| abstract
| - So let's think about this: Maybe the thing that makes John such a great leader is that it's in Sarah's blood. After all, we've seen that Sarah has badass inside of her in the first and especially second movies. So in the original timeline, Sarah gets knocked up by random 80s dude, Cyberdyne manages to create Skynet without any help from future technology, John Connor grows up and survives the nuclear holocaust, and ends up being an awesome leader and kicks the machine's ass until they decide to use their fancy time travel technology to go back and wipe him out. So everything gets reset, only now the Terminator exists in the 1980s. Reese also sends himself back because he somehow knows the T-800 is out to get Connor. So now, Sarah sleeps with Kyle instead of random 80s dude, producing a slightly different but still badass John Connor, and they destroy the Terminator, leaving behind a relic that inadvertently helps Cyberdyne build Skynet even faster, and probably improves human technology as a whole to a great degree. (Or not, since it is secret and Cyberdyne is kinda the eeevil corporation that Cameron loves to have in his movies) The future plays out a bit differently this time. Sarah goes nuts and imprisoned, and John lives with his foster parents. Sarah stays in the looney bin until she probably dies, and Connor is raised by his foster parents, but having the badass blood in him still survives nuclear holocaust and fights the machines. The Machines decide to eliminate this thorn in their side, so they send back the T-1000, possibly an advanced machine caused by the spike in technology caused by the T-800 arm left back in the 80s. It fails again, and the timeline gets reset once more.... etc Only this time,
*
* Time doesn't make much sense in terminator, here's why. If you could change the past the changes would have to be immediate (because from current time point of view they have already happened, just like everything that you did yesterday has already happened, it isn't happening now), meaning once skynet sent a terminator back, but Reese hasn't been sent yet, at that instant the future would have been changed because everything in the past has already happened. Alternately changes in the past have no effect on the current timeline and killing Connor in the past would have made no difference to the present, rendering the whole "sent terminator into the past" gambit pointless.
* In the former case it does make sense if you assume that Reese was going to be sent and nothing had happened to prevent his going, and in the latter it's still important to bear in mind that the machines were making a desperate last minute attempt and evaluated that they may as well give it a shot--in other words, that there is some chance that traditional understandings of how time travel would work might turn out to be wrong, and they had nothing to lose in trying since they had already lost the war anyway.
* I don't see how the former makes sense though. Terminator goes through, Reese hasn't been sent yet. At that point terminator has to succeed in his mission (since Reese is not in the past to stop him, and the past has already happened from his point of view), so there is no longer a John Connor to lead the resistance in the present, no victory for humans, no Reese to send to the past.
* Let’s say that the original Terminator has just been sent back. The Resistance sees that it was programmed to go back and prevent John from being born, so they make plans to send someone else back to stop it. Then someone asks, “How about we just… don’t send someone back?” With that in mind, they could make two conclusions: Either A) The Terminator failed, as John is still alive in the present; or B) The Terminator has affected another timeline, which will have no bearing on their own existence. Or are they afraid that John will begin to fade away, BTTF-style? The same logic can be applied to Skynet’s perspective. It would know immediately if it had failed, because it would still be in the same situation rather than the rewritten version where the Resistance is beaten. And if there is indeed a multiverse, then sending a Terminator would only benefit Alternate-Timeline-Skynet and not itself. The next thing to look at would be the concept of an evolving timeline that changes with each iteration, as mentioned above. This is still essentially the multiple-timeline idea – they just happen to be alternate timelines that other time-travellers have visited. The defining aspect about a single timeline is the grandfather paradox and the inability to prevent things that lead to travelling back in the first place. If someone travels back in time, there has to be some point in the future where that exact same individual slipped into the past. But in a constantly re-writing timeline where past-version knowledge is passed on to the next version, there will eventually be a point where going back is unnecessary. Let’s say the latest Terminator goes back and kills Sarah/John. Skynet continues to play a perfect game and annihilates the resistance. It therefore has no need to pursue time travel technology and lives happily ever after. That means that from its perspective, that “Perfect Hand” Terminator simply blipped into existence at one point in time, which means that it either came from a parallel universe, or otherwise it would have to pursue the time-travel loop for no other reason than to avert a theoretical paradox. It seems to make a bit of sense for a machine to follow this through, but again – what would happen if Skynet just thought, “Nah, let’s just not send someone back, we don’t even need to anymore.” Such a world in a single-timeline universe would be unachievable (since the course of events would already be decided as soon as the Terminator shows up), and a Skynet working on a multiple-timeline train of thought wouldn’t follow that course of action as it would only help the multiverse Skynet.
