The Bechdel Cast - The Terminator & Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

On this episode, the Bechdel Cast celebrates our three year anniversary! Jamie and Caitlin discuss The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Hasta la vista, Patriarchy. (This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere. Thursday. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked, if movies have women in them Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast, start changing it with the Bechdelcast Hello and welcome to the Bechdelcast, my name is Caitlin Durante And my name's Jamie Loftus Happy three year anniversary, Jamie I know, this is so exciting podcast my name is caitlin dorante and my name is jamie loftus happy three-year anniversary jamie

i know this is so exciting it doesn't feel like it's been that long but it also it's been like the weirdest three years in the history of the country so it also feels like forever true congratulations congratulations to you hey here we are. We just got fish tacos. Hasta la vista, baby. Hasta la vista, bitch. Wow. Wow. Now it's feminist. Now it's feminist.

Now it's feminist. We neolibbed it. We did it. So today, that is why it's just the two of us. Just the two of us. We're doing a little celebratory three-year anniversary episode. We got our fish tacos. We watched two movies, not one. Just we got our fish tacos. We watched

two movies, not one. And I'm excited about it. Yeah. So before we jump in, just the regular biz out of the way. Oh, yeah. What is the podcast? What is it? Who are we? What have we been doing for three years? Good Lord. Honestly, existential. Couldn't tell you. Well, this is our podcast about the portrayal of women in movies. And it is based around or as a jumping off point for our discussion, we use the Bechdel test. a media metric developed by cartoonist Allison Bechtel that requires that two female identifying characters in a movie have to have names they have to talk to each other about something other than a man for at least two lines by our standard our relatively low standard the bar changed right maybe it's time to I mean it's the tricky thing is if we demand more, nothing will pass. Exactly. Oh, what a nightmare.

You know, maybe we should have gone, you know, it would be funny if we were like, I'm going to start a feminist movie podcast or a James Cameron fan podcast. This episode would have a little bit of both. James Cameron is, what is going on? Multitudes is going multitudes he contains going on with that person oh we're talking about terminators today because a new one just came out uh-huh about a month ago i i did not see it i saw it and i have a little bit to say so so if you haven't seen it yet i'll give a spoiler warning a spoiler warning but uh we'll talk about that a little later on. Yeah. But these are some of my favorite movies, which is why I insisted that we do them.

So what is it? What is your history with the Terminator franchise and like these two specifically? By the way, we're covering the Terminator and Terminator 2 Judgment Day. Correct. Yes. I saw them both when I was 16 years old. Back to back? Yes yes because my family owned not unlike the james cameron titanic 2 vhs tapes oh did they sell it in a bundle yes so my family had the t1 and t2 vhs bundle box set and they were in my house for a few years, but I just like didn't pay them any

mind. And then one day I was like, I'm 16 years old. It's time for me to watch Terminator. And I Wow, it's a rite of passage. And I watched them both on the same day back to back. And I loved them, especially T2, which is which is I think widely considered the favorite the better movie although there I met a number of people who like Terminator 1 better and I think they're silly but also you know to each their own but yeah I would I would rank T2 among my top 10 favorite movies of all time. Wow, to this day? To this day. Wow.

I love that movie particularly. And just, I mean, well, okay, so then I saw those and I was like, I guess I'm a huge Terminator fan now. So I have been for, you know, going on 15 plus years. I saw Terminator 3 Rise of the machines in theaters it was terrible bad i saw terminator salvation in theaters it was like fine but i never felt the need to watch it again skipped terminator genesis and then daenerys connor right yeah but then i uh did see Terminator Dark Fate on opening day. What's your history, Jamie? Nothing.

Didn't care about him. Honestly, not crazy about him now. I liked T2 a lot from a feminist perspective. There's a lot about T2 in particular to love. I love watching Sarah Connor kick ass. It's just not, if you've been listening to the podcast podcast this is never going to be a movie that appeals to me right i don't like 80s blockbusters in general i get dragged in the reviews sometimes uh and i have this to say sorry for being so fucking young no i just i'd never seen these before uh prepping for this episode because I intuited that they were not for me.

And that was generally true. I think that there's a lot of cool stuff to talk about, though. I am. I'm excited to talk about it. But especially like Terminator 1 in particular, I'm just like, I mean, it's the effects are pretty of the time. Just like the synth score that's happening. I mean, that's fun. It's's fun but it's like pretty silly i like respect its place in history and all that and it is kind of cool from like a filmmaking perspective to see like a movie that clearly was not being set up to have a sequel then have a

sequel and have the sequel be so much better right um because we feel like that very rarely happens true and also except for paddington too of course but like i mean of course i mean those are the two major majorly cited ones t1 and t2 and p1 and p2 and depending on who you are the cheetah girls uh yeah no i i just had never uh gotten around to seeing it and you know now i can't say that anymore and And that's my history with the Terminator franchise. I'm not going to see the new one. Because I have to go see Parasite 500 more times. Of course. Yeah. Well, should we dive into the recap? Yeah, let's do it. to do a more condensed version of the recap than usual for both movies since we are covering two so if if if things aren't as thorough as you like um we do have to remind you after three years it is still a free podcast we've been very defensive lately i i mean honestly people are coming at us

more and more for being like read a book i'm like uh we we're not legally required to read a book first of all we have never purported to have read a book true and we never will nor would we okay so uh the terminator 1984 yes but we open in los angeles ever heard of it in 2029 it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Little did they know that we were not even going to survive until 2029. True. Yeah. Or that might actually be the last year. Maybe they were right. Anyways. True. Yeah, yeah. But there's a war happening between humans and machines. Then we cut back to LA in 1984. Two people show up out of thin air. One of them is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is a Terminator who has been sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor.

And you see his butt. You see his butt. Yep. You see that, I mean, the nudity choices in this movie are, I think, very interesting. True. There's more male nudity than female nudity that never happens the other is kyle reese a soldier from the human resistance in the future who is sent back to protect sarah connor then we meet sarah connor she is a young woman she works as a server but the reason she's being targeted by the Terminator is because she is the mother of

John Connor, the leader of the human resistance in the war against the machines in the future. Which is good, because we all know that the value of a woman is ascribed to whose mother she is. Right. Oh, yes. We'll talk all about that. Yeah. And the machines figure out that if they can go back in time and kill John Connor's mother, then they won't have to deal with John Connor. So both Reese and the Terminator get their hands on some guns and then they go to try to find Sarah. The Terminator starts killing every Sarah Connor in the phone book. And then he goes to kill Sarah at home. Only she's not home, but her roommate ginger is and the

terminator kills her thinking it's sarah right right after she has sex because it's the 80s right because women who have sex in a you know scary movie uh have to die but again at least the man dies as well true uh meanwhile the deaths of these other Sarah Connors are being reported on on the news and Sarah hears about it. So naturally she starts freaking out. And also at this time, Sarah notices that this dude is stalking her. It's Reese, but she assumes that it's the guy who's been killing these other Sarah Connors. Well, but as we know, Caitlin, the guy who is stalking you actually is your husband, is your baby daddy. Right.

I think there's a lot of good lessons right at the top. Yes. So then the Terminator figures out where Sarah is and he goes to kill her. But Reese intercepts him and saves Sarah by shooting the Terminator. Except it's really hard to kill Terminators. So he gets back up and keeps chasing them and then reese is like sarah come with me if you want to live so they escape and sarah's like what the fuck who are you what's going on right which is fair legitimate questions yeah and reese explains

everything that i explained just a moment ago including including how the Terminator is a cyborg. Right. Armored alloy endoskeleton underneath living human tissue. There's a lot of this movie that is just things being explained to the alleged protagonist of the movie. Yep. And also that this Terminator will not stop until Sarah Connor is dead. Yeah. He also explains the nuclear war that will take place a few years from now that the machines started because they became artificially intelligent. And more about that in Terminator 2.

Ooh. Meanwhile, the Terminator is still chasing them. And he has Terminator vision. So he's very good at finding them it's great it's good it's like target detected and we're like computer enhance enhance some great hacker imagery uh-huh for sure and then there's a car chase a crash and then sarah and reese are taken into police custody and a criminal psychologist dr silber Silberman, talks to them. And everyone, based on the information that Reese gives, thinks that Reese is crazy because he's claiming to be a time traveler from the future who was sent back to stop a cyborg from killing Sarah.

Right. So they're like, he is delusional. And she is also not sure. Right. At this point, whether she believes him either right and then the terminator shows up at the police station and we get the famous i'll be back right line and he kills several of the police officers but reese manages to get loose he and sarah escape again and reese tells sarah he's like, by the way, my name is Kyle.

And then we realize that there's Kyle visibility in this movie. I know. You're like, wow, we're really making space for Kyles here. Interesting. I mean, shout out to all our Kyle fans. But also, like, take a good long look at the mirror. Okay. So then they go to a motel.

