The Terminator

The Terminator, by Randall Frakes and Bill Wisher

November, 1985  Bantam Books

It’s hard to recall how big a deal The Terminator was when it was released; that there was a time when “I’ll be back” was fresh and fun. I think I first learned of the movie due to a poster a friend had in his room, around the time of the film’s release – the same image of Arnold Schwarzenegger which graces the cover of this tie-in paperback. I didn’t see the movie in the theater – I was only 9 when it was released – but I rented it on VHS as soon as it came out and watched it over and over. 

Several years ago I was researching the tie-in novel for The Terminator and discovered that there were two different Terminator novelizations: this one, by screenwriters Randall Frakes and Bill Wisher, and one that was published in the UK and written by British horror novelist Shaun Hutson. At the time, I decided the Hutson novelization sounded like the one I would enjoy more, and so I ordered a copy…and I still haven’t read it. It was in at least 2013 when I bought it, maybe before. At the time, I don’t think this Frakes-Wisher novelization was so scarce, but I can’t remember; I didn’t research this novelization much because it didn’t sound as interesting to me as the Hutson version. Per what I had read, Frakes-Wisher hewed incredibly close to the actual film in their novelization, whereas Hutson went for a pulp-horror approach. 

But as it turns out, the Frakes-Wisher Terminator novelization was included in the latest box of books Robert Mann sent me, and it appealed to me so much that I decided to read it, even though I still haven’t read the one by Shaun Hutson. An important note is that the Frakes-Wisher novelization came out over a year after The Terminator was released. Also, the authors worked on the script itself with director James Cameron. So in this case we don’t have a novelization that wildly veers from the source material. Indeed, the Frakes-Wisher Terminator is pretty much the epitome of a movie novelization in that it is literally a novelization of the movie, with only a few minor tidbits that diverge from the film – and the only “new” stuff is a bunch of background material. And the majority of the background material concerns one-off minor characters. 

It's been decades since I read a Stephen King novel, but his stamp is all over this book. I’m certain the authors were fans; as if confirming this, we’re told that one of those one-off minor characters – the gunstore owner who is shot by the Terminator in one of the movie’s more memorable scenes – is from Bangor, Maine. But man, “background material about one-off minor characters” is pretty much the main thing you get from the Frakes-Wisher Terminator novelization. I knew I was in for a bumpy read when the book opened with four pages of backstory about a random garbage truck driver. You know, the garbage truck driver who witnesses the Terminator as he materializes in the middle of a dark Los Angeles street in 1984. A character who is in the film for a handful of minutes (if that), yet the novel opens with a veritable case study on the guy. 

And folks it goes on like this through the entire novelization. The three punks who foolishly accost the naked Terminator – we get their names, what they are up to, all kinds of filler material about them. Hell, the garbage truck driver even sees them as he’s driving along his route and we get his opinions on them. It doesn’t sound like much, but I’m not joking when I say it is like this throughout the novel. Many years ago I read Gary Provost’s Make Your Words Work, and he used a great metaphor: he said little things like this might seem minor when taken one instance at a time, but if you were to take all those instances and put them together into a suitcase or something you’d find that it was too heavy to lift. Well, I’ve butchered the metaphor, but what I’m trying to say is, this is exactly what happens here – there’s just way too much incidental detail about incidental characters throughout this novel, to the point that the book comes off as a slow-moving bloat. 

Also, there is an almost slavish fidelity to the movie. All dialog is rendered faithfully, all the scenes are here as they are in the movie. But here’s the thing: all the dark humor is pretty much lost. Again, there was a time when “I’ll be back!” and “Get out!” and “Wrong!” would make viewers laugh, just the deadpan dark humor Arnold conveys as the titular Terminator, and absolutely none of that is captured in the Frakes-Wisher novelization. In fact, the novel is just too damn serious, and takes itself way too seriously. This is why I figure I’ll like the Hutson novelization better, and if anything reading this Frakes-Wisher novelization has inspired me to finally read the Shaun Hutson novelization. The uber-seriousness of Frakes-Wisher means that the pulpy fun of the actual film is lost. 

But I don’t mean to come off as too negative. I mean there is some humor here and there, just not much of it. While all of Terminator’s lines are here, including of course “Fuck you, asshole,” the authors present everything point blank, with that same serious vibe. Only minor asides feature any dark humor…like when a random cop is killed by The Terminator. In the film, this cop was played by William Wisher himself, so it’s possible he wrote this scene in the novelization. But anyway, in the book we learn that the cop is responding to a call – and yes we get a lot of detail on the cop and his background – and he sees the Terminator hit by a car. “DOA,” the cop automatically thinks to himself…and moments later when the Terminator slams the cop’s head into a car, killing him, we’re informed that the cop’s last thought is “DOA,” ie referring to himself. I’ve mangled the setup but it was fairly funny in the actual reading. 

