Salvation: Terminated

What day is it? What year?

Those are two questions we hope we will never have to ask. For it either means that we've lost our memory or we've woken up to a new sinister reality... such as the one portrayed in the long-running saga of The Terminator.

I never got to see the first one in the cinema. That was way back in 1984. I was still a child and knew nothing of the significance of The Terminator as an icon of pop culture. Then, in 1991, I got my first taste of what a powerhouse this saga really is when Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released upon mankind. Until today, it still stands as one of THE best movies ever witnessed on the silverscreen. The younger generation will recall the third installment of this saga more vividly but that is a poor imitation of what The Terminator really is. Most of us would not even acknowledge T3 as part of the saga, which just tells you how much it sucked.

So, it's indeed satisfying to note that the latest installment has made a triumphant return from the 'malfunction' that was T3. I won't spoil it for you. Rather, I recommend that you go watch it. It's not as groundbreaking as T1 or T2 were but it will still set your heart racing. If you understand the core message of what this saga is all about, I think you will appreciate that the film-makers have injected that rather well into this action-packed, character-driven vehicle.

The question that John Connor poses to us at the end - as to what makes us all human, is a message we need to embrace. In the Terminator universe, the war is fought between man and machine. But in our universe, the war is fought between man and himself. Which could be worse I wonder?

The sooner we realise, the better; for we might soon discover that we have led ourselves to a salvation that has been terminated.