And Reese makes some bombs to try to kill the terminator with and then he makes some love then he makes some love in what i am so excited to describe later it's it's james cameron's pervy corner oh we're gonna read the script i'm so thrilled can't wait oh it's disgusting so then the terminator finds them again and there's another chase scene and a big explosion which melts off the terminators like fleshy exterior hot hot literally and figuratively and he chases sarah and reese through what i think is like a robotics factory, some kind of factory. It looks expensive.

Yeah. Reese gets killed. And then Sarah finally crushes the Terminator in a hydraulic press. And then she says, you're a terminated fucker. We're like, whoa, she had to do something. Made you wait till the end. And then we cut to a few months later and she is Gregnant. She is Gregnant as heck.

With her son, John. Greg. Greg. Greg Connor. I mean, would it have killed them to call him Greg? It wouldn't have. Wouldn't have. Because Kyle Reese made her Gregnant.

He Gregnatted her. Yeah, for one one shot kyle over there really fertile guy that kyle definitely or her i mean i guess we don't know maybe they're both very fertile it's a group effort after all and then we see her recording what's basically a podcast for for her son her son her son john greg greg and that is the end of that movie yeah now for terminator 2 judgment day which is another biblical reference inside of what we can't deny is the 14 bajillionth christ narrative trying to not be a christ narrative that's very true but until you said that earlier when we were watching t2 it had never crossed my mind that this was a christ narrative i feel like it's because i'm just seeing it though like if i

had seen it when i was young i wouldn't have but now i'm just i'm so sick like even movies i'm loving right now are still about fathers and sons i'm so i love parasite i'll see it a million times it's not even a spoiler it's a father and son joint you're just like uh i've just we get it it's complicated for you guys there's been an i just whatever it's a father and son sure okay and Okay. Yeah. I mean for T2 especially. So yeah, we open with some more shots of LA in 2029 being a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Sarah Connor's voiceover kicks in saying that 3 billion lives ended on August 29th, 1997. That's some like Thor shit. Some snappy, snappy, snappy the finger wait not thor sorry oh no i'm canceled thanos wow i wouldn't i not to brag but i'm fucking cool and i don't see those movies uh well i'm cool and i do see them we're both cool mr thanos and his little glovey yes but this time brilliant observations is skynet which is the

name of my external hard drive i named it skynet really yep there's also a real skynet now like there's a government project called skynet which yikes i hate anyway so uh august 29th 97 is what has been deemed judgment day from the people in the future because of this nuclear attack that was initiated by the machines. Right. So then we cut back to, I think it's either 94 or 95. I think it is. Wait, let me check because I think it may be 97 for some reason.

97 is when Judgment Day happens. Oh, wait. So it's a few years before that. Okay, never mind it's 94 95 okay uh and two people show up out of thin air again one of them is arnold schwarzenegger and he's bad to the bone oh my god yeah and then we're like okay we know this scene was done better in the parent trap but nice effort jimmy cams yes and then the other person is robert patrick from spy kids fame his right best known role that's all we care that he's done yes

and both of them are trying to reach young john connor uh one of them is trying to kill him and one is trying to protect him. Greg. Greg. Sorry, Greg Connor. So Greg Connor has been living in foster care for the past few years because his mom, Sarah Connor, ever heard of her? Yeah. Has been in a psychiatric hospital because everyone thinks she is delusional when she talks about Judgment Day and time-traveling killer cyborgs. And she's tried to escape a number of times. And it seems like she's gotten close. But they keep putting her under more and more surveillance. And so now she's focused on getting very, very strong.

Right. She's doing pull-ups. Pull-ups. Oh, my God. I felt them in my body. Dr. Silberman from the first movie is there. And he's the one who's like she is like under his supervision yes um then we cut to cyberdyne systems where this dude miles

dyson is using technology from the terminator that sarah connor crushed in the first movie to develop other technology meanwhile john, John, Greg, Connor. Greg. Is at a. He goes by Greg. He goes by Greg. He is at a shopping mall, which may or may not be the Glendale Galleria.

We don't know. Headcanon, it's the Glendale Galleria. And we're like, go across the street to the Americana. Right. Go outside. Yeah. And the two guys who showed up in the beginning are both after him and just when you think Arnold Schwarzenegger is the bad terminator again psych he's the

protector he's the nice one the first time I saw this when I was 16 years old I was like oh my freaking god I can't believe it he's a good one and he's crazy but he's like he pulls the gun out of the box of roses and then he steps on the rose and you think he's gonna kill john connor but just kidding he saves him so that means the other guy is the bad terminator uh and he is a t 1000 a more advanced model than arnold that he can turn into like anamorphs goop doesn't it look like he looks like an animal like if anamorphs had a way bigger i'm guessing that's what anamorphs was ripping off like they were trying to do that effect did you ever watch animals i didn't know oh it was a tv show about kids that could turn into owls yeah and they

would turn into like silver goop and they're like, oh, no, no. Kind of reminded me of that. Yeah. So he's made of like liquid metal and he can shapeshift and then also like turn his arms into swords. It kind of looks like a screensaver, too. The way that the liquid metal looks. It looks like an old screensaver. Right. I mean, it's like 1991 CGI, which was like just the very beginning of CGI. But it's like pretty good. Yeah. No, it's cool.

I mean, even like seeing the guy's shapeshift between different like people and into like it is it still looks scary. Yeah. And then John Connor is like, hey, Arnold. Get it? Ha. now we're talking we we gotta go get my mom so they drive and go to pick up sarah connor but she's already like halfway escaped from the hospital in a scene that i now realize kill bill is very much ripping off potentially um i feel like there's no way i mean it's like quentin tarantino saw terminator 2 like because there's i mean the beats are pretty close to identical where it's sarah connor i mean what happens to uma thurman's character is is like a more severe assault right but she's assaulted while she's unconscious she comes to and she kills everyone in the hospital or you know injures

them beyond and then is able to escape yeah true it's exciting so yeah she's she's well on her way to escaping but then she sees arnold who she thinks is still a bad terminator yeah her son john slash greg is like no he's good now can you imagine the ptsd of it's got to be a lot severe there's a lot i mean well we'll talk about that but then some thoughts about that arnold says come with me if you want to live and that's the same thing that kyle reese said to her so she's like i guess i gotta trust my boyfriend said that who i still love i guess it's okay so they all meet up and then they get the hell out of there. Yeah. And they go and gather some weapons.

And then Sarah goes after Miles Dyson thinking that if she kills him, she can prevent the impending war. He's doing all the work to create what will eventually become Skynet. This is one of my favorite moments in the movie because I wasn't sure where this moment was going to go. And it ends up being pretty cool. Right. Because she can't bring herself to kill him because she's not a Terminator after all. No. She's, wait for it, a mother. A mother. Because she's in front of his family and so forth.

Right. So instead, she, John, Arnold, and Miles go to Cyberdyne and they destroy all of Miles Dyson's work on Skynet. Right. Miles ends up being, like, a hero. Yeah. Yes. And I hate that he has to die, and we'll talk about that as well. But the cops show up, and then Bad Terminator shows up, and there's a big chase, and they end up in this steel mill and there's like the fun liquid nitrogen slash like bad

terminator gets frozen yeah and arnold's like hasta la vista baby baby but the bad terminator melts himself back together and then there's some more fighting and it's long it's quite long but then eventually they manage to kill the bad terminator and melt him for good in the liquid steel and then arnold terminator is like hey wait a minute you have to kill me too because my cpu chip has to be destroyed and it's sad because he's daddy now he's daddy now that's right greg can't catch a break and he's so upset. He watches his daddy go into lava. You're just like, oh my God, what is poor Greg? Yes.

Hey, Jamie. Yeah. I don't know if you noticed this in the movie, but when they go to pick up Sarah Connor from the hospital, there's a sign at some point that says she's in Pescadero. That's a six hour drive. That's like, there's no need to think about how large California is. But they're traveling in state. But that's not to say that it isn't a very long voyage.

And there's like, I think something that Sarah Connor really could have used. Tell me what do you think it is? Well, I think this is a very graceful transition into talking about away suitcases away caitlin creates thoughtful products built for the way modern travelers see the world not those future doofuses like sarah connor people of now they started with the perfect suitcase and now they offer a range of essentials all of which would have made sarah connor's travels more seamless and you think she'd know that seeing as she's from the near future you would think you'd think well we have some away suitcases

we got some we got some we've used them recently recently we went to denver for our live shows and then you i just used mine to go cross country to boston and it genuinely like it's my new prop suitcase for the show i travel with because it's just like i genuinely really i really enjoyed my away suitcase and it's cute i've never had one that had like four wheels i was always 60 wheels are good yeah before i got my away suitcases i was just like dragging my old ones around the rocks cotton or whatever gravel whatever but what we're trying to say here is that all of the ways suitcases are thoughtfully designed to last a lifetime with they've got durable exterior little shells yeah they can withstand even the roughest and toughest of baggage handlers.

