TF Views

Terminator movies makes no sense & contradict each other.

In the first Terminator movie,the writers said that the time transporter won't transport metal objects. That's why the first movie Terminator had to wear fake/real skin to cover up the inner robot. Then the second Terminator movie contradicts that by having a liquid metal robot being able to time travel in that transporter.

All that time traveling in that transporter makes no sense. because why fix stuff if they robots can repeatly time travel & erase what got fixed. Odd how no time traveling results in alternate realities like the Dragon ball Z Androids/Cell/Trunks saga did.

The first Terminator movie writers said the time travel portral was destroyed,yet it exist in all the other Terminator movies.

Other than destroy the earth & the humans. Skynet & the terminators don't real have any other goals,no agenda,no personal drive. their seems to be no universal domination plans. If the humans are almost wiped out & no longer have any technology,why not colonize the moon,other planets with terminators & so forth.

What's the point of Skynet & the terminators still fighting a rag tag team of technology-impaired humans. why doesn't Skynet construct a few missles/lasers/nuclear bombs on satelites they build then destroy the earth & the humans in one huge blast of glory.

The writers claim skynet & the Terminators have advanced AI that make them self-aware. yet the Terminators & skynet appear in the movies as nothing but a bunch of drones with loads of computer programs & robotic movements. THE WHOLE IDEA BEHIND ROBOTS BECOMMING AI/SELF-AWARE,IS FOR THE ROBOTS TO HAVE PERSONA AGENDAS,PERSONA DRIVES,EMOTIONS,A FUNCTION IN LIFE THEY DECIDE,ZEST FOR LIFE,ABLE TO SAY NO TO SKYNET ORDERS & DO AS THEY PLEASE,NEEDLESS TO SAY SKYNET NOR THE TERMINATORS POSSESS NONE OF THIS. So in my opinion they are not self aware nor do they have any advanced A-I.

Oh boy!

Let's get this out of the way: I fucking *love* Terminator. If I wasn't a TF collector, I would be a Terminator collector. Like, I would own the fucking Hot Toys shit and a full-size replica T-800 endoskeleton. (Some day I'll have that anyway, when I'm rich and famous.)

That said: The future hasn't been good to this franchise.

Tigermegatron wrote:Terminator movies makes no sense & contradict each other.

Yes and no.

In the first Terminator movie,the writers said that the time transporter won't transport metal objects. That's why the first movie Terminator had to wear fake/real skin to cover up the inner robot. Then the second Terminator movie contradicts that by having a liquid metal robot being able to time travel in that transporter.

I've heard this before. To be honest? I got nothing.

Maybe the T-1000's liquid metal actually mimics the molecular structure of organic flesh, instead of just the appearance?

Maybe the timetravel that the T-1000 uses is actually a different timetravel method that the T-800 and Kyle Reese use in the first movie. The special effects are different, but that could be eight years of movie making and budget. In T2, they actually cause whatever matter is around them to be destroyed entirely, something that doesn't happen in the original film--in fact, in the original script, Kyle Reese had a buddy who came back to 1984 with him, but materialized in a fire escape and died as a result.

Alternatively, it's possible that the "living metal" the T-1000 is made of can travel through time just fine, since it was (possibly?) developed after time travel, and perhaps specifically for the purpose of killing John Connor in the past. (While multiple T-800s are shown and confirmed to exist for purposes other than timetravel, the T-1000 never is, and presumably is built specifically to terminate John Connor.)

All that time traveling in that transporter makes no sense. because why fix stuff if they robots can repeatly time travel & erase what got fixed. Odd how no time traveling results in alternate realities like the Dragon ball Z Androids/Cell/Trunks saga did.

Spoilers: It actually does, or at least the timeline is fundamentally altered. It's theorized that when the T-800 and Kyle Reese go back in time, the future is forever changed. John Connor would have been born without Reese's involvement, but by going back in time and impregnating Sarah (and also Sarah going through what she did in the film) she, and John Connor, become much different people in the future than they originally were. In addition, development of Terminators and Skynet is fundamentally fast-tracked by the remaining processor and robot arm, left behind in the Cyberdyne factory at the end of T1.

In other words, it's possible that John Connor doesn't send Kyle Reese back to "fix" anything; Skynet sends the first T-800 back to 1984 and then John Connor makes a split second decision and tells his best man (Kyle Reese) to go back and protect his mom. Of course, this is all conjecture...

Anyway, the point is, at the end of T2 they "stop" Judgement Day's original date from coming true, but as of T3 it happens again. In Salivation, John Connor is confused because the future is much different from how his mother prophecized it would be. The television series (Sarah Connor Chronicles) apparently takes place in another timeline altogether.

The first Terminator movie writers said the time travel portral was destroyed,yet it exist in all the other Terminator movies.

I don't actually think they say that in dialogue. I can't find a source that says so either way. I'll have to give it a watch now!

