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david_a posted:What would the "evil" Terminators have done if they succeeded in killing their respective Connor? Lie low until the war starts or high-tail it to the closest defense contractor and "surrender?" They are probably programmed to (to quote Arnold) self-terminate. Any time they spend in the past increases the chances of changing the future, and once Connor is dead it needs everything else after that to stay the same. Of course in T2 Skynet is only created because of the chip left behind by the first Terminator, so its possible Skynet doesn't know its in a closed loop. The series contradicts itself in T2, and then back again in T3, so who the gently caress knows. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jan 2, 2015 |
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Jan 2, 2015 17:51
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Basebf555 posted:They are probably programmed to (to quote Arnold) self-terminate. Any time they spend in the past increases the chances of changing the future, and once Connor is dead it needs everything else after that to stay the same. I really need to re-watch these, but didn't Cyberdyne finding the chip & arm of the Terminator from the first film accelerate Judgement Day, or was it going to happen no matter what?
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Jan 2, 2015 17:54
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Parachute posted:I really need to re-watch these, but didn't Cyberdyne finding the chip & arm of the Terminator from the first film accelerate Judgement Day, or was it going to happen no matter what? Yea its implied in T2 that everything is a closed loop because of the chip from the first Terminator, but then Judgment Day is prevented, so maybe it isn't? Then in T3 it is explained that Judgment Day could be delayed but its always fated to happen at some point. There is no real consistency. Edit: Its been brought up before but one factor is how much does Skynet really know about previous timelines(ie past versions of itself). Like, does it have knowledge that we don't about an "original" timeline where nobody ever traveled through time and Judgment Day occurred on a different day than what we're told in T2? Does it somehow have insight into this "multiverse" and is able to see all the various branches of the tree and chose which to take? The answer would change things a lot. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jan 2, 2015 |
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Jan 2, 2015 17:56
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My theory is that in the original, unaltered timeline John Conner was the son of Sarah and just some random dude. Then Judgement Day happened, and John grew up to defeat Skynet. Skynet builds a time machine to stop this from happening, but is unaware that time in their Universe is fixed and you can only change the unimportant details of events while the broad strokes will always remain the same. Since Skynet will always build a time machine, mess with the past, and thus create branching timelines, it never learns this since as soon as it sends a Terminator into the past it erases itself from time and becomes replaced by a different Skynet who then makes the same mistake. There will always be a Judgement Day, there will always be a man named John Conner of various parentage who leads the resistance, and Skynet will always send Terminators into the past to try and stop this but in doing so actually just keeps the loop moving.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:31
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It's a fine line to walk: Of course NONE of the time-travel shenanigans from ANY of the movies make ANY sense if you really pick it apart. But there is potentially a line that Genisys could cross that would make people go "Oh come on, that's not how it goes!" It's all fiction, but it has to be somewhat grounded in reality and somewhat grounded in whatever origin story the original movie had (and I guess it also needs to "make sense"...whatever that means).
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Jan 2, 2015 19:04
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The events of Terminator make sense as a closed loop but you can't go any further than that if you want things to continue making sense. All the films after that are building on what came before and they all have inconsistencies in the way they attempt it.
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Jan 2, 2015 19:13
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Basebf555 posted:The events of Terminator make sense as a closed loop but you can't go any further than that if you want things to continue making sense. All the films after that are building on what came before and they all have inconsistencies in the way they attempt it. But it can make sense if you assume a closed loop has a modicum of breathing room. It's likely unintentional on the writers part, but the films hold up if you look at it as the details can be changed but the broader events must always happen. The characters have a small amount of free will, but only within a narrow set of rules that must be followed.
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Jan 2, 2015 19:17
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Basebf555 posted:The events of Terminator make sense as a closed loop but you can't go any further than that if you want things to continue making sense. All the films after that are building on what came before and they all have inconsistencies in the way they attempt it. Three reboots from now, all of Sarah Conner's ancestors will have had Arnold terminators watching over them. In this timeline, by 1984, half of the west coast will be Arnold terminators "in hiding," and the other half of the population will be other terminators hunting them. In hiding. There will only be 1 actual human within 500 miles of L.A.
