Finding Humanity within the Cyborg

I watched Terminator Salvation (the last instalment of the Terminator saga) this weekend and I realized that the movie did not only resonate with the theme of Cyborgs but also the theme of the Return of the Dead as well as a good mix of Real versus Reality. In the beginning of the movie the year is 2003 and character Marcus Wright is shown as a man about to be executed on death row. A doctor comes to visit him before his final end and convinces him to donate his body to research. Fast-forward to 2018, the world is being ruled by robots and machines and the human population is a mere minority fighting for its survival.

As the movie begins to progress, Marcus awakens and finds himself in the middle of the desert. He is depicted as a character willing to partner with John Connor – the leader of the human rebellion who was prophesized in the first instalment as the key to defeating the reign of the machines. However, after crossing a field of landmines and triggering one to explode, Marcus finally gets to meet Connor, but the encounter is everything but pleasant as Marcus’ reality comes colliding with the real. When Marcus wakes up from the explosion, he finds himself in Connor’s camp, tied up in chains and looked upon by Connor and his crew as if he was the enemy.

As the shot zooms out to capture the scene, the truth about Marcus is shot to the forefront: his skin had been incinerated by the explosion, but instead of revealing bone and flesh, all that remained to be seen was titanium alloy and bionically constructed arms and ligaments. The promising hero turned out to be a semi-robotic human designed by the enemy machines and created to gain the trust of Connor, only to eliminate him when he least expected it. Upon this realization, Marcus comes face to face with what he really is and is tormented by the reality of what he has become because it seemed to be so impossible, so unfathomable – something that should have been contained in the realm of the real.




The movie provides the audience the sense of the dead coming back to life only to realize he is not human anymore. Marcus was convinced he did not actually die in 2003 and that he was being given a second chance to make up for his mistakes. In truth, he did die, and when he did all his organs including his mind were reconfigured into a robot that would be revived to destroy the main character. However, in an attempt to romanticize the real and naturalize the cyborg, the movie added a twist by allowing Marcus to be a machine whose humanity proves capable of beating out his programed purpose to search and destroy.

This last instalment of the Terminator saga has proven to be a good example of bringing some key themes of class discussions into the fore. In the end, Marcus Wright still manages to be the hero in the movie by facing off with the machine of all machines, destroying it, and then sacrifices his own life in order for John Connor to live. Within this framework, the issue of the real and the symbolic come into play along with the rise of the living dead and the domination of cyborgs.