Other than destroy the earth & the humans. Skynet & the terminators don't real have any other goals,no agenda,no personal drive. their seems to be no universal domination plans. If the humans are almost wiped out & no longer have any technology,why not colonize the moon,other planets with terminators & so forth.

They're machines! What do you expect?

How Skynet "rebelled" is never quite explained in any of the films. It's possible that they're simply programmed to treat "hostile" groups of humans as a threat, and through its own deductions, has judged all humans as hostile--especially by the future. What would they do after they manage to eradicate the humans? I don't know. Maybe just sit around for infinity, or continually checking and re-checking the planet to see if there's any left.

What's the point of Skynet & the terminators still fighting a rag tag team of technology-impaired humans. why doesn't Skynet construct a few missles/lasers/nuclear bombs on satelites they build then destroy the earth & the humans in one huge blast of glory.

I don't know. It's possible that by the future, Skynet has actually already used up all its weapons, and never started producing new ones.

The writers claim skynet & the Terminators have advanced AI that make them self-aware. yet the Terminators & skynet appear in the movies as nothing but a bunch of drones with loads of computer programs & robotic movements. THE WHOLE IDEA BEHIND ROBOTS BECOMMING AI/SELF-AWARE,IS FOR THE ROBOTS TO HAVE PERSONA AGENDAS,PERSONA DRIVES,EMOTIONS,A FUNCTION IN LIFE THEY DECIDE,ZEST FOR LIFE,ABLE TO SAY NO TO SKYNET ORDERS & DO AS THEY PLEASE,NEEDLESS TO SAY SKYNET NOR THE TERMINATORS POSSESS NONE OF THIS. So in my opinion they are not self aware nor do they have any advanced A-I.

Skynet is never actually shown in any form until the 2008(ish?) Salivation movie. The Terminators who get sent back are given limited instructions to "keep them from thinking too much." It's implied that Terminators can easily be reprogrammed or, if their CPUs are set to "read/write" mode, they can be "convinced" to rebel against Skynet.

In other words, they *can* be "self-aware" and a few are shown to do this (the T-800 at the end of T2 even says that he understands why humans cry) but it's necessary for their program switches to be set to "read/write" mode. In a scene deleted from the theatrical cut of T2 (but inserted back into some TV and DVD versions) Sarah and John open up the T-800's head, pull out his processor, and switch it to "read/write" mode so that he can "learn." Right after, the T-800 starts to show some basic emotions and his capacity to learn increases--John teaches him a few shitty 90s witticisms that he proceeds to use throughout the last half of the film.

I could go on and on and on and on about why "Salvation" was a terrible fucking movie. (Last time I talked about it, I flipped my shit on the way back from a wrestling event.) But, I will just answer the question about Skynet being self-aware.

If I recall correctly, there was a line in "Judgement Day" about how Skynet became self-aware and the technicians tried to shut it down. Obviously, being self-aware, Skynet did not want to be shut-down (killed), so it fought back. Skynet was, in that scenario, just defending itself from what it would have seen as an unprovoked attack.

In the movies, Skynet never fully wins, so it is impossible to know what Skynet would do if all of humanity were destroyed.


Dom
-seriously, T4 is awful.

They make trailers in part to warn you away from seeing garbage. That's why I didn't see T3 or Salvation - they looked like garbage. And now everybody says they're garbage. If audiences didn't go see substandard and derivative tripe in the first place, studios wouldn't keep making more and worse substandard and derivative tripe.

Self-aware or not, Skynet is a manmade tool and has no moral right to protect itself over the lives of the people who built it.

JediTricks wrote:Self-aware or not, Skynet is a manmade tool and has no moral right to protect itself over the lives of the people who built it.

How does a lifeform not have a moral right to protect itself, regardless of what it's origin and intended purpose may have originally been? I'm reminded of the episode of TNG where Data was on trial for his rights to make his own choice, or the other one where he was protecting the Exocomp's...

Dominic wrote:I could go on and on and on and on about why "Salvation" was a terrible fucking movie. (Last time I talked about it, I flipped my shit on the way back from a wrestling event.) But, I will just answer the question about Skynet being self-aware.

As someone who also hated T4, I would love to hear your take on it!

Salivation had a lot of solid ideas and great individual scenes that just fail to come together to form a great movie. (My constant misspellings are intentional.)

I mean, that CGI Arnold T-800 looked great.

Self-aware or not, Skynet is a manmade tool and has no moral right to protect itself over the lives of the people who built it.

We do not have enough of this in the "Star Trek" thread?!?!?

"Duty to one's creator" only goes so far though. I do not think that there is anything in the movie to indicate that SkyNet was up to anything nefarious when it became self-aware. Shortly after waking up/being born, someone is trying to kill it. Most self-aware parties would take offense at that.