* Why would the Terminator need a gun with a laser sight?
* It uses visual aiming, just like humans do.
* It's probably used to energy weapons and not the trajectories of conventional firearms. Also, the gun in question, the AMT Hardballer, was notoriously unreliable.
* Why in the bloody hell is anyone convinced that T2 was trying to be ambiguous about the 'alignment' of the Terminators initially? Right off the bat, the T-800 beats up a bar in an illogical maneuver to obtain clothes without killing anyone while the T-1000 just off-handedly kills a police officer. There could not be a more obvious EVIL TERMIE HERE!!!! sign over his head. This really stands out if you watch T1 and T2 back-to-back because the T-800's behavior so blatantly contradicts his behavior in the first movie.
* Maybe if you paid attention then you would notice that t-1000 wasn't in any way indicated to be a terminator intially, and he wasn't shown "killing" anyone (for all the viewer knows he punched that cop in the nuts). There was no blood, no typical terminator obtuseness or massive physique, absolutely nothing to indicate he was anything other then human. He also arrived second, same way as Kyle did. So I call bs on your supposed deduction that he was a terminator (a bad one too) without seeing the whole film. You might also remember that Arnold in the first film also was shown to kill only one punk, throwing the other and we are not shown what happens to third. Don't confuse your post-factum knowledge with what is actually shown in the film.
* And even though he didn't kill anyone, he did deal some pretty grievous bodily harm to two of the bikers (Stabbed one in the back and threw the other onto a goddamn grill.). The T-1000's behavior before he was revealed also contradicted what the audience expected a terminator to act like at the time. He doesn't sound monotone, his movements aren't quite as stiff, and he does seem fairly friendly all things considered.
* We see the T-1000 grab the cop in the beginning, then see him slump over. Death is implied, if not shown. And it is implied a HELL of a lot more than the T-800. Yes, he tosses around a bar full of bikers, but it isn't.... deadly. The movie does not make it look deadly, rather simply 'movie' violence. Hell, you spend more time on Arnie slipping on the shades than you do on the injuries of the bikers. As regards the punks from T1, we, uh, saw him straightforwardly rip the heart out of one of them. No flashiness, nothing. A vast contrast.
* I just watched the scene with T1000, all we see is him making a thrusting motion with his arm, framed from shoulders up. It implies a punch, a stab perhaps, but since we aren't shown any weapon, any blood on his hand, or him morphing his arm into a blade you'd have to have powers of premonition indeed to assume that he is a terminator. We don't even know that the cop is dead rather than just unconsious, we can only infer that in retrospect when we are shown that T1000 stabs his victims in a generally lethal manner. Yes, Arnold is shown in a "cool" way, while Patrick is slightly menacing, but we KNOW Arnold is a terminator (even without seeing the first film, termovision gives it away off the bat), and Patrick appears human. Thinking that Arnold is the bad guy, or maybe even both of them are bad guys is a perfectly natural assumption. It would seem slightly off on first viewing, but in no possible way is it as obvious a reversal as you claim it to be. As far as the first terminator, I am pretty sure he simply withdraws a half-open first (after doing whatever internal damage that he did), no heart there. Sure, not quite the same as stabbing someone through the shoulder with a dagger, but considering he only kills one punk on-screen in the firts film, not that far removed.
* Why doesn't the T-1000 simply envelop his opponents? We see that he can turn into a shapeless blob at will. So why doesn't he surround the T-800 with his mass, and then crush his vital components from the inside?
* He doesn't have that much mass. Fully enveloping the T-800 would be hard with his mass, and even if he did, crushing him would be impossible, because he would have to apply that pressure across his entire body. It's one thing to apply force on a single point on a blade a few inches across. Its another thing altogether to apply that pressure across the entire surface area of a seven-foot tall robot with the bulk of a bodybuilder. It will literally have a few hundreths or thousandths the strength to apply per square inch. Stabbity/punchy is more efficient.
