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Hodgepodge posted:Amusing idea: "John Connor" did not originally exist, but was created as a fictional figurehead for humanity to rally around. Trying to kill him ironically lead to the meme spreading to the past, leading Sarah Conner to have a son named John Connor who goes on to lead the resistance due to his essentially miraculous knowledge about Skynet. So what you're basically saying is SKYNET: "John, I am your father. Search yourself, you know it to be true." John: "Nooooo! You killed my father! You're a drat machine!" SKYNET: "It was I that gave you purpose. It was I that set it all in motion that birthed you and made you what you are. You are a product of me." John: "No...no...I am a man." SKYNET: "What is a man but a miserable pile of secrets." Ok maybe I went a bit off course.
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Dec 8, 2014 17:15
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nexus6 posted:One thing I've not really managed to get my head around is: if Skynet succeeded, what did it expect would happen? If the terminator was successful, would John Connor in 2029 just magically vanish? Would the human resistance just give up? Doesn't Kyle say the terminator was sent back right as the resistance was storming Skynet, so presumably Skynet is already hosed at that point? It's hoping he'll disappear, but as I said before, if the T-850 is right and the timestream is self correcting and Kyle gets killed then someone else will father John Connor. Hell if the Terminator kills both Sarah and Kyle then some other Sarah Connor will bear a boy named John who'll save the day.
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Dec 8, 2014 17:16
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nexus6 posted:One thing I've not really managed to get my head around is: if Skynet succeeded, what did it expect would happen? If the terminator was successful, would John Connor in 2029 just magically vanish? Would the human resistance just give up? Doesn't Kyle say the terminator was sent back right as the resistance was storming Skynet, so presumably Skynet is already hosed at that point? They were trying to make Skynet work in the next iteration of the timeline. So the Terminator wasn't trying to save the version of Skynet that sent it, it was trying to ensure the safety of a new, different version of Skynet. In a sense the Terminator was a Skynet sperm cell impregnating a different universe with Skynet as the old one died.
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Dec 8, 2014 17:17
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Gatts posted:So what you're basically saying is Well, post T3 Skynet who absorbed the internet, yeah. That actually explains a lot, now that I think about it.
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Dec 8, 2014 17:19
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Gatts posted:So what you're basically saying is That's not too far from the stupid scene in Salvation.
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Dec 8, 2014 17:20
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Well one way Skynet could win would be if they were able to kill John Connor after its creation, meaning after the events of the first movie. They tried to kill Sarah and failed, ensuring both John and Skynet's creation. Then, at a later date Skynet kills John, but the artifacts from the first attack are still in the past, leading to the creation of Skynet. I assume that's one of the main reasons why the time-travel mechanics were changed for T-2. If nothing from the future can be changed then is John really in any danger? The closed-loop explanation in Terminator was really more of a twist that you aren't supposed to know going into viewing it.
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Dec 8, 2014 18:12
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LaughMyselfTo posted:They were trying to make Skynet work in the next iteration of the timeline. So the Terminator wasn't trying to save the version of Skynet that sent it, it was trying to ensure the safety of a new, different version of Skynet. In a sense the Terminator was a Skynet sperm cell impregnating a different universe with Skynet as the old one died. The obvious question then is, why bother? Why does Skynet care about the wellbeing of its alternate timeline iteration? Is it just a final "gently caress you" with no real logic behind it? And why does the human resistance send back agents to protect the Sarah and John Connor of an alternate universe? Out of a sense of extreme trans-universal altruism?
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Dec 8, 2014 18:25
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Cnut the Great posted:The obvious question then is, why bother? Why does Skynet care about the wellbeing of its alternate timeline iteration? Is it just a final "gently caress you" with no real logic behind it? Eh, that's one of those basic philosophical questions that you just have to accept will go unanswered. Even setting aside alternate universes, if you could change the past would that mean you are effectively "killing" the person that you currently are? If you change the future are you killing a version of future you? Most time travel stories don't really touch on that issue.