The inside is cool. It has like a bunch of different pockets and a whole interior organization system. What I like is that there's like compartments so that your shoes aren't going to touch your stuff and just like stuff I hadn't even thought about. And I just was like, oh, I guess my shoes will touch my stuff and I don't care. But now I can care because, you know, and you can separate clean and dirty clothes it's really nice and there's a TSA approved combo lock that keeps your belongings safe Caitlin my combo is zero zero zero zero four extra security But you could make a real one theoretically

if you know how those sorts of things work. You know what, Jamie? I do and I did. Oh, wow. But you're not going to disclose it. I'll never tell. Well, I guess a woman's heart is an ocean of secrets. Other things to know,

Away products are designed to last a lifetime, as we said. So if any part of your suitcase ever breaks, Away's standout customer service team will arrange to have it fixed or replaced we also didn't even mention that there's a phone charger in the away suitcase which there's like a little battery pack portable battery pack you can plug your phone into it it's it's a lifesaver there's also a 100 day trial on everything that away makes so you can take your product out on the road. You can go to Pescadero from LA if you want to. In the future. In the future, which is now our past.

It's confusing. It's weird. You can go any manner of places, test it out, travel with it, everything. And if you decide it's not for you, you can return any non-personalized item for a full refund during that 100 day period no ifs ands or buts and they offer free shipping returns on any order within the contiguous us europe canada and australia so i truly and my mom the other day i saw my mom when i was in boston and she looked at my suitcase and she was like what is that and i was like it's my new suitcase and i didn't use a brand name and she was like i heard your podcast is that in a way and so my mom's a listener and a fan and she might actually get one and the way she's going to do it is with our special offer code for 20 off on any suitcase or bag. You want to be like my mom? Visit awaytravel.com slash TBC and use promo code TBC during checkout.

Again, that's $20 off any suitcase or bag. Visit awaytravel.com slash TBC and use promo code TBC during checkout. All right. Let's check in on Sarah Connor. Let's do it. All right. Well, I guess, mean there's there's a lot to talk about here it's so we're gonna attempt to do a discussion that kind of spans both of the

movies but we'll probably be clicking in and out bear with us sarah i mean sarah connor obviously is the main character worth discussing worth discussing and she's i for i mean i i would say the best remembered character from the movie even though arnold is also i don't know maybe they're tied no definitely arnold is far more really remembered yeah god damn it they're the second one ends up being a lot more i mean she's right up there and then she is she also got her own tv series the sarah connor chronicles which i admittedly never watched well caitlin you're canceled i mean like the fact that like arnold is on the poster for both movies like that i think

shows like who's potentially the more valued character in this franchise but sarah connor for our purposes she's by far the most right but but i i think it is kind of fascinating to watch how she is treated differently in both movies i think it's it's like one of those cool things where you can see kind of you know like you can track the growth of a filmmaker in the space of seven years you can track the growth of uh you would imagine society a little bit in seven years where in the first terminator sarah connor i think she's still more active than a lot of female protagonists of 1984 but she's not extremely active she is cast as a mother in a love interest for the most part until the very very very end uh she's not made out to look as particularly qualified which i think is like both one of the coolest and most frustrating things about her character because i feel like

the the first movie i feel like is all about withholding information she doesn't have any of the information or skills she needs to be an active participant right in the first movie and then the second one is the total opposite she has most of the information and all of the skills she needs to survive so it's cool it is cool and i mean as much as we get frustrated when a female protagonist like in an action franchise isn't equipped with like the skills and the information she would need to have to like be a total badass that also wouldn't right it makes sense at least in the first movie yeah i just i think that that's like one of those things that it comes down to

like that was a narrative choice to give her literally no information or i just like that's one of those things where i wish like if she doesn't have the skills i mean that makes sense she is an la waitress why would she have these combat skills but then at least give her some information give her something that doesn't mean that she's gonna have to go to like the whims and be constantly needing I don't know I just feel like in the first one she never really has an upper hand until the end and I feel like that's like a narrative issue or it was for me I see what you're saying and I might be like because i love these movies so much like i it might be difficult for me to like separate my feelings yeah but like i don't know like yes of course it wouldn't make any sense for her to have combat training and

why would she have information about the future but like like Kyle Reese like gives her a lot of information. Yeah. But that's her stuff. But that's what I'm saying is like she there's nothing she can tell him. You know, you know what I mean? Like I feel like it wouldn't have like made the concept of the movie work less if she even at one point in the movie had information that he didn't that was able to move the plot forward. Like if she's like hey there's a blockbuster around the corner that we can hide in exactly 1984 and you don't

know what blockbuster is even like goofy 1984 knowledge that could come into like i just i was frustrated because usually i feel like most movies will toss you a bone of like something right of like I mean obviously you know she sort of becomes the fish out of water in her own world but it you you know there's usually something and so I was kind of like I see what you're saying I misunderstood before but yeah that yeah that's a valid criticism for sure another thing with her in Terminator 1 is that i mean well i mean my my issue with the sarah connor thing is i agree that she is a feminist icon especially in t2 i love so much about her but it does like her whole you know she's she's in her 20s she's in 19 she's 19 on the first movie so she's 19 but she's 28 because movies right uh but she's 19 she's a waitress in la which you would imagine she has some sort of creative aspiration

movie has no interest in why she's in la how she got there what her dreams are what her goals are two men show up and tell her this is what your life is you will give birth to this boy yeah and this is and and and we only see her push back against it one time in that scene with kyle where she's like i can't even balance a checkbook like i don't have i can't be this like you know military hero i can't be this terminator destroyer whatever and that's the only time we see her stand up for herself about like well what about what i want what about my choices which we haven't i'm trying to be an actor over here you would imagine i'm trying to audition for the for aliens directed by james cameron it's coming out in two years i gotta get i gotta get i gotta start taking classes but the movie has i mean mean, it's and I and I and I know that this is a critical part of the movie working. But you know, it is a young woman who two guys from the future show up and say, this is what your life is. And you have to make this work. And she doesn't really have much. The movie doesn't give her much space to say, No, I get to decide what i do with my life yeah it's like well can i still moonlight as an actress in addition to that's that's the most frustrating thing about this movie in particular

and then it carries over into t2 yeah but it becomes a little too like it's so money because well like sarah connor is targeted because she's important but she's only important because she is the mother of a man who is actually important to the resistance. Exactly. Because like these movies can't envision a world where a woman is important because she's the powerful resistance leader. They can only see a world where a man would be in that leadership role. And she's his mother. His mom.

His mother. I mean, and it's cool. It's so I mean mean there is this like and and i know that we have to consider the time that this came out in where it was i mean for a long time sarah connor was like about as good as you could get for a female protagonist in an action franchise and uh for all the jimmy cammy issues we'll bring up later like he was one of the only directors that would prioritize that and for sure work so for all of its flaws it definitely was progressive for its time but you do see just kind of with some time and reflection that she is still

relegated in both movies to an extent to her relationships to men and and that's another thing that i feel like is kind of fully taken from uh kill bill and the bride is that you know you can see this woman who is kicking ass she's very capable she's excellent at what she does but it's the connection to motherhood that ends up driving the story. Women aren't allowed to have motivations that aren't connected still somehow to domesticity. And again, that's like obviously not to knock the concept of motherhood, but it is like the way we most frequently see women defined by in movies. And even in these like very famous action movies, it's still that somehow right a woman can only be a participant in narratives like that if she's also framed as you know being a mother oftentimes and yes of course like to clarify we love motherhood we love moms it's just the societal expectation that women

must be mothers and you've got no other choice and that's what your role is as a woman in society that's what we take issue with well and also i think just like my my frustration is just like i think it's wonderful that there's movies about motherhood and like frank discussions of motherhood women aren't i mean there there's one woman one for four in both of these movies is there a woman actually writing about it so women are not allowed to have really generally a perspective on motherhood it is an invented perspective forced upon them by a male writer and a director and it's also just like that is the only narrative you can have like there's not many alternatives and so i don't know and if it sounds like i'm being too harsh it's because i

don't have any um sentimental connection to these movies. But especially in the first one, the Christ narrative was so heavy handed. And then at the end, they're like, Jesus is about to be born. And I'm like, I don't I can't give a fuck. Jesus's name is Greg and he's about to be born. You know, well, also to just touch on something that you just mentioned um the the writers of these two films both were written by james cameron and then on the first terminator movie gail ann hurd has a co-writing credit and then on the second movie um william

wisher has a co-writing credit uh however for the first movie that would appear to have been co-written by a woman yeah according to wikipedia uh gail anhurd suggested some edits to the script after she came on board as a producer of the film and then took a screenwriting credit for the film but james cameron has stated that she did no actual writing at all i read that as well which is just like i mean i'm glad she got paid yeah when women get paid but also like uh let them do the fucking job right yeah yeah gail and her i mean it's she produced both of these movies she's produced a number of famous movies um in a time where not a lot of women were producing movies much less movies this huge right so that is great it is i mean if you if you look at the script for terminator one

