Terminator Salvation

Now we get to the good stuff.

Seeing as I have way too much to say about John Connor for just one post, I’m gonna break things up and start by looking at his first appearance in Terminator 2…

Connor (as originally played by Edward Furlong) is probably my favourite child character to appear in an adult-oriented movie. The thing is, I usually hate it when kids take the spotlight. I even have a problem with Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense (which, according to my friends, officially makes me the devil). But for some reason, I was always okay with Furlong’s Connor, even though he displays all the hallmarks of annoying child stars: the grating voice, the look-how-cool-I-am attitude, and the rapid-fire pop culture sayings. On paper, Furlong is basically Macaulay Culkin with more swearwords.

But the fact of the matter is, Furlong’s Connor is the most identifiable character in the franchise, and might very well be the reason why Terminator 2 still stands as the best entry in the series.

If, in the summer of 1991, you happened to be a pubescent boy (and let’s be honest, that is the Terminator fanbase), then chances are you saw Terminator 2 in a very special light, because young John Connor might just be the perfect hero for generations of aimless youngsters.

It’s hard not to feel for the kid. For starters, his mom’s always pushing him to succeed, and it’s awfully hard to live up to such high expectations (what with her pressuring him to be the messiah and all), his dad’s gone, he has trouble making friends, he’s always crossing the authorities, and it’s really hard to meet girls when you’re being chased around by robots. But instead of getting all angsty and whiney like his contemporaries on Degrassi High, John Connor says screw it. In very colourful and creative ways. And instead of retreating into video games and Dungeons and Dragons, he makes his own fun, he makes his own father figure, and he takes no guff. But at the same time, he makes nice with his mom, he does what he can to save the day, and he’s not afraid to cry.

Watching this movie for the first time as a fellow aimless young hipster was like a religious experience. Because at the ends of the day, John Connor gives all scrawny, nerdy dudes reason to hope. And the movie, for all its superbad action tendencies, ends with the surprisingly uplifting message that if you just be yourself and let your emotions out, things will be okay and you’ll grow up to be a hero after all.

And, really, how cool is that?

Not since Luke Skywalker in Star Wars has one amazingly annoying young man given legions of bored, dissatisfied film nerds reason to dream.

See, the magic of John Connor in T2 is that, all in all, he’s a major disappointment. In the first film this guy has been hyped as the one and only savior of humanity, over-flowing with brains and war-heroics and superpowers. And then in T2 we get Edward Furlong, who is pretty much the exact opposite. He’s scrawny, selfish, bored, and often does incredibly stupid things just for the heck of it.

But the thing is, he knows he’s a disappointment. He knows he’s not the man he’s supposed to be, but he refuses to let other people’s expectations change him. He has kind of a “que sera sera” outlook to the whole thing. And for the masses of young men and women whose parents wanted them to become accountants and doctors and lawyers, but who instead wanted to daydream about sci-fi and watch cartoons, John Connor is all kinds of heroic. His message is simple: Live your life, try not to piss off your parents too much, and if it truly is meant to be, then just let it be.

And most importantly, there’s no situation that can’t be solved with coarse language.

Keep your eyes peeled for part 2 where we’ll look at Nick Stahl’s time behind the John Connor reigns and see what we have to look forward to in Salvation.

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