/\ Also at the end of Terminator 2 it showed Sara Connor has an old lady watching John Conner playing with his son, where he is a lobbyist at Washington. That was a hole not covered. Anyways, it's clear that Terminator 2 was suppose to resolve the story, but now they have kept going and like most movies these days they always end with a cliff hanger or the possibility of another movie.
But I am a huge Terminator fan and I will check this one out for sure.
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Originally Posted by Burninator
/\ Also at the end of Terminator 2 it showed Sara Connor has an old lady watching John Conner playing with his son, where he is a lobbyist at Washington.
Really? I must have missed that part. Time to crack out the DVD I guess.
My issue with the continuity within T3 wasn't the fact that Skynet came into being anyways. It was the fact that Skynet still nuked all the human cities. In the T1 version of the future Skynet nuked us to prevent us from turning it off. But in the T3 version of the future Skynet existed in cyberspace. Wouldn't destroying every major city on Earth do some serious damage to Skynet itself?
Really? I must have missed that part. Time to crack out the DVD I guess.
I could be wrong, but I believe this part was a deleted scene. Again, I could be wrong. I believe the original ended with present day Sarah Connor.
EDIT: FROM imdb.com
A scene in a Skynet-free future, with Sarah Connor as an older woman giving a monologue about how John became a senator. This scene was NOT included in the SE, because James Cameron felt it just didn't fit the dark, gloomy atmosphere of the rest of the movie.
More...
Director James Cameron fought over the ending with executive producer Mario Kassar. Cameron wanted to end the film with the alternate Coda Ending (the older Sarah in future) as a bookend, but Kassar wanted to end the film in an another way (as a measure for possible sequels). He eventually relented when test audiences and Kassar himself reacted negatively over the coda ending, and he went the existing one.
I could be wrong, but I believe this part was a deleted scene. Again, I could be wrong. I believe the original ended with present day Sarah Connor.
Coincidentally I watched T2 and T3 this weekend, but I am not sure which version of T2 I watched. It was a "borrowed" copy, and it said it was uncut. I want to buy the trilogy as one package. But with HD DVD and BluRay who knows when, if ever that will happen.
This will be the movie they should have made for #3. The third act showing the man vs machine war. When they showed flashes of the future apocalypse in the first movie I immediately thought that it would translate well on screen. No more present day stuff, I want to see a war against Skynet on the big screen!
Which was the fundamental philosophical problem with T3 (believe me, I wrote a 4th year English paper on the philosophy of the Terminator films). The first two films were entirely predicated on the idea that the future is not a fixed certainty: to quote "there is no future except what we make for ourselves." The end of T2, Dyson's research is destroyed, the chip and arm from the original Terminator are destroyed, the T-1000 and the second Terminator are destroyed, leaving nothing for Skynet to built from. Yet then T3 comes along, Skynet gets built anyway (with no explanation for the continuity there), and the philosophy is now "the future is set no matter what, you can't change it no matter how hard you try"? Please. I was very disappointed with this. At any rate, I'm a sucker and will go see this one too...
I always thought the biggest hole in the entire series was, who originally invented the chip? That dyson guy who is credited with creating skynet based all his research on the remains of the machine from the first movie. It's like no one ever really designed the original.
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I always thought the biggest hole in the entire series was, who originally invented the chip? That dyson guy who is credited with creating skynet based all his research on the remains of the machine from the first movie. It's like no one ever really designed the original.
That's the whole time paradox. Terminator #1 comes back, gets crushed in machine press by Sarah Conner. It's arm and CPU chip are recovered and become the basis of Dyson's research which leads to the creation of Skynet and the subsequent war on humanity. This leads to the attempts on John Conner's life, Skynet sending the Terminator back to kill Sarah, and the circle runs infinitum. As to who created the original chip, my guess would have to be Skynet because it invented the Terminators themselves. But then how does Dyson's research on the chip lead to the creation of Skynet when Skynet doesn't create the chip and the Terminators for several years in the future??? My head is spinning...
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It's called a pre-destination paradox; where cause does not have to preceed effect.
Another classic Sci-fi example is the fact that in Star Trek the Borg are responsible for humanity getting warp drive; because without the help of 24th century engineers Cochrane's warp ship would not have made it off the ground.
