PART 1 — THE LUNCH THAT CHANGED THE CASTING

Before The Terminator had a leather jacket, a chrome endoskeleton on movie posters, or Arnold Schwarzenegger saying almost nothing while dominating the screen, the casting plan looked very different. In the early 1980s, Schwarzenegger was becoming a recognizable leading man after Conan the Barbarian, and Orion executive Mike Medavoy saw him as a possible Kyle Reese—the human soldier sent from 2029 to protect Sarah Connor. James Cameron immediately saw a problem. Reese was supposed to look like a man who had grown up starving inside a ruined future, someone exhausted by years of hiding, fighting, and sleeping in rubble. Schwarzenegger, already famous for a body built through professional bodybuilding, looked almost like the opposite of that idea. (BFI)