Terminator Salvation: A Movie Review

by John David Ebert

When James Cameron’s film The Terminator came out in 1984, the idea of machines becoming sentient and eliminating human beings from the world may have seemed far-fetched, a mere science fiction premise for an entertaining 80s drive-in movie. (Yes, drive-ins still existed in the 80s). But now, 25 years later, with the fourth Terminator film having just been released, the idea is not only no longer far-fetched, but it has in fact become a reality.

You don’t believe me?

Take a look around at the world right now: it isn’t the same one we lived in back in 1984. Do you remember ringing up your own groceries back in 1984? I don’t. Do you remember those people called librarians who used to check out your books for you at the front desk and tell you, usually with a smile, when they were due back? Not there anymore, those librarians. Do you remember when you could call your public utilities in order to ask questions about your bill and actually speak to a live human being instead of a computerized simulation of a human voice? You don’t? Well, then maybe you’re a 20 year old. They tend not to remember such things.

One day, not too long ago, about a year or so, I received a traffic ticket in the mail. It was a ticket for making a left turn just when the arrow turned red. That’s funny, I thought, I have no memory of doing this. But yet, there was the photo of me that I had received in the mail, driving my car through the intersection, apparently in complete, rebellious defiance of the law, and without a police officer anywhere in sight. There was, apparently, no need for one, since my criminal action had been caught by the cool, remote, sentient eye of HAL 9000’s modern incarnation sitting on the top of the traffic light above me that recorded my violation. No need for any police officers, since the eye of the camera could cite me just as well, and just as thoroughly. Indeed, even ruthlessly.

Perhaps I am just becoming a complaining curmudgeon at 40 years old, bemoaning the good old days when we were better off? Or perhaps I have just lived long enough, and am perceptive enough, to take notice of these “improvements” in our society that have sinister implications for ourselves as “human” beings upon this earth? Well, maybe I’m just exaggerating; maybe none of this has anything to do with the Terminator films. And yet: It has recently been brought to my attention that the Israelis now use remote-controlled drones for what is called “targeted assassinations” of Palestinians they believe to be guilty of terrorist activities. These drones are unmanned aircraft which hover high enough in the sky to be invisible to the naked eye, but which keep careful watch, by means of electronic surveillance, of specific human individuals who have been targeted for death on the ground below. Drones are also becoming more and more common devices used by the United States government as a means of replacing real live soldiers in the Middle East. This means that they can act as buffers between human sensibilities such that it appears that no single human being is responsible for the killings, since they have obviously been carried out by robots.

And here are some other scattered observations: Does text messaging make it easier and more convenient for people to communicate with one another, as advertised, or does it actually enable one to hide behind a labyrinth of integrated circuits and microchips in crucial situations such as breaking off relationships with lovers or telling friends who have become enemies where they can go? I have heard of divorces taking place via You Tube and of people hearing loved one’s messages of distress via email or text messaging. Is it easier to tell someone to go fuck himself via email? And what about the 20 year old with his Ipod earphones wrapped in an invisible bubble of electronic pulses who is oblivious of what is going on around him? Does his Ipod make it easier for him to disengage with his surroundings and enter a private mental space in a public forum when he should really be engaged in how other people are relating to him?

Let’s face it: our electronic technologies are not making it easier for people to connect with one another, but rather easier for us to slip away into our own private matrices comprised of Ipods, Iphones, laptops, computers, cell phones, Blackberries, etc. Each one of us is disappearing from view out of the human Umwelt, fading off to wander inside a virtual matrix of pulse signals that is surrounding us with a labyrinth of silicon and metal and electromagnetic pulsation. Direct, face to face human contact is slowly, but ever so surely, beginning to become the exception and not the rule. All of this technology is actually serving to make us more and more remote from one another, oblivious to each other’s sufferings and human anguish.

You see, I don’t think the Terminator films, with their science fictional hyperbole, are exaggerating very much at all: we are under assault by our machines; we are in danger of being replaced by them. The human element is disappearing from the world all around us as we install automated systems, drones, timed cameras and integrated networks to do jobs and perform functions once performed by real live human beings.

 This is precisely why the mythology of Cameron’s Terminator universe is still alive and of interest to mass audiences so many years after the release of the original movie. The myth is talking to us and it is telling us that we need to wake up and realize what we’re doing. We’re in danger of replacing ourselves with an automated technological fascism which makes it easier for cold, unfeeling and distant systems to more efficiently process bureaucratic functions at the expense of the emotions and values of the human beings who are disappearing into the very latticework of the civilization that these machines were originally designed to protect. The modern human being is “fallen,” just as Heidegger portrayed him, but with the further connotation that he is trapped like a dead insect in a web of circuitry that has sucked the life out of him.

You see, every technology, every civilization, indeed, every art form, reaches a point where it flips over into its opposite and becomes what McLuhan used to call an “overheated medium” which has outgrown its original function and has become ripe for dismantling and discarding. Our overheated techno-electronic civilization is reaching just this point of overheating, and the Terminator films are trying to draw our attention to this fact. They are continuing to work out the myth of Dave Bowman’s battle with HAL 9000 that began back in 1968 and which, despite the ever increasing warnings that have been coming in celluloid form over the years, just keeps reiterating the same unheeded messages.

Is the new Terminator film any good at furthering this mythology? Well, it’s certainly not a bad film, and it is worth watching, although it is not particularly inventive and doesn’t really add anything new to the mythology beyond serving as yet another reminder that we need to begin rethinking our civilization on a human scale. We need to remember what we built this great machine to do in the first place, namely, that it was built to serve human interests, not dictate technological agendas that rob human purposes of their integrity and values. Human society was designed for human beings living at a human scale, not for machines and robots. When the machines have taken over and begun dictating to us, the end of the present cycle of history is drawing near.

This has all gone far enough.