Terminator gets rebooted in 2015

[PREDATOR490]

I would like a Terminator movie that actually ditches the time travel so they can tell a consistent story. However, that only resulted in giving us T4 which ended up being a poor action flick mess and TSCC which ended up being a melodramatic waste.

Says the one guy on this board who hated T:SCC. It was very well received.

Not enough to save it, keep it going or get any attempt at resolution.

[Thanas]

Not enough to save it, keep it going or get any attempt at resolution.

Critics loved it, audiences did not as the friday night timeslot killed it. So like a lot of other shows. None of that in any way proves your point.

[Grumman]

It should be noted that Kyle Reese did the same thing in the previous movie; the final act had Kyle and Sarah going to Sunnyvale to destroy Cyberdyne systems, which was then a small manufacturing company.

Kyle Reese died fighting the Terminator. His last act was to put a demolition charge in its torso and he died in the blast. This is not like what happened in Judgement Day.

Also, the possibility that John Connor would be erased from existence if Judgement Day was prevented would have added plenty of drama and tension. Do we sacrifice one boy to save billions of people?

No, because it's technobabble bullshit that draws attention to the premise's greatest weakness. The last thing anyone making a Terminator movie should be doing is rubbing the audience's face in the fact that it's a bootstrap paradox.

Plus, John Connor was a little shit. Tell the audience that if they stop millions of children being burned alive one obnoxious kid will never be born, and they're going to roll their eyes.

[PREDATOR490]

Not enough to save it, keep it going or get any attempt at resolution.

Critics loved it, audiences did not as the friday night timeslot killed it. So like a lot of other shows. None of that in any way proves your point.

What point is it you think I have to prove, exactly ?
TSCC ratings went from 10m > 8m > 6m > 5m > 3m

You can cite critics loving it all you want, viewers were not watching it and it got shit canned after 1.5 seasons to gain traction.
End of Story

The time travel mechanic of this franchise has consistently been a problem because they make a mess out of it like T3, con volute it like TSCC or outright cant decide what they are doing like T4.

Remove the time travel mechanic: No more techno babble bullshit about different timelines and everyone freaking out about stepping on a butterfly.

[Patroklos]

Without the time travel component you basically have Ironman: AI. Terminator is more than just the killbot, its the soul crushing drama of getting the fore knowledge of an unavoidable apocolypse of our own making, later reversed by the hopeful realization that they might actually be able to avoid it. Additionally, half the terror of the Terminator itself is that he a foreshadowing of the horror humans will face, leaving mostly to our imagination to fill in the rest from this small personification of hell on Earth we see on film.

The time travel doesn't work if you think about it, but the move has enough successful themes for most viewers to accept it as a justified handwave to andvace a greater story. Its on different that intersteller travel via "insert vaguely Russion sounding name" drive, check your questions at the door mechanics.

[Thanas]

What point is it you think I have to prove, exactly ?

[

That you are not just trying to pass your well-established dislike of the show as fact. But hey, good job of that so far.

[TheHammer]

Attempts to make any contribution to the Terminator franchise after T2 have went nowhere and now they want to erase it all and start over just to ensure they can keep the rights ?

T3 wasn't really an attempt to contribute to the franchise. Almost the entire second half of Terminator 2 was about the protagonists refusing to let Judgement Day happen. It ended with the T-800 committing suicide for no other reason than to stop Judgement Day from happening. Unless you were going to do a "prequel" in the pre-change timeline that should have been the end of it. Instead Terminator 3 declared "No, Judgement Day happens anyway, and the T-800 killed himself for nothing".

The problem is that if they stopped Judgment Day, John Connor should have been erased from existence (similar to how Marty McFly was almost erased from existence in Back to the Future). In T3, John actually says that, "He might not even exist" if he actually stopped Judgment Day.

There are two prevailing theories in time travel scifi: Single timeline, parallel timeline.

In true single timeline time travel, all instances of time travel are accounted for. Meaning you could not alter history. Despite your best efforts, you will fail to alter whatever historical event you seek to achieve. Rather your actions merely help shape the history you already know. The original terminator could have followed the single timeline theory. None of its events are inconsistent with that premise. Kyle reese goes back to become J Connor's father, and the Terminator in essence becomes the father of skynet. Those events both incorporated in to and were consistent with the history that Kyle Reese already knew. He was merely completing his destiny so to speak.

