Some 30 years ago, a down-on-luck film director and a
muscular actor were both looking for opportunities in Hollywood . The director had a funny idea
about a sci-fi film, which was inspired by a nightmare he had some times ago.
The concept was realized, and a movie with a low-budget was made. The producers
from the studio did not have high anticipations of this movie, they believed
this film would disappear into oblivion a few weeks after it was shown in
cinemas. This was NOT the case – the 1984 film became the weekend champion in
box office, one of the top 10 films in 1984 in Time Magazine, inspired no less
than 4 sequels, a TV serial, numerous franchises, a Universal Studio park
attraction. It was honored by the American Film Institute numerous times, regularly
on the IMDB Top 250, and had no less than 3 million Facebook fans. It was
ultimately chosen for preservation by the National Film Registry in 2008, which
I believe it was something the bosses behind the film would never have
anticipated. Indeed, I will be more than surprised if you have not even heard
of this film, and those responsible for it – James Cameron and Arnold
Schwarzenegger. This great film, is my favorite film of all time – THE
TERMINATOR !!
‘The Terminator’ has stood the test of time. While extremely
entertaining in its own right, ‘Terminator’ was unlike any typical popcorn
movie. The film has asked so many important questions which are more than
relevant in a world technology are so essential for us, a world that artificial
intelligence has pervaded some many aspects of our lives. No matter how
successful ‘Titanic’ or ‘Avatar’ may be, ‘The Terminator’ is James Cameron’s
true masterpiece. Without the track record of the Terminator films, he will
never be allowed to make films like ‘Titanic’ or ‘Avatar’.
As a big fan of Terminator for more than 15 years, I have so
much to say about this great film! These films have addressed some many themes
about the human condition, and therefore I decide to divide my discussion into
3 parts.
Part 1. Focus on ‘Terminator 1’ – this article. The
human-machine relationships and also why we have a love-hate relationship with
terminators.
Part 2. Focus on ‘Terminator 2’ – can machines learn to be
more ‘human’ and ‘no fate’.
Part 3. Terminator and Postmodernism – how has ‘Terminator’
films helped us to make sense of the modern condition?
While we may have heard of the story before, let me
describe, once and for all, the ‘Terminator’ storyline here. The background of
the story is that, in year 2029, computational machines have become self-aware
and they see their human makers as threats, so they wage war on the human
civilizations, leading to a nuclear apocalypse. These machines are resourceful
in terms of technology, and they come in many diverse forms. They have one
thing in common – they call themselves ‘The Terminators’...
The terminators in 2029 know that their wars against the
human race are coming to a dead-end, so they devise a ‘creative’ strategy –
using the time-travelling device to go back in time, to prevent the birth of a
male known as ‘John Connor’, who will become the resistance leader against the
terminators. In short, they go back in time to ‘terminate’ John’s mother, Sarah
Connor, back in 1984 (the year the film was shown). So, they send a humanoid
robot of the model T-800 (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) back through time to
carry out the mission. On the other hand, knowing the plan of the machines, the
humans also send a soldier, Kyle Reese, back in time to stop the terminator.
The story begins now...
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| Kyle Reese
In 1984, both the Terminator and Reese arrived at the same
night. After acquiring clothes and firearms respectively – including the
Terminator asking in a shop for a ‘Phase Plasma Rifle with 40 Watt Range’,
which was certainly fiction in 1984 – they began their quests to track down
this ‘Sarah Connor’. Sarah was actually a young and vulnerable witness at that
time. With no ideas which ‘Sarah Connor’ was the one to terminator, the
terminator had to track down all 3 females with the name ‘Sarah Connor’. He
unfortunately got it wrong twice – the first 2 dead Sarahs were not the ones
who would give birth to Sarah Connor. At an evening, both Reese and the
Terminator have garnered clues of the whereabouts of Sarah. Sarah, believing
she was stalked, took refuge in a pub called ‘Tech-Noir’. The Terminator
entered the pub and found Sarah, and at the time he was about to gun down Sarah
once and for all, Reese had the first shot and shot down Terminator. Then, at
one of the most surprising scenes of the film, the human-looking Terminator was
simply unscathed by the bullet hit and stood up again, and started blasting
through everywhere with his micro-Uzi, gunning down numerous victims along the
way. He attempted to shoot Sarah again, and only stopped by Reese’s rifle
blasts. Reese and Sarah escaped with a stolen car, with the panicked Sarah not
convinced at all about Reese’s story. Meanwhile, the Terminator has car-jacked
a police car, and he discovered Sarah and Reese again in a car park, starting
another chase. Eventually, police came
after Terminator’s car crash into a corner, and narrowly escaped. Reese and
Sarah were arrested.
