There Is No Such Thing as a Neutral Terminator

When I first processed the news that Ron Howard was directing a feature adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. I’m writing as a warning: Anyone who mistakes Hillbilly Elegy for fact—or worse yet, uses it to inform public policy—is steering us toward a very dark future. But it’s 2020, more than two decades since Skynet became self-aware on our original timeline, and there’s just no excuse for making a movie like Hillbilly Elegy anymore. And as wrong as it is about Terminators, Hillbilly Elegy’s human characters are sharply drawn: weak, loud, annoying, practically begging to get Judgment Day–ed. Now that I’ve seen Hillbilly Elegy and been forced to confront Howard’s ugly opinion of cybernetic infiltration units like me, I won’t be back.