it's very clear that it's a james cameron script because it is disgusting it's horny as hell so you're just like oh this there's no way this isn't written by a man who's never made a woman come in his life like that's the only energy you get from it so yeah i saw that as well you're like oh that totally tracks based on the very bizarre excerpt that i've read i mean it i am happy at very least and again it's like uh 80s early 90s like you're like i'm glad that a woman was involved and like had influence over the store or at least some influence over the story and what happened i mean it's frustrating though because even the terminator movie that just came out five credited writers all men you know which is just like a continuation of this fucking hideous

thing that i feel like we're seeing as like as it becomes more of a priority and an audience demand for there to be more inclusion in movies where the front facing stuff, the on camera stuff is far more inclusive. And then behind the camera, it's exactly the same. Pisses me the fuck off. Right. Because in Terminator Dark Fate, and this is not a spoiler, because if you've seen any of the trailers, you know this, but the three main characters of that film are three women. And you're not going to believe fans of the Terminator franchise. We're mad about it. Another kind of conflicting thing I have about this first movie is,

so a man is sent back as Sarah Connor's protector and savior, essentially. So the plot of this movie forces a woman to be in a situation where she's constantly needing to be protected by a man because he does have the upper hand in terms of having the combat skills and all the information necessary to keep her alive she has nothing but all at the same time though she's like she isn't framed as being helpless she like doesn't she does stuff you know like especially toward the end it does take a while it takes like the whole movie but also if i was in that situation like i

have no combat training if someone was like sent back to kill me i'd be like yeah i don't know how to survive either right well again i think it's a story flaw yeah because that's like it didn't have to go that way she could have had something she i agree that she if she even just had like knowledge of contemporary la and she could be like we let's go this way or like we can hide here yeah like that would have been that would have been nice right the end i like i like all of her scenes at the end like when she starts to when she's allowed to drive right right right yeah so in the third act essentially is when she starts to become a bit more active uh where she yeah like you said she is driving the various cars that they've stolen um she does veer the terminator off the road when

he's chasing them on the motorcycle she saves kyle and i mean he has to save her a number of times but like their truck rolls so she like pulls him out of the truck and saves him and then after the terminator gets back up out of the fire she's the one who like she breaks the glass she unlocks the door to get into the factory and then yes she's the one who like lands the final blow of like crushing and destroying the terminator which is cool i you know because you were like kind of set up by that scene to make it seem like kyle's gonna be the one that does it but he dies but then he was too weak and then she gets it was really exciting when she when she gets like the death blow because so i

mean female protagonists very infrequently get that in their own movies true so i thought that was great yeah i mean the last act you start to see like the and it was i mean it was kind of like heartwarming even though you're like the love story is so bizarre but it was kind of sweet i thought to see kyle be kind of like starstruck by her and like i don't know just kind of that was something i'm like oh if i'd seen that movie when i was younger it would have like hit for me where she feels like oh i'm just a waitress there's there's not much to me and then he's like no do you know how cool you're gonna be or like the coolest person in the world she's like what and you know like that i thought that was like kind of sweet but it's like did she

really need that validation from a future man i don't know i think she's already cool even before she for sure is she drives a moped she has a pet iguana feminist icon pugsley pugsley the iguana you know she she's an independent woman we know what her job is she has a roommate ginger who she seems like get along with really well i feel like we don't know that much about her. We don't know much. Her end game isn't being a diner waitress. Probably not. It isn't.

But one of the things I did like about what we know about her character early on is her date bails on her on a Friday night. But she decides to go out to dinner and a movie by herself. That was so cool. Like in a lot of movies you would see that happen. And then you would see the woman like cry over a tub of ice cream at home. Right. And like, not that,

I mean, I do that sometimes. I was like, it definitely happens, but it, in terms of setting a precedent. Right. Uh,

it's, that's become, yeah. Like the whole like a boy didn't want to go with me I'm just going to eat ice cream that's become like such a trope so yeah I really liked that you know she's just like fuck it I'm going to go

to a dinner and a movie but like what does she want to do with her life we don't know yeah we gotta take a quick break but we'll be back hilarious get what I did there jamie no unpack it during the break okay well we'll be back Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017

was murdered there are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life

in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday.

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Some people won't give you the real talk on drugs. But it's time we know the facts. Fentanyl is often laced into illicit drugs and used to make fake versions of prescription pills. You can't see it, taste it, or smell it. Suppliers mix fentanyl into their products because it's potent and cheap, and the dealer might not even know. Keep yourself and others safe by knowing the real deal on fentanyl. Get the facts. Go to realdealonfentanyl.com. This message is brought to you by the Ad Council. Another thing. Well, OK, so even though we don't know really anything about her aspirations or, you know, just that much in general, and she doesn't get a chance to be super active until around the third act of the movie, I would argue that she's still fairly.

She's reaching. I'm coming down fairly she's reaching i'm coming she's reaching i'm gonna come to the defense of this movie probably too much but i would argue that she's fairly proactive throughout the movie in the sense that like when she thinks she's being stalked by kyle reese like she goes she says something yeah she says something she goes into a public place because she thinks that'll be safe she calls the police like i think in a lot of movies where a woman is being chased by a killer and maybe this is more common in like horror slasher movies but also i would argue that terminator 1984 is not unlike a slasher horror film but in a lot of cases the women in those movies make stupid choices and that might sound victim blamey, but they're stupid choices because the male writers who write those characters think that women are stupid.

And so they write them that way. And I think that that point, I totally see what you're saying. And that stands just strictly based on how her roommate is treated. Her roommate and her roommate's boyfriend, when they're murdered in cold blood right after having sex that is like a horror movie right yes yeah for sure but sarah is like using the best judgment she can whereas in like other movies of this era again especially like you know slasher movies the female characters were using terrible judgment and even like i watched a movie around halloween time that came out in 2017 what was it a terrible horror movie on netflix about a killer clown called terrifier but i was like this looks horrible let me watch this and in that movie again this movie came out

two years ago but all the female characters just like kept making one stupid choice after another like they would go back into the creepy warehouse for no reason at all after a bunch of very scary stuff had just happened to them i think we're used to seeing like female characters using poor judgment or just like not being very proactive but in this movie like sarah is making smart choices and she's being proactive and even though she does like make a mistake because she thinks she's talking to her mom and tells her the number of the motel that she's staying at but it was really the terminator who had been impersonating her mother i mean who would have guessed

she had no way of knowing that she didn't know yeah so even like a mistake that she makes she didn't do it because she's like written as a an airheaded underwritten female character i still think she's an underwritten female character in the first movie but you see she has been imbued with 1984 street smarts and that's yeah that's good and that's also i mean like you said before this is a movie coming out in a decade where action movies had almost no interest in featuring women like the action movies of this time were things like die hard first blood robocop indiana jones lethal weapon top gun like all these like hyper hyper masculine dripping with toxic masculinity films uh that didn't have any vested interest in female

characters which might be a good point. I mean, and it's weird because you get a taste of that with The Terminator. But The Terminator is kind of like this, I don't know, it's kind of like a smartly written character where The Terminator, I mean, and we know now that like robots are also prejudiced because they're made by people. But I feel like The terminator is created to be someone who doesn't discriminate just has a mission and accomplishes it so there's not even

even though he is like technically the lead macho blah blah of the movie you don't see that like inherent sexism in him because he's a machine he's a machine he's so you're like oh that's kind of cool like you you don't get the casual sexism that you would in a die-hard kind of movie because he's a computer cool and i do i mean this is maybe a good point to bring up james cameron's pretty consistent commitment to not objectifying linda hamilton in both of these movies which is again it sounds like a very like least you can do creative choice but not a lot of movies were making that creative choice especially in like blockbuster movies where that's so inherent even now truly yeah I mean 80s action movies if there

was a woman in the story she was very much overly sexualized like gratuitous nudity all that kind of stuff and if she was participating in the action it wasn't a very skimpy outfit the whole bit yeah so that is cool and you i think especially in the first one you see more made of arnold schwarzenegger's body than of linda hamilton's you do have that brief sex scene that we are going to do a reading from i mean, should we get to that now? Because I would like to talk about this romantic subplot. Okay. Well, let's, I guess, start by like reading.

Okay. So do you want to be Sarah or Reese? And then I'll read action lines. Okay. I'll be Reese. Okay. Ready? Yes.

Action. And so you feel nothing. It's better that way. Oh, Kyle. Reese takes a long, slow breath before he answers and when he does, his voice has a new quality, an unfamiliar tenderness. John Connor gave me a picture of you once.