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The terminator retreated into a motel room, and in a
memorable scene of special effects, he did self-surgery to repair himself, cutting
arms, fixing blood vessels, even cutting out one of its eyes to restore his
vision (this was where the ‘eye-damage’ cliché all started). He then put on the
now iconic dark sunglasses to shield his eyes. Meanwhile, at the police
station, no one believed in Reese’s terminator ‘fantasy’, calling him a loon
instead. But then, the terminator arrived at the police station. Forging
himself as a friend of Sarah, he asked for permission to get in. The clerk
instead urged him to wait. The terminator, inspecting the surroundings,
delivered one of the greatest movie quotes of all time, ‘I’LL BE BACK!!’ and
walked out. He did come back – with a car crashing the hell into the police
station! Now armed with 2 semi-automatic firearms, he started blasting the hell
through the police station, killing anything he considered as ‘life’. Every
single cops in the station were dead, yet Reese and Sarah were able to run away
again.
Now appreciating the threat raging towards her, Sarah became
intimate with Reese and their relationships improved. During a brief rest,
Reese had a dream about the future, when he is, surprisingly, holding a photo
of a sad-looking Sarah. Then, a bunch of terminators infiltrated the compound,
and with guns resembling the legendary ‘Phase Plasma Rifle’, they caused as
much damages as their potentials would allow them. Amidst fires and explosions,
Sarah’s photo was burnt to ash...
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| Sarah and Reese |
Sarah and Reese checked into a motel, and got ready for the
robot’s inevitable attack. It was then Reese told Sarah the truth, ‘I come here
for you, Sarah’. Reese was, is, and will be John Connor’s father. They made
love, writing history along the way. Soon, the terminator tracked down their
motel, and got one final chase. After both their cars have overturned, Terminator
commandeered a large tank, and chased the couple. Eventually, Reese used a
dynamite and ignited the terminator’s tank, leading to a massive explosion. Just
when Reese and Sarah thought they have killed the terminator, he suddenly
emerged alive, now in his metal-endoskeleton (rid of all human tissues). Knowing
that they almost had no ways to defeat this machine, the couple desperately ran
into a factory, with the name ‘CYBERDYNE’, and its importance would be evident
in ‘Terminator 2’. Sacrificing himself, Reese gave one final futile struggle
against the terminator, only to be killed by him. Now a one-on-one showdown,
Sarah crawled and hid through the mountainous assortments of machines, with the
terminator trying to get his hand on her. He unknowingly crawled into a hydraulic
press, and seeing this opportunity, Sarah showed her caliber by pressing the
button of the compressor, crushing the terminator’s skull! The powerful robot,
terminator, finally met his ironic end – he was terminated by who he was
supposed to kill!
Some time later, a pregnant Sarah was seen sitting alone a
car, taping her story to her sure-born son, John Connor. A little boy took a
photograph of her, which was the same photograph in Reese’s dream. A storm was
coming, but would it be more intense than Sarah’s war, her war against the
machines? We’ll see in ‘Terminator 2’!
