Had a weird thought about the Terminator films.

[Kerr Avon]

Wibbly wobbly timey wimey!!!!!!

 

[CB2001]

I tend to think of it as working like "Yesterday's Enterprise" in TNG. The moment time trabel occured, it overwrote everyone's memories of how things had been. After T1, John Connor only knew that a single T-800 had been sent back to kill his mom. Once T2 happened, his memories included the 2nd T-800 and the T-1000. Same with Terminator 3.

One problem with my own theory though, is that as soon as the first T-800 time traveled, that should have been it: Sarah would have been killed, and the human resistance would have fallen apart for the lack of her son. If Kyle stepped into the time machine 10 minutes after the terminator did, he could have waited an hour, a week, or a month in order to find more folks to go back with him, gather more intel on the area, you name it.

True. But there's another problem that comes up: We don't know how long it takes for the changes to occur. In the non-canon RoboCop vs. The Terminator, it depicted the ripple effect taking some time to catch up to the future timeframe. For example, when Flo succeeded in destroying RoboCop before his brain could be hooked into Skynet (from Issue 1 of 4), it detected the change and managed to send three Terminators back in time to stop Flo from succeeding, and it only had minutes to do so.

Since we never seen such a thing occurring in the films, we don't know if there's a moment of transition (like depicted in the Back to the Future films) or if it really is instantly changed the moment it occurs.

 

[GlazyUK]

What struck me in Terminator was his hair, the Series 800 Model 101 Infiltrator unit's come off a production line so you'd assume they'd all have the same hair, it's not until 36 minutes into the film after he's been through a fireball in the back alley that Arnie gets the now recognizable spiked hair we associate with the Terminator, yet at the beginning of T2 he shows up with pretty much the same spiked haircut, and not the one we see him with at the start of the first movie.
The background to the screenplay states that after Kyle Reese is sent through to follow the first Terminator they realize that another unit, the T-1000 has been sent through so they program another Series 800 and send that through to help John Connor out. The script for the sequence where they send Kyle Reese through time and then walk into the warehouse full of unactivated Terminators can be read in script form with concept sketches in Terminator 2: Judgment Day - The Book of the Film - An Illustrated Screenplay. Cameron wrote the whole opening with the Time Displacement Machine but it was deemed to expensive to film. Once the second Terminator gets sent through the rebels are all set to rig the whole complex and blow it up.
Also it's not until the Series 800 damages his eye in a fight that he's forced to wear sunglasses to hide the damage in the first Terminator movie, yet in T2 and T3 he seems to wear the shades from the off, more like a fashion statement.

 

[CB2001]

What struck me in Terminator was his hair, the Series 800 Model 101 Infiltrator unit's come off a production line so you'd assume they'd all have the same hair, it's not until 36 minutes into the film after he's been through a fireball in the back alley that Arnie gets the now recognizable spiked hair we associate with the Terminator, yet at the beginning of T2 he shows up with pretty much the same spiked haircut, and not the one we see him with at the start of the first movie.
The background to the screenplay states that after Kyle Reese is sent through to follow the first Terminator they realize that another unit, the T-1000 has been sent through so they program another Series 800 and send that through to help John Connor out. The script for the sequence where they send Kyle Reese through time and then walk into the warehouse full of unactivated Terminators can be read in script form with concept sketches in Terminator 2: Judgment Day - The Book of the Film - An Illustrated Screenplay. Cameron wrote the whole opening with the Time Displacement Machine but it was deemed to expensive to film. Once the second Terminator gets sent through the rebels are all set to rig the whole complex and blow it up.
Also it's not until the Series 800 damages his eye in a fight that he's forced to wear sunglasses to hide the damage in the first Terminator movie, yet in T2 and T3 he seems to wear the shades from the off, more like a fashion statement.

Well, I know this is going to sound odd, but we can be sure that for the Model 101 exterior has some minor differences so to be able to attempt some sort of variation (if all of them had the same hair cut, then you'd be able to recognize it at a distance. For all we know, they also have the same model with different hair colors and styles). I could be wrong, of course.

As for the shades, it could be something John programmed into it, as he remembers it wearing them from the moment he first met it up to the point where they're destroyed by the guard at the sanitarium.

 

[Death Grin]

I think the sunglasses thing was an "artsy fartsy" thing. T1 Arnold arrives and as he gets more damaged, his true self, the unfeeling robot shows through and he uses the glasses to fit in and hide his true nature. It's the opposite in T2. T2 Arnold starts out more machine like, even though he gets damaged and you see his robotic inside, his "humanity" is showing more. I know there is a better way to say this, but I hope you get the idea from what I wrote.

