Terminator #7: by Joel and Ethan Coen

Sometimes my mind creates entire movies when I sleep. Well, not sometimes. Only when I don’t write.

My dream last night was possibly the best movie I’ve seen in a long time.

It began before I knew there was going to be a movie. In my dream, I saw a TV interview with Joel and Ethan Coen, the fantastic and quirky writers/directors. They were talking about how they have fallen on hard times, how they no longer had any money, and so had to accept a gig writing and directing a movie they never would have otherwise: The next Terminator film. But, of course, they said, they still did it their way.

And then the movie began. This being a dream, I was in it.

It took place on a small island, a point which will become important later.

I was given some sort of pink computer chip and was told to hand it over to the police. I go to the police, and a Terminator arrives.

This time, in this movie, the Terminator is not looking for a person. Rather, he/it is looking for the chip.

While the Terminator begins to attack the police, I am able to sneak out. Back home (at my island home, apparently,) I find a good hiding place, hopefully, for a pink computer chip: Under the pink welcome mat. I only tell my best friend where it was, in case things get hairy.

The police station is being destroyed and dismantled from the inside. The Terminator, naturally, cannot be stopped. But we never see what happens in that station. We never see the fighting.

We see the survivors who are able to escape. We see people running out, jumping out of windows, some crashing through windows. We see signs of fighting: Smoke, explosions that rock, the buildings, walls that crack and sometimes break.

The people on the tiny island are gathering around the station, trying to figure out what’s about to happen. Panic is beginning to set in.

With the ground floor destroyed, the fighting now clearly moves to the second floor. More explosions. More violence. More panic on the island.

The fighting reaches the top floor. People on the island are trying to find a way out of the island — but there is no escape for some reason. You cannot leave the island.

The Terminator comes out and begins to question people who have something to do with the chip. I see that and run away, hoping not to be questioned because I’m not in computers, I was just doing a favor for a friend.

The Terminator goes through the computer people one by one and no one reveals I have it. He kills every one of them.

Now the Terminator moves to search the island, building by building. Completely ignoring us regular people, he goes from small home to small home, searches them, and destroys them in his wake.

I watch as he was slowly approaches my one-floor small island home. He never actually looks under welcome mats. My heart is racing, hoping he won’t when he gets to my home.

The island people had now split into two: those who try to find a way to escape and get as far away from the Terminator as the island allows and those who help in the Terminator’s search in the hopes he will go away once he finds his chip. The island is full of people searching everywhere and everything.

As the Terminator is about to reach my home, something distracts him and I am able to sneak in and walk away with the chip only to hide it someplace else.

Now the Terminator begins to demolish my home.

I’ll just mention that clearly, Joel and Ethan Coen were creating a Terminator movie where you only see the people’s reactions rather than the chase and action. It was a movie about the fear of the people, the reactions, the way we all try to survive, rather than about the chase.

Back to the movie: My best friend reveals to me she didn’t find the chip under the mat.

“Why did you search for it?” I ask, watching the Terminator from a hill at the end of the street — that’s how small the island is, there is nowhere else to run to.

“I wanted to give it to him,” she said. “We have to get rid of him.”

Just like that, my best friend had joined the Terminator. I am glad I moved it.

The Terminator by now had destroyed half the island. And now the second Terminator, the good Terminator, finally arrives.

Again, the battle demolishes most of the island, but we can’t see any of it. It happens in hangars, inside homes, and always out of our sight.

Crashes, explosions, smoke, and fires are all things we can see. But we don’t see the battle.

Almost everything on the island is destroyed. But then it happens: The good Terminator is victorious and the bad Terminator is dead.

The people on the island breathe a sigh of relief and I wake up, needing to pee.

I was so in shock that I had dreamt of a Terminator movie that had no action in it, that was all about the fear and the human reactions to it, that I immediately recorded myself in a voice memo, my voice still cracked from sleep and jet lag. I recorded it so I wouldn’t forget. Because I knew I needed to tell people about this movie.

Like I said, this is what my mind does when I don’t write. This time, I’m glad I didn’t.

Because. It. Was. Awesome. Joel and Ethan Coen really pulled it off! Go and see it!