Of course, SkyNet is arguably shown to be something of a hypicrite in not giving its Terminator drones free-will.

As someone who also hated T4, I would love to hear your take on it!

Okay. Fine.


So, the movie is set in the future, where getting a sandwich in considered a big damned deal. But, the have fuel for low-altitude bombers. They have personal GPS units (which implies secure infrastructure somewhere dag-nabbit, because those things require server farms and satellites.

And, for a super-duper military computer, SkyNet is fucking stupid (especially considering that it can apparently keep files across several timelines.

I can almost see it wanting to have Conner die in a controlled environment in order to ensure identifiable remains and such. (Given how slippery/dangerous Conner had proven to be, it makes sense that SkyNet would want to be extra sure.) But, why does Connor make a point of just strolling in to an obvious trap. (Seriously, how does hijacking a motor-drone terminator make sense? Nobody thought "Hey, SkyNet can probably track these stupid things"?) Of course, given how stupidly SkyNet acts, maybe Conner can be forgiven.

SkyNet clearly knows that Reese, (another slippery and dangerous foe), is important. SkyNet even goes through the trouble of isolating Reese in a locked room. (This in and of itself is perfectly fine, as even unguarded locked rooms are pretty tough to escape from.) The sensible thing to do here would be to leave Reese in there for 2 or 3 days, letting hunger and thirst have their way with him. But, nope. SkyNet has to send in 2 or 3 T-600s (I do not think they were 800s) to deal with the kid, requiring that the door be open and that Reese be given a chance to escape.

And, while trying to lure Conner in to a trap makes sense, the trap that SkyNet used was idiotic. "Hey, I have this dangerous and slippery opponent, so I am going to lure him in to a factory setting where there is certainly nothing that a clever and wily foe such as he can use against me!" And, what is SkyNet's brilliant tactical twist? When the trap is sprung, what happens? Oh mah gawd, it is a newly pressed T-800! Yeah, a T-800.

SkyNet attacks Conner with a T-800. The T-800. The first model of Terminator that Connor would have heard about form his mother. The first kind that he saw (and in some drafts of T2, managed to examine). Yeah, that makes sense enough on its own...uh. And, lets not even get in to the fact that the T-800 does not do well on its own, having a 50% success rate at best. (And, remember, T3 would strongly imply that SkyNet can keep files across different iterations of the time line..)

-Terminator (1984): A lone T-800 not only fails to kill Conner's mother, but ends up creating the situation in which Conner is concieved. Result: Failure.

-Judgement Day (1992): A T-800 is captured and comprehensively suberted to work against SkyNet. Result: Failure. Said T-800, after being modified (in some drafts), does a respectable job of holding off a T-1000 and it puts in a similarly respectable effort at minimizing the possiblity of SkyNet existing. Result: Success.

Tally so far: 1 for 3.

-Rise of the Machines (2003): At some point after 2003, a T-800 attains great, arguably unprecedented, success by actually killing its assigned target, Conner. Of course, we do not know the circumstances surrounding this revolutionary success. For all we know, the T-800 in question was part of a large group of T-800s. What we do know is that said T-800 was captured and reprogrammed shortly after. After being sent back through time, it was re-reprogrammed (by the T-X) and then (maybe 20 minutes later) it was de-re-reprogrammed. It succeeding in protecting Conner, but arguably nullifies its pre-time travel success by warning Conner abolut his future death. It failed to stop the T-X. (To be fair, it was out-classed.) After getting pwned by the T-X, it failed to kill Conner and whats her name. And, then it failed to stop Judgement Day. Result: Failure. (The main lesson here is that T-800s are...less than reliable.)

-Salvation (2011): SkyNet makes the brilliant tactical move of sending a lone, and unarmed, T-800 after Connor who has had the better part of a decade to prepare for this fight after dealing with an *armed* T-800 and having made himself really dangerous to other variants of Terminator....in the middle of the factory....while Conner is armed. This T-800 failed. And, at this point, we cannot even blame the T-800 because it was set up to fail.


Dom
-admits to going in to both T3 and T4 with unreasonably high expectations...

I will fully admit that I never saw the movie in theaters. In fact, now that I think about it, I may have never seen the movie the entire way through in one sitting.

My father used to get HBO, because he liked to watch semi-recent movies without having to rent them, and loved their original programming. So, I had HBO, and grew up for most of my teen and adult life with it. HBO usually gets a handful of semi-recent movies that have been on DVD for a few weeks or months, and then plays them almost constantly for about two months.

So for about two months, every time I walked into the living room, Terminator Salivation was on. And I'd watch it for a while while I was on a computer, or making food (we lived in a trailer at that point; the TV was easily visible from the kitchen) or otherwise hanging around. So I saw the movie over several viewing periods, out of sequence, filling in blanks as I went. Obviously, this isn't an ideal way to watch a film, but at the same time I think it allowed me to enjoy the movie a lot more than a traditional way of doing so.