 

[terryr]

In T1 he grabs some clothes at random and they happen to be cool for a bad ass.

In the second he also happens to get clothes by accident. But there is a effort to make him 'look cool'.

And then in T3 he again gets biker clothes and harley. Now this has become his 'image'. He should have had something different. Maybe a 3 piece suit. Or golf clothes.
But Arnold wanted to look cool.

I did like what Vivek posted about if you stopped one terrible person/thing another would replace it. I saw it on a special about time travel actually. If skynet had been stopped some tyrant may have risen up and caused the war so either way the world might be meant to have it. That was the only thing I liked about T3 was the fact that it showed no matter what they did the war was meant to happen.

I disagree. If Hitler had been killed in the 1930s there would have been no World War 2. One guy created a World War. No one else could have, or wanted to do it. And even he didn't really want it.
So much of human events is random. You might meet the love of your life at a certain spot, but roll the dice 100 times and you'd never have met most of the time.
What bugs me about alternate universe stories is that there are the same people in each of them. When we are all so incredibly random.
It requires ALL of our ancestors to have met and made babies. 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16, 32, 64 , 128....All meeting every time.
And then even with the same parents the same sperm and egg have to join every time.

 

[DuneMuadDib]

As soon as the first T-800 time traveled, that should have been it: Sarah would have been killed, and the human resistance would have fallen apart for the lack of her son. If Kyle stepped into the time machine 10 minutes after the terminator did, he could have waited an hour, a week, or a month in order to find more folks to go back with him, gather more intel on the area, you name it.

Edited for rethought opinions.

Sending the T-800 doesn't change anything because the timeline already is based upon one where Kyle was sent back. It's how it always played out in 1984 and how it always played out in whatever future date it is that I forget.

But accepting your argument for a moment, there's a bigger problem. T-800 is sent back and kills Sarah before Kyle can go back, so no John and no Resistance. So if John's never born why would the Machines send a T-800 back to kill Sarah in a timeline where there was no John-led Resistance. Okay, so they don't send back the T-800 in timeline 2 because there's no need, but with no T-800 Sarah doesn't die so John is born and so on.

The only reason to send a T-800 back is if John was born. The only way John is born is if Kyle is sent back. The only reason Kyle is sent back to protect Sarah from the T-800. The time loop is stable because A leads to B leads to C leads to A.

 

[DuneMuadDib]

Yes, I quoted a non-canon comic series. And if you bothered to read the rest of the post instead of skimming, you would have seen that I did used an example from the films itself (with the T-800 arriving shortly before the T-1000 did when the T-1000 was the first one through before John and the Resistance took the complex).

Between the starting off using a Robocop vs Terminator comic to argue your point and the wall of text that followed I skimmed. First bit dissuaded me from taking the argument seriously.

That aside, the most that example from the film shows is that for some reason they don't seem to have sent the T-800/850 and T-1000 to the same time. I don't recall seeing any clocks, so there's nothing to suggest that they aren't arriving at the same time or really what span of time separates their arrivals. Normally films don't depict events that happen concurrently on-screen at the same time.

That said we'll assume that Arnold arrived before Patrick since that's how it's shown in the film (though that could just be an echo of the first film to lull the audience into assuming Arnold is bad again if they don't know better). How does Arnold arriving before Patrick preclude the Machines just sending another T-800 to 1984 to have a second go at Sarah?

You suggest that the T-1000 was sent first, then bad Arnold, then Kyle, then good Arnold. Interesting. It also suggests that there's no reason at all for the Machines not to be able to send another Terminator back to 1984 if the Resistance could send protectors back to the same times afterwards. The Machines should be able to do the time travel calculations better anyway so there's less reason for them to not send a second Terminator to the same time to finish the job.

 

[SSgt Burton]

In the second he also happens to get clothes by accident. But there is a effort to make him 'look cool'.

Yeah Cameron has said in the T2 commentary that he essentially broke the fourth wall by playing "Bad to the Bone"- basically embracing the "cool badassness" of the character. It becomes no stretch that the Terminator steals the sunglasses for no real reason other than Terminators look cool in sunglasses.

And then in T3 he again gets biker clothes and harley. Now this has become his 'image'. He should have had something different... Maybe a 3 piece suit...

Like this?

(Not too sure if that would have worked. )


And for the record I'm also in the camp that if you really wanted to prevent the war, John Connor must die before it begins.

