âCome with me if you want to live.â - Terminator model T-800
After the world-conquering AI, Skynet, suffered several embarrassing defeats at the hands of an outgunned and largely apathetic human race, the machines finally did something smart: They built a Terminator that didnât know it was a Terminator. Yes, constructing hordes of stainless-steel murder-bots, equipping each with a self-piloting learning OS capable of navigating the rudimentary aspects of human mores (first step: find clothing!), and covering them in living meat in the form of a famed Austrian weightlifter is indicative of Skynetâs technical brilliance. Ditto for the subsequent liquid metal T-1000 and its upgraded, Species-meets-Fembot-meets-Roger Cormen inspired successor, the T-X. (Shouts to Kristina Loken.)
The Terminators are viciously-crafted death devices. Each is clever in its own predatory way. They are capable of participating in simple conversations with unsuspecting (though usually increasingly creeped out) humans, the topic of which invariably centers on the location of Sara Connor and/or her son John. They even kinda sorta pass the Turing Test. Just as long as they get to to drive the dialogue and the subject matter of said dialogue, as mentioned, doesnât stray too far from âIs Sarah Connor home?â Terminators drive cars, fly helicopters, shoot guns. The T-X comes programmed with very very basic seduction algorithm that calls for increasing its liquid metal bust size in order to discombobulate and confuse. The Terminators were specifically designed to blend into human populations.
Their weakness is that, once they acquire their target, a Terminatorsâ judgment programming immediately loses all modes of chill. One second some diesel dude with a central European accent is asking about Sarah Connor. The next, a killer robot is driving a truck through the front of a police station. A Terminator can hang around humans but it canât convincingly interact with them because it lacks the ability to understand human culture.
The exception to the rule is the T-800 from T2/3. That particular robot not only gained the trust of Sara Connor, but it became a sort of surrogate father figure for John Connor. The crucial distinction between killer-bot and cuddle-bot being that the protagonist T-800s were specifically modified by the human resistance and were not part of Skynetâs AI system.
By the time the truly shitty McG film Terminator: Salvation rolled around in 2009, however, Skynet had learned its lesson. The brute force approach just wasnât working. In Salvation, Skynet seeks to to lure John Connor into a trap by deploying Marcus, a more or less well adjusted adult human male who doesnât have the slightest inkling that heâs actually a cyborg with a Skynet chip in his brain whoâs part of a complex genocidal system.
Which brings me to Leonardo DiCaprio, a grizzly bear, and the wild Canadian woods. Â
In The Revenant, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a 19th century frontiersman and trapper, who, along with his half-Native American son, Hawk, is tasked with guiding a party of fur trappers across the northern plains of the west.
The film begins with Glassâs group of hardy outdoorsman weathering a ruthless surprise attack by a band of Native American warriors. A handful of survivors manage to escape by boat. Glass recommends that the group disembark and hike overland for Fort Kiowa with whatâs left of their fur haul. While scouting the path ahead, Glass is attacked and gravely injured by the famed Drudge bear. The leader of the trappers decides to leave Glass behind, and offers a cash reward for any man who will volunteer to stay with him. Two men agree â the virulent racist and malcontent, Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), and the young and naive Bridger (Will Poulter). They are joined by Hawk.
One thing leads to another and Fitzgerald murders Hawk while a wounded and heartbroken Glass looks on in impotent fury. Glass is buried alive in a shallow grave and left for dead. There follows is a tale of single-minded revenge set against various breathtaking backdrops, liberally peppered with the requisite man-vs-nature grunting, grimacing, and gore.
The filmâs Oscar-wining director, Alejandro Iñårritu, understands that he has made a film about the plundering of a continent by a technologically-advanced Euro-centric capitalist culture.Â
From an interview with The Guardian:
âThe way these men deal with nature⊠Cutting trees â profit from it. Killing animals â profit from it. And the impact they had on the [indigenous] communities, the broken promises and contracts and the blindness of seeing them as people, the fear of the otherness, the judgments and the prejudice of the colour of the skin and other cultural beliefs⊠We havenât escaped from that kind of fear and prejudice.â
What is interesting, though, is the way Iñårritu seems to miss the fact that his hero, Glass, is inextricably bound up in the  ur-capitalist system of pillage that the film is ostensibly attempting to criticize.  Glass is âa man, a beast, a saint, a martyr, a spirit,â the director told The Guardian.
Ok, sure. But, the fur trapping expedition is in that particular part of the backcountry, because Glass led them there. It is his knowledge of the region, its people, culture, and languages, that is utilized by the expedition to more efficiently despoil the wilderness and steal from its occupants.
Yes, Glass is not overtly racist. He had a Native wife and he loves his mixed race son. But he is an integral part of a system which is nothing but racist. Heâs a Terminator who doesnât know heâs a Terminator.
When Fitzgerald calls Hawk âthis dog here,â the boy starts to object. Glass stops him.
Glass: âI told you to be invisible son. If you want to survive, keep your mouth shut.â
Hawk: âAt least he heard meââ
Glass: âThey donât hear your voice! They just see the color of your face! Understand?â
And yet Hawk is there, among people who do not hear his voice and only see the color of his face and will eventually kill him, because of his father.Â
In The Revenant, Iñårritu depicts the 19th century frontier as brutal, unforgiving, and lawless, a liminal zone squeezed between an ancient past and manifest destiny. Yet heâs anything but unforgiving with his main character. Glassâs copious and excruciatingly detailed sufferings â the bear attack; the crawling half-dead and voiceless across the frozen wastes; falling off a cliff on horseback; curling up inside of his dead mountâs abdomen for warmth, Hoth-style; and the climactic, eye-gouging, leg-stabbing, finger-chopping fight with Fitzgerald â are used to burn away the characterâs sins; to obscure instead of acknowledge. Just as Glassâs son and the flashbacks scenes of his deceased wife are devices designed to make the audience feel empathy. The film is a strangely perfect comment on the state of culture in 2016. It is a well-meaning and technically exquisite epic that has no idea how full of shit its perspective is.Â
âLeo,â said with Iñårritu during his Oscar speech with a tone tinged with awe, âyou are the Revenant.â
That isnât a compliment.Â
