“The Terminator” is one of my favorite actions movies of all time. It’s just non-stop suspense, set pieces that were revolutionary at the time and still stand up twenty five years later, and characters that you actually cared about. It put James Cameron on the map, and set the stage for countless man-against-machine rip offs that never captured the magic of the original.
But there’s one thing about “The Terminator” that I can’t stand, that irks me every time I watch it, that takes it from a 10.0 to a 9.9. I think you know what scene I’m talking about, and if you don’t, you might not want to read this post. Ready?
It’s the sex scene.
Not that it’s a bad scene (it isn’t), not that it isn’t kind of hot (it is), but let’s look at it rationally. You’re Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese. You have an indestructible robot hell bent on killing you, who “will not stop until YOU ARE DEAD.” You’re on the run, constantly, often mere footsteps away from a giant cyborg that looks suspiciously like the future governor of California. So what do you do?
Well, if you’re a rational human being, you most certainly do not spend a romantic night in a motel room jumping the bones of the guy sent back to protect you. That scene gets me every time. I want to scream out, “Stop holding hands and feeling each other up! Run! Make more of those pipe bombs!” But no. They always get down and dirty, and I always shake my head as Arnold drives up to their motel on his motorcycle holding a gun the size of Italy.
So what’s my point? Well, a lot of readers ask me why there’s no sex scene in my first novel, THE MARK. After all, the hero and heroine are young, energetic, have plenty of chemistry, and are undeniably attracted to each other. So what gives, Jason? Are you just a big prude? Would it have been so bad to offer one romp?
But the truth is, I did have a problem with it. While writing THE MARK, I considered whether the two characters should have sex. I knew that in future books, if they stayed together they certainly would, but in the end I decided that this was not the time
I wrote THE MARK to take place over three days, in such a way that every second was accounted for, and every decision mattered. My characters, like Sarah and Kyle, were often mere seconds away from death, and even when they weren’t they didn’t know they were safe. If, all of a sudden, Henry and Amanda paused from the action to do a little hanky panky, it would have felt forced, disingenuous. I have nothing against sex scenes, in fact some of them can be quite enjoyable (and I’d be lying if every now and then I didn’t flip through a romance novel to see all the creative ways one could write a sex scene). But in THE MARK, it just didn’t work. It wasn’t an organic part of the story, and I think readers would have picked up on it.
Like in “The Terminator,” the tension would have fizzled out. After all, if the characters were so relaxed as to do the horizontal mambo while other people wanted to kill them, how dangerous could those people be? If you were an assassin, and you found your targets in a room rounding third base, wouldn’t you have a serious emotional breakdown? I mean, wouldn’t you question your vocation if you were so non-threatening that your targets didn’t even think they needed to wear clothes to protect themselves from you?
KYLE: Oh Sarah, I love you.
SARAH: Kyle, our son will save the world from the machines.
KYLE: God, you’re beautiful, and I bet eight years from now you’ll be buff as hell.
TERMINATOR: What the hell are you two doing?
SARAH (embarrassed): We were just, um, talking.
KYLE: Yeah, talking.
TERMINATOR: But you’re naked!
KYLE: Ok, you got us.
SARAH: Yeah, we were totally doing it.
TERMINATOR: What the hell? I mean, here I am, impervious to bullets and pain, with a gun that shoots a thousand rounds a minute. I’ve been chasing you non-stop for days, I killed an entire freaking police station, and you two are having sex? Don’t you respect me at all?
SARAH: We do, it’s just…
TERMINATOR: It’s just what?
KYLE: Ok, to be honest, you’re just not that scary. We figured even if you did a little coitus interruptus, we’d have plenty of time to make pipe bombs and get away.
TERMINATOR: I’m so ashamed.
SARAH: Don’t be. It happens to a lot of guys.
KYLE: Hey!
SARAH: Not you, stud muffin, our baby’s going to save the world, remember?
TERMINATOR: I need a drink. I’ll be back.
So, in the end, there is no sex scene in THE MARK. Not to say there’s no romance–there is–but Henry and Amanda have a relationship that just could not be consummated in the short time they have to get to the bottom of the conspiracy afoot. So when writing, especially characters involved in relationships, I always have to keep in mind the possibility of sex. It’s a normal, healthy part of a relationship, and when you’re writing a series there comes a time when your characters have to express their love for each other. Or, for other characters, they just meet someone for a quick bonk.
But it has to be organic to the story, and by that it depends on the universe you create. In my books, it’s important that sex only happens when it needs to happen. When it furthers along my characters, or acts as an emotional release (I was going to say another kind of release, but this is a family blog).
Hopefully I was able to create enough romantic tension between my two leads so that even though they don’t get much past first base, you’ll want to see how their relationship changes and matures over time. But it won’t happen at the expense of the story or realism or suspense.
So if anyone has any good editing software, let me know so I can edit out those few minutes of “The Terminator.” I’ll thank you greatly, and, deep down, I think the Terminator himself will be appreciative. If you look quickly, a small tear runs down his cheek as Sarah and Kyle make love, because he knows that when he gets home SkyNet will be mighty disappointed in him.
