Of course she’s late to work. Sarah Connor is a 19-year old waitress who works at a nondescript burger joint. She gets all the orders wrong, is clumsy as hell, even drops a soda on a burly patron and can only sigh in protest when a precocious kid dumps a dollop of ice cream on her dress.
In Terminator (1984), Sarah Connor is the quintessential likeable girl-next-door, who gets stood up on a Friday night and is meant for the mundane. But excitement comes, (like it almost always does), in the form of a man. In the Cinderella story, the man is Prince Charming with heavily conditioned hair, but in this dystopian world of the Terminator, it is a soldier who’s back from the future to save the big-haired blonde babe from the metal machine that is Arnold.
If the rescue op isn’t enough to pique your interest, there is a brief romance in between that ends rather abruptly when Reese is killed by the Terminator, but not before she conceives the baby who will one day save the world.
The movie ends with Sarah crushing the Terminator with a hydraulic press. Hasta Lavista Carpe Diem!
Sarah Connor Gets Big Guns...Literally & Figuratively
Sarah Connor gives birth to John Connor and leads a semi-criminal lifestyle in the seven years that James Cameron took to make his second masterpiece.
As Bangalore-based filmmaker Bharat Mirle puts it,
Sarah Connor is this sweet, innocent American girl, who is transformed into this relentless warrior-mother figure.
In ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’, Sarah appears to have channeled her grief into rage. She trains like a fiend and is seen doing pull ups even while under long-term psychiatric treatment. The no-fuss pony tail replaces the 80s hair-sprayed madness and lets you know that Sarah has been a busy stocking ammo, hitting the bench press and preparing for war.
Strong, Independent = Crazy Man-Hater?
She is institutionalized after she tries to warn authorities about Skynet. But the isolation appears to have had its affect on her mental state and Sarah Connor exhibits an unmistakable streak of actual madness. She is a single mom who will move hell to protect her son and that can prove to be stressful job which could explain the frequent nightmares and the cigar smoking,
Towards the end, Sarah Connor is shown to be a paranoid, overbearing, less nurturing, over-protective mother. She also comes across as a man-hater at certain points in the film.
Sarah Connor, the Pop Culture Icon
Bangalore-based writer Apurvo Rao Parthasarathy is a complete Terminator nerd and believes that Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor has had a huge impact on pop culture.
She turned out to be another Jane Fonda of sorts after the second movie hit the screens in 1991. Many women wanted to look like Sarah Connor and registered themselves into the Sarah Connor Fitness Regime.
Apurvo does have one complaint though.
I would’ve loved to see her taming the Harley-Davidson Softail Fat Boy Low that was made globally popular by Schwarzenegger in the T2. That legendary bike was launched 1990, and the movie released in 1991. If there was a scene with her on the bike, I’m sure more women would’ve made an attempt to try out the Fat Boy, as well.
Sexualizing Sarah Connor?
From the looks of the latest ‘Terminator: Genisys’, Sarah Connor appears to have softened up a little. Emilia Clarke who plays the protective “Dragon Mother” in the Game of Thrones replaces the legendary Linda Hamilton in the latest installment. Far from the tough mom, Sarah Connor version 2.0 appears kinder when she tells her son to “run and not look back”. And while she is described as “scared and weak” she is seen effortlessly fighting a machine in the very next frame.
One will have to see the movie to pass judgement on how Sarah Connor has evolved in 2015 but by the looks of it, Terminator: Genisys promises to go back to basics and appears to be more about the life and times of Sarah Connor.
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