Redemptive Violence in Film: Terminator

My post last week "Gunslingers, Quakers, and Redemptive Violence" is spinning off into a series between me and David Opderbeck of Through A Glass Darkly.  David’s first post in the series is Terminator: The Eschaton, and follows:

“I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white
horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges
and makes war.”  – Rev. 19:11

The summer blockbuster film Terminator Salvation
follows the exploits of John Connor as he fights for the human disapora
against Skynet, an artificial intelligence that seeks to obliterate
humanity in favor of a world run by and for machines.  It’s a bad
movie, filled with ludicrous plot holes (Earth to machines:  haven’t
you seen Goldfinger and Austin Powers?  Kill John Connor before
letting him into your secret lair!), though the post-apocalyptic
special effects are undeniably cool.  Yet, with all its absurdities,
something about Terminator Salvation nudges my
Biblical-relevance-o’-meter.  Is it Left Behind for our ironic post-industrial sensibilities?

I spent many hours in my youth listening to preachers who thought they had figured out the imagery of Revelation 19.  They imagined the armies of the earth literally gathered on the plain of Armageddon (the Megiddo Pass)
to confront Christ, the Rider on the White Horse, in physical battle.
At the conclusion of this decisive battle, the “beast” and the “false
prophet” who lead the rebellion against Christ are “thrown alive into
the fiery lake of burning sulfur” (v. 20).   The remaining combatants
are “killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on
the horse, and all the birds gorge[] themselves on their flesh” (v.
20-21).  (These scenes are only available in the “Unrated Director’s
Cut” version of the Bible.  The Disney Family Bible skips right to the
“no more tears” part).

Here is “redemptive violence” at its thickest.  Only after this
cleansing apocalypse — and the ensuing, mysterious millennial period
and final outbreak of rebellion in Chapter 20 — do we reach the quiet
shores of the New Jerusalem in chapter 21, in which God “will wipe
every tear from [his people's] eyes.  There will be no more death or
mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed
away” (v. 4).

I will need to demur to the literalism of those “Summer Bible
Conference” preachers who first introduced me to the starkly horrific
elegance of the Bible’s apocalyptic literature.  Precisely because the
genre is apocalyptic, these images must be understood as images,
impressionistic and sometimes nearly incomprehensible pictures of
realities far deeper than their “literal” surface.  Those preachers
were correct, however, to note that the divine reckoning they
represent, in which “kings, generals, and mighty men, [and] horses and
their riders” are judged along with “all people, free and slave, small
and great” (ch. 19, v. 18) by the blazing light and piercing truth of
Christ, is a violent act.

So perhaps we can see John Connor as Christ figure, a Rider on a
White Horse, expurgating the steel-cold machinations of sin, leading a
remnant of humanity to its final salvation.  I would like to say that
this is so, except that Connor also embodies the trope of the
tragically stoic hero, the man who must deny his humanity so that
others can live.  Maybe Connor is a kind of high Medieval Christ,
staring distantly from an altar triptych with big, vacant eyes.  Better
yet, he might reflect a Nestorian duality, never truly entering into
the price of his atoning violence.  Either way, we, the movie audience,
are invited to gaze at the spectacle of a mechanical ritual sacrifice
without experiencing the expurgation of real blood, sweat and loss. 
“Terminator” ultimately offers us Salvation without kenosis.  For the real thing, the Rider must win his White Horse by way of the Cross.