dystopia

Review: Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Movie glasses
Terminator: Dark Fate is action packed and intense. The protagonists are always in danger of being killed by a Terminator sent to kill a young woman. She is important in fighting the coming machine war. The Terminator leaves plenty of collateral damage as he strikes out. Fortunately, the target of the assassin has plenty of help to make it through.

Despite the action, there was very little in the movie that was enjoyable. Dealing with a dystopic future can’t be treated as fun. The film shows a future world that would be horrific, but do I really want to be taken there?

There’s enough horror in our potentially dystopic future. We have some people building up the world now, while many others are doing their worst to let it falter. Terminator: Dark Fate starts with a beach covered with human skulls that just inoculates against striving to solve the problems of today.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was the bright spot in the movie. He had an acerbic aura that briefly lightened up the atmosphere. Describing himself as being good at telling jokes was one funny break in the movie.

Terminator: Dark Fate ramps up with more and more destructive ways to be killed. After so long, it just gets tiring. One asks: “When is it going to be over?”

Vulnerable

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In the book “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other,” Sherry Turkle said “With some exceptions, when we make ourselves vulnerable we expect to be nurtured.” (p. 235) She’s referring Erik Erikson and the expectations coming from basic trust. That’s something that’s completely counter to the way that the Internet often works. For the most part, any time you put yourself out there, you’re at risk of being attacked or ridiculed rather than built up and comforted.

One place for this risk comes from places that encourage intimacy. It’s not always easy to trust people to begin with. Letting your guard down out there in the social media dystopia isn’t always safe. If one makes comments that might be too hard to share in person, it can still end up hurting.

One reason for this is that anonymity allows people to be more negative and exhibit the dark tetrad personality traits when, in person, they wouldn’t act out. To them, the idea that people have feelings or that they are afraid of being humiliated is alien. Often, the enemy only feels good by getting some lolz.

Sometimes you can find a community of like-minded people where you can be safe. This reflects Sherry’s comment “Communities are places where one feels safe enough to take the good and the bad.” (p. 238) I’ve found some, like deviantART, are different than most social media. One reason is that to belong there, you have to put in some work. You can’t just repost an inane meme and belong. A member of dA is a creator. A pretender just looks around and is lurking.

Every time you get in front of a computer screen and post something on Twitter or Facebook, it’s possible to misstep and be misunderstood catastrophically.