Or another example within Terminator; John Connor was born because the Machines sent back a terminator to kill him; and John Connor sent his own father back to stop Arnie and to knock up his mother.
Really? I must have missed that part. Time to crack out the DVD I guess.
My issue with the continuity within T3 wasn't the fact that Skynet came into being anyways. It was the fact that Skynet still nuked all the human cities. In the T1 version of the future Skynet nuked us to prevent us from turning it off. But in the T3 version of the future Skynet existed in cyberspace. Wouldn't destroying every major city on Earth do some serious damage to Skynet itself?
In a movie about Time travel, continuity is kind of fluid. Its not cast in stone that the female terminator was sent from the future after the events in T2, she could have been sent before the Good guy arnold from the second movie was sent back.
If I recall, the funky skynet virus did not begin to proliferate itself until after the Terminatrix had arrive, so its possible through the whole funky time travel duex ex machina that she infected the Internet with the virus since one of her skills was the ability to infect computers. So its possible that a terminator was sent back in time to infect the cyberworld with a virus created by skynet to ensure that skynet existed.
You look at the wackiness of the whole thing
1) Terminator sent back in time to kill the mother of the future destroyer of skynet. Terminator is killed in a Cyberdyne manufacturing plant, but the result at the moment is that the future hasn't been changed. John Conner is still going to survive. Cyberdyne industries un effected
2) Terminator is sent back in time to kill John Conner, the resistance which had seized control of the time machine and supposedly smashed it in the first movie sends a friendly terminator through. The question has to be when did Skynet send their terminator through. Was it before the original terminator from the first movie was sent through? Because again, unless there were multiple time machines. The resistance had seized the time machine when they sent their guys through. We also find out that the events of the first movie allowed Cyberdyne to recover the Terminators processor which allowed them to begin work on Skynet. In essence Skynet provided the technology to allow itself to be invented. However at the end of the movie Dr Dyson the suppossed inventor of the Skynet computer was dead. Cyberdyne's offices and all of their technology and plans were destroyed, the original processor from the first terminator and the two terminators were destroyed. The Threat should have in essense been destroyed.
3) In the third movie, we have an older John Conner, the original judgement day hadn't happened. However we get another bad terminator that comes through the time portal. Then a good terminator comes through the portal. In theory, the first thing that the bad terminator does is inject her virus into cyberspace. Then she starts wiping out John Conners senior leaders, with her primary mission being the elimination of John Conners. In the end, Skynet goes on line in attempt to eliminate the virus, but the virus takes over and infects Skynet into launching a nuclear strike. Not to protect itself from having the plug pulled, but to protect itself from mankind. Meanwhile the terminatrix fails in her mission and John Conner and his wife survive in a nuclear bomb shelter.
So here's my theory.
Skynet, believing in redundancy and being efficient sends three terminators through at the same time. The first to kill Sarah Conners, the second to ensure that John Conner is dead, the third to ensure that Skynet is created as a backup plan with a secondary mission of exterminating an older John Conner if he survived to that age. The resistance then steps in and seizes the time machine and wins the war. They notice that the first terminator is sent back in time and send a soldier back in time to defend Sarah Conners. They realize by reading through history or the logs on the machine that a second terminator was sent through to kill a 15 year old John Conners and even though the mission is a success and Cyberdyne was eliminated along with Dyson, the events of the third and redundant incursion have happened and Cyberdyne has survived in its original format which is the virus infested format. Now at this point I'm assuming that Skynet counterattacks and Conners is killed by a t-100 which is then captured and reprogrammed to go back and prevent the death of Conner and his wife. Now because they had supposedly smashed the power grid during the battle, they probably had no idea of what the third terminators true mission or capabilities were so they just assumed that she was back there to exterminate Conners instead of her primary mission of infecting the World Wide Web which would force Skynet on line.
So to summerize, Time Travel movies and Continuity can't really be discussed in the same breath, because Continuity doesn't exist it can always change.
Just my 2 confused cents.
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Or another example within Terminator; John Connor was born because the Machines sent back a terminator to kill him; and John Connor sent his own father back to stop Arnie and to knock up his mother.
