanna Loken, an actress who had consistently worked—mostly in television—since the mid-90s. Roles on Pensacola: Wings of Gold and Mortal Kombat: Conquest had given her some geek cred prior to this film, but it was an entrance for the ages. If you saw the film in theaters and felt a twinge of disappointment that it wasn't a better nude scene, that's because the film's 2.35:1 format prevented you from seeing more.
The film was released in the Fall of 2003 on DVD in both Widescreen and Full Screen editions, because most people had televisions in those days which had a 1.33:1 ratio and they foolishly thought they were being cheated out of footage because on their televisions, a widescreen film looked as though it had its top and bottom chopped off. In actuality, it was typically because the so-called Full Screen version—more accurately referred to as Pan and Scan—that filled their entire screen was created by chopping off the left and right sides of the film.
In a case like this, however, it seems like director Jonathan Mostow opted to shoot the film in an open matte format—equivalent of 16x9 or 1.66:1—allowing him to craft the shots in the editing bay and only use what he deemed to be the best parts of the captured image. This is a common practice and likely gave him the ability to craft a less gratuitous look at Loken's body, as you can tell by these comparisons between the Widescreen version (top) and the Pan and Scan version (bottom)...
As someone who worked in a video store—another lifetime ago—and adamantly advocated for the Widescreen format in the nascent days of DVDs, I can say that I was wrong in this one instance. The open matte format allows us to see much, much more of Ms. Loken. Here's an even better example of widescreen (top) vs pan and scan (bottom)...
I mean, it's kinda no contest in this instance. This one instance. Continuing the proud Terminator franchise tradition, the female nudity ends here and we get more male nudity, once again courtesy of Arnold, who was in the midst of his first, ultimately successful campaign for governor of Cuhlee-fornia. With Schwarzenegger now unavailable for the next several years, the time felt right for a reboot...
Terminator Salvation
If ever a film was doomed to fail, it was this one. The time felt right for a reboot as several major franchises were doing likewise in this same era: Star Trek, Fast and Furious, and Sherlock Holmes in 2009 alone. Slated for aMemorial Day weekend release, it looked like it might be a big player in the thick of the summer season, despite director McG being attached. Everyone deserves a shot, right?
In late January, 2009, the famous audio of the film's star Christian Bale on set tearing hilariously named Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut a new asshole leaked to the press. The cameraman was apparently tinkering with lights and walking around on set during takes—a major sin on any film set—leading Bale to launch into anearly four minute character assassination. It's the sort of thing that usually wouldn't have left the set outside of whispers and rumors, but the internet turned it into a meme and to this day, many of us still say, "Oh gooooood for you" when we see Christian Bale.
This more or less doomed the film to fail instantly, as McG clearly didn't have his set under control, meaning this would be another fiasco from a director with several to his name already. Even dumber, Warner Brothers pushed for the first PG-13 rating in the series, meaning toned down violence and—worst of all—no female nudity. Male butt cheeks are just fine in mega-million dollar blockbusters, but any woman taking out her breasts will earn her film an R.
And that's what happened to poor Moon Bloodgood's nude scene, which was filmed and later inserted into an Unrated Director's Cut on Blu-ray. Too bad this was never seen on the big screen because it had been a long time since anyone other than a cyborg was nude in this franchise. It's poorly lit and shot, leading me to be on Christian Bale's side in the fight against Shane Hurlbut...
The thing about this director's cut, however, is that it showed that even an R-rated version of this movie would have sucked. In the end, though, at least they released the sceneand didn't chicken out completely about nudity the way Paramount did when they got the franchise for yet another reboot in 2015...
Terminator Genisys
Perhaps the most misguided of all the many reboots and sequels this franchise has seen, 2015's Genisys—another stupid subtitle—does what all the worst of these movies does and tries to fix the gaps in the franchise's logic. In doing so, they only end up creating more and bigger problems and twists for the sake of twists—John Connor's the bad guy this time.
The only inspired bit of casting in this saga—that saw Michael Biehn replaced with charisma vacuum Jai Courtney in the role of Kyle Reese—was that of Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor. Clarke had proven that she was good at playing determined badass women with a single drive and purpose in life on Game of Thrones, not to mention the fact that she would be comfortable with any potential naked time travel.
When the time came, it seemed that Ms. Clarke kept up her end of the bargain but Paramount and director Alan Taylor had used ridiculous cgi shadows and all manner of Austin Powers-esque blocking to prevent us from actually seeing a nipple or a butt cheek. For the record, there are bare butt cheeks earlier in the film, but in the other proud Terminator tradition, they belong to Jai Courtney. Here's a taste of the stupidity on display during the very brief time Clarke is nude in the film...
You could point to these last two films and say that the PG-13 rating is ultimately what ruined the franchise, but T3 isn't all that great a movie either. This is why Terminator is now following the trend of ignoring bad sequels and making a direct sequel to T2 titled Terminator: DarkFate. They may course correct a number of problems, but they're clearly still embracing the terrible subtitle trend.The first image from the film looked promising...
Cameron's not directing—Deadpool's Tim Miller gets that honor—but he is allegedly taking a more hands-on approach to producing the film, as opposed to his role as check casher on the previous sequels.We know that Mackenzie Davis bares her ass because it was in the red band trailer, but beyond that, we haven't got much idea. If the franchise's past is any indication, however, there's bound to be more male nudity than female nudity in the flick...
Check Out the Other Franchises in Our SKIN-depth Look Series
—A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of the Halloween Franchise
—A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of the Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise
—A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of the Friday the 13th Franchise
—A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Comic Book Movies
—A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity ofthe Species Franchise
—A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of the Death Wish Franchise
—A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of the National Lampoon's Theatrical Features
—A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of the Porky's Trilogy
—A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of the James Bond Franchise
—A SKIN-depth Look at 25 Years of the NC-17 Rating
**All non-Mr. Skin labeled photos in this article courtesy of IMDb
