I’m Officially Rooting For Skynet: Revisiting Terminator Salvation

I’m Officially Rooting For Skynet: Revisiting Terminator Salvation

A few weeks ago, Terminator Salvation opened to a mixed bag of fandom hate and general acceptance. By now, we’ve all heard about how ludicrous the ending is, how stiff Christian Bale’s acting was, and how Helena Bonham Carter is a strange addition to the mythology. All of these elements have been addressed in previous reviews..however, there is one particularly disturbing element which has not been discussed and I feel it needs to.
First, let me present a hypothetical situation.
You’ve been living in the desert for over a year after a nuclear apocalypse with three or four members of the same sex. Suddenly, a dashing member of the opposite sex appears with meager supplies of food and antibiotics (both of which have been in short supply since the aforementioned nuclear holocaust) that they are willing to share. Is your first thought “Let’s rape them!”?
For those of you who don’t know, this scene actually takes place in Terminator Salvation when Human Resistance soldier Blair is accosted by evil rednecks who decide to gang rape the first woman they’ve seen in a long time. Luckily for Blair, Marcus, a Terminator who doesn’t know it, comes to her rescue.
Okay....I am now officially rooting for Skynet and its never ending army of Terminators and Hunter-Killers. If humanity is that close to extinction and the first thing they think of is rape, there’s no hope for the species. Really, I hope the Terminator series ends with humanity being destroyed by the machines. It is scenes like this that really are disheartening to see. Really disheartening. So...why was I wanting humanity to survive again? Thanks, random raping rednecks, for letting me see the light.
I want Skynet to win.
I want it to totally eliminate the human race because if we’re that close to biting the big one and the first thing on men’s minds is “RAPE IT!,” then there’s no hope for the species and I’m saddened by how impossible Star Trek is.
I want John Connor to go completely insane. He has to be halfway there. I mean, he’s spent the last thirty years listening to cassettes his mother recorded in the nineteen eighties...about how he is the son of a future soldier and how he is destined to save humanity from the oncoming onslaught by a race of cold, heartless machines. You can’t tell me that kind of thing doesn’t do something to your head after a few decades. I’m tired of watching him listen to tapes and tote that stupid eighties-tastic picture of his pregnant mom and her German Shepherd everywhere. I know it gets burned up in a Resistance tunnel at some point, but seriously, enough is enough with that Polaroid, okay?
So yes, I want him to go crazy and die, realizing that he isn’t the Messiah...that his backstory is all bullshit....that his mother was a hallucinating schizophrenic and that his life is a sham. There is no point in saving the humanity of the Terminator universe.
He might be halfway there...after all, he does think it is a good idea for his wife (who used to be a vetrenarian) to give him open heart surgery in the desert...and to take the heart of Marcus, whose tissue Connor doesn’t know is compatible with his own...and that is their only actually useful soldier. Nothing in Terminator Salvation could have been done without Marcus (the Terminator who doesn’t know he is one...also more human than humans because he doesn’t think rape is very gentlemanly). So, in effect, John Connor is literally killing humanity’s chance at survival. Thanks, John. Skynet salutes you.
I want Skynet to win by decimating humanity...then, I want the series to end with T-800s gardening and taking care of squirrels and butterflies like the killer robots from Laputa: Castle in the Sky, proving that killer cyborgs are actually more environmentally and socially conscientious than our primitive race of meat bags ever could be.
That ending to the franchise would utterly infuriate its whiny boy fanbase, but would be so utterly brilliant that words can’t describe it.
Ah...it would be beautiful way to end the franchise, indeed...and completely unexpected!