Ewwwww.... Gross....
Or in the words of Austin Powers... "Awe crikie, I've gone crosseyed".
I think with all the comercials for the FOX Terminator TV show... I thought to myself... why wouldn't they send an army, or kill someone in the linage before Sarah Conner, so that Sarah Connor couldn't be born, thus John Conner couldn't be born?
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I can't respond to you're whole post, 'cause quite frankly you confused the crap out of me...
As for continuity and time travel films, I can't say you're wrong but the events you proposed were definately not presented in the movies. What we do know from the Terminator films is this:
1) A Terminator was sent back to kill Sarah Conner and by extension, John Conner, the leader of the human resistance. Sarah Conner crushes the T-100 in a machine press at Cyberdyne industries, where it's arm and CPU chip are recovered.
2)The T-100 arm and CPU fall into the possession of Charles Dyson who uses them as basis for his research on a functioning AI computer program known as Skynet. Sarah and John Conner along with Terminator #2 destroy all records of this research and Dyson himself is killed, thereby effectively ending the threat that Skynet will be constructed.
3)In Terminator 3, the military industrial complex has completed construction of Skynet and puts it online. No explanation is made as to where the research to build this Skynet program came from, how it was constructed without the basis of the arm and chip, etc.
I'm not sure about time travel and continuity, but storytelling continuity has to at least remain intact. But I guess we'll see what happens in the new film...
I can't respond to you're whole post, 'cause quite frankly you confused the crap out of me...
As for continuity and time travel films, I can't say you're wrong but the events you proposed were definately not presented in the movies. What we do know from the Terminator films is this:
1) A Terminator was sent back to kill Sarah Conner and by extension, John Conner, the leader of the human resistance. Sarah Conner crushes the T-100 in a machine press at Cyberdyne industries, where it's arm and CPU chip are recovered.
2)The T-100 arm and CPU fall into the possession of Charles Dyson who uses them as basis for his research on a functioning AI computer program known as Skynet. Sarah and John Conner along with Terminator #2 destroy all records of this research and Dyson himself is killed, thereby effectively ending the threat that Skynet will be constructed.
3)In Terminator 3, the military industrial complex has completed construction of Skynet and puts it online. No explanation is made as to where the research to build this Skynet program came from, how it was constructed without the basis of the arm and chip, etc.
I'm not sure about time travel and continuity, but storytelling continuity has to at least remain intact. But I guess we'll see what happens in the new film...
Sorry to confuse you, it somewhat confuses me too. Whats to say that the skynet that the military developed was based on the work done by Dyson? We know that Cyberdyne was developing the processor for the military, and even though the plans at Cyberdyne were destroyed that dosen't mean that the military didn't have copies of his work, or were not working on a parallel project. We also don't know how accurate the original story was. Remember that pretty much any historical record was destroyed during judgement day, the virus infection that caused Skynet to go self aware originally. Also we do know that when they lost control of Skynet in the third movie, they did try to shut it down, both at a systems level, then at a power level, and failed at both.
Edit, as an add on. We don't know that the terminator processor was necessaily the required technology to get Skynet on line. Remember when Dyson made his speech in the second movie talking about how the processor that they found basically caused a huge change in the way that scientists were looking at computers. If that information was shared with their military partners, they could have developed a similar chip based around the theories that were created. We know that Skynet could invent, they created the terminators, the infilitrators and the time machine, the evolution of the computer chip could have come after Skynet came online.
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Last edited by CaptainCrunch; 12-18-2007 at 03:14 PM.
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^^^ True enough. There's definately enough plot holes surrounding the story to squeeze out some plausible explanation for Skynet's continued existence. I was just disappointed by the fact that nothing was officially offered in T3 to explain it. All we get is the Terminator telling John Conner "the future is unavoidable, so buckle down and get ready for the crap to hit the fan." Philosophically, this is a complete 180 degree turn from the first two films which were based on the philosophy that nothing is fixed or certain - we can change the outcome of future events by changing what happens today. In a nutshell - Terminator 1&2 are all about determinism, then Terminator 3 flips it on its head with a bunch of fatalism. Bad continuity.