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Jan 2, 2015 19:22
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Esroc posted:But it can make sense if you assume a closed loop has a modicum of breathing room. It's likely unintentional on the writers part, but the films hold up if you look at it as the details can be changed but the broader events must always happen. The characters have a small amount of free will, but only within a narrow set of rules that must be followed. There's still an element there that is inconsistent and can't really be explained. For that to work there has to be a mysterious third party(nature, god, whatever) that determines what the rules are, what can be changed and what can't. Its a narrative tool that explains the inconsistency of the impact of time travel. I works because nobody really cares if time travel is totally consistent, its sci-fi after all. But only the truly closed loop really "makes sense" in that everything in it is explained by what we're shown in the film(except for the actual nuts and bolts of the time travel machine I guess). You don't have to add your own explanation to make all the events fit.
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Jan 2, 2015 19:30
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Time travel doesnt make sense.
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Jan 3, 2015 01:08
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They already explain how the time travel works: the characters make their own fates. I posted an article about this earlier.
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Jan 3, 2015 01:24
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Sasquatch! posted:I would suspect that they're not going to go down the "it's a different John Connor if anything is different" route. The events of T2 and especially T3 point to the concept that there will be a Skynet and by that logic there will be a John Connor that will lead the resistance to take it down...but it doesn't have to be the John Connor taking down the Skynet (at least as we know them). I don't see how this is going to jive with them jumping forward in time. if she gets pregnant in 1984 and then hops into a time machine to 2015 or whatever for the climax of the movie, when is she giving birth?
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Jan 3, 2015 02:42
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AdmiralViscen posted:I don't see how this is going to jive with them jumping forward in time. if she gets pregnant in 1984 and then hops into a time machine to 2015 or whatever for the climax of the movie, when is she giving birth? In the future the past has already happened
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Jan 3, 2015 04:06
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Spakstik posted:In the future the past has already happened She departs from 1984 in a time machine and arrives in the 2000s. So John is going to be unborn or less than a year old in the 2000s in this new timeline. This is hinted at in the trailer and in the leaked script.
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Jan 3, 2015 04:10
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AdmiralViscen posted:She departs from 1984 in a time machine and arrives in the 2000s. So John is going to be unborn or less than a year old in the 2000s in this new timeline. This is hinted at in the trailer and in the leaked script. Skynet tries new tactic: send back a terminator to "protect" Sarah but actually just keep her under the watchful eye of one of it's agents to prevent John from ever being conceived. Our at the very least plant the seed of "we can coexist with the machines" in the heart of the resistance from the very beginning (Sarah's influence on John).
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Jan 3, 2015 08:41
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david_a posted:What would the "evil" Terminators have done if they succeeded in killing their respective Connor? Lie low until the war starts or high-tail it to the closest defense contractor and "surrender?" Unless they had secondary objectives (which could've been absolutely anything) I'd figure they would just turn off or go into sleep mode or something considering they aren't completely autonomous. As the T-101 states when John asks if it's ever afraid; "If I were to fail my mission, I would become useless, there would be no reason for me to exist".
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Jan 4, 2015 00:24
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Esroc posted:Just thought of something. John Conner is the result of Kyle Reese and Sarah Conner sleeping together in the first movie, creating a predestination paradox. Which means if those exact events don't happen exactly as they did in the first film then John Conner as we see him would never exist. Even the smallest change in events would render the future John Conner nonexistent simply because the chances of the same sperm impregnating Sarah are like 1 in 250 million or something. I'd be really reluctant to apply the "different sperm" logic, since there is maybe one time travel or alternate history story in the entire world that doesn't completely ignore that. Mostly because it's really boring, as it renders any attempt to make a change further than, say, about 20 years in the past pointless, because at least one human generation is going to be wiped out of existence and replaced with a new randomly generated one anyway. Though if you want to get really technical, as long as the conception happens on the same day, and the same egg is ovulated that day as in the original timeline (I have no idea what determines that) and the fertilized egg still gets implanted correctly (I don't know what the chances of that are, either), then the resulting John Connor will still share half the DNA of the original one, ending up as a "semi-identical twin" of the Ur-John Connor. But the half of the DNA that gets reshuffled is the half that determines sex, so there would still be a 50-50 chance of getting a "Jane Connor" instead. And even leaving aside human reproductive biology, you'd still have to deal with things like Chaos theory. I don't know the exact science, but I'm pretty sure that a time traveller's mere presence would result in totally different global weather patterns within a few weeks, and who knows how many things that would change. And then you get into quantum uncertainty and... Now I'm starting to get a headache. This is why I hate time travel discussions. I think Pop Arena has the best advice on this subject: "Here's the key to writing good time travel: don't write time travel." INH5 fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 07:39
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The idea what sort of person you are is decided even at all by which sperm made it to the egg is hilarious. Like yeah maybe your hair or face are different but alternate you was raised by the same people to do the same things. Basically if you accidentally change a tiny thing in time, a bunch of people might look slightly different but act the same way.
