Don’t Be So Political: THE TERMINATOR (1984) – New Restoration!

 

 

 

 

A cyborg is sent from the future to assassinate Sarah Conner, the mother of the man who leads humanity’s war against the machines. Humans send a warrior of their own back to protect her. 

 

 

The year is 2029. The world has suffered through nuclear war and from it, rises artificially intelligent machines. Los Angeles is a ruin, its streets are paved with skulls. A few humans have survived and banded together to fight the machines. Thanks to their leader, John Conner, the tide has turned and humanity is on the verge of victory. The machines send a terminator, a humanoid cyborg killing machine, back in time to assassinate John’s mother, Sarah, and end the war before it begins. The year is 1984. Sarah Conner is a waitress at a diner and is headed out for a Friday night of partying. Her future arrives and she must survive the relentless pursuit of the Terminator. 

 

 

Decades before its time and foreseeing many of the technological advancements of our present, James Cameron’s The Terminator brought forward a new epoch of action film making. Kinetic and grimy, the film’s use of stylized futurism set a standard for the genre. Schwarzenegger plays the role he was born for and Linda Hamilton immortalizes herself in her first turn as Sarah Conner. The film went on to be a massive hit, spawned a string of sequels, and has been preserved in the US Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. 

 

 

Dealing with the AI-ification of the military, the unpredictability of black box models, and machine’s innate inability to be responsible for its actions, The Terminator warns of war directed by automation and algorithms. It is a worst case scenario imagining of the now infamous dictate from an internal IBM document which read, “A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore a computer must never make a management decision.”