Midway through The Terminator I attempted to change my mindset and judge the novelization as if it were 1985 and I hadn’t seen the movie a hundred times. It totally succeeds in that way; one can easily relive the movie through this novel, as every moment is captured here, just fleshed out with emotional depth via the backgrounds or the impressions of the characters. So if you didn’t have the VHS, the Frakes-Wisher novelization would be the next best thing in 1985. Plus it does have a little more that’s not in the film, like more of a glimpse into how the Terminator functions and thinks, and also there’s just a little more on the future world Reese has come from – a future that’s just a few years away now. Here too the authors bring to life minor characters; like say in the actual film, in the flashforward sequence, you might see one of Reese’s comptariots get gunned down. Here in the novel, you’ll be told that compatriot’s name, get a little more detail on him or her, stuff like that. 

And so for people who love the film and just want more of it, the Frakes-Wisher Terminator would totally hit the spot. But I’m one of those readers who likes a tie-in that’s different than the film…even wildly different, like Invasion U.S.A. Or novelizations that hew close to the film, but add a lot of extreme stuff that could never be in a mainstream film, like Coffy. This is why I’m assuming Shaun Hutson’s novelization might be more up my alley, as I’m figuring it will diverge from the film more than this one does. I guess what I’m trying to say is, when I read a movie novelization I would prefer something original, instead of a straight-up literary recreation of the film.

So otherwise there isn’t much else to say. You just get the movie here, but with a lot of extranneous background material. Like we learn more about the other Sarah Connors who are killed by the Terminator, and also we learn that the roommate of the real Sarah Connors is pregnant. More stuff on the restaurant Sarah works at, more stuff on practically every character who appears in the movie, no matter how minor they may be in the scheme of things. The authors most succeed in bringing Kyle Reese to life, though. They totally capture the feral nature of a man – whom we learn here is only twenty – who has lived his entire life being hunted. Kyle’s reactions to 1984 Los Angeles are very much explored here, better than the film, and there’s extra incidental stuff like him stealing a slice of pizza and some candy bars. 

One random “new” thing I liked was the bizarre note that the Terminator would break out an X-Acto knife and slice into the thighs of the freshly-killed Sarah Connors, inspecting their corpses. This only served to make the cyborg seem even more weird and dangerous. It isn’t until late in the novel that Kyle reveals that the Sarah Connor of his future has a metal pin in her leg, and the Terminator is checking the corpses for ID verification. But what the cyborg doesn’t know is that Sarah doesn’t have the pin yet – and, of course, she gets it in the very end of the novel, when the Terminator finally explodes and a shard of its exoskeleton impales her leg. Another thing with the novel is that the authors do try to explain a lot of what happens, and why, but they still have to ignore obvious questions…like how The Terminator could know Sarah Connor lives here in LA in 1984 but not that she doesn’t have the metal pin in her leg yet. (The explanation is that “records were lost during the war.”) 

The Terminator is also explored a bit more here in the novel; the authors refer to him as “Terminator” in his sections, ie no “The.” Actually they also refer to him as “he,” but then once his underlying exoskeleton is revealed he suddenly becomes “it” in the narrative. We get a better look into his programming parameters and how much power he has – we learn at reduced power he could last for a few decades – and the authors do a good job of making him seem more realistic. But as I say they miss the dark humor Schwarzenegger brought to the role. Also I had to laugh because as the movies progressed, Schwarzenegger’s poor T-800, which appears in this novel as a perfect machine of destruction, was outclassed by ensuing upgraded Terminator models (T-1000, T-X, etc). You have to wonder why Skynet didn’t just send one of those upgraded models to 1984 instead of the T-800. 

Now as for the action, while all the big scenes are here, and go down identically to how they do in the film, the violence has been almost totally removed.  This I understand is another big difference from the Hutson novelization, which appears to be more gory (always a good thing around here!).  People get shot in the Frakes-Wisher and fall down, and that is it.  There is none of the violence of the film; even the big attack on the police station is fairly bloodless.  Reading this novelization, one would get the impression that The Terminator was rated PG.  Same goes for the Sarah-Reese conjugation, which occurs mostly off-page, and what juicy details we do get are clouded in metaphors and whatnot.

Actually now that I think of it, the vibe of the Frakes-Wisher novelization is closer to the gravitas of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and fittingly Frakes penned the novelization of that one as well (which Robert also sent me a copy of). What I mean is, when you watch the original Terminator, it’s like an edgy John Carpenter sort of thing, kind of low-budget looking but with its own weird punkish drive. All the sequels went for bigger action, better special effects, and etc, but the edgy core was lost – and the edgy core is lost in this novelization, too. It just doesn’t have the neurotic drive of the film, and comes off as too literary. And at 240 pages of smallish print, it’s also too long; again, it has more the nature of a bloated epic. 

But, the Frakes-Wisher Terminator novelization did entertain me, and achieved the goal of a tie-in by making me want to watch the actual movie (again). It also made me want to read Frakes’s T2 novelziation, and it inspired me to finally look into S.M. Stirling’s early 2000s T2 trilogy, the “serious” vibe of which seems to be directly inspired by the work of Frakes and Wisher.