This is the last post before i hit the sack. It’s almost 7am already.
Let me tell you about The Terminator. i enjoy action movies a lot. especially if you throw in a lot of high-tech. The theme of The Terminator is something commonplace–pessimistic futurism, human induced everything-ends-in-chaos view of the world. You see this in Matrix also. The same theme (minus the high-tech) is in Mad Max, Waterworld…and other storylines. However, what makes The Terminator interesting is the use of the time travel concept. the concept itself is not new, but the way that it is used makes it interesting. here’s the plot. simply put, in the far future, the robots take over earth and attempt to kill all human beings. there is a band of humans holding the front with a leader who gives the robots a hard time and might just put an end to their robotic dreams of world domination. so the robots get this great idea to travel back in time and assassinate the woman who becomes the mother of the future savior BEFORE she actually becomes the mother of the future savior. to stop the robots from doing this (here the conflict arises), the humans send someone–a man from their troupe–to protect the woman. but this man from the future ends up getting the woman from the past, pregnant. and guess what, the woman eventually gives birth and the child grows up to become the future savior of humanity.
in time travel parlance, this is a paradox called a “predestination loop.” and this meddling with time as an excuse for a script gives me ulcers! time travel can be an amusing element of fiction. but in this case it is extremely irritating. to the point that i can’t enjoy the action because i keep going back to this nonsense!
~The Fool
I agree with the “time traveling” concept that Terminator brandishes throughout making the plot more interesting. Take that element away and indeed it wouldn’t really stand-out. Some stories have succeeded using the same formula be it a love story with a good twist (or a tragic end). I was reminded of a not-much-similar concept reintroduced for a film in the “Forbidden Kingdom” being, “a gate of no gate” where one is taken to another place and time to alter something that has gone wrong. Absent in the movie though is a sensible connecting to the present world, and I didn’t really get how the real world of the present and the alternate world are inter-related (unless I got lost in the middle). The movie was okay overall. Some other movies have the same concept.
I am looking forward to the day science fiction does not have to be so trapped in its own language. The future can speak in our terms given that it is speaking in our time anyways. I am also looking forward to an author with the conviction to write a science fiction novel with a heart and not just the scrambled mind. I hope the Filipino can produce such a story and offer a more than interesting narrative from a very unique point of view.