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Jan 4, 2015 13:11
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Hbomberguy posted:The idea what sort of person you are is decided even at all by which sperm made it to the egg is hilarious. You get treated differently based on how you look. Also Male or female? Any birth defects? Your DNA changes more than your appearance dude, and those changes can completely change who you are.
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Jan 4, 2015 14:16
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Granted, there are cases where the change would be massive, biologically speaking. I'm referring to the concept that you are 'a different person' purely by way of being born from a different sperm. A large part of terminator's themes are about embodying an ethical ideal rather than simply allowing yourself to be caught in the ebb and flow of history and its changes. If a Jane Connor was born instead, the point is it shouldn't be allowed to make much of an overall difference - the key remains to combat the things that seek to alter your being and embody the same revolutionary potential. How people treat you, in other words, doesn't necessarily have to affect who you are. The world would doubtless perceive Jane differently, but that is entirely their mistake. Every film's version of John Connor is a different 'real person' based on different life experiences, but regardless each one casts these things aside to become John Connor, a set of ideals that guide humanity. This idea pops up in Batman very often, where Bruce Wayne is basically a lovely person, but nevertheless can play Batman. This interplay pops up in each film in its own way, but Salvation does it best because Skynet is justifiably poo poo-scared of John Connor, the ethical ideal that destroyed it in previous times, even when the physical person doesn't measure up. Almost anyone can fill Connor's boots. Theoretical alternate Salvation: John dies thirty minutes in but a woman who used to be a waitress realises what has to be done and takes his place in history. Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 15:14
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Hbomberguy posted:The idea what sort of person you are is decided even at all by which sperm made it to the egg is hilarious. Does this make twins, including fraternal ones, the same person?  This is the closest I've seen anyone come to taking a hardline, absolutist stance in the nature versus nurture "debate", which is bullshit because it's obvious people are affected by both.EDIT: gently caress, what if Sarah bore twins? LaughMyselfTo fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 17:11
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I'm talking pretty specifically about the concept of personhood in society and how the goal of ethics is to transcend both nature and nurture. People are reading sentences like 'granted, there are cases where the change would be massive' and responding 'what a hardline, absolutist stance!'
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Jan 4, 2015 18:13
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Hbomberguy posted:People are reading sentences like 'granted, there are cases where the change would be massive' and responding 'what a hardline, absolutist stance!' They're actually reading that you consider it hilarious to think that someone would be different if they were conceived by a different sperm  which really needs some explanation in the same post to avoid comments like that.
GRINDCORE MEGGIDO fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 18:44
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If someone's conceived by a different sperm, they are literally a different person. They're, like, a time-brother or something. We have a real-life test of this: actual loving siblings. Yes, in that case the egg and the sperm are different, but it's similar in principle: they're likely to have similarities, particularly because of similar socialization, but you're a crazy person if you think that this makes them the same for purposes of personhood.
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Jan 4, 2015 19:07
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wipeout posted:They're actually reading that you consider it hilarious to think that someone would be different if they were conceived by a different sperm Hbomberguy posted:The idea what sort of person you are is decided even at all by which sperm made it to the egg is hilarious. Taking that even a step further, since people tend to act within the confines of their society, this randomly-generated new generation INH5 was talking about is probably going to turn out hilariously similar to the previous one. The point is to challenge the very system itself.
