The car chase that ends with the cars crashing into the wall, and Kyle being arrested.
When the cops look in the other car, the Terminator is gone.
Did he run away? Why would he do that?
That always bugged me. He showed in the movie that he wouldn't let a few police get in his way of killing Sarah. He shot up a whole station.
And the end showed that it didn't matter how banged up he might get, he still kept going after her.
So why take off?
It would have compromised his mission. While battling the police, Kyle and Sarah could've escaped and gotten ahead of him. By disappearing and ambushing the police station later, he takes them by surprise and has them backed into a corner, thus strengthening his odds.
'Remember when' is the lowest form of conversation. - Tony Soprano
Great answer!!
shareThe answer is simple: so they police won't believe their story. it's a common trope in horror movies.
Remember in Alien3, Ripley can't convince the prison warden that the alien is real, and he doesn't believe her until he's killed by it.
"He's dusted, busted and disgusted, but he's ok"
the state the terminator was in in the hotel room is the answer.
the terminator will have calculated its damage could prevent it successfully killing Sarah in front on Kyle and the cops who will no doubt have been opening fire on it.. (like only a 47% chance of successfully terminating her in his damaged state so better to try again when fully repaired when it can mount a surprise attack).also maybe it might not have been immediately certain of all the damage to its systems and had to get away to run diagnostics etc to determine its damage as if it had tried to terminate sarah right then and then it could've found something not functioning correctly (and all the cops and kyle would've tried to prevent it too)
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1. It was damaged, like the previous poster said.
2. It could afford to leave the scene, and acquire them later, because it knew where they would be(with the Police in some station).
3. If the cops weren't there during the crash, and Kyle and Sarah just took off running, the Terminator would have definitely went after them(damaged or not).
Because then the film would be over. No matter how you slice it doesn't make sense. Only his arm and eye was damaged, and she was just a few feet away.
It makes Reese's speech about him being relentless, well, wrong about him being relentless really.
This lame trope is so stupid. "Because then we'd have no movie". It doesn't work that way. You have the things happening in your movie make sense, not write them for plot convenience. That said, it has a valid reason, because the terminator was damaged and needed to repair itself.
shareThis is the only dumb part of an otherwise pretty solid story. There's no real justification for it, The Terminator would have gotten out of the car, headed straight toward Sarah and tried to crush her throat, ignoring the police & Reese firing on him.
shareNot really.
Remember in the gun shop he was asking for a phased plasma rifle. He didn't know what kind of weapons the police might have. If they incapacitated him, his mission would fail.
Or even if he succeeded in killing Sarah, but was captured or destroyed by the police afterward, he might have compromised the future by making people aware of the dangers of artificial intelligence, and preventing the creation of Skynet.
--- if it was captured or destroyed by the police afterward, he might have compromised the future by making people aware of the dangers of artificial intelligence, and preventing the creation of Skynet.
BINGO!
You might have a point, except The Terminator just drives into a police station soon after that anyway. Just gets out on foot and starts waltzing through the place.
Terminator 'disappearing' in the garage didn't make sense
Yeah, the brazen attack on the police station was actually the thing that was out of character for me. The terminator's mission should have been a bit more stealthy, for the reasons I mentioned.
shareI can't actually believe that you guys get stuck on that kind of details. I mean, maybe yeah it is kind of out of the character but... It serves a purpose in the plot. It gives us some interesting plot elements that would be absent if the script would develop the character in an uni-dimensional way.
shareThat's true - the original concept was that terminators are supposed to be INFILTRATION units, that blend in. Nothing inflitrational about such an attack, but then again, its mission bypasses all other programming, and its mission is to terminate Sarah Connor. Which it does twice, but can't do the third time.
Besides, it's a MOVIE, it needs 'spectacular action'. I would've been more glad if the story had been a bit more clever and utilizing this infiltration ability a bit more. But it's still a good movie, as movies go.
I agree.
The Terminator's 'nature' (such as it is) is to go straight to the target and terminate with extreme prejudice (if it can be said to have such). It is a merciless, emotionless killing machine.
Now, the explanations are pretty good, BUT.. which compromises his mission to terminate Sarah Connor more:
a) Going STRAIGHT to Sarah and terminating her immediately, regardless of whether there are police in the area, shooting it afterwards (they probably wouldn't have shoot it before it could've killed Sarah).
Wouldn't matter even if they DISMANTLE it afterwards, it would've completed its mission.
b) 'Disappearing' without at least 5 or more pairs of eyes that are staring right at it noticing, and then going to some (pre-arranged? How?) motel (that has all appropriate instruments) for a surgery, and taking a risk that he might not find the target again, or that they will possibly be able to protect her. It will also not know if they will move the target to an unknown location or another police station or a hard-to-break-in jail or whatnot. Perhaps the police might RELEASE the target, which would mean it would take a HUGE risk of not finding it again, especially now that it has been alerted to its presence.
It's cover is blown, and the target will now know to expect it. The target is very likely to get away, and the terminator will have hard time finding the target again, if it can even be expected to find it at all.
I don't know, I would think B) would be compromising the mission in a _WAY_ bigger way.
It's just a stupid horror movie cliché and trope, and thus bad writing. The only really awful flaw in the movie, besides wondering where Kyle Reese learned to curse like that (would there really be a word like 'motherf-er' in such a desperate, apocalyptic scenario?)
For the rest of the plot to unfold, simple as that.