Wolf Gnards

Arnold Schwarzenegger has been in the news lately, what with his divorce and his illegitimate spawnenegger love child, but it all started with the hint of a possible Terminator 5. Maybe, Terminator 5 was all part of an elaborate smoke screen: Don’t look at my politics, don’t look at my marriage, don’t look at many children I may or may not be the father of, look at this totally awesome movie about robots from the future. And guess what… it worked because I’m sitting here thinking, “From the future, you say?”

Terminator 5 can go one of two ways: awful awful (which is the maximum awful allowed by law) or awful fun (which is still awful but in a way that makes one smile). I being a fan of bad puns and stupid catch phrases am hopeful for awful fun. However, as eager as I am for Arnold’s subtle acting touches, I do have one minor problem with Schwarzenegger returning to the Terminator role: Why are robots getting old?

That’s kind of a problem. Killing machines in walkers is kind of a design flaw that the filmmakers will need to sort out. And while Schwarzenegger certainly looks good for his age, he doesn’t look that good. There’s only so much that Vaseline lenses and digital face-lifts can do. At some point the storytellers will have to explain why this robot is so elderly. It’s sort of like in old school Schwarzenegger films themselves when the movie has to explain why this guy is just so god damn Austrian: he’s a barbarian, he was raised on an exotic private Island, he was frozen trying to save his wife, he’s Russian, he’s German, he’s an amnesiac spy on mars, he’s a robot. Now they have to find some plausible explanation for an aging machine. Solving this mystery is probably the thing that will set the tone for the whole movie.

Terminators Age

The T-800’s are made with an organic covering, which can sweat, smell, bleed, and presumably age. Aging robots are perfect for infiltration, you could put a Terminator in a sleeper cell for years without anyone noticing. And is Skynet really that concerned about the age of organic skin coverings when they’re sending these things out under heavy laser fire? How many robots are they really expecting to return with skin intact? So, Arnold would still play a T-800, just not a T-800 fresh off the assembly line. This is a Terminator who’s been around the block, seen the world, run with the bulls, backpacked through Europe. This is a Terminator that’s moved out his parents’ basement and works 9-to-5, but it’s just until his music career takes off.

Malfunction

Schwarzeneggerbot 800 has gotten older because of some sort of minor malfunction in his robotic skin graft. Any sort of malfunction will do. Maybe, it’s just bad skin; Abe Vigoda was all that was left in their Terminator skin vats. Maybe, whatever doodad that regulates skin is broken, or the slider that controls skin age in his CPU was set incorrectly. Just some simple, stupid reason that can be explained in some throw away piece of dialogue.

Both natural aging and skin malfunction are a little boring to me though. If you’re going to terminate a movie franchise, let’s just terminate the shit out of it.

Operation Shady Acres

Terminator 5, or Terminator: Operation Shady Acres, involves Arnold infiltrating an old age home. A terminator has to blend with his scenery, and what better way to sneak into a nursing home than with an old ass robot. You know something’s up if a young muscly guy in sunglasses is running around an old age home with a shotgun, but a robot with liver spots and a cane is just another patient. Picture this: Ed Asner is a cantankerous John Connor fed up with the hullabaloo of time travel and waiting for Judgment Day. Schwarzenegger plays his old T-800 friend who teaches him how to live again, while John teaches the Terminator what it truly means to be alive.