I never knew why. It was very old, torn, faded. You were young, like you are now. You weren't smiling, just a little sad. I always wondered what you were thinking at that second. Oh, he's so cringy. He closes his eyes, reaches towards her. His fingertips trace the contour of her nose, chin, cheeks. I memorized every line, every curve. He opens his eyes, looking right at hers. sarah i came across time for you i love you i always have sarah's quietly overwhelmed reese looks away i'm sorry i shouldn't have said kyle

and now the money shot she leans forward and kisses him his face face is frozen, a mask. She continues tenderly. He begins to respond. The dam breaks and he holds her in a tight, trembling embrace clinging to her like life itself. James Cameron is literally a virgin. Kyle picks her up and carries her

to the bed. She kisses his neck and chest, tracing his scars with her lips. He unbuttons her blouse very slowly sarah guides his powerful hands over her a sequence of cuts details impressions sarah a very close angle as she grimaces in divine agony agony reese his face wrapped his hand clutching the pillow as if to kill it it is explosive torrential a confluence of fate and will disgusting james cameron should be writing like competitive erotic fanfic like i was like sir this is a Wendy. Like, please take this out. And it's funny because I think it really did produce one of the most sexless love scenes I've ever seen.

I hate this sex scene in the movie. Although, okay, here's what I will say about this. It's written a little differently in the script. What ends up on screen is Sarah being the one who initiates romantic contact with Reese. Like, she's the one who comes on to him because she's like, hey, what are the women like in your time? And he's like, I don't know. I don't talk to women.

I've only ever loved you. And then he's like, oh, no, I shouldn't have said that. And then he goes over and starts fiddling with his bombs because he doesn't know how to be around a woman. You know how boys are. And then she kisses him and then they have sex. And then, of course. She gets pregnant. But I mean, yeah, she's the one who's like initiating this sexual encounter, which I

always like to see. It is nice. Yeah. And then and again, it's like another thing that this movie does that might not seem. I mean, even now, I feel like there's still not a lot of women in movies who initiate sex scenes, except for Rose and Titanic. James Cameron needs a woman to initiate it. Unfortunately, one of the other nastiest sex scenes ever written.

What I don't like, though, about this romantic subplot is, one, it exists. It exists at all. It was a studio note. Of course it was. I read that strengthening the love interest between Sarah and Reese was a studio note. James Cameron agreed to it because apparently it hadn't been written quite that way. Like their relationship wasn't as strong and romantic in the original script. So he's like, yeah, sounds great.

What I really hate about it is that he shows up as this protector man. He rescues her multiple times. Rescues her and then also like treats her really badly. The way he treats her physically at the beginning made me very uncomfortable. He's repeatedly like screaming, grabbing. I know it's like it's an emergency, but he keeps grabbing her arm and you're like, dude, saying he's like do exactly as i say don't move unless i say don't make a sound unless i say do you understand so yeah just a lot of like extremely aggressive pretty violent uh actions towards her and then they have sex a while later

so not into it it's not great i get how it fits into the story and it feeds into the whole franchise and you're like oh now it's kind of this story element that's inseparable from the entire franchise and you know hooking up with a future man sounds hot sounds great uh i just like i i don't know i have more i i don't like that it is such an obvious studio note relationship um that carries into terminator 2 in a way that is like doesn't feel necessary where she's like i still love him right and which we'll get into because the whatever my thing is listen sarah connor didn't get to decide what to do with her life. She didn't even get to name her own fucking kid. It's like, ugh.

So I just... She wanted to name him Greg. She wanted to name him Greg, which makes logical sense. The relationship is annoying, and the sex scene is weird. Every 80 seconds, I'm just like, who is... We were saying this when we were watching like you can just feel that there is an entire crew in the room it doesn't feel like you're just like oh the actors seem so like i'm like they must be so uncomfortable otherwise why would this scene appear this way

i think yeah i mean what really bothers me about it is not, I mean, the sex that they have, fine. Like, I think they're trauma bonded together. That makes people horny. And I think, you know, they have their sex. But when it bleeds over into the second movie and she's like, I still love him. I think about him all the time. And like, she has dreams about him. Like, they knew each other for a day. Like, do you really, are you in love with him?

Well, if we're formally crossing over into terminator 2 territory i mean obviously sarah has a like infinity more agency in terminator 2 than she does in the majority of the first one and and i feel like t2 is like the feminist icon version that people really remember and cosplay as and all this stuff i mean you can literally see how like laurie strode is dressed like sarah connor from t2 in the halloween movie that came out last year like it is a very enduring version of this character something i wanted to touch on this does sort of just demarcate i guess like the difference of how he approaches her character in the first and second movies oh yes which by the way he first describes her so in the first movie this is how he describes sarah connor sarah connor is 19 small and delicate

featured pretty in a flawed accessible way she doesn't stop the party when she walks in but you'd like to get to know her. Her vulnerable quality masks a strength she doesn't even know exists. So that's pretty fucking patronizing. And then in T2, this is how he describes her. He's truly a horrible writer. Sarah Connor is not the same woman

we remember from the last time. Her eyes peer out through a wild tangle of hair, like those of a cornered animal. horrible writer uh sarah connor is not the same woman we remember from the last time her eyes peer out through a wild tangle of hair like those of a cornered animal defiant and intense but skittering around looking for escape at the same time fight or flight down one cheek is a long scar from just below the eye to the upper lip her voice is low and chilling monotone so he kind of i mean and you can see this you can see like shades of the Sarah from Terminator 1. But it's for the most part like a really different, like you can see where she's coming from, but she's very different in T2. And like way more fun.

Definitely. But there are still like some little things that just like bug me is that James Cameron has this thing where he for his time, peak Cameron, although, you know, Avatar a billion, maybe there's a second coming. Cameron right had more progressive female characters than most but he does kind of he's still a man and he still kind of uses the same I feel like quote-unquote cheat codes to give his female characters dimension in multiple movies and Terminator 2 and Aliens I feel like he makes a very similar choice with Ripley as he does with Sarah Connor. Where it's she, you know, these are both very capable and motivated action heroes. But they're motivated by mommy. And he has difficulty, it would appear. I mean, he doesn't in titanic but he has difficulty seeing past motherhood

in this period of movies as a conceivable motivation he can't like think of another conceivable motivation for a woman right which is annoying and in this one too and in t2 there's a few different moments where sarah connor you know there's like that speech where she says um oh you know what i'm trying to bring up where she's basically oh this thing this machine was the only thing that measured up and she's talking about how she you know she's been subtly scouting for a father for greg for greg and you know that just sort of doubles down on the like nuclear family trope and like everyone needs a mother and a father which we know is not true and it's not like it's a bad thing for her to want more support in parenting but it's just such a straightforward kind of underthought i feel like

conclusion of like well of course she has to find a father for her son yeah i also this is maybe a reach but also like that bothered me because yeah she says something like of all the would-be fathers like this machine is the only thing that could measure up because it would never leave him or get drunk and hit him or shout at him or say he was too busy for him but like the other part of this terminator character is that like he doesn't understand human emotion and like it's just like completely void of like emotional vulnerability and as someone who grew up with a father who is incapable of emotional intimacy or vulnerability wouldn't recommend i've and yes because i've estranged myself from my dad for that reason so i feel like sarah connor being like yeah, daddy just needs to be around.

And it's like, well, that's not good enough. So I feel like it's like, yeah, letting fathers off the hook as long as they're just around. And it's like, no, there's more to it than that. Yeah, it's weird. It's kind of complicated, too, because it's not like Sarah Connor is. I mean, there's so something i think is very interesting i guess this sort of crosses over t2 becomes more of this goofy father-son relationship than i was expecting it to right that's one thing i feel like that takes up way more real real estate

in the movie than it needs to and it again implies that every kid needs a mother and a father and like you know good terminator becomes daddy and you're like i get like sure i guess you know and and i do like that john greg call him what you will um he has an arc of becoming more emotionally intelligent more sensitive more empathetic i feel like through the movie where you start out and he you know he's in foster care his mother's in a psychiatric ward and he you know says that you know he doesn't believe what she's saying and she you know he doesn't trust what she says and he's like better off without her all this stuff right you know which we don't get a lot of good examples of portrayals of younger boys especially like pre-teen boys it's like a you know tentative time for anyone

so to see you know his arc be learning to believe women is really cool and so that's great i the father-son stuff it's just like okay you know i guess it kind of feels like a different movie in some ways but i well i do also like that part of his arc is him teaching his new daddy he's like teaching him like emotional intelligence and like empathy a little bit he's like you can't kill people like also like we have feelings people hurt people cry we're afraid like he tell he basically tells as you pointed out jamie that he tells the terminator to smile more he does that's i think that that's a bonus scene but it's yeah i think that might be from the director's cut

but he does a scene where he's like you should smile and then he's like how do i smile i was like oh this is uh this is like this is not trying to do this but it's kind of funny that it did right it is cool yeah where and like the younger boy is encouraging the older man to be emotionally intelligent and consider other people and their motivations and their lives and you know, literally their lives keeping them alive. Right. That's lovely. But going back to his motivation and believing his mom that was like what I thought was one of the more compelling elements of Sarah Connor's character in the second one is we start from this point of like it feels like weirdly like pretty modern of she is stuck in this psychiatric ward because people don't believe what she's saying she doesn't have enough evidence of what she's saying for people to believe it and similar to how they treated kyle in the first movie law enforcement thinks it's easier to just kind of lock her up and and tell her that she is you know her mind isn't right right and she sticks to her truth until what i think is kind of like a devastating

