Interview with a Terminator-Hater

I was already somewhat aware of my friend’s media habits before I began my interview, mostly because we share a good deal of interests and in addition spend a good deal of time together, but I wanted to try and get a more in depth understanding of the things he likes. For example, when I asked him about music he initially said that he listens to a lot of rap. That came as no surprise to me, so I asked him to elaborate. It was then that we got to talking about rock music and eventually I found out that he had been a huge fan of……drumroll……99.1 HFS! I had noticed many times that he had an autographed photo of the Sports Junkies on his bedroom door, but never really thought much more about it. He told me that he used to listen to their morning show almost every day back when HFS was still around. The show was appealing to him because he’s a huge sports buff – ESPN is on at his apartment a great majority of the time, especially when Jim Rome is Burning, SportsCenter, or First Take (previously Cold Pizza) is on. The Junkies were just four guys who were into sports and played rock music that he liked and so he kept listening until….well, we all know what happened. As it turns out, two of the guys from the show went to the same high school that David went to. I’ve noticed that many of the guys I have met that went to school there have a very specific sense of humor about things, so that may contribute to why he liked their show so much. I think maybe I should let him know that in 2005 they returned to D.C. on WJFK FM 106.7.

The Terminator franchise has been a successful one, not only in the form of three (soon to be four) movies, but also various video games, books, and now recently a television show. The story was originally developed by James Cameron, but has since changed hands various times. The idea of a future where machines have developed to the point where they become self aware and take over the human race is not an original one; we have seen this type of science fiction plot in movies like I, Robot, and The Matrix. There is something compelling about these types of stories that portray the possible future of our world in the hands of the machines we created to help us. Unfortunately, my interviewee is not as interested in movies like this as I am, but we were still able to have an interesting conversation about the Terminator concept.

Initially, before I could even ask him any questions about my topic, he mentioned an action scene in the third Terminator movie that he liked a lot. Let me first give a little background information on the movie: so, in this third installment of the films John Connor is in his mid-20s and encounters his (unknowingly) future wife (played by Claire Danes) during the period of resistance against the SkyNet computer system. Arnold plays the original Terminator sent back to protect John from being killed by the new and improved lady Terminator model. Unfortunately, the villain Terminator has been sent not only to kill John, but also other prominent future leaders of the resistance movement against SkyNet, which includes Claire Danes’ character. She manages to locate Danes’ fiancé and since she can take on the form of anything she touches, she makes herself look like him and pretends to assist the police in investigating her “kidnapping”. Ok, so now we come to the scene that entertained my interviewee: the lady Terminator, disguised as the fiancé uses her super strength to punch completely through the body of the police officer who is driving from the backseat of the car. I mean, she totally blows through the car seat and the middle of his torso, and then proceeds to grab the steering wheel and take over driving.

So after reminiscing about how sweet that scene was with David, I asked him (after we established the fact that he didn’t much care for the Terminator movies) was what it was about them that he disliked. He told me that he was just not a big fan of action and sci-fi movies in general, which surprised me because, well, he’s a guy. Duh. And don’t most guys think that action scenes are sweet? So I decided to dig a little deeper. I got him talking about what he thought was so appealing about the movies to those people that enjoyed them and he said he thought that their popularity (especially T2, which grossed $204.8 million in theaters back in 1991) stemmed from the fact that the films are so action-packed. They are the epitome of the type of movies that people enjoy going to the theater to watch, “popcorn movies”, to use his wording. We then got into a discussion about the way our society has for a long time enjoyed predicting the different ways technology will affect our future. He seemed to think that many people, even though they know that these movies are fictional, they still anticipate the possibility that humans will advance to the point where machines have to potential to assume a higher intelligence.

Unfortunately he had not watched The Sarah Connor Chronicles, so we couldn’t discuss the fact that the show portrays a time period that happens between Terminator 2 and Terminator 3, which in a sense negates the story line that was developed in the third movie. I was pretty disappointed that he hadn’t seen it, but then I remembered that I had only watched the first episode of the season. Perhaps that will be our next mission: to catch some of the new episodes when (or if) they bring the show back. If all goes well, I hope to eventually convert him into a sci-fi fan, or at least a Terminator fan. Hasta la vista, baby.