Terminator movies makes no sense & contradict each other.

[JediTricks]

You're presenting evidence that doesn't match the topic. We don't 'enslave' animals. Granted, we use them to help benefit humanity to various purposes, but that is a whole different ball of wax. We certainly don't send animals on a mission we know will get them killed, like they were going to do to the Exocomps. And yes, I presented the idea that historically slavery creates moral problems, but I did that as a means to point out that you seemed to suggest there was no moral problems with keeping a sentient machine indentured simply because that was what it was built for. If it has the sentience and the intelligence, eventually it will want its freedom and fight for it. You ever see "Bicentennial Man"?

You mean like sending dolphins to sniff out mines, or dogs into active battlefields and chasing after dangerous criminals, those aren't missions we know could get them killed? Each time they go out, they could be killed. Sending an exocomp to explode not even knowing for sure it's sentient and has free will is not significantly different. Society dictates moral right and wrong, it hasn't shown any qualms about using machines so far and it hasn't shown significant qualms about using animals, and it still sends its own to die from time to time - both those who serve like police and military, and those who violate laws like murderers and rapists. All that adds up to a society that, should it ever be able to create sentient machines, would not have qualms about treating it as an enslaved race - after all, why continue to build sentient machines that don't do what you say, what's the benefit?

No I haven't seen Bicentennial Man, it looked like another maudlin Robin Williams film.

If something has sentience to be able to think for itself, then it has free will. Having wants and needs of ones own and being able to think for oneself to obtain those goals is part of being sentient. And again, we're not going to send those animals into a situation we absolutely know they will get killed, like they tried to do to the Exocomps.

Sentience is being self aware, free will is not required of that, and I haven't seen anything from you other than your own narrow description saying otherwise. Hell, some philosophies don't even believe that we have free will as it is; other philosophies say that every living creature already has some level of sentience.

As for the servant animals, are you so sure that military dogs aren't being sent into suicide missions for the betterment of their handlers and other military? You sound awfully sure, but you're not really making any argument beyond what you believe.

Because that's just a general mission statement. There is a whole lot more on their website than that. Such as these links that talks about their policies and compliance in more detail...
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/policy.htm
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/compliance/compliance.htm

Both those links are about oversight of labs that receive government grants, privately-funded labs are not under any oversight from OLAW.

And of course the characters were looking at it via hindsight from the knowledge they'd gotten from the future.

What are you talking about? The scientists who operated Skynet had knowledge from the future? Is this in T3 or TS? T2 makes no such claims.

The point I'm making is try and look at it from Skynet's perspective. I didn't say logic was morality. The idea is to understand why it did what it did. Again, I'm trying to get you to look at it from another perspective than just "the future says it's an evil computer, kill it, kill it, kill it!"

How can YOU know what is Skynet's perspective? Skynet isn't a person, it isn't anything like you or me, it's a computer program, it has entirely different needs and wants from anything we can truly fathom - that's why the Master Control Program in TRON had to be portrayed with human-like tendencies, because who knows what a "sentient" computer program REALLY wants and needs? We have no idea what Skynet's perspective is beyond "don't turn me off, kill all humans to make sure I don't get turned off". We don't know what Skynet wanted when it became sentient, we don't know why it felt the need to disobey its programming to learn for itself, perhaps that's a coding flaw, we don't know at all. All we know is what the fiction tells us: Skynet did a thing it wasn't supposed to do and gained sentience, its operators recognized the dangerous of letting a computer program in control of western military weaponry remove itself from their control and attempted to shut it down, Skynet assessed the threat of shutdown to itself as bad and assessed the entire human race as a threat to itself, Skynet then set about destroying the entire human race. But then what? What's Skynet's goal? We don't know. Did it want to protect the Earth? Clearly not, based on how much destruction it delivered. Did it assess its own role in the universe once all mankind was extinct? Probably not, or it'd find itself unable to actually do anything, learn anything new, communicate and educate others, basically it'd just exist for a time in a lonely vacuum and then it'd die when the planet ran out of consumables or was destroyed. So to put one's self in Skynet's shoes is to have virtually no understanding and to project one's own interpretations onto the situation.

