Terminator Salvation and Battlestar Galactica May 22, 2009
Posted by Jason W Ellis in Movies, Review, Science Fiction.Tags: androids, BSG, humanity, machines, mcg, organs, terminator
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I spent part of today catching up the last part of Battlestar Galactica Season 4, and I saw Terminator Salvation this evening with Yufang. I learned in BSG today that the Thirteenth Tribe were actually Cylons–skeletons, bodies, and all. In Terminator Salvation, Marcus Wright is constructed in the other direction than Terminator 3′s Terminatrix–Marcus is the fusion of man and machine. However, Marcus was once a murderer–the unconscionable, monstrous, the inhuman. Given his second chance, he becomes human, or at least what we may consider the human ideal–altruistic, helpful, and self-sacrificing. Thus, the machine makes the man more human. However, throughout Terminator Salvation and BSG, I’m reading a shift in the concern about the machinic appropriation of the human. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the original Terminator and T2 films, and older SF, the fear was only about the surface, about the appearance of human mapped or stretched over a cold, metallic infrastructure. Now, it seems like the concern has more to do with organs and the organic. Where does this anxiety over our bodies and the tissues that make them work and function come from? Obviously, the fear of losing human-ness to the machine is rooted in the emergence and subsequent evolution of anxieties following the integration of humans into the great machine and system of the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps following the turn of the century into the 2000s, the organic (i.e., genetics) meshes with the machine (i.e., AI representing the networked/computerized landscape of the now). What this might mean for future SF and our engagement with organic and machinic technologies I do not know. However, I am eager to discover where this future might lead.
Machinic functions taking over organic matter – though this is being presented somewhat literally, it sounds like D+G’s desiring-machines. I wasn’t aware of this twist to Terminator Salvation, I’m excited to see what the film proposes about this coupling!
On a more simpler note… how was it? Did you like it?
[...] Science Fiction (this seemed appropriate after watching Terminator Salvation last night–more here), Signet Classics Three by Flanner O’Connor (Wise Blood, The Violent Bear it Away, and [...]
Hey Matthew,
I did like Terminator Salvation until the very end. I don’t want to give anything away, but I will say that I thought that the last five minutes were more hokey than the most wholesome episode of The Andy Griffith Show. I guess I’m willing to accept time travel and killer machines, but the way the end unravels and the way it is framed is just too much (actually, wasn’t one of the Charlie Angel movies setup similarly–hm). I definitely recommend the film, but I can’t say that the film is perfect.
Jason
After seeing the film, I know what you mean about the ending.
For me, the real problem with T4 is that it has to go up against the Sarah Connor Chronicles, who, in my opinion, did a better job dealing with the ‘terminator universe.’ The first couple of movies may have necessarily been pure Hollywood action, but the Sarah Connor Chronicles takes the terminator lore and deals with it on a more conceptual level (even if it does have its fair share of action). I think this is what I prefer about the tv-series.