The "All things TERMINATOR" thread.

[a-dev]

After Skynet becomes autonomous (and Dyson would no longer be needed), the technological developments seem to kick into higher gear in the 21st century. Ground and air assault tech are developed, terminators are produced (with living tissue and even bad breath!), and Skynet presumably even creates a functioning system for time travel! Based on that context, I have to believe that the technological leaps made by Skynet between 1997 and 2029 would easily allow for repair of the recovered CPU. At the very least, repair it enough to retrieve info from it

Agreed. It would make every effort to do this.

I do concur that avoiding any undoing of the previous 1984 events would indeed be a logical objective that Skynet would reach. But I want to stop here to explain what I base that on just in case it seems like I'm attributing too much strategic calculation to the Skynet AI.

Skynet is described to have started as a strategic defense program trusted with replacing human military decision-making. Within a single month (from August 4th to the 29th of 1997), it gains self-awareness and employs an autonomous reaction in self defense against humanity. The nuclear strike on Russia, with a specific expected response, shows how accurate and adaptive its strategic formulations already were in 1997. And Skynet would've only grown *more* deductive and strategically sound all the way into 2029.

With all that said, Skynet could've arrived at the specific choice of 1995 perhaps to ensure that Miles Dyson would be far enough along not to risk tampering with him reaching certain benchmarks (by potentially exposing him to more future tech that he wouldn't have accounted for). And in 1995, John would still be young enough to dispose of with ease. He was a prodigy who would be formidable beyond his years as he got closer to adulthood, though. It would obviously be best to still target him well before he gets old enough to already be the resourceful battlefield warrior he proved to be in the 21st century.

Very good, I have nothing to add.

I think Skynet awareness of the T1 1984 events would help here too. Sarah had seen a T-800 in 1984 and might've prepared John for ways to defeat one. More importantly, the 1984 T-800 had indeed been defeated. The T-1000 would therefore represent a more reliable assassin with greater versatility.

Plus, with multiple timelines, wouldn't the need for an expanded lore explanation of why a T-1000 wasn't sent to 1984 become a moot point anyway? The reason why becomes a matter of there not being a T-1000 available to that first version of Skynet. So no need to create a Skynet "fear" of the T-1000. Is there anything in the film that alludes to any such thing being necessary if we apply the multiple timelines interpretation?

Oh no I wasn't suggesting that Skynet could have sent a T-1000 on the 1984 mission - I agree that it probably didn't even exist yet in that timeline. But for the 1995 mission - if, according to the expanded lore, Skynet was nervous of the T-1000 (perhaps it couldn't be restrained by a ''Read-Only'' mode like a T-800?) I wondered why Skynet went ahead and used it instead of simply sending another T-800.

Your suggestion works for me - either we don't have to take this little tidbit about Skynet fearing the T-1000 as canon because it's not explicitly stated in T2 - or we can say that Skynet suspected (or knew) that in another timeline it had already sent a T-800 on a mission to 1984 and that that Terminator had failed. The T-1000, with all of its capabilities was deemed to offer a bigger chance of success, while the risk of it going rogue must have been considered small enough.

Invoking that visual is something I will never object to.

Then lets gaze back in time to 2004 because we can

Spoiler

Good lord.

Sarah was still trying to sort things out. If she believed that John couldn't have existed any other way only 6 months after conceiving him, I can compartmentalize her logic that way. But what's more important to me is her eventual view that she *could* change the future, not just for John but for all of humanity. And I think most people would agree that the ending of T2 was supposed to symbolize a departure from any sort of closed-loop reality where fate is locked in and unavoidable.

There remains the small issue that John, as of the scene where he's talking to Uncle Bob underneath the station wagon, seems to have the same mistaken idea that his mum initially had. They also aren't accounting for ''Original John'' - i.e it was never Furlong's adult John who sent Reese - again, for our purposes I put it down to them not thinking it through fully - understandable because I've been a fan of this franchise for 30 years and in all that time I was content to say ''meh, it's time travel, tawhk to da haand!'' until this conversation over the past couple of weeks.

In any case, in T2 they seem to believe they can change the future without the unintended consequence of making John disappear out of existence or something. Plus they have Uncle Bob, a machine with super-advanced AI, going along with it so that must additionally persuade them that it can safely be done.

