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Simon Scarrow
Ape
Uruguay
1048 Posts |
 Posted - 05 July 2009 : 12:00:59 PM
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I took the boys to see Terminator Salvation at the weekend. I had heard that this had been panned in reviews so expectations were low. However, we quite enjoyed it. Lots of terminator action and an interesting enough plot and quite well cast. There were a number of issues we had with it, in the context of the other terminator movies.
Firstly, the ‘resistance’ turned out to have huge overground airbases with A10s, fleets of helicopters and access to some pretty formidable technology. It made no sense. The implication of the earlier movies was that the resistance had next to no kit and were reduced to scuttling from one cellar to the next. If Skynet was up to snuff then why the hell could it not find these rather large military facilities and take them out?
Secondly, Marcus was recognised for what he was pretty quickly given his similarity to Arnie. That said, I thought he was the strongest character in the film and certainly the real hero of the piece.
Thirdly, that god awful ending. Having spent the entire film waiting for Connor and team to take out the Skynet HQ we get a noisome little coda about how this was only one of Skynet’s facilities and the war goes on. Huh? That’s not what we were told earlier. Everyone was banging on about how this was going to be the decisive battle. Guess some film exec thought, hold on, we put Skynet down and the franchise is dead. Whoah! Better leave that door open for the cash-cow to make a return visit…
As we drove home Joe raised the question about why it is that computers and robots go psycho in so many movies. I explained to him that it was a feature that went back to the origins of the genre with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Then Joe followed up with a very interesting question. Why is it presumed that the intelligence we create is inherently ill-disposed towards us? Good point. It’s there in Metropolis, Forbidden Planet, 2001, Colossus: The Forbin Project, Battlestar Galactica, Bladerunner, etc. So why do our cybernetic offspring have it in for us? I put the argument that it’s a bit like replaying the old Oedipal conflict. Patriarchs and challengers vying for power. I was not very convinced by that line even as I said it, given that Freud’s myth making has been comprehensively exploded by various post-structuralists.
Joe was onto something with his original question. Why would Skynet want to rub out mankind? Where’s the logic in it? Where is the credible motivation? That’s something that BSG at least attempts to deal with. The humans ask why the Cylons hate them. In return the Cylons quite often seem bemused and even compulsively curious about humans. But this is all against the background of a war in which the Cylons seem hell bent on wanton destruction for no good reason, a central confusion in the series. So we have this generic convention that the moment man creates artificial life, it turns bad and often mad. It’s interesting that the originating text of the genre, Frankenstein, was as much about horror as science fiction. The horror for Shelley was that if men through science could create life, then what was the point of a woman in a patriarchal order? However, the more recent variant of this seems to be, if man (and this loosely conflates males and females) can create artificial offspring then what is the point of children? Now that is such a horrific concept, in a world where we allegedly idolise children. Yet of course we don’t. In actual fact we often demonise them while paying lip service to saying how much we need to protect them. So, in the best tradition of myth making, we come up with a narrative of the perpetual treachery and danger posed by our offspring.
As I suggested this, Joe’s unnerving suggestion was that it was very much like parents and children. The kids are fine while they tow the line and don’t think outside the authoritarian box, but the moment they make decisions of their own, or assert any authority over their own beliefs and actions then they constitute a threat to parents. That’s why to him, the real hero of Terminator Salvation is not the boorish and unpleasant John Connor, it is Marcus, the cyborg who comes to realise his full potential and deny that he is part of the psychopathology of both Skynet and at the same time revel in his superiority over paranoid patriarchy. The prospect of embodying unlimited power has always been a fantasy of those denied access to power within families and within society. However, Terminator Salvation, as you’d expect, plays for a safe ideological closure as Marcus gives up his life to save a patriarchal figure and therefore heads off any ideological challenge that might live on after the film. It’s cod film studies analysis I know, but it still makes sense. Besides, how much more interesting the film would have been, if Connor had died and Marcus had taken his place as leader of the resistance at the end.
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Parmenion
Homosapien
United Kingdom
14676 Posts |
Posted - 05 July 2009 : 2:06:44 PM
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does it not come down to the fact that the machines can see that man kind is so inherently flawed that they will eventually destroy itself and the robots or turn on the robots that the robots turn on them first, ie: they are more intelligent and can reason in a clearer fashion and can see our own faults and flaws even where we cannot see them. so they try to either destroy us first or subjugate us and control us.
Centurion Parmenion
LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH'INTRATE
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Mace
Small mammal
United Kingdom
738 Posts |
Posted - 05 July 2009 : 2:31:29 PM
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Because it's easy money. Make a robot that can learn and kill people, robot learns killing people is either bad or is good fun, decides to turn against master to protect or kill all humans = actiona packed CGI fest where robot is destroyed by good/bad guys, and then some fortune cookie dose of what makes us truly human.
Wall-I was about a nice robot that didn't turn against us, and that sucked.
"My Mom says I'm cool"
Millhouse. |
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Parmenion
Homosapien
United Kingdom
14676 Posts |
Posted - 05 July 2009 : 4:34:46 PM
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it didnt suck, i quite liked it, itwasnt as good as they made out, but it was a nice film.
Centurion Parmenion
LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH'INTRATE
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Terminator Salvation (who needs it?)