^^^ True enough. There's definately enough plot holes surrounding the story to squeeze out some plausible explanation for Skynet's continued existence. I was just disappointed by the fact that nothing was officially offered in T3 to explain it. All we get is the Terminator telling John Conner "the future is unavoidable, so buckle down and get ready for the crap to hit the fan." Philosophically, this is a complete 180 degree turn from the first two films which were based on the philosophy that nothing is fixed or certain - we can change the outcome of future events by changing what happens today. In a nutshell - Terminator 1&2 are all about determinism, then Terminator 3 flips it on its head with a bunch of fatalism. Bad continuity.
Remember that the future did change, the original judgement day had passed by. They could have done a better job of explaining that Skynet had multiple contigencies in place to ensure that its existance happened no matter what.
I even think that the second movie without the delete scene was still to an extent about fatalism. Frankly even though they had thought to have destroyed skynet. We still see in the third movie that Sarah Conners continued to avoid society and stock pile weapons and train her son to be a leader. John Conners stayed off of the grid and moved around constantly. I also think that there was a hint to that fatalism at the second movie since the last scene was them driving down a single lane road with a line down the middle, and we didn't see an exits or road signs.
So they didn't even believe that the future could be entirely changed.
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The other thing that gets me; the whole reason why Reese couldn't bring back weapons was the time machine worked on the field created by human flesh. OK, the T-100 had human flesh, but what about the terminators in T2 and T3? And if they didn't need human flesh any more; why did everybody show up naked?
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Originally Posted by ken0042
The other thing that gets me; the whole reason why Reese couldn't bring back weapons was the time machine worked on the field created by human flesh. OK, the T-100 had human flesh, but what about the terminators in T2 and T3? And if they didn't need human flesh any more; why did everybody show up naked?
Yeah, I never got that one either.
If all you had to do was wrap something in human skin (seemed to work for the Terminaotrs) to make it go back in time, them why didn't the just skin some poor schmuck, and use his skin to make a Laser Cover, for everyone to bring back with them.
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I also think that there was a hint to that fatalism at the second movie since the last scene was them driving down a single lane road with a line down the middle, and we didn't see an exits or road signs.
Actually, it's the complete opposite. During that final scene, Sarah Conner does a voice-over explaining that the future is like a dark highway - it was no longer known to her (ie, the future war was no longer a certainty due to their destruction of Cyberdyne Industries) and that it was all up to them, there is no future except what we make for ourselves - the definition of determinism.
Also in the early part of the war if I remember they didn't need arnold because there were no terminators with exo-skin. Then they had the ones with Rubber Skin. They wouldn't need the iconic Arnold Terminator because he didn't come in to play until the end of the war when he was sent through the time machine. Hell they could just digitally scan Arnold and make a mask if they needed to and you could see him from a distance stepping into the time displacment grid.
I've always had this question but nobody's answered it satisfactorily for the Terminator franchise: In T2, his entire lower arm gets stuck in a gearing type machine, what happened to it? Is any mention ever made of it again? That this arm was totally forgotten by everybody in T2 is good opportunity to suggest some future technology that survived the events of T2.
As far as the Terminator pre-destination paradox, consider that John Connor would never exist so long as the future with the Terminators did not exist. As long as John exists in the universe, it is undeniable that a future with the Terminators does exist otherwise Skynet would not have created time travel technology and his father would never have been sent back in time to meet Sarah Connor (Skynet had no idea his father was from the future, thus fullfilling it's own paradox). Therefore, as long as John is in the story, he will always grow up to be the leader of the resistance.
It doesn't matter where Skynet originally came from, as long as John Connor exists in the present, it means Skynet must exist in the future, it's a mutually supporting causality paradigm.
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It doesn't matter where Skynet originally came from, as long as John Connor exists in the present, it means Skynet must exist in the future, it's a mutually supporting causality paradigm.
Hmmm.... I never thought of that. Good point. Still, if that's the case it would be nice to get some kind of official explanation.
At any rate, I just saw the preview for Fox's "Terminator: Sarah Conner Chronicles" t.v. show and it looks pretty good. Seems like it takes place somewhere between T2 and T3, so hopefully we'll get a lot of questions answered about the official timeline of events...
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