Notes on Neo-Noir (and The First Two Terminators)

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Using the blog as a notebook to keep some interesting things I've run across. Passages from The Philosophy of Neo-Noir:

"Everything takes place in relation to the self: the self is the detective, the self is the villain, and all the clues exist solely within his own mind. (this in relation to neo-noir specifically)

"The first form (of detective story) is the nineteenth-century version, especially Sherlock Holmes. In that formula, we have the first-person perspective of John Watson, a medical doctor (and really a kind of detective), who is, in fact and quite clearly, looking for the essence of the mind of Holmes. However, this investigation of the self into another takes place only when the other, namely Holmes, is looking for another still, namely the villain.

"Everything changes however, as the nineteenth century becomes the twentieth and Sherlock Holmes, in turn, steadily becomes Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. For now Watson is gone. And it's the detective himself who is telling the story about his own search for the other as villain. So it's still a first-person singular detective story, but the degrees between the reader (or the viewer) and the villain have closed by one: namely the removal of Watson, such that our first-person perspective is, in fact, closer to the actual events of the case. This is the second major form of the detective story—namely classic noir.

"And, if you decrease the degrees even further by one, you get neo-noir as the third form. It's still a first-person narrative—and, like noir, it's still the detective who's doing the talking, but he's no longer looking for some mysterious villain in the city. He's looking for himself: he's looking for himself as an other."
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I'm not sure this is entirely or always true. I mean, it works for Bladerunner for sure. And the sequel. But I'm sure I've seen neo-noirs that follow the form of the classic noir too. Maybe in some there's that sense of the hero and the villain being similar, almost mirror reflections of each other. Like the sense in The Terminator that Kyle Reece, and all the people of his time, have had to become like human Terminators in order to survive against them—they've essentially had to hollow themselves out of all real humanity and become living killing machines with no feelings and no human relationships—basically machines on the inside, with a skin of humanity and vulnerability over it. It's as if the terminators are just concretizations of that metaphor. And to some extent that's what Sarah is afrad she'll have to become (and does in the second movie). I suppose they could be called neo-noirs, or something close to it. There's no femme fatale in the first one (it isn't a necessary component anyway)(... or is the Terminator an Homme Fatale to Sarah?), but there is in the second—it's Sarah herself. She's screwed up John's chances at any kind of normal life and then he gets dragged in to save her and the world. Not sure either could really be called neo-noir though. But then, Cameron did name the night club Tech Noir, and that's the name for his style of filmmaking. Maybe they are. It bears more looking into. I'm loathe to call them that though, because in each the protagonist isn't doomed, they make it through in the end. Maybe it's closer to the classic hard-boiled detective thing? Set in a noir universe, but the protag makes it through and is uncorrupted by all the nastiness that drags everyone else down. I still don't know. Maybe pseudo-noir? Lol, or maybe just not.

Ok, here's the answer:
Terminator: 5 Ways The Original Movie Is A Noir (& 5 It's A Slasher)

... Ironically (or perhaps not?) written by a Ben Sherlock.