At first glance, James Cameron’s breakout sci-fi hit The Terminator and the Chinese wuxia movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon seem quite different from each other. One is a gritty, gun filled, science fiction movie and the other is a contemplative, beautiful martial arts movie featuring sword fights. Upon watching them side by side and examining the two, they are much more similar than I had originally realized.

The Terminator is about an unfeeling cyborg from a future in which robots have all but wiped out humanity that is sent back in time to kill the mother of the leader of the human resistance. The movie follows the mother and a human soldier sent back in time to protect her while they are pursued by the murderous Terminator. The story of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a bit more convoluted. It centers around a governors daughter who set to marry in an arranged marriage and a legendary warrior who is retiring. The story follows the daughters journey of breaking out of the role assigned to her and theft of that legendary warrior’s powerful sword.

Excellent Action

Both The Terminator and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are action focused films with excellent fight scenes. They both were also extremely influential in the action genre. Although the movies feature completely different time eras and the character’s weapon set could not be more different, the scenes featuring extended action sequences evoke the same feeling of apprehension and tension. Some of the scenes even parallel each other a bit. Both films include a fight scene takes places in a bar while showing off the antagonists deadly ability with very well crafted action. There is a more famous scene in the sequel, also in a bar, so the action scene in The Terminator is known as the Nightclub Scene. In both The Terminator Nightclub Scene and the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Bar Fight Scene the scene starts with the audience having the knowledge that the antagonist poses a great immediate danger to everyone in the vicinity, raising the tension until inevitably the combat starts, wrecking the establishment in the process. Although the fight goes differently for each of the antagonists, both scenes still do an excellent job of showing how unrelenting they are. The two scenes are also some of the most respected scenes in the action genre. This is an example of how influential these two movies are. Although with the two mentioned scenes are somewhat famous, there are scenes later in both movies on that overshadow both.

The famous police station massacre scene in The Terminator features arguably the Terminator’s most famous line and displays him at his most destructive.  In an action movie trope, that the scene shares with the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Bar Fight, the Terminator easily dispatches a very large amount of enemies with ease. There are two scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which overshadow the Bar Fight Scene. The Bamboo Forest Fight, in which the characters sword fight while jumping through the treetops a bamboo forest, and a duel between two women in a confrontation near the end of the movie. Both are iconic. Upon learning that the same fight choreographer for The Matrix did the fight scenes for this movie, it comes as no surprise. He also directed some of the earlier Jackie Chan films. This amounted to the film being called “the most exhilarating martial arts movie” he had ever seen by Roger Ebert.

Strong Women

An important aspect of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is it that it put more of emphasis on its female leads. Hollywood around that time was starting do its best to put women into the spotlight more than in the past. This movie succeeds in this better than even most movies released in the years since. The main story of the movie revolves around a governors daughter Yen Ju, played by Zhang Ziyi, and her anti-heroic journey to break out of the gender roles of her time. Her iconic duel with actress Michelle Yeoh gained them Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, respectively, BAFTA nominations.

16 years prior to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Terminator debuted. Although the story does revolve around a woman, it does not do as good of a job in giving women a more active role in its story. The central character, Sarah Connor, spends most of the movie as the damsel in distress as she needs protection from the titular Terminator. This movie does to a good job though in paving the way for Sarah Connor to become the famous badass that she is in the sequels. The story does well in showing  her believable journey from an innocent young woman living a regular life to the trauma hardened fighter she becomes at the end of the movie. The Sarah Connor that Linda Hamilton portrays at the start of the movie is very different than the one she portrays at the end.

Innovative

Both The Terminator and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were quite unprecedented for their time. They both surprised the public upon their release and charted at number 1 at the box office. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did extremely well. It spent 18 weeks in the top ten of the domestic box office. At least half those 18 weeks were spent in the top three spots. That is no wonder as it is still the highest grossing foreign language movie of all time. It grossed 128 million beating the runner up by over double. This helped establish Chinese cinema as the second biggest box office after the United States.

Even though blockbuster action movies were nothing new by the time The Terminator hit movie theaters, the world still had not seen the likes of it. It was a low budget movie that was expected to come and go without much fanfare. What happened could not be more different. The movie jumped straight to the number one box office spot upon release and stayed in the top ten for another eight weeks. It is clear how come. The Terminator combined brutal, well crafted action with real feeling, empathetic characters in a thoughtful, well written science fiction story. While there might be some films that predate this one that have attempted something similar, no films in the past had succeeded in doing what this one did.

The sequel to The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is much more known for its innovation  in special effects and action  however the original movie does a great job of using the technology available for its time. The scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator fixes himself is quite gut wrenching. Towards the end of the movie there is a scene where the Terminator’s his skin is burnt off revealing the robot skeleton underneath. Director James Cameron does a great job using practical effects and strategic shots to make it seem much more realistic I would have ever expected out of 80s movie. Scenes such as those were perfect as the technological horror that Cameron intended as a warning of the dangers of relying on technology. Seeing as the very first Apple Macintosh was released earlier that year, flooding computers into households all across the world, this warning was very timely.

Even though the only genre connecting the two movies is action, these two legendary movies have much more in common than I thought. With some very human, empathetic characters driving both stories through exhilarating action it is amazing in retrospect just how much these two movies took the world by storm.