Terminator is one of the greatest science-fiction action series of all time, and it has featured a lot of cool guns.
It's one of the greatest sci-fi action movies of all time, and was one of James Cameron's earliest successes that would lead to one of Hollywood's all-time blockbusters, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
The Terminator is about a humanoid cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent through time from the future by a sentient AI robotic enemy of humanity known as Skynet. Its mission is to kill a woman names Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the mother of the leader of the human resistance in the post-apocalyptic future, before she can even conceive her son, John Connor. The resistance manages to send a counter-attack in the form of Kyle Reese, a human protector for Sarah.
One of the first things the T-800 robot did once showing up in the 1980s, after getting some clothes and a station wagon to get around, is hit a Los Angeles gun shop and acquire an arsenal. He infamously asks for a Plasma Rifle in a 40-Watt range, but the other firearms he requests off the rack are all real guns. A few of them wouldn't have exactly been legal to sell as they were shown in LA at the time. For instance, the Uzi he selects would have had to have been sold with a 16-inch barrel and in semi-automatic, as a carbine, but it's sold with a normal short barrel. We can also assume the T-800 is able to easily convert any semi-auto to a full auto firearm.
Technicalities aside, here's a breakdown of the coolest guns used in the original Terminator, as well as a couple of the coolest firearms from the following sequels.
AMT Hardballer .45 Longslide with Early Laser Sight
The first gun the T-800 uses as its primary firearm is a striking and now-rare longslide AMT Hardballer 1911-based handgun in .45 ACP. It's one of the guns he chooses from the gun shop.
The huge tube mounted with a bracket above the gun isn't a flashlight, but instead one of the earliest laser sights small enough to mount on a handgun. While the laser sight was real and was made by a designer from the company that would eventually become SureFire, it didn't exactly work as depicted in the movie.
The laser required a large amount of power. When we see the laser activated, it's connected to a wire running up Arnold's sleeve and to the back of his waist where he wore a large battery pack. Another wire ran down Arnold's other sleeve and ended in a switch he held in his left hand which activated the laser.
There's just something badass about a longslide 1911, and the stainless steel finish and the chosen angles along with the cylindrical laser sight make it look even bigger. Except, the gun makes sort of a lasery sound when fired instead of the boom of a .45. That's not accurate at all.
Uzi 9mm Submachine Gun
When the T-800 tracks down Sarah Connor at the club Tech Noir, he's armed with his AMT Hardballer, but also with the Uzi, which he is wearing under his jacket on a sling.
Once Kyle Reese opens up on him with his sawed-off Ithaca 37 shotgun, the T-800 opens up with his Uzi, spraying down the bar and killing several bystanders.
The Police Station Assault - AR-18 and SPAS-12
When the T-800 assaults the police station where Sarah is hiding and Reese is being held, he is prepared and armed with the Armalite AR-18 and the Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun that he got from the gun shop. He has removed the stock on both guns—since he's an extremely strong robot, he doesn't really need them.
Using both guns akimbo, the T-800 pretty much takes out the entire station, with Sarah and Kyle barely escaping.
Winchester 1887
In Terminator 2, Arnold plays a different T-800, this time reprogrammed to protect Sarah and the now teenaged John from another, more advanced Terminator, the T-1000, that was sent through time at the same time as the original T-800.
The T-800's primary weapon through most of the movie is a Winchester 1887 lever action shotgun with the barrel cut down and the stock removed. He often spin cocks the shotgun the way John Wayne cocked his lever gun in True Grit. ?
Tactical Remington 870
Another notable shotgun is Sarah Connor's Remington 870 with a folding stock that she grabs from the police SWAT van and carries throughout the film's ending in the foundry, and most notably in the scene where she repeatedly works the action with one hand due to her injured shoulder.
M79 Grenade Launcher
The T-800 also carries a single-shot M79 grenade launcher that he uses to great effect during and after their infiltration of the Cyberdyne building, along with a bandolier of 40mm grenades.
This is also the weapon the T-800 finally uses to do enough damage to the T-1000 for it to fall in the vat of molten steel, which dissolves it and kills the seemingly indestructible Terminator.
GE M134 Minigun
During the standoff and shootout with police at the Cyberdyne building, the T-800 uses a striking machine gun to hold off the police. He uses a highly modified multi-barrel GE M134 Minigun. This is an electrically powered machine gun that's normally mounted on helicopters and other vehicles.
This is the same M134 that was used in the film Predator, though it was changed a bit for T2. While in Predator, the gun was attached to an absurdly small ammo pack, the T-800 uses a large duffel bag of ammunition and, presumably also some kind of battery to power the gun.
While there were a few more cool guns in other Terminator movies, like Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation, and Terminator Genisys, those movies can't hold a candle to the original three. Apparenthly, without Cameron at the helm, the capability of choosing extremely cool firearms was absent as well.
NEXT: GUNS FROM MOVIES: HEAT