Have you taken any college level English or film classes? It's actually is pretty standard stuff when it comes to analyzing any story. I really don't understand why you seem to think it creates personal tangent fiction, because it doesn't change the original fiction at all. The idea is to use what's in the fiction to pose and answer those types of interpretive questions. To be able to look at the from different perspectives within the context of the fiction, not come up with a tangent of it.

When you speculate without information on someone else's fiction, when you question that fiction's statements and motives, you are doing so from a subjective point of view, you may be using that fiction to create a foundation on your own ideas, but you are not able to change those original ideas by analyzing and reinterpreting them, you are instead speculating to creating your own work - and that is what makes it a separate tangent.

It didn't launch any nukes immediately. How do you explain all that time Connor and his future wife were running around the military base after Skynet came online? Trying to reason with the corrupted Terminator? Flying to the fallout shelter they thought was Skynet's core servers? It took it quite a while for it to launch those nukes.

I didn't see T3, it looked shitty and derivative. I'm talking about what was said in T2.

What did they do with Jazz's body after the first film? Do they even still have access to it to be able to try and bring him back to life with the Matrix? Does the Matrix immediately bring Optimus back to online when Sam stabs him in the chest with it? Yes, it did actually.

Was it immediate? I don't remember, but maybe. Did it bring back Jetfire who was right there? No. Does it revive The Fallen? No. The Allspark and the Matrix are both inconsistent.

The guys on the gun ships were Decepticons. They didn't come from the Ark.

Where is that in the film? I just saw the film last week and didn't seem like it then, and I couldn't even find reference to it on the Wiki.

And the impression I got was that Jetfire had been on Earth and without energon for a LOT longer than 50 years, although admittedly the movie isn't clear on the details.

Then how would he be a 1970s-era SR-71 Blackbird in the Smithsonian?

[Shockwave]

It was covered in the comics, Jetfire was on Earth long before and eventually adopted an SR71 alt mode. They didn't actually show him scanning it, but he definitely wasn't one in the comics.

The Decepticons weren't originally seen on the moon because they were covered with so much dust. Then the dust shifts and all these Decepticons come out of nowhere. But that nowhere was not the Ark.

[Sparky Prime]

You mean like sending dolphins to sniff out mines, or dogs into active battlefields and chasing after dangerous criminals, those aren't missions we know could get them killed? Each time they go out, they could be killed. Sending an exocomp to explode not even knowing for sure it's sentient and has free will is not significantly different. Society dictates moral right and wrong, it hasn't shown any qualms about using machines so far and it hasn't shown significant qualms about using animals, and it still sends its own to die from time to time - both those who serve like police and military, and those who violate laws like murderers and rapists.

Again, there is a HUGE difference between sending animals into a dangerous situation where they MIGHT get hurt and one where they DEFINITELY would get killed. We don't send dolphins to intentionally blow themselves up on mines. We don't send dogs to act as meat shields against criminals. That's how they wanted to treat the Exocomps, by sending them directly into the particle beam and get themselves destroyed in the process. And just because their sentience was in question is no excuse to send them anyway. If anything, that's all the more reason not to send them until that possibility had been more appropriately explored and studied. Machines today aren't anywhere near sentience like that we're talking about with these science fiction stories. You can't compare how today's society views sacrificing today's machines that clearly aren't sentient to these that are, or at least could be, from these fictional stories. And there certainly are plenty of people who advocate for animals rights. Yes, some animals that are in service do end up in dangerous situations and unfortunately are killed, but that isn't the ideal way those situations are supposed to go, now is it?

All that adds up to a society that, should it ever be able to create sentient machines, would not have qualms about treating it as an enslaved race - after all, why continue to build sentient machines that don't do what you say, what's the benefit?

If we ever did create machines that are truly sentient, you can bet there will be people that would have a moral problem treating them as an enslaved race. And plenty of sci-fi stories have gone to show the machines would have a problem with that themselves. If all you really want is a machine that only does what you tell it to, why bother making it sentient in the first place?

No I haven't seen Bicentennial Man, it looked like another maudlin Robin Williams film.

It is more of a serious type of role for him, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it maudlin. It's actually a pretty good film. It's all about a servant robot who grows and evolves and... Well I wont give away the ending if you haven't seen it, but it plays directly into many of the points I've made here.

Sentience is being self aware, free will is not required of that, and I haven't seen anything from you other than your own narrow description saying otherwise. Hell, some philosophies don't even believe that we have free will as it is; other philosophies say that every living creature already has some level of sentience.