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Jan 4, 2015 19:13
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Esroc posted:Just thought of something. John Conner is the result of Kyle Reese and Sarah Conner sleeping together in the first movie, creating a predestination paradox. Which means if those exact events don't happen exactly as they did in the first film then John Conner as we see him would never exist. Even the smallest change in events would render the future John Conner nonexistent simply because the chances of the same sperm impregnating Sarah are like 1 in 250 million or something. Alternate theory: Reese and Conner bone in the first movie, but anyone can tell you that just having sex one time does not guarantee pregnancy. Sarah Conner strongly believes Kyle Reese is destined to be the father until she gets her period. Then she bones tons of guys, names the kid John anyway and gives the picture to John so Kyle can save her skin (and to relive the one romantic moment she had in her life).
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Jan 4, 2015 19:15
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Skeesix posted:Alternate theory: Reese and Conner bone in the first movie, but anyone can tell you that just having sex one time does not guarantee pregnancy. Sarah Conner strongly believes Kyle Reese is destined to be the father until she gets her period. Then she bones tons of guys, names the kid John anyway and gives the picture to John so Kyle can save her skin (and to relive the one romantic moment she had in her life). Now you're getting it.
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Jan 4, 2015 19:17
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Skeesix posted:Alternate theory: Reese and Conner bone in the first movie, but anyone can tell you that just having sex one time does not guarantee pregnancy. Sarah Conner strongly believes Kyle Reese is destined to be the father until she gets her period. Then she bones tons of guys, names the kid John anyway and gives the picture to John so Kyle can save her skin (and to relive the one romantic moment she had in her life). This would make a good spinoff.
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Jan 4, 2015 19:21
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Alternate theory. Terminator sex with stolen Kyle Reese sperm just to loving get the ball rolling.
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Jan 4, 2015 19:22
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I don't know why this annoys me so much, but it's Connor, not Conner.
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Jan 4, 2015 19:43
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LaughMyselfTo posted:This would make a good spinoff. You literally just made me check that wasn't the actual plot TSCC.
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Jan 4, 2015 19:49
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Skeesix posted:Alternate theory: Reese and Conner bone in the first movie, but anyone can tell you that just having sex one time does not guarantee pregnancy. Sarah Conner strongly believes Kyle Reese is destined to be the father until she gets her period. Then she bones tons of guys, names the kid John anyway and gives the picture to John so Kyle can save her skin (and to relive the one romantic moment she had in her life). Skynet sends a Terminator back to 1960 programmed to invent the pill early, John Connor is never born because Sarah is on the pill.
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Jan 4, 2015 19:55
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What if the Resistance starts sending back genetically engineered supersoldiers for the specific purpose of fathering a superior John Connor?  It's like a time-travel-based evolutionary process.
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Jan 4, 2015 20:01
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LaughMyselfTo posted:EDIT: gently caress, what if Sarah bore twins? The non-John twin would be Arnie.
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Jan 4, 2015 20:46
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ReV VAdAUL posted:The non-John twin would be Arnie. Now I am imagining John Connor as Danny DeVito. 
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Jan 4, 2015 21:05
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WarLocke posted:Now I am imagining John Connor as Danny DeVito. We need to work in Eddie Murphy somehow.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:12
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INH5 posted:And even leaving aside human reproductive biology, you'd still have to deal with things like Chaos theory. I don't know the exact science, but I'm pretty sure that a time traveller's mere presence would result in totally different global weather patterns within a few weeks, and who knows how many things that would change. And then you get into quantum uncertainty and... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS9D6w1GzGY
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Jan 4, 2015 21:42
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Parachute posted:Alternate theory. Terminator sex with stolen Kyle Reese sperm just to loving get the ball rolling. Alternate theory. Skynet attacks just as Kyle Reese is about to go back in time. Very little of his body is left. His testicles are sewn into the undercarriage of a Terminator so we can still fertilize that specific egg with the correct sperm.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:37
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LaughMyselfTo posted:We need to work in Eddie Murphy somehow. He's the new Terminator chassis, duh. This poo poo writes itself.
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Jan 5, 2015 05:08
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GORDON posted:Alternate theory. Skynet attacks just as Kyle Reese is about to go back in time. Very little of his body is left. His testicles are sewn into the undercarriage of a Terminator so we can still fertilize that specific egg with the correct sperm. A Terminutter, if you will.
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Jan 5, 2015 09:11
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