Terminator: Salvation

ChristianityToday explores some themes from the Terminator movies: The human-machine relationship. From cell phones to iPods, technology is playing a bigger and bigger part of our lives, to the point where some people have said that we are all becoming de facto cyborgs ourselves. The original film makes humorous references to pagers and answering machines, both of which were fairly new at the time, as well as the bigger, factory-sized machines that make such devices possible.

In this increasingly mechanized and technological world, it is more important than ever that we hold on to something spiritual, to the thing that makes us uniquely human; in Terminator Salvation, a teenaged Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) points to his head and his heart and tells his fellow prisoners to "stay alive, in here and in here." But humanity is no mere spiritual abstraction; it is also rooted in the world of organic, physical life. So the people in these films love each other, have children together, and die for each other sacrificially.

The source of meaning and morality. In the first two sequels, John Connor and his wife-to-be, Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), are assisted by Terminators that have been re-programmed to protect them—and they ask these robots if there is anything more to them than their programming. Are the Terminators "worried" about dying? If John and Kate are killed, will that "mean anything" to them? Faced with such questions, the Terminators betray little emotion, and reply simply that they would have no reason to exist if John and Kate died, and that they need to "stay functional" in order to keep their human masters alive.


Kate Brewster and Kyle in T3But there is more to a meaningful life than simply following your programming, and both T2 and T3 end on notes which suggest that the "good" Terminators have achieved something resembling free will; in both films, the Terminator goes beyond the orders he has been given and sacrifices himself for the greater good, even though he didn't have to.

T2, in particular, goes even further and suggests that the Terminator of that film has learned "the value of human life." Interestingly, though, when John initially tells the Terminator it is wrong to kill people, he can't think of a reason beyond "Because you just can't, okay?" It isn't until the TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles that a former FBI agent named James Ellison (played by the openly Christian Richard T. Jones) explains to a Terminator that it is wrong to kill because human life is made in the image of God and is therefore sacred.

And so, just as the re-programmed Terminators derive their meaning partly from the ones who have programmed them, but also partly from their freedom to go beyond their programming, so too we humans derive our meaning from the One who breathed life into us, and from our ability to exercise our free will in his service.

Destiny, prophecy and fatalism. The future is not set, and there is no fate but what we make for ourselves. So say several characters in each of these films, and yet, these characters don't always behave as though they truly believe this. After all, John Connor sent the adult Kyle Reese back in time to become his father—and much of the new film revolves around John's conviction that the teenaged Kyle needs to be rescued so that he can fulfill that destiny.

The films even play with the idea that efforts to change the future will just make things worse. In a couple of deleted scenes from the original film (available on some versions of the DVD), Sarah convinces Kyle that they should destroy the company that built the machines, to prevent the machines from being born—just as the machines are trying to kill Sarah to prevent John from being born. But, as we also see in T2, all Sarah ends up doing is luring the Terminator to one of the company's factories—thereby guaranteeing that the technology which makes the machines possible will end up in that company's hands.

In this, the films sometimes resemble Greek myth more than anything biblical. (T3 makes its debt to the Greeks explicit when the general who puts the machines in charge on Judgment Day tells his daughter, "I opened Pandora's Box.") To the Greeks, fate was unavoidable, and efforts to prevent a prophecy from coming true usually ended up fulfilling it.

And yet, the films resist fatalism. Just as the biblical prophecies often came with a call to repentance or an assurance that salvation was waiting on the other side of judgment, so too the Terminator films stubbornly cling to hope.

Death is certain, but human life remains precious nonetheless. The human spirit cannot be defeated or assimilated by machines. And, as the newest film makes especially clear, we can never rule out the possibility that we will get a "second chance."