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| The photo that travels through time. |
Before we go into the artistic merits of ‘The Terminator’,
we have to settle some scores. This is an issue that has generated some many
controversies and arguments throughout the years, and has drained so many imaginative
thoughts. It relates the logic behind the plot of ‘The Terminator’, namely the
time-travel issue. Many viewers have discovered the inconsistencies in the
story, especially after the emergence of Terminator 3, and the whole issue has
become Rashomonic, full of contradictions and in no ways the issues can be
reconciled.
As a big fan of The Terminator, let me plainly state my
position – there is absolutely NO point to argue or reconcile any of these
inconsistencies, as these attempts will prove to be futile. Because what we are
dealing with here is challenging the very foundation of science and philosophy,
and any diversions from that will almost lead to non-constructive circular
reasoning. Time travel is a concept that challenges the foundation of
Metaphysics. It is challenging the idea of ‘irreversibility of time’, and it
can not be empirically verified. To try to treat it ‘logically’ will almost
lead to tautological and invalid conclusions.
The reason why this ‘plot hole’ appears at first time is
because, first, any plot involving time travel is thorny, and will be open to
logical challenges. Second, James Cameron and the creators of the film never
have anticipated the film would reach such a scholarly status, and therefore
they have not been meticulous enough to write a totally logical story. Let’s
just say the damage is done!
If you really want an answer, there are indeed 2 schools of
thoughts regarding The Terminator’s plot. The first, which I think I belong to,
are the ‘traditionalists’. They treat the first two Terminator films as a
whole, and leave out the other recent terminator films. That will make the
storyline of the film ore logically consistent. The second school is more open
to interpretations, and they often a ‘parallel universe’ explanation, stating
that the ‘Reese’ comes from another time universe and thus can make love with
Sarah, leading to John’s birth. Yet, both sides can in no way provide a version
free of plot holes involving time-travel.
Let me put this simply, though. The plot holes in the
Terminator should no way be detrimental to the merits of the film. Indeed, The
Terminator has touched on so many important themes relevant to modern human
lives that it has achieved a timelessness, which will be appreciated by many
generations of audience.
The genre of ‘Terminator’ belongs to a sub-genre of science
fiction, known as ‘cyberpunk’. Examples include Blade Runner, Robocop, Akira
and The Matrix. These films often portray a realistic and rather dystrophic
future, and they are considered as ‘Postmodernist films’. These films have
often shared common themes, and I will leave the discussion regarding
Postmodernism until the third part. This time, I would like to focus on the
themes of the first Terminator film.
Technological advancement, to humans, can be both a promise
and a curse. Throughout history, we have used our imaginations and creativity
to create solutions for problems we may never materialize. We develop tools,
automatons, and eventually sophisticated machines to make our lives easier, and
better. The technological achievement is the sublimed essence of human civilization
intelligence, and that is what motivates us to move further into the future, to
conquer the machine. But, when is the point to stop? Humans are different from
the lifeless machines, because we have cognitive powers, divided into reason
and emotion. One cannot emerge without the other, and indeed the essence of
human being is that we are capable to feel and be emotional, rather than acting
like some cold, unthinking machines. That is the reason why since human’s
earliest days, we have always been fearful of ‘dehumanization’, which is the loss of essence of human and
reduce to a mere machine-like existence. This IS exactly what The Terminator is
about.
aped. Reese and
Sarah were arrested.
The terminator is a ‘cyborg’, short for cybernetic organism.
It is a humanoid robot, covered by live, human-like tissues and organs. But
deep inside, there are mechanical components – the metal endoskeletons – and a
CPU controlling his cognitive decisions and tasks. True, this terminator looks
like Arnold ,
but he can never be considered a human, he is a cybernetic non-human, the exact
opposite of human being. Yet why we feel weird about this human-like robot? Freud’s
concept, ‘uncanny’, may shed some light on this. The reason why we feel
unconformable about this humanoid robot, but not, for example, a washing
machine, is because the terminator resembles us. It is this similarity that
gives us an uncanny feeling, and makes us weary of our subjectivity. Indeed, a
sentiment for the ‘fear of technology’ is a theme that is evident in many
films, including those of Shinya Tsukamoto and David Cronenberg.
