THUNDERDOME
Why Sarah Connor is the Most “Bad-Ass” Female Character
“On your feet soldier! On your feet!”
Thunderdome is a Fanfare series where our writers good-naturedly debate some matter of pop culture and then leave it to the readers to decide. Read each post and vote at the bottom!Warning: Contains extensive spoilers for The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
“Bad-ass” isn’t a term that flows easily from my lips. For a start, in Britain, we say “arse” not “ass”, so the very act of speaking the phrase aloud (or even thinking it) requires an awkward attempt at American vocal inflection that doesn’t come easily to a stereotypically stuck-up Brit like yours truly. At any rate, I say that as an irrelevant aside to bear in mind whilst reading my case for Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) from the Terminator films as the most “bad-ass” female character on film.
When I say the Terminator films, I mean The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), ie those directed by James Cameron. The subsequent instalments are bastard children; the product of furtive, fumbling, lust-for-cash fuelled extra-Cameron dalliances that have no good artistic reason to exist. I shall not be referring to them again.
Sarah Connor is introduced as a young waitress who, by her own admission, isn’t tough, organised, and can’t even balance her chequebook. She is late for work, attracts woefully inadequate men, and at first glance seems helpless to a remorseless cyborg killing machine like the Terminator. However, she isn’t an idiot. When she hears about the murders of the other Sarah Connors from the television news, she is smart enough to take reasonable precautions, ie stay in a public place and wait for the police.
Of course, reasonable precautions aren’t enough against the Terminator, as she soon learns from Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), the young soldier sent from the future to protect her. Plot exposition ensues, delivered in the least boring manner imaginable (ie yelled dialogue during thrilling car chases). She learns she’s destined to give birth to the legendary John Connor, a man who will eventually overthrow AI nightmare Skynet, set to decimate mankind in a few years via nuclear holocaust and mass extermination.
The police tell Sarah Kyle is crazy, but she doesn’t really believe it. Sure enough, when the Terminator attacks the police station, Kyle and Sarah go on the run together, and of course fall in love, leading to the conception of a baby who turns out to be John Connor (in a sex scene that actually advances the plot, with Sarah on top, which also speaks volumes). So far, so plot-twisty (and personally, I think the poignant love story in The Terminator is one of the best things about the film, giving it real heart), but when do we get to the “bad-ass” stuff? That’s only in the second film, right?
Not so. Sarah gradually becomes a tougher character in the first film, learning from Reese to make bombs, disappear off the grid, and generally prove herself a damn sight more resilient than she first appeared. The moment the real Sarah Connor is born is in the crucible of the final act, as she yells at her bullet-ridden but not-quite-dead companion: “Move it Reese! On your feet soldier! On your feet!”
Of course, Kyle is subsequently killed in an explosion, giving proper tragic weight to the story, but it is a seriously wounded Sarah who ultimately destroys the Terminator, crawling away from its grasping mechanical hands, and crushing in it in a factory hydraulic press: “You’re terminated, fucker,” she pronounces. Her arc to “bad-ass” is complete.
Jumping ahead to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, much has changed for Sarah Connor. She has raised her now twelve-year-old son John (Edward Furlong) to learn as much as possible about Skynet, teaching him useful criminal skills such as how to rob ATMs, as well as weapons training, and any other military skills she thinks will help in his journey to end up saving the human race. Unfortunately, Sarah was caught by the authorities and placed in a psychiatric hospital, and John has been put in foster care.
In her hospital room, Sarah trains, doing chin-ups by turning her bed into gym equipment. She is reintroduced as having recently stabbed her psychiatrist, Dr Silberman, in the leg with a pen — a prelude to greater assaults which frankly this odious man rather deserves. We learn she has made repeated escape attempts, and is tormented by recurring dreams of nuclear war. After Dr Silberman cruelly emotionally manipulates her in a therapy session, she assaults him again, and she is subsequently sedated by several hospital staff. Before Act One even finishes, it is clear Sarah Connor is a force to be reckoned with, and someone who will die before she gives up the fight.