It might seem more complicated and exhausting here because a-dev and I are willing to get into the weeds. But the basic premise is simple enough: the first two movies make more sense when you allow for multiple timelines because that gets rid of most of the paradoxes and contradictions that exist otherwise.

Exactly. We're going into it in detail to prove the concept.

- We started off (well, you did) saying that the single linear timeline concept cannot work, the paradoxes are nonsensical

- so how then should time travel work? You presented the parallel timeline theory and added necessary detail as to how 2 time travellers from one timeline would end up in the same alternate timeline as opposed to each just creating a separate timeline

- I wanted answers to these questions - Would Skynet really be incentivized to pursue time travel in this scenario and likewise would the Resistance even feel any need to respond considering their timeline of origin will be unaffected? I was satisfied that the answer was yes to both and for the reasons we talked about

-we ruled that 2 timelines (Original + 1 alternate) wasn't enough to account for everything in the first 2 movies so we upped it to 3 (Original + 2 alternates)

-we ran our algorithms and demonstrated that 3 was indeed the magic number which enables T1 and T2 to play out as they do but with logic and sense behind them. Down with Time Travel Paradoxes!

• Original Timeline (with an original John Connor - father unknown and a Skynet developed by normal means) playing out with no time travel interference all the way up to 2029 when it is first used by Skynet - it sends the Terminator to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor and John sends Reese in pursuit. As soon as they enter the past they create.....

• Timeline #2 - the 1984 events of The Terminator playing out as we see them in the movie but then running with no further time travel interference all the way up to 2029 (again) at which point Skynet sends the T-1000 to 1995. This version of the Resistance (led by a new John Connor, Kyle Reese's son) is able to send the T-800 we know as Uncle Bob in response. As soon as these two enter 1995 they create.....

• Timeline #3 - the 1984 events of The Terminator are the 'past' of this new branch which plays out as we see in Terminator 2 Judgment Day in 1995. The storyline of this film sees the end of Skynet and thus no further time travel shenanigans. NONE I declare!

 

[ajp4mgs]

With the mute button utilized, right around 2 minutes into that trip to 2004 I was reminded of just how excellent of a "vintage" that was. Good lord indeed.

The storyline of this film sees the end of Skynet and thus no further time travel shenanigans. NONE I declare!

Agreed. But I do hope that the future in timeline #3 sees some awesome use of Uncle Bob's arm that was left in the chaindrive gears. The novelization has John go back to collect it and toss it into the smelting pool, but no such thing is shown in the film - so I reserve the right to imagine awesome future endo-type tech derived from it.

 

[jye4ever]

I get anxiety coming to this thread knowing I have a LOTR sized book to read within an afternoon time frame

Academia was less work lol

 

[Khev]

I get anxiety coming to this thread knowing I have a LOTR sized book to read within an afternoon time frame

Academia was less work lol

I know right.

 

[jye4ever]

Holy crap perfect lol

 

[a-dev]

 

[ajp4mgs]

I get anxiety coming to this thread knowing I have a LOTR sized book to read within an afternoon time frame

Academia was less work lol

I have no idea what you're talking about. I, for one, am always concise and straight to the simple point.