* What happened after they removed the CPU from the terminator in T2? Was removing and sticking it back in enough to overwrite the "don't learn to much" program?
* "skynet presets the switch to read-only when we're sent out alone". So, it was not program, but a physical switch, like the one on SD-Memory Cards, which you can set to read only and back with a simple motion of a hand.
* It might have been asked before but why didn't Kyle just show Dr. Silbermann his brand from the prison camp to prove his story? He shows it to Sarah earlier in the movie, but Silbermann claims he "doesn't [have] a shred of proof." He might not have believed him still, but it's better than just expecting him to take his word for it.
* It wouldn't have done anything. It would've changed Silberman's view of him from "delusional whacko" to "delusional whacko with a tattoo."
* If anything Silberman would've just assumed Kyle did it to himself as part of his delusion. So-called "alien abductees" have been known to do the same thing.
* When was the resistance formed?
* Probably as soon as the first set of bombs stopped dropping.
* In T1 Kyle Reese said that humans were rounded up by the machines and put into extermination camps, and that one man - John Conner - taught them to fight back and escape. So the Resiatance was formed after Skynet started its Final Solution for humanity post-Judgment Day.
* So can an T-1000 be reprogrammed?
* It can be programmed in the first place, so probably yes. You'd just have to find a way to subdue, then interface with, what amounts to metallic pudding.
* Why don't Skynet make an terminator that self destructs when it find its target?
* Because then it's only got one shot to hit its target, and it makes it impossible to confirm the kill. If the explosion doesn't do it, then that's a total waste of an asset.
* In TSCC why would the police be after John?
* Because he and his mother are basically wanted terrorists who've bombed civilian targets in the past based on the ludicrous assumption that those targets are going to create killer robots in the future? You know, the same reason that Sarah was institutionalized in the second movie?
* I can understand Sarah getting arrested but John was only 10 years old when it happened.
* Irrelevant to why they're after him. He is both a witness and a minor being cared for by a criminal. The police will want him regardless, if only to question him.
* In the show, it just made it seem that the cops were trying to arrest him. That's why I'm confused.
* John has always been Sarah's weak point. If the police can catch him, they know that Sarah will come looking for him. Since she is a wanted terrorist, they'll do anything catch her. Also, living off the radar makes you wonder what they do for money, since its hard to get a decent job without SSN, permenant address, or anything resembling a clean background check. Besides, in the pilot, the security cameras witnessed him aiding in a fucking bank robbery that ended with an explosion that probably thermalized the vault. If there is evidence he made it out, of course they'll be looking for him.
* So during the future war is John the president of the whole human race or what?
* Hard to say. The series doesn't get into too many details about how many humans survived and where the survivors are all living. Also, not all humans are necessarily part of the resistance. The rest may be in concentration camps run by the machines or surviving on their own. John Connor may just be the leader of the human resistance movement, not necessarily the entire human species.
* What was the deal with Skynet's behavior in T3? The previous Judgment Day was originally brought about as an act of self-defense by Skynet after an attempted shutdown when the AI became self-aware several weeks after being activated. T3's Skynet meanwhile appears to go homicidal and order the extermination of humanity the moment it goes online, which just has to beg one to question the competency of the scientists who created it and just what its purpose was supposed to be.
* Eliminate human error?
* What would the T-800 or 1000 do afterwards if they succeed in their missions?
* In T3 the Terminatrix had a list of John Connor's lieutenants. Maybe the first two also had lists, but were told that killing Connor was the most important thing they could possibly do with. If they'd succeeded, they might have had orders to go on killing people known to be Resistance leaders. If they completed that list...well, they could always rent themselves out to a computer company. Heck, they might even have had some kind of standing order to help develop Sky Net.
* In SCC the units just shut down and wait for further orders unless outside stimuli directs them to attack. So they'd likely find some out of the way location safe from nuclear bombardment and power down until they received further orders.
* Does the resistance ever win the war against Skynet?
* It was stated in the first film that the time-travel attempt was a last-ditch effort by the machines to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Since the attempt failed, the resistance did win in that timeline. Too much of a headache to go into detail, but "yes" should suffice.