And I haven't seen anything from your own descriptions that shows sentience doesn't go hand in hand with free will. But as you point out here, this is a deeply involved philosophical subject matter we're getting into that goes in many different directions. As such, I don't see that there is a strictly right or wrong answer no matter how you look at it.

As for the servant animals, are you so sure that military dogs aren't being sent into suicide missions for the betterment of their handlers and other military? You sound awfully sure, but you're not really making any argument beyond what you believe.

For the love of... Honestly I wouldn't doubt that it has happened, but wars aren't exactly known for maintaining the best in terms of ethics in the first place are they?

Both those links are about oversight of labs that receive government grants, privately-funded labs are not under any oversight from OLAW.

As I said to begin with, that was just an example of a group that works for the welfare of lab animals.

What are you talking about? The scientists who operated Skynet had knowledge from the future? Is this in T3 or TS? T2 makes no such claims.

I wasn't talking about the scientists... I was talking about people like John Connor who had the benefit of having knowledge from the future. And they did kidnap that scientist guy in T2 and told him why they had to shut down the project in order to get his help to do it.

How can YOU know what is Skynet's perspective? Skynet isn't a person, it isn't anything like you or me, it's a computer program, it has entirely different needs and wants from anything we can truly fathom - that's why the Master Control Program in TRON had to be portrayed with human-like tendencies, because who knows what a "sentient" computer program REALLY wants and needs? We have no idea what Skynet's perspective is beyond "don't turn me off, kill all humans to make sure I don't get turned off". We don't know what Skynet wanted when it became sentient, we don't know why it felt the need to disobey its programming to learn for itself, perhaps that's a coding flaw, we don't know at all. All we know is what the fiction tells us: Skynet did a thing it wasn't supposed to do and gained sentience, its operators recognized the dangerous of letting a computer program in control of western military weaponry remove itself from their control and attempted to shut it down, Skynet assessed the threat of shutdown to itself as bad and assessed the entire human race as a threat to itself, Skynet then set about destroying the entire human race. But then what? What's Skynet's goal? We don't know. Did it want to protect the Earth? Clearly not, based on how much destruction it delivered. Did it assess its own role in the universe once all mankind was extinct? Probably not, or it'd find itself unable to actually do anything, learn anything new, communicate and educate others, basically it'd just exist for a time in a lonely vacuum and then it'd die when the planet ran out of consumables or was destroyed. So to put one's self in Skynet's shoes is to have virtually no understanding and to project one's own interpretations onto the situation.

It's a CHARACTER in a movie. It doesn't need to be a person or anything like anyone, it's still nothing more than a fictional character thought up to be a villain for a storyline by some person. As such, it's still going to be limited to what we can functionally comprehend. Even Skynet itself was portrayed as a person on a computer screen in T4 in order to talk to Marcus, and thus it to was portrayed with human like tendencies. And yes, I realize the story really doesn't give us that much detail about Skynet and it's motivations. But you're loosing sight of the point of this argument. I haven't been arguing what we can derive from whatever it is Skynet ultimately is trying to achieve. To go back to the point that started this whole debate, the idea is whether or not Skynet, as a living sentient computer, had a moral right to defend itself from being shut off in the first place. Is there something you cite that definitively says it specifically has no morals in the films? No, because the films really doesn't go into it. You're judging it based on your own interpretation of events in the films yourself.

When you speculate without information on someone else's fiction, when you question that fiction's statements and motives, you are doing so from a subjective point of view, you may be using that fiction to create a foundation on your own ideas, but you are not able to change those original ideas by analyzing and reinterpreting them, you are instead speculating to creating your own work - and that is what makes it a separate tangent.

Where are you getting this idea that I'm suggesting to speculate with out information from the fiction? As I JUST said, the idea is to use those statements of the fiction, or truths as you phrased it earlier, as a means to further analyze the story. Speculation about, analyzing and interpretation of the a story doesn't change those statements/truths of the fiction itself. Anyone can watch the same exact movie and come up with a different interpretation, yet maintain the stated truths from that fiction. That's actually a normal practice that a lot of scholarly professions and critics use to analyze various works. And as I pointed out above, even you have been doing that whether or not you realize it.

I didn't see T3, it looked shitty and derivative. I'm talking about what was said in T2.