I don't just go on rambling and typing whatever comes to my mind without any consideration for the fact that it'll be a chore for people to read. Nope, I think through my potential responses first so that I can trim excess and keep things limited to key points. And you guys make it seem like the subjects we've discussed here are somehow complicated or confusing. Yeah right! As if there's anything hard to follow about drawing a distinction between the different theoretical applications of time travel relative to the system of reality which the time travel would be occurring in. This is just basic stuff. We didn't even delve into analyzing the nature of reality in the context of how spacetime would be defined differently according to which interpretation of quantum theory is being applied as a backdrop for time travel parameters. That's clearly what James Cameron must've been intending for his audience to ponder when he set out to make a Terminator film in the first place, so it's actually been negligent of us not to even so much as broach the subject here. I take responsibility for that and I personally apologize to James Cameron. And I could perhaps understand how these posts might've gotten wordy had we branched into string theory and how it would recontextualize our four-dimensional understanding of spacetime by introducing the possibility of several more dimensions that have yet to be defined. But sheesh, we didn't even go there. We didn't even begin to tread on how the closed-loop timeline and the open-ended parallel timelines might be able to coexist in an extra-dimensional understanding of the composition of reality. I know everyone was probably anticipating when a-dev and I would eventually reach this inevitable extension of our discussion, only to be disappointed by our restraint in avoiding the obvious questions that Cameron was asking about the existential ramifications of how time travel would in itself define the rules governing space and time that would narrow the number of viable theoretical variations on the nature of the universe. I guess we can still get into that in our next round of discussions, now that we've concluded the most basic aspects of what sort of reality the Terminator franchise is set in. The obvious metaphor that Cameron was going for is that Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor are the Adam and Eve of his existential thought experiment. John Connor is obviously mankind itself, and Skynet symbolizes the danger of unraveling the layers of science and intellect so quickly that mankind itself becomes endangered. John ends up being the one to discover where we go wrong as a species, and then takes it upon himself to restart creation by sending Kyle back to have a do-over of the genesis of mankind with the hope of changing things so that our very existence doesn't get threatened by our misguided pursuit to conquer progress and control of the flow of knowledge, and even life itself. And Cameron did all this while planting paradoxes that would force us to understand that creation itself is not an isolated event, but can actually be one of several versions that leave us with truly infinite possibilities of life experience and destiny. I think we can all pretty much agree that's what the Terminator films were truly about. No question there.

So... wordy and complicated posts? I just don't see it.

 

[jye4ever]

Epic

I read it

 

[a-dev]

Concordantly!

In seriousness ajp we didn't seem to get much uptake on that, did we. Even Khev dropped off

 

[ajp4mgs]

Epic

I read it

I have to admit that I'm laughing my ass off that you read the whole thing, but I really do feel bad about it at the same time. I figured that you'd see what I was doing after just the first few lines and skip straight to the end.

Thanks for being a good sport, bud. And just know that I seriously considered taking the word count even higher.

Concordantly!

In seriousness ajp we didn't seem to get much uptake on that, did we. Even Khev dropped off

Just look at it this way: nothing we agreed on was refuted.

 

[TheRealCanadianBros.]

Okay so the exchanges between a-dev and ajp over the last several pages has been a wild ride. I need to go over that again. I really appreciate the depth you two have gone through.

Also forgive me for forgetting but a poster here mentioned an really good Dark Fate idea of following Carl's life after the death of John Connor and Sarah trying to hunt him and the family as an act of revenge. I just wanted to say that this is an awesome idea and I really wish that DF did more to explore the 30 year gap and what both Carl/Sarah were up to.

 

[a-dev]

Okay so the exchanges between a-dev and ajp over the last several pages has been a wild ride. I need to go over that again. I really appreciate the depth you two have gone through.

https://youtu.be/rm7mNDQvh7k?t=6


Seriously, thanks for reading. Some people like the paradoxes and find it part of the appeal but I now find it much more interesting, more exciting even, when it all actually makes sense.

 

[a-dev]

^all true.

As for the comments, it's pretty much guaranteed you'll always see people clamoring for a 'proper' future war movie. I used to want that too. No longer. I would now need it to align with what ajp and I talked about in the last few pages and it most definitely would not do so.

I know right.

I've found myself chuckling away at this again. I don't know why that pic of Joker helplessly flung by the speeding car is so funny but it is

 

[shells075]

^all true.

As for the comments, it's pretty much guaranteed you'll always see people clamoring for a 'proper' future war movie. I used to want that too. No longer. I would now need it to align with what ajp and I talked about in the last few pages and it most definitely would not do so.



I've found myself chuckling away at this again. I don't know why that pic of Joker helplessly flung by the speeding car is so funny but it is

Lol, this same video popped up in my suggestion earlier today. Youtube algorithm doing its thing. The machines are coming!

Edward Furlong looks like he's been through the future war in this vid.

 

[Khev]

I've found myself chuckling away at this again. I don't know why that pic of Joker helplessly flung by the speeding car is so funny but it is

I know it really is awesome, lol.

I belief the first time I ever saw that meme was on a video game Facebook page lamenting the insane difficulty of the old Nintendo Ghosts 'N Goblins game.

 

[jye4ever]

And it still made me laugh lol

 

[Khev]

 

[jye4ever]

 

[Khev]

 

[punisher1974]

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