It’s not every day that Nike halts production of their sneakers to accommodate one outside request. Of course, it’s not every day that Terminator comes calling.
In the first Terminator movie, Kyle Reese famously wears a pair of Nike Vandals. For the upcoming movie Terminator Genisys, costume designer Susan Matheson wanted to ensure that this movie’s Kyle Reese wore the exact same shoes.
There was just one small problem.
Nike no longer produces the Vandals that were seen in the original movie. And when Matheson contacted Nike to ask them about possibly making Vandals for the film, she was rebuffed.
“Nike wanted me to design an ID, like something, using the Air Force One base. But I’m a sneaker person and I know every single base of every sneaker. The Air Force One base is not the same as a Nike Vandal.”
“So I said, ‘No. I’m not going to do that. I need you to make me the real sneaker… Everybody watching this movie is going to know if it’s the real sneaker or the non-real sneaker.’ Anyone who is a fan of Terminator knows that sequence and knows the photo booth, and knows him grabbing the jacket, and knows that he’s taken the pants off the bum in the alley. We all know this, because I’ve watched this movie in slow motion frame by frame over and over and over. This is the entire reason I went into moviemaking, was a combination between Terminator and Mad Max. Those two movies made me decide that I wanted to do costumes. So for me, if I can’t give you the real sneaker, then I might as well not do the movie, right?”
To back up Matheson’s point, this is the Vandal as seen in the 1984 film.
And here’s a somewhat close (BUT NOT THE SAME THING, CLEARLY) Nike Air Force 1 interpretation that I quickly threw together on NikeID.
The main differences between the Vandal and the Air Force 1 are the sole material (the Vandals had no Air cushioning) and the fact that the Vandals were generally slimmer than the Air Force 1s. Also, while the Air Force 1 usually came in leather, the Vandal was made with canvas or nylon.
Nike eventually got the message:
Nike shut down production and made an exact original replica of the Vandals, specifically for Terminator Genisys. Matheson called it her “single greatest moment on this entire movie.”
It’s the little details that matter.