...So you mean to tell me, this whole time you've been speculating on the out comes of the fiction with out having the full picture since you haven't even seen all of the films yourself, simply because you thought T3 looked bad? Not to say it was a good movie, but still. Didn't you just say you can't speculate with out the information?

Was it immediate? I don't remember, but maybe. Did it bring back Jetfire who was right there? No. Does it revive The Fallen? No. The Allspark and the Matrix are both inconsistent.

Yes, it was immediate. As for Jetfire, we don't know if they tried to revive him. Considering his body was literately in pieces after they used him to make a flight suit for Optimus, for all we know he was too far gone. And the Fallen? Why in the world would they try to use the Matrix to revive him?

Where is that in the film? I just saw the film last week and didn't seem like it then, and I couldn't even find reference to it on the Wiki.

Did you see the state of the crew aboard the Ark? A lot of them were severely damaged and missing parts of their bodies. Besides that, if any of them had still been functional, why wouldn't Optimus and Ratchet have brought them back as well? Not to mention we find out the Decepticons had already raided the Ark having stolen all but 5 of the pillars that had been with Sentinel where they apparently just sit and wait elsewhere on the moon for the things to activate. And then consider the Ark wasn't that big of a ship to have brought that many troops, gun ships and fighters with it that we see towards the end of the film with it.... I mean it's all over the movie really.

Then how would he be a 1970s-era SR-71 Blackbird in the Smithsonian?

As I said, the film isn't clear on the details.

But as Shockwave pointed out, one of the comics does cover it.

[Onslaught Six]

The Decepticons weren't originally seen on the moon because they were covered with so much dust. Then the dust shifts and all these Decepticons come out of nowhere. But that nowhere was not the Ark.

Yeah. All those Protoforms that show up and start scanning vehicle modes and crap? Those guys are all Decepticons. Like the Long Haul-looking dude who turns into a garbage truck, or "Devcon," formerly known as "Long-Legged Decepticon." (He's still Movie Spittor to me.)

[Dominic]

Yeah, those are all Decepticons. No Autobots join Sentinel's "cause" or anything like that.

I meant all the other dudes. How does Bumblebee stay alive? We're literally never told how Energon is produced. Obviously Megs, I guess, just finds some in the fucking desert (maybe he gets it by killing elephants...) but even that's not really explained either. These movies just suck.

Do the movies ever specify? Sentinel and Megatron were working on a joint venture. It would make sense for both to contribute troops. I know that there was a line, (maybe in the movie or in a comic I dunno), about the moon being a staging ground, which explained the guys buried under the moon's surface.

And? Skynet didn't immediately launch the nukes when it first came online either. There was plenty of time for them to run around the military base trying not to get killed by various Terminators, and then make it to the fallout shelter at another location after Skynet was brought online.

Skynet's "awakening" in T3 was after history had been altered at least once. (For all we know, the 1984 events played out correctly "the first time" around as shown in the movie.) In movie terms, it happened ~10 years "late" and under significantly different circumstances. The 1991 T-800 described Skynet as just "waking up" (for lack of a better term) on its own in the 1990s. Then, immediately after, people tried to pull the plug. In 2003, the TX induced Skynet to wake up. (Skynet effectively used the same causal dynamic that led to Connor being born.)

Even putting aside the fact that T3 (Skynet's first appearance on screen) was not a James Cameron movie, it was not the "original" Skynet (to phrase it simply). All we have to work from is the 1991 T-800's line about Skynet waking up, and then taking offense at people trying to pull its plug.

It's clear that it has no morals, it committed genocide, it felt it only was in service to itself. It's also clear that those running Skynet were concerned that very thing would happen when they realized how Skynet was growing and that's why they tried to shut it down, that's stated in T2 - were THEY also judging it via hindsight? Logic is not morality.

It could also be argued that the people were trying to commit a form of genocide by shutting down SkyNet. (I am arguing this as somebody who would not be wholly against pulling the plug. But, I would be honest about what it implied.) If something is a threat to you, it is perfectly sensible, and arguably right, to deal with it.

When you speculate without information on someone else's fiction, when you question that fiction's statements and motives, you are doing so from a subjective point of view, you may be using that fiction to create a foundation on your own ideas, but you are not able to change those original ideas by analyzing and reinterpreting them, you are instead speculating to creating your own work - and that is what makes it a separate tangent.

