I read something that deeply touched me this weekend, not in a volume of history or a poem, but in an article about an action movie on a sports site.
The site The Ringer,primarily concerned with sports and a bit of pop culture, periodically runs “oral histories” of influential popular films, in which they interview as many of a movie’s actors and other principals as possible and assemble an inside understanding of the film’s making.
Last week, the site published The Oral History of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, marking the 30th anniversary of the film’s release. Interviews with director James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, ILM visual effects genius Dennis Muren and others offer an inside look on how the story was brought to the screen and what made it more impactful that the legions of stratospheric-budget, CGI-filled imitators that followed.
Being a big fan of the film (and, to a lesser extent, the franchise), I found the piece quite interesting and entertaining. And, at the end, when Cameron and Schwarzenegger are musing on the film’s deeper meanings, man’s headlong rush to destruction, the promise and dangers of technology, a mother’s drive to save her child and everyone else’s, I was floored by Schwarzenegger’s takeaway. It is simple yet profound, and absolutely vital to what happens next, here in the world outside the screen.
The whole idea is that there is no fate but what we make for ourselves. We don’t have to say, “Well that’s the way it’s going to go.” We have control over ourselves.
We are in charge. We don’t have to take this shit that’s coming our way. We can go and create a future, the one that we want, which is a good future without those machines. We just have to fight for it.
For a big clunky bulldozer in a flesh suit, they guy’s got a point.
Check out the piece. It’s pretty satisfying.