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Dec 8, 2014 19:05
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Neo Rasa posted:Dwayne Johnson operating with Terminator 1 caliber efficiency while just being his normal affable, charming self would be legit terrifying. Absolutely. Have Skynet program him with manners and a positive attitude, so he charms the poo poo out of everyone, and never wipes the smile off his face even as he's terminating the poo poo out of an entire police department. It would be god drat unsettling in ways we've never seen, and really consistent with the tone of the first movie. Ruthless merciless machinery. I would fully support a reboot as long as it was simply T1 line for line, with modern CGI and that one twist for the terminator. And the Rock is about the only actor that could pull it off.
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Dec 8, 2014 21:55
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Cnut the Great posted:The obvious question then is, why bother? Why does Skynet care about the wellbeing of its alternate timeline iteration? Is it just a final "gently caress you" with no real logic behind it?
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Dec 8, 2014 21:57
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LaughMyselfTo posted:They were trying to make Skynet work in the next iteration of the timeline. So the Terminator wasn't trying to save the version of Skynet that sent it, it was trying to ensure the safety of a new, different version of Skynet. In a sense the Terminator was a Skynet sperm cell impregnating a different universe with Skynet as the old one died. Soooo, why does Skynet care about an alternate timestream Skynet? I thought it was trying to save itself? Edit: reading is hard nexus6 fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Dec 8, 2014 |
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Dec 8, 2014 21:57
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It works best if you think of it as a new version of the timeline that has overwritten the old one. There aren't two existing simultaneously. It only gets confusing because there are people that have jumped from one timeline to another(I guess that will be Arnold and Kyle Reese in this movie), so they have memories of both. Live Die Repeat is similar because nobody around Cruise's character and Rita remembers anything, so to 99.999999% of the population theres only one timeline and its always been the same.
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Dec 8, 2014 22:04
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Lurdiak posted:I guess for some people, the "lore" of Terminator is more interesting than the performances, cinematography, special effects, cool moments, themes, etc. and the series might have delivered on that if you could stomach the awful writing and acting. To me it just felt like giving Terminator the Smallville treatment. It's funny because one of the reasons I dislike the show and the movies that came after is that they don't really follow the "lore". But yes everything you mentioned as well. Basebf555 posted:It works best if you think of it as a new version of the timeline that has overwritten the old one. Yeah this is what Skynet is trying to do. Overwrite humanity's victory with its own.
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Dec 8, 2014 22:54
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The canonical approach can't explain what's going on in the movies because, obviously, terminators and time travel don't actually exist. Of course, everyone knows this - but it's nonetheless difficult to accept that the robot in Terminator 1 exists purely as a representation of Sarah Connor's fears for the future. The film is primarily the story of two insane people whose claims of a Worldwide Mad Deadly Communist Gangster Computer-God are treated with the utmost respect and credulity. This and this alone is the reason why things work differently in the sequels. The robots change in accordance to the protagonists. In Terminator Salvation, there's nothing left to be paranoid about. It's not just a homeless veteran and a woman having some kind of mental breakdown - everyone is familiar with the insanity of the world around them. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 00:38
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LloydDobler posted:Absolutely. Have Skynet program him with manners and a positive attitude, so he charms the poo poo out of everyone, and never wipes the smile off his face even as he's terminating the poo poo out of an entire police department. That'd just be The Guest.
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Dec 9, 2014 00:47
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The canonical approach can't explain what's going on in the movies because, obviously, terminators and time travel don't actually exist. Because if something doesn't exist in the real world there is no way that someone can write a story that includes the possibility that it might exist, nor can we attempt to fit those mechanics into a plot that is logically consistent with the assumptions made in that story.  Do you ever get bored of making up complete bullshit explanations for films that completely fall apart under even the most casual glance?
