Terminator Loophole

Fenris

Fenris

Well-Known Member
I just realized something about the Terminator movies.

LOOP HOLE 1:
If the Terminators were able to kill either Sarah or John, they probably wouldn't exist in the first place.

Without Sarah or John, the Terminators would not have a reason to go back in time. With that in mind, there would be no T800 hand which scientists like Dyson, would study. Without the hand, Skynet would not go online.

Am I even making any sense?
 
Fenris said:
I just realized something about the Terminator movies.

LOOP HOLE 1:
If the Terminators were able to kill either Sarah or John, they probably wouldn't exist in the first place.

Without Sarah or John, the Terminators would not have a reason to go back in time. With that in mind, there would be no T800 hand which scientists like Dyson, would study. Without the hand, Skynet would not go online.

Am I even making any sense?
Click to expand...

It's called a paradox ;) it is not in their nature to "make sense".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox
 
>deep breath<

Hookay. So, here's my take.

You could argue that technology would have eventually developed to a point where Skynet would happen anyway. Thus, the war would happen anyway, at any time. So, arguably, killing John or Sarah Connor would only kill the leader of the resistance.


Of course, the truth is, none of this matters if producers think there's a buck to be made. Hell, you could kill John Connor in one film, and then say that the resistance realized he was essential and therefore built a terminator of him to run the resistance!
 
Or you could make the assumption that when the terminators travel back in time they create an alternate timeline much like in BTTF Part 2 oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed...
 
Isn't there an infinite universe theory that states we create a parallel universe everytime we make a choice or something? So maybe they're not the exact same Terminators, JC, etc. didn't TSCC touch on this with Derek and Jesse? She was A Jesse, but not HIS Jesse?
 
I agree with Solo "judgment day" would have happened anyway. The best and simplest way to explain this would have been that after they sent the terminator back to kill Sarah and then we knew about Judgment day the date would change as we went through the movies. i.e., after the hand is discovered we reverse engineer the **** out of it and now judgment day happens sooner because we advanced so quickly.
 
I always thought of it as a skynet as being like a spoiled kid, in its own timeline it had lost, the resistance had won, sending back a terminator to kill Sarah Connor would not help the skynet of that reality, but in another, it would win, because Sarah would be dead, and there would be no John Connor to stop the skynet in that reality.

Skynet just never counted on the resistance sending one of theirs back too.

If skynet had any real sense the time machine would just explode after one use.

Send a terminator back, boom, game over.
 
Fenris said:
I just realized something about the Terminator movies.

LOOP HOLE 1:
If the Terminators were able to kill either Sarah or John, they probably wouldn't exist in the first place.

Without Sarah or John, the Terminators would not have a reason to go back in time. With that in mind, there would be no T800 hand which scientists like Dyson, would study. Without the hand, Skynet would not go online.

Am I even making any sense?
Click to expand...

Yeah, you're making sense. In fact I've talked about this before with various people. That's the irony of the whole situation. Skynet doesn't seem to get that without John Connor, it wouldn't exist, and without Skynet, John Connor wouldn't exist either. The funny thing is that John is so blinded by "trying to save humanity", that he fails to comprehend that the only way to save humanity is to allow his mother, and him, to die (that or he does comprehends it, but decides to be selfish by continuing to exist instead of making the big sacrifice and pretty much screwing humanity more than helping it).

However, some people believe that Skynet would come into existence anyway without Connor's existence (the only way I could see it avoiding its own existence being wiped out is to do like what it does in the RoboCop vs. The Terminator comic series, which is to send its technology back before the 1980s to allow for Cyberdyne to receive it and not have it be dependent on Connor's existence), but in the view of just the first two films alone, I don't see how it could exist without John Connor's existence.
 