sad scene where we see there's that like really great Linda Hamilton moment where we see a clip of her from like when she first got there. Screaming like it happened. It happened. Which you're just like, oh, fuck. And then we flash forward to her. However, long later saying to a medical professional. I mean, the same one from the first movie. Dr. silberman

saying even though we know she doesn't think this taking it back and being like i was wrong the thing i know is the truth is actually not the truth now can i see my son that i thought was like one of the most emotionally compelling parts of both movies is like she has to take back her truth in order to survive and like i just i thought that was like a it felt very contemporary and you sort of see her dealing with even though it's not explicitly stated but it's uh you know like a post-traumatic stress narrative with the dreams that she's having and when she's first confronted with arnold schwarzenegger's face again and just like i don't know it's like you see her sometimes act a little bit harshly or a little bit abruptly but it is all grounded in this like well she's been through so fucking

much she's been so disbelieved even by her own son and just like kind of watching her go on that journey of first of all her son learning and accepting what was the truth the whole time and just her like navigating the like PTSD of what happens to her have the evidence to support her truth because a fucking corporation stole it and is now being used as research to develop the technology that will later kill everybody. that scene was super effective where she's like, it makes it seem like she's walking back what she actually believes, but she's only doing that because she's so smart. If she says, Oh, no, I'm feeling better. Now. I don't believe this anymore. I made all that stuff up. There's no evidence because there is no evidence like there would be evidence if, you know, I had crushed that Terminator. So she's walking it back, but only because she's trying to trick the psychologist into getting, yeah, putting her in minimum security. I thought it was super effective. I totally agree. Cool.

Oh, I thought it was good. One thing that this is, I mean, I guess this might be another example of it being well done know even though she does her son ends up believing her and dyson ends up believing her it's only because she has the evidence all of a sudden right it's never that they're like you know what i should have taken seriously what you were saying there was no reason not to i believe you it's only when she has the flesh and robot evidence of a Terminator. And she can literally peel someone's arm down. Like, you know, I feel like Greg only truly believes her once he's met a Terminator himself. And Dyson only truly believes her when Arnold Schwarzenegger removes his hand. And so it's, which I think is unfortunately kind of a realistic thing in terms of like the circumstances under which people believe women is no one really believes her until she does have the hard evidence.

Yes. demanding that it does feel unfortunately kind of on point that the two people who end up believing her and i guess you would include um dyson's family in this as well even though they don't have uh very large roles they don't believe it until until they see it yeah for sure so another very cathartic moment for me in the movie is when dr silberman sees the bad terminator coming through the gate in a way that only a like liquid metal robot would be able to do and so he sees it and in you know he's watching this whole scene unfold where you know this other terminator is there and then his like mouth drops a gape because he's like oh fuck she was telling the truth the whole time right like yes fucking believe women and there's like a similar theme explored in aliens yes at

the beginning of that movie is a very similar like i swear to fucking god this is happening and then no one believes her until there's for sure that evidence so another mr jim theme he i think is effectively explored here i agree to just go back to that hospital scene the first time i saw that scene where she is escaping from the hospital i just remember feeling so empowered and like energized by it like i was like you know this teen girl was like fuck yes go sarah because it's so cool around the same time in the movie john is telling arnold he was like we gotta go get my mom like we gotta go rescue her i order you to do this like even though it's dangerous and maybe the other terminator will be there like we have to go

save her so like it's set up in a way that's like maybe they're gonna have to like literally go in and break her out but she's already basically broken herself out which I love right that she doesn't have to be rescued um you do get the feeling that if they hadn't showed up she would get out anyways 100% yes she was like well on her way out and just kind of, I just want to do like a little beat by beat breakdown of this. Cause I just love it so much where she is putting on this facade of pretending to be just so drugged up that she's basically not cognizant. And she very subtly steals a little paperclip and hides it in her mouth. And then after she's been like locked up in her restraints in her room, she like spits out the paperclip, uses it in her mouth and then after she's been like locked up in her restraints

in her room she like spits out the paper clip uses it to unlock the restraints and then the door then she has like broken off the handle of a broom and she uses that to beat the shit out of the guy who has been horrible to her who has beaten her and licked her face and like electrocuted her so she breaks his face and then drags him and locks him in a closet takes his nightstick takes the psychologist hostage you know with the whole like Drano like liquid drain cleaner thing fucking brutal yes I loved it and I just like that whole sequence where she's like calling the shots and doing whatever it takes to get out of there yeah i was just like oh man like this is so fucking cool yeah i think i mean that whole scene is so exciting and cool and also like completely like

there is no mary sue element to it because you know that she's been planning this for so long and she's been like bulking up and her solitary confinement like she has developed every single skill she needs to pull off this fucking incredible sequence it's so cool right because it's like it's a bunch of different things it's us seeing a woman be like tough and smart and tactical and just like straight up kick ass in a way that is not sexualized because in a lot of like action franchises that do feature women who are like kicking ass like vagina suplex it's the it's the pussy slam that we see over and over but it's it's we don't see anything like that with sarah connor it's us seeing her escape from this wrongful imprisonment because she hasn't been believed and she's basically saying like just a giant fuck you to all the people who have not

believed her for all these years which is crazy cathartic it's so cool it's so cool and it's just it was such an empowering awesome scene to and I love just yeah every time i see this movie i'm always just like yes and we don't see her fall into the women are only allowed to use household items as weapons here sarah i mean she she uses what's around in the hospital but i feel like that makes perfect sense right and she does use a broom but then she takes a nightstick and then she uses guns throughout the rest of the movie right right and so like that i mean it truly is just like she's being treated like an action hero is treated which is great i so just i guess to kind of close on the mommy stuff because i feel like we've been alluding to it quite a bit and it takes a larger role in the second movie again it's kind of necessary to the narrative because the kid exists now yes um but there is that moment that happens right after

she it seems like she's gonna kill dyson and then she's like jk i'm mommy i can't kill you slash a lot of stuff she's human they're like sitting in dyson's kitchen with his whole with it with his wife and him and good terminator and john she's kind of railing on dyson for trying to build another terminator she says how are you supposed to know fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb men like you thought it up you think you're so creative you don't know what it's like to really create something to create a life to feel it growing inside you all you know how to do is death and destruction and then greg cuts her off and is like mom yucky um which i don't know i mean i think that there's a lot of different reads of that line sure there's a read of it i think that is like very empowering and really hitting the nail of the like what james cameron is trying to do with her character right on the head of like women with

a narrow definition of what a woman is but like women can be badass and like they give life that's so cool like there's there's a read of it that's very empowering and i think that there's a read of it that's like a little reductive with with time and you know just progress i don't think it was intended to be reductive at all right but you know it's like that's the only way she can define a woman's power is through mommy stuff yes and so you know there are moments in and for its time again it's like that you do not get a better female action hero than sarah connor but there are times where i feel like it leans a little too heavy on the crutch of like and her motivation is still woman stuff

you know right definitely i definitely agree with that but on the other hand i can also see women who are mothers also feeling very empowered by sarah connor of course by the mere fact of like she's a mom and she's also a complete badass because mother characters in movies are often depicted as like being just like naggy shrewy types of characters or just like, you know, just a typical kind of mom. So to see. Which is literally how Dyson's wife is portrayed. True. So to see like a mother character who is also extremely tough, I think is like representation that we don't get to see that often. Again, I think it goes back to that thing we were talking about before, where it's like we have nothing against mothers and motherhood.

But for that to be the only option of a motivation is where I find it to be possibly reductive. Yes. It is like there is no even in Kill kill bill a movie that is allegedly about revenge it's not really just about revenge it's also about motherhood yep so it just i mean i think that there are more options now and that this movie was important in pushing stuff forward but there are yeah i i do still feel like that read of it. Like there is a, I was rolling my eyes just a little bit. For sure. That all being said, in terms of like Sarah's badassery and like all the cool things we

get to see her do. And to me, the very drastic stark change between her character in the first movie and the second movie is not only like cool to see this more empowered and badass version of this character but it also like tracks very well for what the story requires of it so like i so it makes sense for the story which as a screenwriter um i don't like to mention it but like that i very much appreciated um however there was something that i like couldn't help but notice if we're kind of comparing some of the opening sequences of terminator one and terminator two where in terminator one the terminator's in hot pursuit and sarah needs kyle reese to save her and get her away

from the terminator and all this stuff but in t2 john aka greg who is a child uh but a male child is able to get away on his own for a little while like on his motorbike so i'm like okay well she also had a moped she did have a moped but at the same time john has been raised by his mother his mom but in the context of like she was always telling him like you're gonna be a military leader like you need to learn combat and weapons and engines and like all this stuff so he was more equipped than sarah was to like like he knew about terminators like and he probably was like oh this thing that's coming to kill me that's probably a terminator i have to get away yeah but it's still just the optics of like this child is able to like escape this terminator but a grown woman needs all this help totally i don't know

they both have mopeds it's like why is one more capable than the other should we talk about dyson and his wife yes as we already sort of touched on a little bit i'm a fan of his arc in the second movie except for the very end i don't think he needed to die right uh but i like there was more character written for him than i assumed there would be honestly because it he's sort of set up as someone who sarah connor would kill or that good terminator would kill but because of the progress that those characters are already making they don't kill him and then we get to see progress on his part of being like, I see what I've done. I see the error of and like the tunnel mindedness of what I was doing.

