10 Movies That Prove The '80s Was The Golden Age Of Action

6. The Terminator

Die Hard
Orion Pictures

No amount of inferior sequels, with last year's box office bomb Dark Fate marking the fourth in a row, can ever take away the legacy of James Cameron's first two Terminators, both of which comfortably rank as all-time greats in both the action and sci-fi genres.

The Terminator franchise may have opted for increasingly heavy reliance on scope and spectacle to try and retain its dwindling audience over the decades, but the 1984 original is a much leaner, meaner and altogether nastier beast, with the time and budget constraints faced by Cameron and his crew informing the movie's breathless, relentless tone.

Arnold Schwarzenegger created an icon with little more than a handful of dialogue and a pair of shades, and while The Terminator is most definitely a B-movie by the very definition of the term, it also became one of the most significant and influential movies of the decade through sheer force of will.

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