The Terminator Opening Sequence

In the opening sequence of The Terminator, the audience is shown what happens at the start of the film which is a giant ship flying through a dark ruined area of Los Angeles in the year of 2029. The ship is shooting lasers at something and this is filmed in a long shot. As the ship flies on scene, it moves to the left and a panning shot is used to follow the movements. The scene changes to an explosion and then a giant tank robot is shown that also shoots lasers. It shows the treads of the robot to drive on the ground which is littered with skulls and then crushed by the weight of the robot. The robot is shown to have a headlight lamp which scans the area and then there is a tracking shot a person running away from them and disappears into the ground. The machines are shown to continue shooting while a screen of text appears which explains the current event and an idea of what is going on and what might happen.

At the start, the sound of the spaceship is heard coming on scene and the soundtrack starts playing at twenty seven seconds in the opening sequence. All the sounds used the opening sequence are non-diegetic and they help represent the genre because the film seems to be a science fiction which means that there will be extraordinary things that happen and not so many normal things. They make the robots seem believable because those sounds are the way media has portrayed those things to sound like such as the sound of the lasers. They probably don't really sound like that if we used them but because older films that first had them made them popular, that is what we all think they sound like.

The Mise en Scene was good because it was accurate for the type of movie it is. The costume of the person was an army uniform which makes it believable because the setting scene looks like grounds of war. The robots looked realistic and like the stereotypical standard robots so that was good. The lighting used was good because it is post-apocalyptic, there may no longer be a sun and it was dark but not too dark. Also I believe this was filmed in a dark scene so that the lasers would show up and so that they are more visible since they may not show up in daylight with the computer technology back when it was filmed. The props used would be a gun that the soldier had and that makes him look more like a soldier and not a civilian which was accurate. The performance of the soldier was good because is showed that he was desperate to run away so he dived into the ground. All these made it look good overall so the production design was good and professional.

I conclude that the opening sequence of The Terminator is very well made and fits in well with the genre which is a science fiction thriller and makes you want to watch this film.