Ok, I finally watched it. I always feel like I should have since I was a kid.
Although I have never seen Terminator (1984) before, but I know Arnold Schwarzenegger is in it. Why is that? Every single poster has the classic machine gun guy with black leather jacket with his bare muscular chest and cool sunglass. After I watched the film, I thought to myself: Oh, there are two other main characters in it. Ever since I was kid, I have not seen a single poster of this film that featured the other two – actual humans – on it. It is just funny to me that the villain who is against humanity has become such a popular symbol, like a brand that does super well in marketing.
Don’t get me wrong, the film is awesome. Amazing cinematography, great editing, and vivid characters. I also enjoyed watching it in 35mm a lot, but the first thing I thought of after finishing was Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997), because this is a classic film that has explicit violence, nudity, and creates adrenalin rush for audiences by its car chase scenes.
Now some deeper themes:
Tech noir – a specific genre – combining film noir and science fiction demonstrates the technology that threatens human’s reality. Our previous screening Blade Runner (1982) is an excellent example.
The Terminator do not think, and do not reason. The only thing it does is select the target and aims to get it killed. It is scary to see Terminator breaking down and keep trying even till the last moment, where its human shell diminishes and reveals what’s under the skin – just a steel-cold killing machine. Machines used as weapon to target individual people, after 40 years since the film’s release, has become reality.
Isarael used AI to identify Hamas targets. “Lavender” is the name of the AI machine aiding Israel’s bombing. “Formally, the Lavender system is designed to mark all suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets. The sources told +972 and Local Call that, during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender, which clocked as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants — and their homes — for possible air strikes.” (https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) However, this system often makes mistakes, and we are talking about as high as 10%. It identifies people who were loosely or not at all related to their targets. This reminds me of the trait of Terminator. Terminator would go as far to kill all Sarah Connors and make tons of mistakes, which is in some way like this AI system, because the military would rather kill a hundred by mistake than letting one real target go. What’s more terrifying is that “dumb bombs” are utilized, which destroys entire homes and kill all their occupants. Women and children who had nothing to do with the war were wiped out because of AI’s decisions.
Furthermore, human has been trying to develop robots that look like human for ages. In Terminator, this serves a specific purpose, because when there are living tissues covering the endoskeleton, Terminators are impossible to be identified. Can anyone imagine if a threatening machine just walks around us with us completely unaware because it looks just like us? There is a term for that – AUTOMATON – a moving mechanical device made in imitation of a human being (Oxford Languages). Also, some people have automatonophobia, which is fear of human-like figures. Arguably, I find Kyle Reese also becoming machine like when he says, “Pain can be controlled – you just disconnect it.” Terminators cannot feel pain as well, but they sense damages. What difference does it make if a human does not feel pain but can see his own injuries? A machine breaks, and a human die. Kyle is also made into a resistance fighting machine to some extent.
I need to confess, for some reason, when I watched A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), I thought the Flesh Fair was pretty cool. Grand elebration of humanity and the “killing” of machines? Why not?
Well, Terminator once said:
Leave a Reply