The “Terminator Salvation” Dream I Had Last Night
Warning: MAJOR Spoilers ahead. If you plan on seeing my dream of this movie, then look away.
We open in a west-coast suburban college campus. Our hero—played by “SNL’s” Andy Samberg—has just met his two new roommates (who may or may not have been played by his two other Lonely Island partners), and all these two guys want to go to the movies. Andy decides to stay behind and prepare for the his first day of school. And maybe even his new life. When the roommates leave, Andy gets down to work putting stuff away, then decides to take a stroll around the quad. As he does this, we hear a rumble.
Then he sees it: an enormous blue-gray mushroom cloud. In the East. It’s nearly 1000 miles away, yet it looms large over everyone.
At this moment we realize—today is the famed Judgement Day.
Cut to weeks later, still on campus, but everything is much different. The sky remains cloudy and gray with nuclear winter. Rumors fly as to what has happened, but it is clear that half the country has been destroyed. We find Andy again, who is now a mix bag: he’s struggling with this new world (an extension of the new-to-college theme), yet he is clearly a seasoned pro in dealing with the specifics of that new world, learning much and adapting in the two weeks of abnormality.
The dorm is like a blown-out bomb shelter, yet it’s still functional. Suddenly the dorm is flooded with human resistance fighters storm in, interrupting Andy’s nightly food scrounge. The battle front has reached the campus. Andy almost walks right into a 25-foot dull-silver Terminator robot, two huge canons in each arm.
We think he’s dead meat until John Connor (played by Christian Bale) arrives on the scene. But John doesn’t do anything to save Andy; he wants Andy to fight it. To learn. He finally tells andy that this particular Terminator has been disarmed. It’s used for training purposes only.
Andy shoots the brain out of the Terminator’s head and everything calms down, allowing Andy to get back to tending to refugees. He finds a pair of young Africa-American girls (10 and 8) huddled in a corner. Andy feeds them and asks about their parents. They tell him they’re gone. “Just like Maggie.”
In this instant it hits us—our worst fears are realized.
The War has claimed Maggie Simpson from “The Simpsons.”
Obviously, this is emotionally devastating and could really happen. She’ll never grow into a healthy animated adult. Andy is crushed.
The battle resumes as more machines attack the campus settlement. They loom closer than before, growing more bold. During this battle, Andy stays close to the soldiers to help out, carrying munitions and supplies when he sees a dark-yet-shiny human sized figure. But the machines don’t have human sized robots… do they? DO THEY? Andy watches the figure sneak into the dorm. He alerts the soldiers, but not before this new model of Terminator kills one of them.
ANOTHER REVELATION: we realize we are at the point in the “Terminator” saga just before the “real” Terminators—human sized, like Arnold—have become known and are unleashed. ‘What will the future hold?’ we ask ourselves. ‘Probably more terror,’ we answer.
The next morning, Andy is by the clothing pile when a tall, heavy set African-American gentleman (50’s) approaches. He looks a little like he’s homeless, but he has an air of sophistication to him. The gentleman trades his broken belt for a new one from the pile. Then a gorgeous college-age blonde girl (flanked by two friends) approach the gentleman. She flirts him up big time, explaining she’s lonely and wants his kind of company. The two walk off together, presumably to have sex.
Credits/I woke up.
Look for it this summer.