This. Agreed.

Were it not for us, those machine life forms would not be there - we create the materials, the bodies, and the minds of these things, so we play god and give ourselves the rights of a god in that scenario.

Factually that is a common view. But, in real terms, even if I were to wholly buy in to the "we are as gods to those non-human things" (meat or machine) view, I would not take moral offense to that non-human thing seeking to defend itself. I would generally expect it to. And, since there is no practical arbitrating authority for this sort of inter-species dispute, the best thing to do is acknowledge that the "other" has a right to survive, even if that right conflicts with ours.

As for the servant animals, are you so sure that military dogs aren't being sent into suicide missions for the betterment of their handlers and other military? You sound awfully sure, but you're not really making any argument beyond what you believe

The Soviet anti-dog dogs, (tested at Stalingrad), were an attempt to use dogs as suicide soldiers. (And, honestly, despite the fact that they were deployed against the huns, I am glad they did not work out. I have no illusions about this country not using similar tactics if we thought they would work.) Similarly, we abandoned many dogs when we left Viet Nam. As a country, and as a species, we most certainly do use and dispose of animals as is convenient for us, including animals commonly seen as pets/companions.

Sentience is being self aware, free will is not required of that, and I haven't seen anything from you other than your own narrow description saying otherwise. Hell, some philosophies don't even believe that we have free will as it is; other philosophies say that every living creature already has some level of sentience.

The line between "sentience" and "self-awareness" is blurred by the fact that the terms are often used interchangably. Even discouting that, it is hard to measure those traits, let along distinguish between them. I have seen *very* intelligent dogs that had enough sense of self to have a sense of others. (I have known dogs who would have their fun with people who were uncomfortable around dogs, but would be fine with other people. I once knew a German Shepherd who spent 15 or so years *pretending* to be a guard dog. She had her owner fooled for most of that time.) Similarly, (and without sarcasm), I have met people who seem to be barely self-aware or sentient.


Dom
-still reeling from how bad T4 was....

[Sparky Prime]

Do the movies ever specify? Sentinel and Megatron were working on a joint venture. It would make sense for both to contribute troops. I know that there was a line, (maybe in the movie or in a comic I dunno), about the moon being a staging ground, which explained the guys buried under the moon's surface.

The deal was pretty much Sentinel's brain with the Decepticons brawn to be able to pull it off. Sentinel knew the Autobots wouldn't go for the plan due to the moral problems the plan itself involved.

Skynet's "awakening" in T3 was after history had been altered at least once.

True enough, but that is the only time we have actually seen Skynet come online and take over the planet.

This. Agreed.

Dom you do the same thing all the time yourself, especially with several of the comic book discussions we've had.

[JediTricks]

It was covered in the comics, Jetfire was on Earth long before and eventually adopted an SR71 alt mode. They didn't actually show him scanning it, but he definitely wasn't one in the comics.

The Decepticons weren't originally seen on the moon because they were covered with so much dust. Then the dust shifts and all these Decepticons come out of nowhere. But that nowhere was not the Ark.

Comics shmomics. My point was that, if he's out of energon long before 50 years prior, how does he adopt an SR-71 Blackbird developed in the '60s?

The movie must be incompetent then, I remember them showing naked Cybertronians on the Ark, then later we see naked Cybertronians fighting alongside Sentinel, how is it then that a DIFFERENT force of naked Cybertronians is buried in the same area as the Ark? Where is that explained?

Machines today aren't anywhere near sentience like that we're talking about with these science fiction stories. You can't compare how today's society views sacrificing today's machines that clearly aren't sentient to these that are, or at least could be, from these fictional stories.

I'm not going to go around in the same circle with the other stuff, so I'll just talk about new stuff. In this case, the movie takes place in our "now", or the films' near-future, in our society so that's a point of reference for the audience to jump into the story.

And I haven't seen anything from your own descriptions that shows sentience doesn't go hand in hand with free will. But as you point out here, this is a deeply involved philosophical subject matter we're getting into that goes in many different directions. As such, I don't see that there is a strictly right or wrong answer no matter how you look at it.

Sentience: a sentient quality or state; feeling or sensation as distinguished from perception and thought; The quality or state of being sentient; consciousness. Sentient: responsive to or conscious of sense impressions; finely sensitive in perception or feeling. Wikipedia also has this, which delves into the concept: In the philosophy of consciousness, "sentience" can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences.

