A Bit of Inglorious Fun

ONCE UPON A TIME IN POST APOCALYPTIC LOS ANGELES ...

EXT. The night sky over L.A. is blackened by nuclear fall-out. Ghostly buildings stand half-demolished; the charred, devastated streets empty except for burned-out human skulls.

And a group of eight young men dressed in torn, ragged uniforms. Plasma rifles are slung over their backs, and the red band of the RESISTANCE decorates their arms.

A solitary figure steps from the shadows. The sound of his boots echoes across the cracked pavement.


EXT. When he steps into the light, we see he is another battle-hardened soldier. He is older than the rest, boasting a thin mustache, and a nasty scar across the throat. He also speaks with a distinctive southern drawl.

ALDO RAINE
My name is Lt. Aldo Raine, and I’m putting together a special team. And I need me eight resistance fighters. Eight metal hatin’ tunnel rats.

EXT. All eight men snap to attention.

ALDO RAINE
Now y’all might have heard rumors of John Connor’s big push coming up here soon. Well, we’ll be pushin’ a little earlier than he will. We’re gonna be dropped into what’s left o’ downtown L.A. dressed as work camp refugees. And once we’re in Skynet territory, as a rubble-crawlin’, shadow-huggin’ guerrilla army, we’re gonna be doin’ one thing, and one thing only … destroyin’ terminators.


ALDO RAINE
(now pacing)
The machines of the Skynet Defense Network have conquered half the world through nuclear warfare, terror, torture, and termination, and I’m here to tell you that’s exactly what we’re gonna do to them. Now I don’t know about y’all. But I sure as Judgment Day didn’t come down from the radiation fields of Tennessee, cross two thousand, five hunnerd miles of skull-littered de-bris, fight my way outta Century City work camp, and then parachute from a fuckin’ reprogrammed HK to teach the machines lessons in humanity.

EXT. One of the resistance fighters nods in agreement.


ALDO RAINE
(continues)
Machines ain’t got no humanity. They’re the mindless metal mechanisms of a soul hatin’ overgrown chess computer that got too big for its britches, and they need to be destroyed. That’s why every robotic sum’ bitch we find wearin’ synthetic human skin, they’re gonna wish they never rolled off the assembly line.

EXT. ALDO stares down the eight veterans in front of him, really getting into his speech now.

ALDO RAINE
We will be cruel to the cyborg, and through our cruelty, their neural data banks will know who we are. They will find the evidence of our cruelty in the deactivated, disassembled, and demolished endoskeletons of the terminators we leave behind us. And Skynet will not be able to help itself from replaying on its surveillance feeds over and over the cruelties its metal minions endured from the blasts of our electro-magnet’ pulses, and the discharges of our plasma rifles.


EXT. Sky. Overhead, a metallic HK begins circling the area, scanning for human survivors. All the men ignore it, including ALDO RAINE.

ALDO RAINE
And the terminators will be short-circuited by us. And the terminators will transmit fearfully about us. And the terminators will go offline rather than face us. And when those terminators shut off their optical receptors and power down for the night, and their memory banks torture them for the evil they’ve done, it will be with thoughts of us that it tortures them with.

EXT. ALDO walks over to a dufflebag on the cracked pavement, reaches in, and pulls out a severed terminator head. Its eyes have grown dark, the red circuitry behind them having long since melted. ALDO holds the skull up to the men.

ALDO RAINE
But I got a word o’ warning for all would be resistance fighters. When you join my command, you take on a debit. A debit you owe me personally. Every red-banded warrior under my command owes me one hunnerd terminator CPUs … and I WANT my CPUs.

EXT. With that, the lieutenant theatrically drop-kicks the terminator head, which sails over into the skeletal remains of a car.

ALDO RAINE
And all y’all will git me one hunnerd terminator CPUs, taken from under the scalps of one hunnerd T-101 infiltrators, or you will die tryin’.


EXT. ALDO RAINE faces the men, and bellows a final question.

ALDO RAINE
Sound good?

All eight resistance fighters take a single, decisive step forward.

THE END

* Photos belong respectively to Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures, and special thanks to James Cameron, Josh Friedman, and Quentin Tarantino for making this spoof possible.