> Arnie the Terminator is pretty tame and wussy comparing to the contents of
> some newest video games (cf. Grand Auto Theft).
Not in my experience. "The Terminator" has some shocking violence -- the cyborg rips out a human heart, throws a guy through a door, shoots a woman in the back, mows down dancers in a discotheque and guns down half the LA police force. The visions of the Skynet-devastated future are equally grisly -- nightmare visions of horror.
Grand Theft Auto isn't even close. No internal organs, highly stylized violence (run someone over, an ambulance arrives to lift them away), parody and humor every which way. Sure, GTA has aesthetic flaws -- most notably, its fuzzy micropolitics -- but it's not even close to the vengeful viciousness of the average Arnie pic.
-- DRR