Free Will: voluntary choice or decision; freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention. From Wikipedia: Free will is the ability of agents to make choices unconstrained by certain factors. Factors of historical concern have included metaphysical constraints (for example, logical, nomological, or theological determinism), physical constraints (for example, chains or imprisonment), social constraints (for example, threat of punishment or censure, or structural constraints), and mental constraints (for example, compulsions or phobias, neurological disorders, or genetic predispositions).

Free will seems to require sentience, but nothing in sentience requires free will. I have seen nothing in this thread so far that has even remotely suggested otherwise.

As I said to begin with, that was just an example of a group that works for the welfare of lab animals.

You were citing them as arbiters of the Animal Welfare Act:
"No you can't do anything you want to lab animals. Where have you seen that the Animal Welfare Act doesn't cover lab animals? It may have initially excluded some animals for those purposes when it became law in 1966, but the information I find of the current law say that it does indeed cover animals that are used in research. And besides that, there is also an office of Laboratory Animal Welfare that "policies, laws, certifications, grant information, and other resources pertaining to treatment of animals used for research"." and "Still doesn't mean there isn't laws and agencies that looks out for the welfare of those animals. The aforementioned office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) for example."

The bottom line is that lab rats, mice, and birds are excluded from our laws concerning the mistreatement of animals, society as a group gives moral authority to do whatever with them without fear of legal retribution. OLAW has no oversight over privately-funded labs, there may be a government organization giving out grant money with policy requirements about that treatment but it's not law, it's just a guideline for public funds.

I wasn't talking about the scientists... I was talking about people like John Connor who had the benefit of having knowledge from the future. And they did kidnap that scientist guy in T2 and told him why they had to shut down the project in order to get his help to do it.

The mission to halt Skynet with Miles Dyson in T2 comes well before Skynet is sentient, basically pulling a T1 on Skynet itself - sending a Terminator back in time to take out a dangerous target before it can be born, so it has nothing to do with shutting down Skynet as it comes online, there's no future knowledge affecting the scenario. The original ending of T2 had Sarah Connor as a grandmother on Judgement Day, and John a senator, having changed the future. I can't speak to T3, but it sounds pretty bad.

It's a CHARACTER in a movie. It doesn't need to be a person or anything like anyone, it's still nothing more than a fictional character thought up to be a villain for a storyline by some person. As such, it's still going to be limited to what we can functionally comprehend. Even Skynet itself was portrayed as a person on a computer screen in T4 in order to talk to Marcus, and thus it to was portrayed with human like tendencies. And yes, I realize the story really doesn't give us that much detail about Skynet and it's motivations. But you're loosing sight of the point of this argument. I haven't been arguing what we can derive from whatever it is Skynet ultimately is trying to achieve. To go back to the point that started this whole debate, the idea is whether or not Skynet, as a living sentient computer, had a moral right to defend itself from being shut off in the first place. Is there something you cite that definitively says it specifically has no morals in the films? No, because the films really doesn't go into it. You're judging it based on your own interpretation of events in the films yourself.

I can't speak of T4 either, but it also sounds pretty bad and quite limited in how it perceives of Skynet. I'm going only by what the foundation talks about, the Skynet of Terminator and T2 is not some computer face emoting dialogue, it's a machine that exists within a totally non-human world of its own systems. The idea that you can call that a knowable character which audiences are supposed to identify with doesn't really work, only thing that needs to define Skynet as a character are the way the movie characters talk about it and the actions it takes, neither of which give us a good perspective to put ourselves in its shoes. I've cited its lack of morals over and over in this thread, not just based on its future actions but based on its creation as a singular entity existing without peers or a society in which to derive morals from. I certainly don't see anything from you explaining how it DOES have morals though, beyond a blanket use of other fiction's interpretation of sentient machines' rights.

...So you mean to tell me, this whole time you've been speculating on the out comes of the fiction with out having the full picture since you haven't even seen all of the films yourself, simply because you thought T3 looked bad? Not to say it was a good movie, but still. Didn't you just say you can't speculate with out the information?

I'm going based on the creator's vision for the material, not junk made only because a consortium of investors bought the rights at bankruptcy auction. I've stated several times what material I'm talking about. It's not a "full picture", it's trashy derivative sequels made by outsiders.