However this kind of touches on the theme in T2 that every human life is precious (especially with the "it's us against the machines" nature of the war).

We can't just off someone like Miles Dyson hoping to prevent the war in the process because it makes us no better than the machines we are fighting against for our very survival as a species.

So even if we had the knowledge that killing John Connor would prevent the war, we still can't impelment that plan as it falls into that "us against them/we can't be like them" theme.

Just like John said to Sarah in T2 (after she couldn't go through with executing Dyson... and forgive me I'm paraphrazing), "We'll figure out another way."


I can't stand the "multi-verse" theories. I like things simple; one timeline for me. :lol


Kevin

 

[Death Grin]

... I can't stand the "multi-verse" theories.
Kevin

Destroy them with fire, like this

 

[Werstrooper]

Destroy them with fire, like this

Critters?

 

[Death Grin]

Critters?

No idea, just did a search on .gif flamethrower.

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Like this?

(Not too sure if that would have worked. )

In this case, it isn't the clothes that makes the character. It's a machine. It shouldn't have vanity issues. As an infiltrator... it should pick the best clothes for the job.

 

[Clutch]

 

[Vivek]

Instead of posting about this Cameron interview in the Terminator: Genesis thread, I figured it would be better to post it in a existing thread discussing the original film.

I have no real interest in the Avatar sequels and that's the only movies Cameron is currently attached to probably for another decade. And yes there are claims as to how much of an ego he has. But after reading this new interview where he is reflecting on his early days while making Terminator, well it's humbling to know how he was struggling as a film maker. It reminded me of how Andrew Kevin Walker described how his time while living in NYC as a struggling screenwriter added to the inspiration of Se7en.

Sometimes many artists due to their turbulent times are able to create such compelling works of art, which otherwise wouldn't materialize if they had easy going lives.

This whole interview is great read where he talks about his early days while making Terminator, casting of Arnold and I liked his basis for Sarah Connor and his take on how her character evolved. He also talks about the budget difference between the two Terminator films and his thoughts on the new film and then about Spider-Man.

James Cameron Talks TERMINATOR & TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, Casting Schwarzenegger, SPIDER-MAN, TERMINATOR: GENESIS, and More

 

[The Terminator]

Another decade? Not a chance. Avatar 2 - Dec 2016. Avatar 3 - Dec 2017 and Avatar 4 - 2018, I'm guessing in or around May.
And then Cameron regains the Terminator rights in 2019 (YAAAAY finally)

He will then hopefully do one of two things: Kill it. Or make one hell of a sequel/prequel/re-imagining well one can dream.

 

[dascoyne]

James Cameron seems less inspired nowadays. I've liked every one of his films up to and including Titanic. The Abyss might be my favorite only because of Ed Harris' performance. But since then he's all about the effects.
Avatar was a shockingly standard "white savior" film with new effects. I get the sense that Cameron, like Lucas, is succumbing to the dark side of CGI.

 

[CB2001]

James Cameron seems less inspired nowadays. I've liked every one of his films up to and including Titanic. The Abyss might be my favorite only because of Ed Harris' performance. But since then he's all about the effects.
Avatar was a shockingly standard "white savior" film with new effects. I get the sense that Cameron, like Lucas, is succumbing to the dark side of CGI.

Good to know I'm not the only one who noticed. Seriously, I feel that everything up to Titanic was a balance between solid storytelling an advancement in film technology. But when it comes to Avatar, it's like he said, "To Hell with story, I'm going to dazzle them with the effects to the point where they won't notice the rehashed storyline."

I mean, I can watch Aliens, The Abyss, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, Dances With Wolves and an episode of The Smurfs and get a much more enjoyable experience than I ever would with Avatar.

 

[The Terminator]

Speaking of the dark side, I sense much hatred in here

I'm so glad I've never seen Dances With Wolves

 

[Jon Kelley]

My biggest gripe with the time travel aspect of The Terminator movie is the future Kyle Reese being the father of John Connor. The only way to accept that fact is, in the original timeline the John Connor who first grew up to be the leader of the Resistance should have a different father. And John Connor born from Kyle Reese grows up to a different John Connor who is well aware of Skynet and the Resistance while growing up. If we go with the theory that Kyle Reese was always the father, it's the "who came first, the chicken or egg?" situation.


I agree. I tend to consider that it was indeed a single timeline, which keeps getting replaced/altered, as supposed to different realities happening or co-existing at the same time.

He got "looped on himself."

An interested treatment of that idea? Robert A. Heinlein - "All You Zombies-" Short read.

Let me know once you've got your head around it - it can take a while...