How can I help? How can I reverse it? And so, you know, 75% of his arc I liked. Yeah. That's lovely. I do. I mean, it's worth mentioning he has his wife. Her name.

She is named as Teresa. Yeah. That's all we know. That's all we know. I mean, she is named as Teresa. Yeah. That's all we know. That's all we know. That's all we know. I mean, she's left at home. She's a pretty much a tertiary character. So I guess, I mean, she didn't have to be, but that's how the movie does frame her.

Yes. I think it's also worth noting that he's one of the very few people of color in the movie. The franchise. The franchise. To this point. Yeah. of color in the movie franchise the franchise at this point yeah but the fact that he is like a tech genius like a person of color in stem uh was representation we were not getting very much of especially in this era agree yeah um so that was pretty cool but yes i don't like still the only

die the character we know the best in this movie that is killed off besides like the villain. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that character could have like been brought back in sequels and like used his like tech genius brain to like help and stuff. Well, yeah, there's like there's no reason in my head why he shouldn't have joined their team. It seems like that was what he was doing. And he was killed 20 minutes later.

Yeah. their team it seemed like that was what he was doing and he was killed 20 minutes later yeah um which again just like feeds into whether it was written intentionally that way or not just feeds into some of the horror movie tropes you see pop up in these movies which is that the person of color always dies and is always the first to die right um even though it's for dyson it's pretty significantly into the movie but he's the he's the character we know best who dies. And that sucks. Yes. So I wish we had gotten Dyson back.

Justice for Dyson. God damn it. I got a little bit of context corner. Woo, let's hear it. For these two movies. We'll start with Lindailton because the most recent terminator movie is the first one she's returned for since terminator 2 and she had some thoughts on how sarah was portrayed in the first one as opposed to the second one i guess the first one

she went into it i mean no one thought it was going to be a huge hit the first one and so she went into it just like it was a job she described sarah and the first movie as quote so wholesome i could puke unquote and that she didn't feel particularly empowered by the character until quote that transition from damsel in distress to all right she's got to pull everything she's got together to get kyle up for the on your feet soldier oh yes and so she said she was generally unimpressed with the first turbinator until she saw it and then was like oh there's something there's something to this and she also saw some metaphorical importance to the sex scene in the first movie where she's on top which she felt was like a metaphor for um where that character is headed so i thought that was that

was cool she also in regards to t2 there was i think kind of an interesting exchange that you know everyone can feel any number of ways about but it's hair related um so this is from an interview with the hollywood reporter from like a couple weeks ago. So it goes like this. Cameron originally proposed that Hamilton chop off her golden brown locks after Sarah's escape from an asylum. She argued successfully, meaning Linda Hamilton, for a ponytail instead, because as she puts it, quote, you don't have to look like a guy to be strong, unquote. For some reason, I won that argument, she recalls. It wasn't even a vanity thing. And then later on, when she became this icon of strength and, you know, the legend sarah connor i realized that it's only because i didn't cut my hair that she became what she did in the minds and hearts of the audience that this

was a picture of feminine strength i would love to say oh i was so ahead of my time but it really was just an instinct that it wasn't right and then she goes on to roast demi moore's haircut in g.i.j so i mean we i mean we know that the baldest woman is in charge this is a rule that is held for three years now but uh i thought it was interesting that she wanted to make that choice because i think in in the case of some action movies written by men that is a like a writing shorthand that is like to indicate like i mean and also it's like practical to get her out of the way but um i thought it was interesting that she like made a stand on her character especially against james cameron which gets us into oh also linda

hamilton has done uh more activism for the bipolar community than most people have oh that's great great oh i mean just to touch on a little bit more um yeah i think there was for a while and even almost you know even as recently as like mad max fury road but like the shorthand for like a really strong badass female character is like chop all her hair off or shave her head kind of thing. Right. And as someone who recently chopped off all my hair. You can't stop killing people. Yeah, I mean, I see what she's saying. I think that's somewhat of a, like, I don't know. Like, yes, I think it is important to see, like,

maybe more traditionally feminine, like, strong female protagonists in addition to seeing, like, I don't think, like, a woman who maybe presents as more masculine it's become a bit tropey but i also don't think there's anything wrong with that either so like yeah i don't know of course not i think that i think or i mean i who who knows i feel like what she is i mean because partially the baldest women in charge rule comes from the trope of writers using it yeah that way exactly um but but there's also it's rooted in some military reality like there's

a lot of like it's based in some truth and some like silly like male writers tend to do this a lot but it's like now i don't know i mean it's i feel like it's kind of neither here nor there um and like everyone should just be able to have their hair the way they want it. Yeah. Yeah. And like 2019 when, you know, gender is very fluid. Yeah. And it shouldn't be to suggest that like short hair can't be considered feminine.

That's also not true. But, you know, I thought it was worth mentioning. Yeah, for sure. Getting around to Jimmy Cameron. Oh, Jimmy Cam. mentioning yeah for sure get around to jimmy cameron jimmy cam legendarily horrible person to to work with specifically not like uh i mean i guess it depends on how you look at it he is a nightmare on set i think he's very much an example of a male director who can get away with fucking murder doing things that a female director of

any amount of experience would get fired and blacklisted for doing and uh i would also apply that to really any marginalized community uh where it is there is some truth to like you only have so many shots um whereas white male directors with a with a specific style can just fucking get away with murder. Some examples of things he's done and ways he's been described. On the set of Avatar, he would take people's cell phones if they were out and he would nail gun them to the wall.

Let's see. Andrew Gumbel of The Independent says, Cameron is, quote, a nightmare to work with. Studios fear his habit of straying over schedules and over budget. He is notorious on set for uncompromising and dictatorial manner as well as his flaming temper leonardo dicaprio told esquire magazine quote when somebody felt a different way on set there was a confrontation

uh and what is it sounds like it's putting it lightly yeah well you know uh leonardo dicaprio is not necessarily you know you would think that leonardo caprio for the amount of time he spends around 23 year olds would be more woke than he is but um it's just not true speaking of their experiences on filming titanic kate winslet said that she admired cameron but quote there were times I was genuinely frightened of him, unquote. He's just a notoriously scary guy. Linda Hamilton also attested to this, where she was, I think, generally very

bent to his whims on set, and then the one time she asked to see playback of a scene she had just done, he screamed at her in front of everyone, and they later got married, which she said was the biggest regret of her life. So, what can you do uh and then just a brief uh one more thing as it pertains to sarah connor specifically you may recall that james cameron made some uh stupid ass comments oh i

have this too 2017 uh when wonder woman came out and he just really couldn't take someone else making movies about women and he was very reductive and the way he described it he said that Gal Gadot was too beautiful and that she was objectified and that she was at you know and and you can view that however you want the point is that James Cameron's like, my female protagonist is the best female protagonist, which means that he only thinks female protagonists can be one way. And there's only one way to be a female action hero. It's pitting women against each other for no reason. It's egotistical.

It's annoying. And also it's incorrect because he says in 2017 he says quote sarah connor was not a beauty icon she was strong she was troubled she was a terrible mother and she earned the respect of the audience through pure grit well there may be some truth to that if you look back at the way that james cameron describes sarah connor in his first screenplay that's not true it's just he's just like a he's just kind of a stupid ass yes i agree i have a little bit of a little bit more specifics on this part of the context corner when he made those comments originally about wonder woman and he also said that well because this character was so sexualized therefore the film is not groundbreaking exactly right like okay and then

patty jenkins the director of wonder woman responded by saying james cameron's inability to understand what wonder woman is or stands for to women all over the world is unsurprising to me though he is a great filmmaker he is not a woman strong women are great his praise of my film monster and our portrayal of a strong yet damaged woman was so appreciated but if women have to always be hard tough and troubled to be strong then we aren't free to be multi-dimensional or celebrate an icon of women everywhere because she is attractive and loving then we haven't come very far have we i believe women can and should be everything, just like male lead characters should be.