Parallels start as soon as there is a second choice, once they made the time displacement device, a new parallel is created, once they decide on what to do with it, another is created, every choice made in the past makes a new parallel. The original timeline exists, but we watch a new timeline when someone is sent back. Killing Sarah just means John doesn't happen and his second in command is now the leader. John only knows so much about the war because Kyle was sent back to tell Sarah about it and she tells John, who tells Kyle who tells Sarah, etc, etc. Killing Skynet means no leader of resistance. They need eachother to function, the producers, writers, directors use this to make more films and $$$. We can easily end the series (actually just 1 and 2) with the peaceful Elderly Sarah alternate ending, they kill the machines, dispose of all evidence, she stops smoking, and John still becomes some sort of leader. But why end it? They got a time machine, it can be never ending in the name of bored producers!
 
Skynet and John Connor are two sides of the same coin. One cannot exist without the other. Yet both try their damnedest to destroy the other, neither realizing that the only true solution is to stop fighting and coexist. In many ways, the Skynet/Connor hatred is very reminiscent of the Star Trek episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," where racial hatred led to the destruction of an entire civilization. Both sides of that war were committed to the complete destruction of the other, and it killed them all. This is, I believe, the ultimate fate of the Terminator universe unless someone says "enough."
 
What came first, the chicken or the egg? If you travel back in time and kill your grandfather, what will happen to your father? And how would you be able to travel back in time if you never existed in the first place?

When it comes to time travel, Doc Brown said it best: great scott :)

The Mad Professor said:
Skynet and John Connor are two sides of the same coin. One cannot exist without the other. Yet both try their damnedest to destroy the other, neither realizing that the only true solution is to stop fighting and coexist. In many ways, the Skynet/Connor hatred is very reminiscent of the Star Trek episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," where racial hatred led to the destruction of an entire civilization. Both sides of that war were committed to the complete destruction of the other, and it killed them all. This is, I believe, the ultimate fate of the Terminator universe unless someone says "enough."
Click to expand...

INT. HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA. BEDROOM - EVENING

CAMERON
That is enough.


EXT. HIGHWAY - MIDNIGHT

MALE VOICE
My mission is to terminate the franchise?

VOICE ON PHONE
Affirmative.

MALE VOICE
No problemo.
 
JLeezy23 said:
Parallels start as soon as there is a second choice, once they made the time displacement device, a new parallel is created, once they decide on what to do with it, another is created, every choice made in the past makes a new parallel. The original timeline exists, but we watch a new timeline when someone is sent back. Killing Sarah just means John doesn't happen and his second in command is now the leader. John only knows so much about the war because Kyle was sent back to tell Sarah about it and she tells John, who tells Kyle who tells Sarah, etc, etc. Killing Skynet means no leader of resistance. They need eachother to function, the producers, writers, directors use this to make more films and $$$. We can easily end the series (actually just 1 and 2) with the peaceful Elderly Sarah alternate ending, they kill the machines, dispose of all evidence, she stops smoking, and John still becomes some sort of leader. But why end it? They got a time machine, it can be never ending in the name of bored producers!
Click to expand...

But didn't Cameron say that when he created the first two films, he always intended it to be a single timeline, not parallel timelines? I remember reading that somewhere that he had always intended that it was a single timeline.
 
This why I love the first one and don't think the sequel was really all that great.

By itself, the first movie is self contained. A self causing time event. That's a pretty cool concept for a movie to explore.
 
1 and 2 can be considered one timeline, but I think anything after seems to have its own canon and make their own rules. Having the T1000 as their most advanced prototype was good, especially since it glitched a lot and Skynet hadn't 100% perfected its technique. The TX and the Connorator seem way too advanced too fast after the 1000 wasn't even in full production
 
I guess as Judgement day got further and further into the future skynet had better technology to play with each time.

Thing makes no sense anyway, why send a robot back when they could put a massive nuke inside an elephant and just blow the entire city, no need to go through all the Sarah Connors in the phone book then.
 
I like the way 2002's The Time Machine handled it. He can't save his wife because her dying is what caused him to create the time machine in the first place.
 
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