My forthcoming book discusses the dominance of dystopian visions of the future, which is hardly surprising given the multiple, overlapping environmental, economic, and political crises we face. In the book, I use nine classic sci-fi movies to discuss various aspects of the coming dystopia. The last of them is Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

The most obvious way to interpret the Terminator series is as a warning about killer robots, and a necessary one. Warfare is being automated, and robots are creeping into policing. Big tech is working, often secretly, with states on defense and intelligence systems. Then there’s pervasive surveillance.

But as Maxim Pozdorovkin, director of the documentary The Truth About Killer Robots, says: “This idea of a single, malevolent AI being that can harm us, the Terminator trope …it’s created a tremendous blind spot. [It gets us] thinking about something that we’re heading towards in the future, something that will one day hurt us. If you look at the effects of automation broadly, globally, right now, it’s much more pervasive. The things happening – de-skilling, the loss of human dignity associated with traditional labor – they will have a devastating effect much sooner than that long-distance threat of unchecked AI.”

So as I discuss in the book, Terminator 2 is really about technology done to us, rather than under our control – through automation, algorithms, surveillance, disinformation, and manipulation. But this also means it’s something that is actually under human control; it’s to do with corporate and state power, a lack of regulation, and democratic deliberation.

Not bad for an action movie with some of the best stunts ever filmed.

But for more on that, you’ll have to read the book.

Come With Me If You Want To Live: The Future as Foretold in Classic Sci-Fi Films, is out in November from Lexington Books. You can read more about it here.