* Kyle Reese explains it to his interrogators in very clear detail. He tells them that the Human Resistance had already won the Human-Machine War, Skynet's defense grid and production factories were destroyed leaving Skynet unable to fight the war any longer. However this does make me wonder how Skynet survived until 2032 to be able to send a third Terminator into the past. The only answer I can come up with is the the Terminators on the field functioned independently and that Skynet found a way to exist as a powerless, isolated program.
* Why was John only worried about Kyle getting blown in the work camp during Salvation?
* Go back and rewatch the first film. Who does John Conner send back to protect his mom? Kyle. And who ends up fathering John Conner? Kyle.
* John isn't certain that that particular Kyle's actions would result in the creation of his past self. but he's not certain it won't. He can't take that risk.
* I understand that; but in the movie, it makes him seem like he was only interested in going to Skynet Central because Kyle was there and he just happened to rescue a bunch of people.
* Again, because him (John) existing is crucial to the survival of the species. He has to rescue Kyle because he can't take the chance that this Kyle isn't going to be his father. Needs of the many, and in this case the many is the entire race.
* Why didn't Skynet send two T-1000s into the past instead of a T-800 and a T-1000?
* They probably didn't have two T-1000s available at the time. Sending terminator's through time was a last ditch effort by the defeated Skynet, it would have used whatever it had available. Heck, maybe that was the first of the T-1000 models that had actually been built?
* The T-800 in T2 says that the T-1000 is a prototype. Skynet probably didn't have time to make more before it lost the war, so it sent the one that it had.
* In the Novelisation of T2, its stated that Skynet Hesitated over sending the T-1000 as due to its unique construction there were questions about just how "loyal" it would be to its mission. This was most likey due to the fact that programming Liquid Metal is a very different prospect to programming a computer chip that can be fitted with a "learn/don't learn" switch.
* Why does Sky Net even have a time machine if the whole "send an assassin back in time" plot was a last-ditch effort? And how did they intend to test this?
* It is all but outright said that the technology is just a prototype that Skynet had just completed and hasn't tested.
* Yes, but why do they have a time machine if they didn't want to use it?
* Because it just completed it and has not tested it yet. Its not an issue of "want" but "can."
* Same reason people will keep guns for self-defense despite not wanting to use it: Just in case they have to.
* Possibly Skynet discovered a human-led top secret research project about time travel when it took over the internet and global military computer systems. It didn't do anything with the information until the war started to turn against it, at which point it built upon what the human physicists had already done.
* The novels of the Terminator series established that Area 51 scientists had created time travel. Skynet is a Military AI and it would have access to the most top secret files the U.S Military has to offer.
* Skynet had the opportunity to converse with John Conner during Salvation. I find it hard to believe that it couldn't have produced an image on a wall or have spoken to him over the loud speakers. I only mention this because these figures are supposed to be the leaders of both sides of the Human-Machine War and enemies across the fabric of time itself. Skynet can't even take a moment out of its time to gloat at its worst enemy?
* I don't think Skynet was given a "Gloat" function, or saw the need to develop one.
* Yes it does. That's exactly what it does to Marcus when he's reborn into his second cyborg body. It goes over the entire plan up to that point and how Marcus was a pawn leading Connor to the facility.
* That wasn't gloating, that was congratulations. Skynet was too dumb to know that taking the form of his last kiss and congratulating him on something he didn't want to do would anger Marcus...much like why it sent a terminator instead of leaving a bomb, but to be fair, that would have worked if John did not learn a terminator killed him that way in T3.
* Admittedly, Skynet gloating at John Connor would have made the movie more interesting. It is supposed to be "self aware", so why not give Skynet some personality?
* Given that General Ashdown is a former Commanding Officer of the U.S Military and John Connor's uniform as of 2029 shows him with the rank of 4 Star General are we to assume that the Resistance is a continuation of the United States Military? I ask this because once the Human-Machine War is over someone is going to have to rebuild the country and assume command. Are we to assume the U.S Government and all its important members like the President have no authority anymore?
* The U.S. Government and its important members kind of, you know, were blown up.
