He has hardly any dialogue, and is only in the action sequences, with Hamilton and Biehn on screen far more, and doing most of the acting. Sure, its since been repackaged as a star vehicle, but prior to that he'd only been in the Conan movies and various projects related to his status as a bodybuilding champ.
I think a better description is it was the film that *made* him a star, since a monosyllabic killing machine is a role he was born to play...GWO
You're probably right in this respect. I'll amend accordingly. sjc
The middle sentence of the entry originally read: "The pretext of the movie is that a cybernetic construct, the eponymous Terminator (played by Schwarzenegger), has been ported back in time from a future where the world is ruled by computers, (who are bent on eliminating the last traces of mankind), to eliminate the mother of a child that the computers perceive may be a threat to their superiority." That sentence seemed a bit too long to me.
Also, why is the Terminator "eponymous"? What people, place, or institution was eventually named after it? --KQ