And there is no right and wrong kind of powerful woman in the mass of female audience who made the film. A hit it is, can surely choose and judge their own icons of progress. And then James Cameron doubled down on his previous comments. He's so dumb. And said about Gal Gadot, but whatever, she was miss israel and she's drop dead gorgeous and that's not breaking ground uh and then he said uh added

about sarah connor in terminator 2 saying uh she wasn't there to be liked or ogled but she was central and the audience loved her by the end of the film and it's just like it's just you don't get it i like patty jenkins's response a lot i'm like she shouldn't have even had to fucking say anything right it's just like it's just another example of like he made it about him for no reason yes no one asked him to it was in response to nothing like it was just like he just made it about him because that's what he's like yeah and it just sucks that he is like one of the very influential directors in hollywood who is a straight white man who is trying to it seems attempt to include women in meaningful ways in his stories right but he still has a very narrow view of what a like strong female protagonist should and could be

i hope that he has you know demonstrates i'm not i'm not gonna set my watch by it but like that was incredibly recent and completely fucking toned up and to double down it's just like it's embarrassing for him yeah and um he should be. Indeed. The last thing I had to say in this context corner is that it appears that the Sarah Connor character is very much based on James Cameron's mother. Huh. Did you know? Well, we didn't know before today that James Cameron is Canadian. I suspect we didn't know this because he's notoriously mean.

So no one would be like, he's probably Canadian. But he is Canadian. And in a profile of him, and this is, I wouldn't recommend this article. It was in Vanity Fair in 2009 when Avatar was coming out. It was called James Cameron, Secret Feminist. And it is just praising woke icon James Cameron. Like, who cares? But the interesting passage concerning his mother goes as follows.

Quote, Cameron's mother, Shirley, is Sarah Connor trapped in the body of a Canadian grandmother. I don't know why Jim thinks I'm so reliant. Shirley shrugged to me, professing bewilderment that she might be the inspiration for the gutsy maternal characters in The Terminator and Aliens. Well, I can take a guess. While a mother with three kids under age eight, James was the oldest of what would ultimately be five, Shirley joined the Canadian Women's Army Corps, happily trooping off on weekends and fatigues in combat boots to assemble a rifle while blindfolded and marked through field in the pouring rain. At a time and place, Ontario, Canada, in the 50s and 60s, when most women set aside their personal pursuits for the sole ambition of homemaking, Shirley was a painter and attended courses in subjects like geology and astronomy.

Often she brought along her oldest son. So I think that that is that's lovely. the first terminator movie even more confusing because again it seems like he couldn't envision a world where a woman would be important because she's the one who has like military training and combat training and leadership tendencies but his mother was in the military right i mean at least he course corrects on the second one i don't know i mean yeah but well speaking of course correcting love what may i oh yes share um so these are spoilers for terminator dark fate so if you would like to avoid these spoilers skip ahead about a minute and a half okay i did see terminator Terminator Dark Fate brag. And I will say

that that movie corrects the idea that women are only important because they are mothers of the important men. Because in this movie, the character being protected is Danny, a Latinx woman. She is the person who ends up becoming the leader of the human resistance against the machines. Also, the protector this time is also a woman. She is an enhanced human named Grace, played by Mackenzie Davis. And then Sarah Connor, Linda Hamilton, is back. And so you see a bunch of scenes with Danny, Grace, and Sarah all working together and getting stuff done. Now, Grace and Sarah seem to hate each other for what feels like kind of no reason. So that's a little whatever.

Awesome. But the movie does. Well, it was written by five men. Right. And the female characters aren't necessarily well developed. And I just had some other issues with the movie but the movie does pass the bechdel test a bunch so that's there's just some of the some of the mistakes that i think the earlier terminator films did that dark fate

attempts to correct at the end of the day at the end of the day i just want women to write the movie and for people to stop rebooting franchises yes because nothing's ever gonna be as good as terminator 2 exactly stop trying let's all move on with our lives okay i think that's all i had that's all i had all right do these movies pass the bechdel test um the first one i feel like i think the first one might it might because we've got sarah talking to ginger her roommate and we have sarah talking to i believe the character is named in the credits as nancy who's or no the other waitress that oh yes i don't think we learned her name in in the movie but that other so the the server at the diner tells sarah about the news broadcast about another sarah connor getting murdered um does sarah respond i can't totally remember

sarah does respond uh it's kind of i mean it's kind of those throwaway i mean it's kind of too throwaway to count but they say hi to each other at one point you're late hi uh then there's that moment where sarah kind of responds i mean i don't know if it's necessarily with words but she kind of says like oh you know like one of those it's like they're talking to each other it's about the murder of other women but you know if maybe it maybe it counts i don't know yeah that one i feel like i wouldn't necessarily count those because we don't ever learn that character's name i think but then sarah and ginger do talk a little bit but these conversations go something like ginger says they're looking at each other in the mirror and ginger says like better than the mortal man deserves and then sarah kisses ginger on the cheek

and then later she's like ginger have you seen pugsley my feminist icon iguana but he's a man but he's a pugsley's a male iguana so she responds and says not recently did you check the messages and then they talk about the guy who cancels on sarah and then that doesn't pass and then she says i'm going to a movie kiddo okay ginger says and then sarah says you and matt have a good time but we have two lines there yeah so maybe i don't know if it does pass it's by the skin of its teeth and then what about what you have for two i think no i think two does not pass there was one moment where i thought theresa and sarah were almost talking but then it turns out theresa was talking to her husband right although sarah does say to theresa get down on the floor bitch fucking down

now and theresa screams yeah so does it pass good um so you know uh it doesn't i don't know which is i think again like you almost and not to say that you know sarah connor is characterized in the same way that princess leia is but just that tendency of like there shall be no more than one strong woman in any movie like that rule kind of holds in at least these two movies yes even though the character the strong female character you get is great there's no women for her to talk to nope so that's that i think what what'd you rate the movie the two i feel like we gotta split it right yeah they're very different in the way they treat their female protagonists i think yes i agree okay so for terminator one i think i would only give this like a one and a half or a two maybe just because of the whole like you're only important because you're a mummy of a man who's

important and like she's not characterized enough we don't know anything about her aspirations she's not equipped with any skills that make her able to contribute to her own safety or of like getting away from the terminator different stuff like that i feel like it's only like a one and a half kind of thing but termin 2, I would double it and give it a three. Because it's still just by the nature of, you know, sequels and storytelling. The different hangups I have about the first movie just carry over into Terminator 2. You know, the whole like very strong emphasis on on but i'm a mummy and that's my major motivation and stuff like that but because she we see you know all of her general badassery

i think i'm gonna go a one and a half and then a three respectively i'm gonna go a one in four i think oh my uh one i really don't have any love at all for the first terminator movie i think that her character is like severely underwritten and then i like the growth she shows in the last act of the movie but i don't feel that it's more than a nipple's worth of growth um i don't like that she's told the person she's gonna become she can't name her own child she's defined by her motherhood etc etc i i you know and again i know that people are gonna roast me but i'm just like i'm just not attached to these movies one nipple for the first one uh and then i think i would go i i again like you were saying i have similar issues with her being defined by her motherhood in the second movie.

But I think just kind of based off of how it does seem like, especially in this gigantically popular, because the second movie did even better than the first movie. It made over $500 million. And it was a very expensive, you were saying it was the most expensive movie made to date. And it still doubled its budget over. And I think seeing a character like Sarah Connor kick ass, have those moments of catharsis, have the idea of believing women effectively tackled in a huge mainstream blockbuster movie is, yeah, I mean, for for its time that's like huge and like i wish that there was less defining her by her motherhood i wish that there was less i need to find a father

for my boy but i just yeah i think it's so it lets her be so much more and and definitely paved the way for more effectively written female action heroes yes i'm gonna go one in four here no fractions for jamie today well there you have it folks the terminator one and two episode and our three-year anniversary episode so you know happy three years once again jamie thank you here's to five million more there's so many more movies to do um well hey jamie where can people follow you on the internet oh uh you can follow me at jamie we never do this i know but i guess it's our anniversary yeah it's our anniversary we don't have a guest so it's true it's our time to shine you can follow me on twitter at jamie loftus help you can follow me on instagram at jamie cry superstar uh by the time this is released you listen to my podcast about being in mensa for a year called my year in mensa uh and and that's

i think what do you have to say Caitlin? You have another podcast too. I sure do. It's called Sludge an American Healthcare Story. Season one has wrapped because luckily I am now sludge free but season two will be coming out sometime in the new year

so check that out. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Caitlin Duranteante and as for our podcasts plugs you can follow us on social media at pectocast you can go to our matreon our patreon aka matreon at patreon.com slash pectocast it's five dollars a month it gets you two bonus episodes plus our entire backlog of bonus episodes. We got merch. We got merch at tpublic.com.

Holidays are coming up, gang. If you want to treat yourself, treat someone you love. By all means. We've got all the designs. We also have our seasonal designs. If you want feminist icon baby Grinch. No, I think it's queer icon baby Grinch. I'm so sorry you want feminist icon baby grinch no i think it's queer icon baby queer i'm so sorry queer icon baby grinch or just a simple grinch and heels

text-free grinch as well um or or any of our designs feminist icon feminist icon alfred molina queer icon all the classics indeed they're all there for you and hey jamie yes hasta la vista baby hasta la vista caitlin bye bye k hasn't heard from her sister in seven years i have a proposal for you come up here and document my project all you need to do is record everything like you always do what was that that was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising wherever you get your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre. Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar,

emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts.