Three weeks ago, The Unenthusiastic Critic said "I'll be back." And now she is, for her first viewing of James Cameron's 1984 sci-fi classic The Terminator.
First, we're having a meandering (and paranoid) conversation about bots, droids, borgs, and the AI singularity. Then, we're sitting down to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role he was born to play: a massive, menacing killing machine with barely a dozen lines of dialogue.
Along the way, we're sharing our favorite artificial life-forms, learning why Nakea won't even have a Roomba in the house, and discussing how she thinks you shouldn't necessarily sleep with a guy on the first date just because he traveled through time to save your ass from an unstoppable killer robot.
Program
0:00: Prologue: from an interview with Hanson Robotic's "Sophia," October 2017
0:59: Preliminary Conversation: Robots and AI
32:41: Musical Interlude: "Todd the T1000" by Jonathan Coulton
34:03: Cultural Osmosis: Pre-Viewing Discussion of The Terminator
48:26: Original Trailer for The Terminator
51:20: The Verdict: Post-Viewing Discussion of The Terminator
1:24:18: Outro and Next Week's Movie
1:25:19: Outtake
Notes and Links
—Film discussed: The Terminator (dir. James Cameron, Orion, 1984)
—Please note that our two-week break actually occurred in the middle of this episode, and we were not able to have our post-viewing discussion in our usual studio space. (So, if you hear a little echo in that conversation, it's not your imagination. Sorry.)
—Opening audio is from an interview with Hanson Industries' robot Sophia, the first artificial life-form granted citizenship of any country, at Saudia Arabia's Future Investment Initiative, October 25, 2017.
—Reviews and Articles Mentioned: Janet Maslin's review of The Terminator, New York Times, October 26, 1984; Siskel and Ebert's review of The Terminator on At the Movies, October 27, 1984; "The Terminator at 30: An Oral History," Joe McGovern, EW.com, July 17, 2014; "In Praise of the Original ‘Terminator,’ A Lean, Mean, Exploitation Movie Machine," Jason Bailey, Flavorwire, July 1, 2015.
—"Todd the T1000," by the infallibly awesome Jonathan Coulton, is licensed under CC BY NC 3.0.
—"Warm Duck Shuffle" by Arne Huseby is licensed under CC BY 3.0.
—Listen to additional episodes and read The Unenthusiastic Critic in prose form at unaffiliatedcritic.com.
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