Ultimate Geek Fu

 
I'll Be Back... Again. And Maybe Again.

---

This is it: the movie The Kid has been waiting for ever since he learned it was coming out. The next installment in the Terminator franchise opens tomorrow, so of course, in preparation for this, The Kid has been running a Terminator marathon in the family room all this week.

Gah. Talk about something guaranteed to turn your brain into feta cheese...

Actually, I'd forgotten what a lean and efficient little horror film the original Terminator was. Terminator 2 remains the far better film, in terms of story, but my favorite moment is still in Terminator 3.

Actually (again), the moment I'm thinking of isn't even in the movie; it's in the deleted scenes on the second disk of the 2-disk DVD set. It takes place fairly early on in the film, at the whoop-de-doo we-could-never-really-get-funding-for-this secret lab where the babe's Air Force general father works. A bunch of suits, uniforms, and lab coats are sitting in a conference room, waiting for someone else to show up so the meeting can start, and while they're waiting, they're watching a corporate video presentation on the Cyberdyne Systems "Soldier of the Future" project. In the midst of all the inspirational corporate happy talk, the camera suddenly trucks in on a very human Arnold Schwarzenegger, sweating, panting, and running on a treadmill whilst plastered with electrodes and surrounded by scientists taking notes. The treadmill stops, and Schwarzenegger turns to the camera, grins, and in a voice just dripping with grits and cornpone says, "Howdy! Ah'm Chief Master Sergeant William Candy, and ah was honored to be selected to partic'pate in the Soldier of the Future project!"

Back in the conference room, one of the suits watching the video says, "I just don't know about that voice." To which the nerdy guy with the big glasses answers, in Ahnold's voice:

"Ve can fix that."

Suddenly, a vision of an entire alternate future history appears before me: a future filled with redneck terminators, who just wanna hoot, holler, drink beer, kick ass, and git 'er done with this whole exterminatin' humanity business, so's they can get back to watchin' NASCAR. Drivers are overrated anyway. It's the cars that do all the work.

Anyway, that's my favorite moment. What's your favorite bit—either to think of or to laugh at—in the whole Terminator/Sarah Connor product line?

Let the arguments begin.

---

ULTIMAGE GEEK FU runs every Wednesday. Have a question that's just bugging the heck out of you about Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Gallactica, Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Heroes, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Smallville, The X-Files, X-Men, The Man From Atlantis, or pretty much any other SF-flavored media property? Send it to slushpile@thefridaychallenge.com with the subject line, "Geek Fu," and we'll stuff it in the queue.