The arrival of a second Terminator — the sublimely lethal, morphing metal T-1000 (Robert Patrick) — this one set to target John, necessitates a second protector being sent back from the future, this time one of the original T-800 Terminators (who all look like Arnold Schwarzenegger) cunningly reprogrammed. A thunderous, action-packed, non-stop thrills megahit ensues; a rare sequel that builds on and adds to the excellent original.
As for Sarah, John and the T-800 attempt to break her out of the psychiatric hospital, but it turns out their help is fairly superfluous, given that Sarah had pretty much escaped by herself. In a clever chain of events, she first procures a drawing pin in her mouth. After pretending to be catatonic and enduring a facial lick from a leering orderly, Sarah uses said pin to pick the lock of her bed bonds. Then she picks the lock on her door and uses a mop handle to beat the aforementioned leering orderly unconscious. The bloody, nose-crunchy violence is particularly ouch-inducing.
Sarah continues her escape rampage, breaking Dr Siblerman’s arm and threatening to pump him full of industrial-strength liquid rooter. Holding the lethal syringe to his neck, she expertly continues her break-out, smashing aside various other guards that attempt to block her passage with brutal dexterity. Eventually, the T-800 appears, which understandably throws her a little, but it doesn’t take long for Sarah to grasp this new cyborg killing machine has been reprogrammed to help.
Sarah is instrumental in battling the T-1000 as they make good their escape, proving her skill with handguns as they flee in a police car. She is injured, slashed across the shoulder, but barely winces as the T-800 sews up her wound. Furious at John for risking his life to help her, she determines to head south and hide. Here the group meets one of Sarah’s old contacts, uncovering a cache of weapons she had stashed earlier. The sheer amount of firepower — which includes handguns, rifles, grenade launchers, machine guns, and a mini-gun — is enough for a small army. Sarah makes preparations with ruthless skill, but what is she preparing for?
Tormented by nuclear apocalypse dreams of the future, the answer soon becomes clear. Sarah intends to take out the man most responsible for the creation of Skynet: Miles Bennet Dyson. In essence, she becomes the Terminator. She becomes the very thing she destroyed in the first film; a remorseless, ruthless killing machine.
Except at the last minute, she relents. After attacking Dyson and his family in their home, she discovers even now she cannot kill him. Hot on Sarah’s trail, John and the T-800 arrive, explaining to Dyson what his actions will lead to. Understandably, he is rather shocked and sickened.
At this point, Sarah condemns Dyson’s mentality, saying men like him created the hydrogen bomb, thinking they are so creative, and that they don’t know what it is really like to create something, to create a life and feel it growing inside them. John interrupts and says she isn’t being constructive, which is fair enough. But at the same time, Sarah’s speech reveals something vital: Everything she has done, everything she has risked and sacrificed, has been the result of faith in her son. Everything has been for John, and her absolute belief that he will save the world. This maternal power is what drives Sarah, and it is the true source of her immense strength of will. A mother fully committed to their children is more “bad-ass” than any amount of fighting and shooting.
Let’s be clear: Sarah has suffered immense psychological damage. She has PTSD from the first film, lives in terror of the nuclear holocaust to come, secretly longs for Kyle Reese (as seen in a dream sequence present only in the extended cut), and has rather lost touch with her moral compass. But her unbreakable love for her son is rekindled at this point in the film. Not killing Dyson is what separates her from the evil she fights, and ultimately what makes her even more “bad-ass”.
With all that pesky character development stuff out of the way, Cameron lets rip in the final forty-five minutes of the film, with a non-stop barrage of tremendous action set pieces, including the bombing of the Skynet building, shootouts, helicopter chases, truck chases, liquid nitrogen tanker surfing, and a spectacular final showdown in a steel factory. Amid these scenes, Sarah is peak shotgun-pumping “bad-ass”; running, fighting, shooting, fighting, enduring torture, fighting some more, and eventually acknowledging, as Skynet is defeated by the T-800’s final sacrifice that: “If a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.”
It doesn’t get more “bad-ass” than that.
What say you?
Based only on the arguments presented (you have read all of them, haven’t you?) and not on personal preference: who wins this bout? Voting closes on February 10 at 6:59 AM.The other entries:
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