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Note that both the T-800 and Halloween's Michael Myers were directly inspired by another robot in human guise, the Gunslinger from Michael Crichton's original, 1973 Westworld film. Schwarzenegger apparently acknowledged that his T-800 performance was based on Yul Brynner's original turn as the Gunslinger. (One might draw comparisons to Robert Patrick's physical appearance and his performance as the T-1000 in T2 as well.) Terminator-vision comes pretty straight from Westworld, and [mild Westworld spoiler] The Terminator's slasher-movie last act is obviously based rather closely on Westworld's. (See eg. https://www.theterminatorfans.com/the-terminator-westworld-connection-6-degrees-of-termination/ for The Terminator and https://winteriscoming.net/2018/10/13/westworld-inspired-halloween/ for Halloween.)

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Thank you, those are some interesting details.

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Nice writeup. +1 to the horror tropes. It also implies its happening while the moviegoer is in the theater :-). BTW, Not only does T1 conceal that Arnold is a cyborg at first, it also doesn't clarify whether Kyle isn't *also* coming after Sarah until the scene in Tech Noir, it's a great twist that's hard to see so many years later.

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Excellent writeup but you missed a pretty big "reveal" in the first film, which explains some of the elements you did write: when we first see Kyle Reese’s character we don't know he is "the good guy". In fact Sarah thinks he is a creep who followed her in someplace. There is a youtube video somewhere that explains the build-up to this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtloZNaoV-0

I can't find the video explanation yet but the point is at that point Sarah thinks Kyle is the creep - she's hiding from him! So this scene is another big reveal.

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