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Dec 9, 2014 01:03
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Caros posted:Because if something doesn't exist in the real world there is no way that someone can write a story that includes the possibility that it might exist, nor can we attempt to fit those mechanics into a plot that is logically consistent with the assumptions made in that story. There is absolutely nothing plausible about robot skeletons from the future. That's why Sarah Connor is institutionalized. The minute you try to explain it in terms of efficient use of a time machine by a logical military AI with vast technological resources, the film breaks down completely. Skynet could put a nuclear bomb in a pig carcass.
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Dec 9, 2014 01:10
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:There is absolutely nothing plausible about robot skeletons from the future. That's why Sarah Connor is institutionalized. Listen we're having our 5,000th CD discussion of Time Travel Science and Accompanying Laws, there's no time to sit back and realize this is all fantasy.
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Dec 9, 2014 01:24
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Skynet could put a nuclear bomb in a pig carcass. It also could build robots to shove corpses into incinerators instead of using captive humans but then we wouldn't have the echo of the Sonderkommando and Sobibór.
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Dec 9, 2014 01:26
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Only organic life can go back. Soooo...T1000 is liquid metal. Explain that. Do we have human skin lying somewhere used as a sack?
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Dec 9, 2014 01:26
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LloydDobler posted:Absolutely. Have Skynet program him with manners and a positive attitude, so he charms the poo poo out of everyone, and never wipes the smile off his face even as he's terminating the poo poo out of an entire police department. Just get Terry Crews and Dwayne Johnson, then you see that the twist is TWO terminators.
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Dec 9, 2014 01:29
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Gatts posted:Only organic life can go back. Soooo...T1000 is liquid metal. Explain that. Do we have human skin lying somewhere used as a sack? The liquid metal molecules can form an organic coating?
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Dec 9, 2014 01:31
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Gatts posted:Only organic life can go back. Soooo...T1000 is liquid metal. Explain that. Do we have human skin lying somewhere used as a sack? Good point; they wouldn't even need the pig carcass. They could put a nuclear bomb inside Robert Patrick, and there wouldn't be a stupid fictional movie anymore.
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Dec 9, 2014 01:33
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Lurdiak posted:The liquid metal molecules can form an organic coating? that is not how mimetic poly-alloys work and you know it! OneThousandMonkeys posted:Listen we're having our 5,000th CD discussion of Time Travel Science and Accompanying Laws That just means the next one is free!
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Dec 9, 2014 01:34
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Reese didn't actually know what he was talking about; the restrictions on time travel have nothing to do with a field created by living things.
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Dec 9, 2014 02:00
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Good point; they wouldn't even need the pig carcass. They could put a nuclear bomb inside Robert Patrick, and there wouldn't be a stupid fictional movie anymore. Which amuses me. Why even go back in time to directly kill Conner? Send the Terminator to do something indirectly that results in his death. The target wasn't to find John, it was to cause a reactor meltdown and devastate the area thus killing Conner. All this time Rowan Atkinson was an actor...nope, he's a Terminator who just went and set off a nuke. DAMNIT, MR. BEAN! WE TRUSTED YOU!!!!
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Dec 9, 2014 02:10
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:There is absolutely nothing plausible about robot skeletons from the future. That's why Sarah Connor is institutionalized. Skynet could put a nuclear bomb in a pig carcass. On the other hand vaporizing all of LA during the latter years of the cold war would drastically alter the timeline. For all Skynet knows, doing so could result in a full scale nuclear war with the Russians a full decade before it is created. Or it could kill someone who is instrumental to its creation, or it could shift US budgetary resources away from the program that ultimately creates it. Hell, it could be sending the bomb back to present day LA while she is visiting a friend upstate. Don't get me wrong, time travel plots are pretty much universally full of holes, and terminator is far from a stellar example, but just having plot holes doesn't make a work of fiction awful. Your idea doesn't make any sense within the plot of anything we see in the terminator films unless we assume that almost every single thing shown on screen is a lie. I mean is T2 just Sarah Connor's fantasy that she has while drooling into the padded walls of her cell? Are the only real scenes in the entire film her attempted break out and her mental exams? Caros fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 02:11
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LloydDobler posted:Absolutely. Have Skynet program him with manners and a positive attitude, so he charms the poo poo out of everyone, and never wipes the smile off his face even as he's terminating the poo poo out of an entire police department. I could actually see this, in the hands of a decent director. Maybe change some key details. Maybe have Sarah be pregnant from the beginning. Not visibly; that would really limit your options. But if she finds out that she's pregnant either just before or as a result of a robot from the future trying to kill her because of it, that would make a pretty good metaphor for an unexpected pregnancy. At which point I would nominate Ridley Scott as director.