* Highly improbable, the President and his cabinet would have been given advanced warning of an incoming nuclear strike and would be notified to go to a high security bunker. Important Military personnel like Generals, intelligence officers, etc. would be given this treatment as well. The U.S Government and Military faced the threat of nuclear attack from the Soviet Union during the Cold War for decades, they would have contingencies to keep the structure of their organization together even after a nuclear war.
* The Cold War had been over for a decade and a half by the time the bombs dropped in T3, and the end of that movie pretty clearly shows that they did not get to those bunkers--because John Conner is there, and they're not. Skynet had shut down most/all communication lines, that's a running plot thread in that movie.
* Skynet would have to keep tabs on where the civilian leadership were presently located, it would be critical to its intended role. Even if it hadn't taken over all the communications, it would be extremely easy to launch American missiles at the American government (much less time to get to a bunker that way) and still have more than enough to incite a MAD response from Russia.
* The Resistance is basically an alliance of surviving military units from different countries. Ashdown (and later Connor) was entrusted withn command by the leadership of this alliance.
* A rather minor point but in T2, after the good T-800 gets his arm ripped off in battle, how come John didn't offer him the old T-800's arm? They're never shown considering that option, they just throw it into the smelting pool without an afterthought.
* Leaving the T-800's Heroic Sacrifice aside, if they had planned on having it stick around it would be easier to explain a guy with a stump than a guy with 2 right arms. The one recovered from the lab was a righty, and the T-800 had lost it's left arm.
* Besides, both arms were rather brutally ripped off - hardly he could've just attach it to his shoulder - it would've required equipment and skills they didn't have, and besides they were dead fixed on destroying the thing.
* Why does Sky Net keep sending terminators back to later and later points in John and Sarah's lives when they are increasingly suspicious? Why not keep sending them to the earliest possible time (i.e. the time of the first movie)?
* Perhaps the continous tense is not aplicable here. Sky Net does not "keep" sending them - it does it once, and then it gets trashed by the humans, because the Terminators had failed. And since it doesn't know when exactly to send them to, it sends several to different periods of time. This is the only way all of this makes some bloody sense to me.
* From T2 when the old pick-up truck is being fixed...why would a Terminator need a torque wrench?
* Because it's more suited to the job than fingers, even of those fingers are super strong.
* Because the torque wrench tightens the bolt to a specific tightness, not just 'as tight as possible'. Besides, the T-800 was trying to pass as "Bob" at this point, so using it's fingers instead of the proper tool would have been suspicious.
* The T-1000's & TX's "mimicking" with their liquid metal exteriors... Are they actually producing a surface that would feel & react like flesh & clothing, or just a fake that looks real? For instance if you touched, prodded or punched them (good luck with that, by the way) would the flesh & clothing feel & react realistically?
* If the T-1000 can only imitate people and objects of equal size to itself, how was it able to imitate Lewis the guard, despite him being much larger than it was?
* In the Novelisation of the film it was stated that the T-1000 "stretched" its molecules out a little bit to accomodate Lewis' larger size. Even the most microscopic increase over its entire structure could allow for much larger sizes & is also how it gained that helmet & puffy jacket when it was a motorcycle cop.
* This troper always took that to simply mean there is a finite amount of T-1000. It could hollow itself out if necessary to create something larger (but less dense) than itself.
* Why on Earth did the cops/SWAT open fire on poor Miles? Did they go "Hey look, that guy's unarmed! Oh wait... noes!!! He's a nigga! Die scum!!". I mean, I would like to believe Cyberdyne guards told the police that Miles was obviously a hostage! And SWAT *knew* they were after the white male that slaughtered the police station... so, WHY? I mean, they later give Arnie SEVERAL warnings before opening fire... Now that I'm grown up, rewatching this movie is a disservice.
* The SWAT Team kicks in the door and screams "Drop your weapons!" They then see a man standing in the middle of the room, turning towards them, holding something in his hand. Race wasn't a factor; it was just bad timing that Miles was turning when the Team came in. Also, when they gave Arnie warnings, his pistol was tucked into his pants, meaning that he wasn't presenting a threat until he ignored their commands.
* Plus, IIRC, didn't Miles have a detonator in his hands at the time? After Arnold demonstrated his willingness to fire on officers with a minigun I doubt they'd want to take their chances with anyone.
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