The Terminator is insightful because it asks a daring
question – can computers be self-aware? Are they merely machines, the ‘slaves’
of humans, or can they affirm their subjectivities and feel jealousy, threat,
anger, or estrangement like us? The Terminator delivers this statement bluntly,
in the most straight-forward manner – the terminators are human’s enemy, it is
between them and us. Indeed, the theme of computers losing control and causing
havoc has already been portrayed before ‘The Terminator’, though ‘The
Terminator’ is likely the most obvious example. In Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’,
the HAL computer lost control and ejected astronauts to the outer space at
will. In ‘Westworld’, the cowboy robot, played by Yul Brynner, got into
computational problems and started murdering the tourists in the theme park. In
‘The Terminator’, the machines suddenly became self-aware, having the ‘false’
belief that the humans were going to destroy them. The computers felt that they
had to fight back first, and therefore wrecked havoc and created the whole
‘Terminator’ episode.
The human-machine relationships have become even more
alarming nowadays. Our lives are indeed orchestrated by computer technologies
and artificial intelligence. How many of our daily activities have nothing to
do with a computer-controlled system? On the other hand, artificial
intelligence is taking the central stage in many different tasks – medical
robots, military robots, or various robotics, these cyborgs are going to be
involved in many dangerous and important tasks in many different fields. If we
have to rely on these ‘friends’, mutual trust has to be established. Wait a
minute, ‘mutual’? How do you know what is in the robot’s mind? The robots are
controlled by algorithms and logic languages, and their reasonings can be
understood by understanding the formal logic behind their commands. However,
machines can learn, for example, if they have an evolutionary algorithm, it is
quite possible to reach conclusions that humans cannot be accessible to. Thus,
we have a long way to go in terms of ‘A.I.’, because there are black-box areas
that we have not been able to reach a definite and conclusive answer. That is the wisdom behind ‘The Terminator’ –
it is asking questions for which the answers will shape our future lives.
What makes The Terminator so fascinating? To me, it is built
on a love / hate relationship between the audience and Terminator. The reason
why much audience finds resonance with the T-800 robot is because, while we are
afraid of this ‘monster’, he has possessed qualities that the audience finds as
some sort of an ideal – we want to be the Terminator!
The Terminator is frightening because, while he looks like a
muscular version of many of us, he is so different from us. He is almost
impervious to any forms of bullets or firearm blasts, he walks around, through
the fire, showing virtually no emotion. He literally shows no fear at all, and
he is so mean – he doesn’t stop, and he will not help, until he has killed his
target. Reese has succinctly stated this in the film, and this quote has almost
become the ‘Terminator Anthem’ –
‘It can't be
bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or
fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.’
That’s him.
Indeed, some may even feel pity for this robot. He has no choice, he is a
workhorse, with a set of commands written in his programs, and he shows no
qualities that humans are proud of – the rich emotions, the possibility of
moral actions. He is a loner, because as a cyborg, he will not be able to
connect with anyone on an emotional level. If a human being can be as
dehumanized and cold as the Terminator, that is ultimate tragedy.
Yet the reason
why he is so captivating is very much because of the same reason. He is a real
warrior, and he fights hard to succeed. He is focused, calm and not afraid of
the monumental tasks that await him. He can fail, but he will not stop and try
again. ‘I’LL BE BACK’ is his motto, his philosophy. Even if he cannot get
things right the first time, he will not give up. He will just stand up and
come back, to the very last minutes. It is this meanness that human beings are
so incapable of, and why we like this character deep down in our hearts. We all want to be as strong and determined as the terminator, when we want to achieve! I guess,
this is one of the reasons why Terminator is popular among so many film lovers.
It is a role that we in no way want to become, yet at the same time we can
identify with so much. That, is what makes the Terminator so iconic.
Next time: Focus on Terminator 2: Judgment Day
(1/3)
by Ed Law
5/7/2015
Film Analysis - 50