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Dec 9, 2014 02:19
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Gatts posted:Only organic life can go back. Unreliable narrator.
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Dec 9, 2014 02:26
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I've figured it out- the only way we'll have a good Terminator/rebooted series. At the end of the movie the Terminator succeeds in killing John Connor/Sarah Connor etc whoever - the Terminator knowing it's mission is complete leaves our remaining main characters cowering knowing that humanity is doomed... Suddenly The "bad" Terminator who just destroyed the future of humanity comes out and joins our main characters. The Terminator then explains how he was sent back in time to prevent a future where aliens take over the robots... TO BE CONTINUED https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcNXq5DUZnk
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Dec 9, 2014 02:31
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Once you accept in your heart that terminators do not actually exist, you can appreciate the films more - including the very good sequel Terminator Salvation. You can understand, for example, what makes the alternate ending to Judgement Day so bad. If Skynet is just a metaphor for capitalism, it's stupid to destroy Cyberdyne while leaving every other corporation intact. Rise Of The Machines got it half-right: Judgment Day is inevitable so long as capitalism exists. It could have stopped, but the solution was too radical - even for John Connor. I believe the reason a vocal group dislikes Terminator Salvation is that, like Mockingjay 1, it begins with the premise that anticapitalism is the answer. The good guys aren't doing much buying and selling anymore, because the threat is obvious to everyone. Skynet has skipped the middleman and, in the name of efficiency and maximizing profit, just directly enslaved the working class. This leads to the point that the individual robots are people too, that they're not the true enemy, and simply nuking them away would be an atrocity - and that's a far more radical message than in the previous films. Caros posted:Your idea doesn't make any sense within the plot of anything we see in the terminator films unless we assume that almost every single thing shown on screen is a lie. Every single thing shown on screen is a lie. Film is a lie at twenty-four frames per second, with the possibility of being in the service of truth.
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Dec 9, 2014 02:48
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Once you accept in your heart that terminators do not actually exist, you can appreciate the films more - including the very good sequel Terminator Salvation. Jesus you are an idiot. I'm as much a socialist as anyone you'd find in D&D, but sometimes the movie about killer robots sent back in time for some reason is in fact a movie about killer robots sent back in time for some reason, not a metaphor for capitalism. It consistently astonishes me that you seem to believe that nearly every movie in existence has an anti-capitalist message. People don't like Terminator: Salvation because it is a poor attempt at a film that missed every interesting thematic and action beat of the previous three films. It does nothing right by its source material and actively misses what people found entertaining in the process. quote:Every single thing shown on screen is a lie. Take your lithium.
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Dec 9, 2014 02:56
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You mean to say that Michael Haneke should take his lithium, because I simply quoted him.
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Dec 9, 2014 03:01
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You two could be lithium buddies. Everything's easier with someone to hold you accountable.
