Alternate John Connor

Spoiler Alert: I'm going to sound like a judgmental prick in this post. I'm OK with that.

I know this guy I like to call Alternate John Connor. He is, in all ways, distinctly underwhelming.

Alternate John Connor is that frat guy you knew in college. Not That Frat Guy; the one who was the Van Wilder of the coolest frat on campus, threw great parties, and managed to charmingly sleep his way through the entire Panhellenic Council, but That Frat Guy; the one who wound up a sixth year senior in that middling fraternity everyone sort of forgot about. You know the one. It wasn't the uber geek frat that won all of the knowledge bowls or the one with all the fratty fratastic frat guys, but the one that all the wannabe fratty fratastic frat guys joined when their first and second choices passed on them.

And Alternate John Connor wasn't a big deal in that middling frat. He was the guy who drank way too much - even amongst guys who all drank way too much - and couldn't wait for the hazing to start every time a new pledge class came down the pike.

And Alternate John Connor didn't achieve this vaunted position of mediocrity at a major university, but instead threw himself full blooded into being That Frat Guy in that middling fraternity at that university that occupies a space in the pantheon of institutions of higher learning somewhere between community college and an actual university you may have heard of. Not Indiana University but Indiana State University. Not The University of Texas but Stephen F. Austin University.

Alternate John Connor graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in inflated egoism and minored in drinking, homophobia, misogyny, discriminatory speech, and date rape. Like I said, Alternate John Connor is, in all ways, distinctly underwhelming.

So why do I call him Alternate John Connor?

Well, he strikes me as Edward Furlong's Young John Connor from Terminator 2 all grown up...after Skynet is destroyed and the audience gets that whole, "There's no fate but the one we make for ourselves," business. Ignore for a moment that Hollywood realized the Terminator cash cow was all dried up once Not Comically Old and Soggy Around the Midsection Arnold Schwarzenegger gave that tear jerking thumbs up as he was dipped in molten steel and assume that Terminators 3 and 4 (were there more?!) never saw the light of day.

Side note: Christian Bale loves this alternative future.

If you're comfortable with that, and I am guessing most Terminator fans are, that means John Connor, son of Sarah Connor, who was raised from word go to believe that he was literally the Savior of All Mankind, received weapons training, fought a liquid metal killing machine in the streets of LA, and destroyed all trace of Skynet with the help of an Austrian accented cyborg is telling anyone who will listen that, had things worked out a little differently, he'd be the indispensable leader of a post apocalypse resistance movement living life on a razor's edge and insuring the continued propagation of the human species.
 

John Connor, Badass

Alternate John Connor, Douchebag

Instead, Alternate John Connor sells insurance, still rides around on a dirt bike, plays WAY too much Call of Duty, and knows all of the lyrics to every song on Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion II album. He's John Connor all grown up but without, you know, the raison d'etre.

"There's no fate but the one we make for ourselves."

Careful what you wish for, Alternate John Connor.