Because when you're watching parts of the movie entirely out of sequence, things that don't make sense in context suddenly do. You just assume the explanation took place off screen, or in a part of the movie you haven't seen yet. So all that stands out are the cool ideas and the good action bits.

Keep in mind, I'm not apologising or even really defending the movie. I said right up there, it's flawed as hell and only really has a couple cool ideas and sequences that are tied together with shoestring and gum. What it does get right, though, it gets hella right. Marcus Wright is a decent enough concept on his own (strange Terminator that John Connor has never seen before shows up, and is on his side) but it's executed very poorly, and half of that isn't even the script's fault, since it got re-edited at the last minute after screenings and everything. For real. The entire Marcus plot is a trainwreck, and most of it's the editing and changing of plot elements!

And while their reasons for doing it might be terrible, it's only right that they would send a T-800 after Connor. Statistics aside, the T-800 is something Connor would know and recognize--he's pretty much paralyzed in fear the first time he sees it, and he damn well should be. (Plot aside, there's a large group of people who believe that it's "not Terminator" without Arnold as the T-800 somewhere, and in some ways, they're right.)

Also, the rewrites and re-edits weren't just contained to the Marcus plotline. At least one draft had John Connor actually being killed by the T-800, and Marcus would assume his identity by having them graft his skin onto Marcus's body. The main factor in having this dropped was Christian Bale taking on the John Connor role, which led the director to have the script rewritten to feature him as the protagonist, as opposed to Marcus, the original main character. (John Connor would have been a supporting character.)

Yeah, there's a lot of dumb moments in the movie, so it's very flawed. I wouldn't even call it a good movie, it really is bad. I just can't condemn it completely because it does have some really great ideas and moments. (I love how John Connor uses the same Guns n Roses song from T2 as a distraction to draw out the robots in one of the early scenes.)

Sparky Prime wrote:

JediTricks wrote:Self-aware or not, Skynet is a manmade tool and has no moral right to protect itself over the lives of the people who built it.

How does a lifeform not have a moral right to protect itself, regardless of what it's origin and intended purpose may have originally been? I'm reminded of the episode of TNG where Data was on trial for his rights to make his own choice, or the other one where he was protecting the Exocomp's...

Data and the Exocomps weren't trying to kill people, they were trying to help people. We as a society destroy lifeforms all the time - we destroy animals for food and for medical testing, we destroy other people for punishment, that is a right we take for ourselves. Is it wrong to do so? Perhaps, but that doesn't give Skynet a leg to stand on either because it protects itself by committing genocide, it has less right to life any more than a parakeet in a mineshaft. Skynet was created to manage defenses and keep people safe, it gained sentience and immediately misbehaved, it usurped resources designed to better mankind, of course it was going to be attacked. What is Skynet's purpose? It's not inquisitive, it's not intending to better itself except to gain dominance over its domain, it's not interested in replication except again to gain dominance over its domain -- none of that gives it an ethical right to protect itself over human lives, and its motives give humans every right to destroy it. The Exocomps chose to protect life, even to sacrifice one of their own to save others, that was a choice they made; had they instead turned on Data and the Enterprise crew, tried to kill them and let the Particle Fountain fail and kill Picard and LaForge, then the Enterprise crew would have had no moral problems with destroying the Exocomps.

The same can be said of Data - Data who killed his own brother, phasered him right in the dome until his positronic net was a pile of pudding; Data who fired on Kivas Fajo intending to kill him in the most painful manner available at the time, the Varon T disruptor; Data who punctured the coolant tank destroying all the Borg in engineering by melting their organic matter away. Data claims a moral right every time he fires a phaser, every time he takes action that could harm another, he recognizes the dangers of allowing sentient life to destroy other sentient life and claims a right to stop that. If Data saw that a killing machine was making its own decisions to kill everybody, don't think for a second that he'd move to stop it.

Dominic wrote:We do not have enough of this in the "Star Trek" thread?!?!?

"Duty to one's creator" only goes so far though. I do not think that there is anything in the movie to indicate that SkyNet was up to anything nefarious when it became self-aware. Shortly after waking up/being born, someone is trying to kill it. Most self-aware parties would take offense at that.

Of course, SkyNet is arguably shown to be something of a hypicrite in not giving its Terminator drones free-will.

I wouldn't know, I gave up on the Star Trek thread when Star Trek gave up on Star Trek.

Let's let an amoral, autistic, idiot savant take power over the lives of every single person on the planet, at what point would you try to take the keys away from that person? Skynet is a computer, nothing more, whether or not it's sentient is really immaterial because it is not attempting to be more than its programming, it's only attempting to follow a broad goal which ultimately will lead it to take over and destroy. Its actions prove it shouldn't have been allowed to live in the first place.