January 7, 2010

How to improve “Terminator Salvation” without spending any additional money

I watched the latest Terminator film recently, “Terminator Salvation.” It was just okay: it began well, but the ending was extremely weak. I’m now going to explain how the film’s ending could have been much better simply by altering three or four lines of dialogue.

Here’s a summary of the plot of the film as it was actually released. The movie opens in 2003, with Sam Worthington’s character about to be executed for the murder of his brother and two cops. He is consumed with guilt, and accepts that he deserves to die. Just before the fatal injection, he signs his organs away to Helena Bonham Carter’s character, who turns out to be a scientist who works for the same corporation that will invent Skynet, the intelligent computer that will later destroy the world.

Then we flash forward to the future: Skynet has destroyed most of the world, John Connor is now grown up and fighting the machines, and, to our surprise, we see Worthington’s character appear. He looks exactly like he did in the first scene, and so we wonder: is he just well-preserved? Is he really a Terminator but he doesn’t know it? Of course, we’ve seen the trailers for the movie, so actually we know that he is a machine of some sort, but we’re not sure what that means yet. He continues to be riled up with self-loathing and wanders the post-apocalytic wasteland.

The human resistance figures out that Worthington is a machine (except for his human heart and brain), but during that time, John Connor’s father has been captured by Skynet and imprisoned. The only way for Connor to get into Skynet’s base is to trust Worthington. Worthington helps him sneak into Skynet, but then, in the computer control centre, Skynet reveals the real story to Worthington: that it was all a trap, that luring Connor to his death was the plan all along, and W should accept that he is a machine and join the robots. W refuses to join the robot cause, and a battle for Connor’s life begins. Connor escapes, desperately wounded through the chest, with his father and W, and manages to detonate a huge bomb that destroys Skynet’s base.

The heroes end up in a jerry-rigged medical facility out in the desert: Connor’s heart is about to fail. W says, “Give him my heart.” He dies so that Connor can go on living and continue the resistance.

Why does this ending suck? Well, one basic rule of screen writing must be: at the climax of your movie, do not offer your protagonist something that he obviously does not want. Because, when he says no, the audience will be unmoved. Given that W has shown no interest at all in seeing himself as a machine, why should he change his mind at the key moment?

It is not heroic to turn down something you don’t want.

Worse: the film has been structured so that, whatever the characters’ doubts about W’s humanity, we, the audience, never doubt it. Why? Because the first scene, back in 2003, shows him being human, shows him taking some responsibility for his crimes, and shows him weighing up his guilt. We would struggle now to see him as a machine—he is the film’s most compelling character.

So–how to fix things? Instead, the computer should offer W something he does want: salvation. The computer says, look, you are consumed with guilt for killing your brother. Whatever you do now, you will never get over it. You can fight for the resistance for years but you’ll never see yourself as the good person you want to be. But, if you join our hive-mind, we can wipe all that guilt free. You’ll be part of our collective consciousness/intellect thing, and you will have salvation.

Then, when W turns down this offer, it is actually a heroic act, because Skynet is offering him a version of the thing he’s been looking for the whole film. The audience thinks: shit, I didn’t really think he’d join those robots, but I’m still feeling tense for him: now he’s lost his only chance to fix his guilty conscience.

Then, when the doctor announces that Connor’s heart is about to fail, and W realises he can offer him his heart, then the audience realises that his heroic decision (to sacrifice his private desire for humanity’s greater good) has been rewarded—then giving his heart to Connor actually means something. Instead of merely seeming like a cheap coincidence, the heart-donation makes poetic sense: by turning down a false salvation, he has gained a real one. The audience realizes: he did the right thing, threw away his one (pretty dubious) chance to be at peace, and, by passing that test, now he’s been given the opportunity to really get peace, and not just a weird computer-based emotional peace but one that is both privately satisfying to him and which makes a difference to the whole world. Ah. I feel satisfied.

There are two other big problems with the film which I will get to later.

Daniel

January 7, 2010

East Coast Life

Hi Bryan, you asked a while ago for some more details on my thoughts about East Coast life. I spoke into my ipod and recorded something. As an intro to those thoughts, here’s a recent New York Times article comparing the British to the Americans.

Read this first: My American Friends

Then listen to me (drumroll, get excited):
East Coast Life

Let me know if the link doesn’t work for you.

Yours

Daniel

December 20, 2009

Together in the snow

Yesterday the snow came down and didn’t stop all night. In the evening I walked out and saw a wedding take place in the open air, under the arcade of the Headhouse Square, as more snowflakes came down. At night the sky was pink/purple, reflecting the glow of the whitened ground.

Today:

IMG_3182 1.JPG

IMG_3212 1.JPG

IMG_3205 1.JPG

Daniel

December 10, 2009

Some good AWP news

So, AWP is the biggest creative writing conference in the US (I think), and the 2010 conference is happening in Denver. I wanted to go, and I heard from my course director that AWP has a “pedagogy forum” which simple grad students like myself can submit papers to. I wrote a paper, “Using Creative Writing to Teach Grammar,” had it reviewed several times by teachers here, and submitted it.

On November 16th AWP emailed to say my paper had been accepted. Yay!

(there’s another aspect to this story, involving money, which is the second part of good news related to AWP, but I’m not sure if I should post it online. Email me if curious)

So–I’m going to Denver in early April. Is anyone else going to this conference, or is living in Denver and would like to meet up?

Daniel

November 30, 2009

An update on me

I’m living in a very beautiful house in Philadelphia. My flatmates and I have thrown two parties so far (housewarming and halloween). Both were very good.

I’ve completed almost a year and a half of my MFA (three semesters)–one more year to go (I plan to graduate in December 2010). So far, I’ve taken two general fiction workshops, a novel-specific workshop, a poetry class, an independent study with the director of the programme (reading classics like Madame Bovary and Portrait of a Lady), two literature courses (Theories of Composition and Greek Tragedy) and a teaching practicum. I’ve taught every semester so far, and so I’ve been contiuously busy all the time.

I like life in America–I’m planning to stay once I graduate and get a job teaching in a college–although I still find East Coast culture hard in some ways. It’s a hard place, and reminds me from time to time of other hard places like northern India or China. I’m curious to try living in another part of the US soon time–perhaps the west coast.

I’m still writing all the time. I slowly improve.

My neighbourhood:

IMG_3172 1.jpg

Daniel