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Dec 9, 2014 03:04
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Caros posted:Skynet could put a nuclear bomb in a pig carcass. On the other hand vaporizing all of LA during the latter years of the cold war would drastically alter the timeline. For all Skynet knows, doing so could result in a full scale nuclear war with the Russians a full decade before it is created. Or it could kill someone who is instrumental to its creation, or it could shift US budgetary resources away from the program that ultimately creates it. All he's saying, if I understand it correctly, that from a realistic standpoint, T1 is the story of two people having something insane happen to them that is indistinguishable from a nervous breakdown. If you met two people who claimed they were running from a robot from the future, you would assume that you had just met two schizophrenics or something of the sort. If someone showed up shooting at them, you would assume you had just met three very dangerous schizophrenics and concern yourself with getting away to alert the authorities and whatever other responsible things you can manage. If the shooter came after you and seemed to be part robot, you would assume that you were hallucinating due to stress and get the hell out of dodge even faster. If you actually believed it was a robot from the future, congratulations on cracking due to your new case of PTSD. That is the "realistic" interpretation of what you see on screen in the first two Terminator movies. Reality is really boring. Robots from the future are very definitely not a part of reality and so are excluded from a "realistic" interpretation of a film in which the protagonists are the only people in the world who know about the time traveling robots from the future. Of course reality can be quite interesting, but if that's what you want there is limitless human history and other forms of non-fiction to absorb. As for fantasy, metaphors and psychodramas brought to life are interesting. That's what myths and religion are, that's what literature is. That is what science fiction is, with a thematic emphasis on the future and science to various degrees a trapping for magic. Even in a realistic narrative such as a history, there is a narrative in which opposing forces define each other. In a wholly fictional and fantastical narrative, the wholly fictional antagonist serves no purpose but to define the protagonists. This is the thing that makes an antagonist interesting. This usually has very little to do with realism in a work of fantasy. Caros posted:Take your lithium. Um, dude... fiction isn't real. Sorry to be the one to tell you. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 03:09
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:You mean to say that Michael Haneke should take his lithium, because I simply quoted him. No, I mean you need to take your lithium. Seriously, take your lithium. The fact that you are quoting a pretentious filmmaker instead of simply making the ridiculous pretentious statements yourself doesn't change anything. quote:All he's saying, if I understand it correctly, that from a realistic standpoint, T1 is the story of two people having something insane happen to them that is indistinguishable from a nervous breakdown. If you met two people who claimed they were running from the future, you would assume that you had just met two schizophrenics, or something of the sort. If someone showed up shooting at them, you would assume you had just met three very dangerous schizophrenics and concern yourself with getting away to alert the authorities and whatever other responsible things you can manage. If the shooter came after you and seemed to be part robot, you would assume that you were hallucinating due to stress and get the hell out of dodge even faster. If you actually believed it was a robot from the future, congratulations on cracking due to your new case of PTSD. Well I actually don't think that is what he is saying to be honest, judging by his posts in this and other threads. Caros fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 03:09
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There's nothing anti-capitalistic about Terminator 2, in which the protagonist is an American expat turned Central-American revolutionary who carries out terrorist attacks on defense contractors.
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Dec 9, 2014 03:13
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:There's nothing anti-capitalistic about Terminator 2, in which the protagonist is an American expat turned Central-American revolutionary who carries out terrorist attacks on defense contractors. Opposition to militarisim, or even to the military industrial complex, is not by definition opposition to capitalism. Anarcho-Capitalists for example love them some capitalism while simultaneously hating the military.
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Dec 9, 2014 03:16
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Sarah Connor is not a libertarian.
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Dec 9, 2014 03:21
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Caros posted:Opposition to militarisim, or even to the military industrial complex, is not by definition opposition to capitalism. Anarcho-Capitalists for example love them some capitalism while simultaneously hating the military. SMG makes contrarian contemporary Marxist readings of films, it's really that simple and if this thread could be about anything else in addition to what he thinks that would be cool too. I would suggest further reading, but he will just quote the relevant Zizek passages to you and you will probably just get even more mad trying to read Armond White, who is fond of also making personal attacks on filmmakers.
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Dec 9, 2014 03:23
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