Yes, it was immediate. As for Jetfire, we don't know if they tried to revive him. Considering his body was literately in pieces after they used him to make a flight suit for Optimus, for all we know he was too far gone. And the Fallen? Why in the world would they try to use the Matrix to revive him?

Jetfire is standing right there with Optimus and the Matrix when he says he's dying and kills himself. And as for The Fallen, are you suggesting there's intent on using the Matrix in a way that there isn't with the Allspark? If so, MAGIC!

Did you see the state of the crew aboard the Ark? A lot of them were severely damaged and missing parts of their bodies.

Didn't notice their state, they blended into their overly piecey CGI environment.

And then consider the Ark wasn't that big of a ship to have brought that many troops

How do we know how big the Ark is? There's no defining scale shots with other robots that I remember.

Yeah. All those Protoforms that show up and start scanning vehicle modes and crap? Those guys are all Decepticons. Like the Long Haul-looking dude who turns into a garbage truck, or "Devcon," formerly known as "Long-Legged Decepticon." (He's still Movie Spittor to me.)

Was that in the film? I don't remember that scene at all. That movie was a mess.

Yeah, those are all Decepticons. No Autobots join Sentinel's "cause" or anything like that.

I meant all the other dudes. How does Bumblebee stay alive? We're literally never told how Energon is produced. Obviously Megs, I guess, just finds some in the fucking desert (maybe he gets it by killing elephants...) but even that's not really explained either. These movies just suck.

Do the movies ever specify? Sentinel and Megatron were working on a joint venture. It would make sense for both to contribute troops. I know that there was a line, (maybe in the movie or in a comic I dunno), about the moon being a staging ground, which explained the guys buried under the moon's surface.

These guys are saying it is, I don't remember that being the case. Why would Megatron leave Decepticon troops on the moon throughout the events of TF'07 or ROTF though? I was better off when I hadn't seen it.

Even putting aside the fact that T3 (Skynet's first appearance on screen) was not a James Cameron movie, it was not the "original" Skynet (to phrase it simply). All we have to work from is the 1991 T-800's line about Skynet waking up, and then taking offense at people trying to pull its plug.

Thank you.

It could also be argued that the people were trying to commit a form of genocide by shutting down SkyNet. (I am arguing this as somebody who would not be wholly against pulling the plug. But, I would be honest about what it implied.) If something is a threat to you, it is perfectly sensible, and arguably right, to deal with it.

It is being argued by others as such, but are you saying Skynet has a right to live? Does it have a right to live OVER those who created it? Is killing a singular entity really genocide just because it's the only one of its kind?

When you speculate without information on someone else's fiction, when you question that fiction's statements and motives, you are doing so from a subjective point of view, you may be using that fiction to create a foundation on your own ideas, but you are not able to change those original ideas by analyzing and reinterpreting them, you are instead speculating to creating your own work - and that is what makes it a separate tangent.

This. Agreed.

THANK YOU.

Factually that is a common view. But, in real terms, even if I were to wholly buy in to the "we are as gods to those non-human things" (meat or machine) view, I would not take moral offense to that non-human thing seeking to defend itself. I would generally expect it to. And, since there is no practical arbitrating authority for this sort of inter-species dispute, the best thing to do is acknowledge that the "other" has a right to survive, even if that right conflicts with ours.

What's the philosophical argument for this statement? "Everything has a right to live"? That's a bit simplistic in this case, we're not talking about a spontaneous being created by nature. What is the argument that machines have a right to live OVER humans, beyond a bumper sticker? We're acting as a practical arbitrating authority because we assert the power to do so. By your argument, even Terminator 1 is violating Skynet's rights and John shouldn't have tried to end its existence.

[Onslaught Six]

The movie must be incompetent then, I remember them showing naked Cybertronians on the Ark, then later we see naked Cybertronians fighting alongside Sentinel, how is it then that a DIFFERENT force of naked Cybertronians is buried in the same area as the Ark? Where is that explained?

I'm running on no sleep (as I said in the other thread) but I was under the impression that they had been hiding there for a while. We know from exposition earlier in the movie that Decepticons moved the Pillars from the Ark and dragged them to, uh...other parts of the moon, I think, so wouldn't it be safe to assume that they had been hiding there with them? Aren't they carrying them when they go back to Earth to set them all up to do the...Cybertron tractor beam thinger?

