The Terminator: A movie older than i am that I saw for the first time around Christmas. Very happy I saw it, was a very fun movie. But there are quite a lot of scenes that hit a bit close to home given current politics, making great fodder for a combination movie plug and political commentary post.
A number of sequels followed this movie, of which I’ve seen the second (I actually watched it earlier, a bit before the 2020 election). The sequel had less I can comment on, but I’ll bring things up when appropriate.
Movie Summary
The movie’s setup is explained in some text at the beginning. In the (now not so far future) of the 2020’s, an intelligent computer called skynet(I think the name was in the original movie) has killed off most people, and is fighting a war with survivors, using various machines it controls. The human survivors win, and as the human close in, the machine makes a desperation move: It send a robot (The Terminator of the title, played by that later governor of California), disguised as human, to find kill the mother of the main leader of the humans. The humans learn about this, and send one of their soldiers back to the same time to protect her.
Most of the movie takes place in 1984, and plays as a slasher/horror movie style plot with action movie style scenes. Which works well for me, I’m not all that interested in horror movies, but action is fun, and having characters fight back makes things work better. Plus it is very tightly structured, watching it I can sail right through without obvious stopping points.
As a warning: There will be spoilers after this point. I will mention and embed actual scenes. I’ll also save sequel stuff for next section.
If you want to watch it, it is (as of this post) free with ads on youtube.
Scenes From the Movie(s). and Modern Politics
I’ll only link to politically relevant scenes here.
What Day is it?
This is one of the funnier scenes. It makes perfect sense for our soldier from the future, Mr. Reese, to do this, but unless you know he’s in a movie with time travel, it is pretty weird.
Of course, with modern politics, the Chauvin trial, the protests last summer, etc., sarcastically asking “Oh, the time travelling white guy gets away...’ would not be surprising.
Gun Safety
No explanation needed, I think.
Finding the target (Warning! Violent Scene!)
(Again, Violent Scene! just avoiding legal issues if you don’ want to see it) In this scene, our villain, the terminator, has founds its target, but fortunately Mr. Reese is there to...slow it down. This robot is pretty tough. Reese and Connor manage to get out, but not before the nightclub gets shot up pretty badly.
Of course, this scene looks an awful lot like a person shooting up a nightclub, helped by the future governor of California seeming to move faster/twitchier/less ponderously (I think), and looking more human than elsewhere in the movie. I don’t know how common shooting up places was in 1984, but today it may hit a bit close to home.
“No, I’m not insane! there ere machines and Robots and...”
Once again we have Reese and the other characters doing their best, and coming to...suboptimal results. Reese is of course telling the truth, but the other characters don’t realize and have no evidence they are in a sci-fi movie with time travel, and treat his story as the insanity it would be in any other situation. To me, it is another funnier scene in the movie.
Of course, with Q-anon going around...If only the vast majority of people acted as the police and psychiatry people do in this movie. And Q-anon is if anything less coherent.
Heavy Weapons Needed (Warning! More violence!)
Here, our terminator has figured out where its target is, and the police find out they are up against something far more dangerous than expected.
Of course, today the problem is if anything the opposite, police aren’t fighting an unstoppable robot, but seem to want the weapons and freedoms as if they are.
The movie continues from there, with some conversations and chase scenes and such, not as relevant to modern politics. We also get some scenes of the future war, which And than, many years later, we get:
The Sequel! Or, Unable to warn anyone.
So the first movie finishes, the terminator dies, and the movie sold a lot of tickets and thus needs a sequel. Sarah Connor has survived, but knows thanks to the previous movie’s events that a lot of death and destruction is coming. Unfortunately, all the evidence is gone, so she’s kind of stuck.
For modern politics, this scene can point a couple of directions. On the one hand, see Q-anon types above, who seem to really want to believe similar stuff with no evidence whatsoever. On the other hand, watching obvious cock up Trump run for office, global warming...there’s a lot of problem stuff going around that evidence exist for, and somehow a lot of people end up in a similar situation.
Oh yes, the apparently very realistic nuclear explosion, gifs of which are all over the internet.
Bonus Round
Here, from 1991, is actual footage of after election week? month? 2020. Or, maybe not exact, it might be a reconstruction. It captures the feeling anyway.
Summary
These movies have been out a long time, so if you’ve wanted to see them, you probably have. If not, and like this sort of stuff, take a watch. (Again, original terminator available on youtube when this was posted.) In any case, it is kind of surprising what seemingly modern stuff works into movies from a good time ago.