Prince Caspian

LeaderU compiled some resources on CS Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia (with Prince Caspian hitting the big screen)

From Dr Bruce Edwards: "The dramatic climax of this story is not, however, the suspicious victory over King Miraz in battle, but the discovery of the now King Caspian’s true lineage, that he, too, is a Son of Adam, else he could not be qualified to reign in Narnia. In one poignant moment that epitomizes the humility required of true leaders, Aslan asks the triumphant Caspian if he were now ready to become king; “I—I don’t think so, Sir. . . I am only a Kid.” To his surprise, Aslan replies, “If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not.” Caspian needed to know the limitations of his own powers, and when he needed to rely on others—and especially Aslan—to win the day.


Nikabrik: The Dwarf Who Would Be Lost

As is the case with LWW, there is yet a betrayer in Narnia, for found in Prince Caspian is a parallel story to King Caspian’s glorious victory is the tragic story of Nikabrik, the stubbornly faithless dwarf. Of all the sad stories of bewitched and bewildered creatures in Narnia who become captive of evil, none is more mournful than the tale of Nikabrik.

This wayward dwarf, incapable of overcoming his profound distrust of the “old stories,” epitomizes a less cunning but equally desvasting aspect of evil’s lure akin to that of the White Witch. Nikabrik—like the band of self-seeking dwarves who fall by the wayside in The Last Battle—is world weary and full of skepticism. When asked if he believes in Aslan, he shrugs that he will believe in “anyone or anything” who will throw off the yoke of oppression under King Miraz; he is not discriminating: “Anyone or anything, Aslan or the White Witch, do you understand?”

Though rebuked by the more pious and respectful badger, Trufflehunter, Nikabrik still harbors his doubts and nurtures his cynicism. As events progress, the impatient and unschooled Nikabrik, rejecting out of hand the promise of help from ancient prophecies or the mobilization of Caspian’s friends, instead puts his trust in his companions, a hag and a werewolf, and plans to call upon the dark magic of the long dead White Witch:

“All said and done,” he muttered, “none of us knows truth about the ancient days of Narnia. . . . Aslan and the Kings go together. Either Aslan is dead, or he is not on our side. Or else something stronger than himself keeps him back. And if he did come—how do we know he’d be our friend? . . . . Any anyway, he was in Narnia only once that I ever heard of, and he didn’t stay long. You may drop Aslan out of the reckoning. I was thinking of someone else.

This is the voice of despair and alienation masquerading as the voice of reason. So distant is he from Narnia’s traditions, its history, its promise—and its relationship to its Creator and King, Aslan—Nikabrik can seriously contemplate “a power so much greater than Aslan’s,” which he defines as holding “Narnia spellbound for years and years, if the stories are true.” Falsehood has become truth, black has become white, destruction has become destiny.

This is Lewis’s cautionary tale to any civilization drunk on the wine of its own self-importance and ability to survive or thrive without historical perspective and relationship to God. This is “chronological snobbery” gone wild, a disposition not only to disbelieve the old stories, but to substitute an opposite meaning for the original.

In the end, Nikabrik confesses, “Yes,” said Nikabrik, “I mean the Witch…We want power: and we want a power that will be on our side. As for power, do not the stories say that the Witch defeated Aslan, and bound him, and killed on that very stone which is over there, just beyond the light?” When the Trufflehunter and others eloquently counter his virulent, militant unbelief, Nikabrik bellows:

“Yes they say . . . but you’ll notice that we hear precious little about anything he did afterwards. He just fades out of the story. How do you explain that, if he really came to life? Isn’t it much more likely that he didn’t, and that the stories say nothing more about him because there was nothing more to say? . . . . They say [the White Witch] ruled for a hundred years: a hundred years of winter. There’s power, if you like. There’s something practical. . . .Who ever heard of a witch that really died? You can always get them back.”

A witch who never dies, whose “practical” power to sustain winter a hundred years is more impressive than the return of the rightful king, the rallying of treasonous ne’er-do-wells to necromancy to revive her —these are the perverse foundation of the new society Nikabrik envisions for himself and fellow dwarves and outcasts. This is how bleak and self-destructive their own imaginations have become. But it cannot prevail so as long as there are those who love and trust the truth."