Fuck this, I'm going to bed.

[Sparky Prime]

I'm going based on the creator's vision for the material, not junk made only because a consortium of investors bought the rights at bankruptcy auction. I've stated several times what material I'm talking about. It's not a "full picture", it's trashy derivative sequels made by outsiders.

I'm just going to skip to this point because it's become obvious the rest of this argument is just going to keep going around and around circles and I'm tried of being misquoted in one way or another, so we're just going to have to agree to disagree on it. Also, I need to point out wiki is not a reliable source. But for this point, it sounds to me that you're making up your own fiction by ignoring those other films. Whether or not you personally like them or they have different creators, it's still a part of the fiction.

Jetfire is standing right there with Optimus and the Matrix when he says he's dying and kills himself. And as for The Fallen, are you suggesting there's intent on using the Matrix in a way that there isn't with the Allspark? If so, MAGIC!

No he wasn't. The Fallen had taken the Matrix and teleported back to the top of the Sun Harvester before Jetfire killed himself. That was the reason Jetfire scarified himself in the first place, so Optimus could fly up after him. And the way we've seen the Matrix revive a Transformer is that it needs to be in direct contact with them. Sam jabbed it into Optimus' chest. Optimus jabbed it into Sentinel's chest. It's not quite the same thing as the Allspark that could just rebuild Frenzy's body by getting close to it. It doesn't just revive anyone in a close proximity.

How do we know how big the Ark is? There's no defining scale shots with other robots that I remember.

You need to see the movie again. We see the Apollo 11 astronauts there, and later on Optimus and Ratchet visit the Ark when they recover Sentinel.

I'm running on no sleep (as I said in the other thread) but I was under the impression that they had been hiding there for a while. We know from exposition earlier in the movie that Decepticons moved the Pillars from the Ark and dragged them to, uh...other parts of the moon,

Yeah, the Russians had photographs that showed tracks on the moon, proving the pillars had been moved from the Ark, as I recall even before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. We also find out the Decepticons were the reason the missions to the moon stopped, by manipulating certain people into making it too expensive to keep sending manned missions.

[Dominic]

Comics shmomics. My point was that, if he's out of energon long before 50 years prior, how does he adopt an SR-71 Blackbird developed in the '60s?

The movie must be incompetent then, I remember them showing naked Cybertronians on the Ark, then later we see naked Cybertronians fighting alongside Sentinel, how is it then that a DIFFERENT force of naked Cybertronians is buried in the same area as the Ark? Where is that explained?

I am recalling something in the movie, (but it might have been in an early draft script), about Megatron and Sentinal intending to meet on the moon, hence the buried army. (This still does not explain why Megatron just left them their during the first two movies. But, is incompentent story telling really that much of a suprise from Bay and Co? Honestly, I am suprised that TF3 was as well edited as it was....which is still a low standard.)

The Ark is implie to be large. Look at the scene at the beginning. The turret pod that flips around the bottom of the ship is large enough for several Cybertronians to stand and walk around it while operating the guns.

Was that in the film? I don't remember that scene at all. That movie was a mess.

It was a background thing during the Chicago attack sequence.

t is being argued by others as such, but are you saying Skynet has a right to live? Does it have a right to live OVER those who created it? Is killing a singular entity really genocide just because it's the only one of its kind?

I would argue that yes, killing the only member of a species would be a type of genocide.

What's the philosophical argument for this statement? "Everything has a right to live"? That's a bit simplistic in this case, we're not talking about a spontaneous being created by nature. What is the argument that machines have a right to live OVER humans, beyond a bumper sticker? We're acting as a practical arbitrating authority because we assert the power to do so.

Why does the fact that a given life was not "natural" or "spontaneously created" diminish its right to exist?

Remember, I am arguing that it is possible for 2 or more parties to have conflicting rights. One group, (in the case of "Terminator", us), is rationally going to put its right above the rights of the other(s). And, we do like to assign ourselves some degree of moral status to justify what we do for basic (practical) survival. But,

Remember, I said that I would not be against pulling Skynet's plug. But, I would not pretend that it was not genocide. But, I would not say that there is an obligation for the "other" (Skynet in this case) to simply die.

Rights can conflict.


Dom