What throws it on its head are T3, which confirms that actions that took place in T2 "altered history" and pushed Judgement Day down the road a bit. However John Connor specifically remembers the original dates given by the Terminator for Judgment day, and other historical events that didn't come to pass in his timeline. This then skewed into true parallel timelines is more akin to what we see in Star Trek other series where the protagonists seemingly "change history" and yet their own memories remain of the "original timeline". The logical explanation isn't that they've changed history, rather they've moved into a parallel universe. Its the only way that changes to the timeline don't seem to create paradoxes like you'd expect they would.

The original Back-to-the-future would at first appear to work on the single timeline theory, however the first clue it isn't is when Marty returned home he remembered only his original timeline. Later sequels would seem to imply that there were parallel timelines, but that what timelines you could travel to were impacted by the times in which you left. I could get into this, but that's a discussion for another thread.

[Tribble]

Dialog from the first movie suggests that it's parallel timelines:

Sarah: So you're from the future?
Reese: One possible future... I don't know tech stuff.

Apparently Reese was given a brief explanation of how time travel worked before he left, and given what we've seen I'd say his explanation fits.

[Grumman]

Divergent timelines would make sense.

You've got one timeline from before the movies, where Sarah Connor lives a boring life until Judgement Day, and at the end of the war Skynet and the Resistance send back the T-101 and Kyle Reese.

You've got the timeline of the first movie, diverging at the point where the T-101 and Kyle Reese arrive, where Sarah Connor has a different son but still names him John Connor, and where her foreknowledge and the recovery of the T-101 changes the progression of the war. In this new timeline they send back the T-1000 and T-800.

And then you've got the timeline of Terminator 2, diverging at the point where the T-1000 and T-800 arrive, in which the T-800 lets John Connor free his mother and they prevent Judgement Day altogether. Or, if you recognise T3, they don't prevent Judgment Day, the T-800 committed suicide for nothing, and the war against Skynet happens anyway.

[Metahive]

Forget about making sense of the Terminator timeline, there's none or, alternatively, Azathoth, the blind idiot god, is regularly remaking its rules.

First movie: "Skynet was defeated, sent one Terminator back in desparation, Kyle was sent after him and the time machine was destroyed afterwards"

Second movie: "Skynet somehow sent another Terminator back and Connor left the time machine intact to sent a reprogrammed Terminator through to pursuit the first, so the war in the future isn't really won"

Third movie: "Skynet is no longer build by Cybderdyne Systems and a supercomputer with a fixed location but an internet worm who is birthed by yet another terminator sent back in time with yet another terminator sent after the first by the good guys. The terminator sent by Skynet is more advanced than the other two and seemingly takes their failures in account despite the fact it shouldn't even know about it. O, and Skynet managed to kill Connor rather easily and also based on knowledge which it should not have and which eradicates the point of the whole series"

Fourth movie: O fuck it, whatever. At least there's no time travel here.

[Losonti Tokash]

The T-800 and T-1000 were sent simultaneously. Kyle Reese and Uncle Bob were also sent at the same time as each other.

[Metahive]

Not supported and directly contradicted in the first movie:

REESE
...it had no choice. The defensive grid was smashed. We'd taken the mainframes...We'd won. Taking out Connor then would make no difference. Skynet had to wipe out his entire existence. We captured the lab complex. Found the...what-ever it was called...the time-displacement equipment. The Terminator had already gone through. They sent two of us to intercept, then zeroed the whole place. Sumner didn't make it.

Notice the use of singular for the Terminator and that the other guy who stepped in with Reese was another human, not a repurposed T-800 who was also supposed to accompany Reese.

SILBERMAN:
Then how are you supposed to get back?

REESE
Can't. Nobody goes home. Nobody else comes through. It's just him and me.

[Crazedwraith]

That reference to Sumner is in an early draft of the script iirc. Not the actual film itself.

And although yeah, T2 did retcon it a bit, its easy to explain as them just not telling Reese about the other terminator mission.

[Grumman]

And although yeah, T2 did retcon it a bit, its easy to explain as them just not telling Reese about the other terminator mission.

Or you could explain the retcon by the fact that Skynet built a machine to perform retcons.

[Metahive]

Why shouldn't Kyle be given information about this? No, really, what's achieved in letting both Kyle and Sarah in the dark about future attacks? I mean, Kyle even says that future attacks by time travelling killbots won't happen at all, FFS!

[Losonti Tokash]

John lied? Kyle was mistaken? He didn't account for a changed future?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Or...the events of T1 changed the way the war goes, allowing Skynet to develop more advanced machines like the T-1000, and in this future they only send back the T-1000,the resistance then sends back the re-programmed T-800. So Kyle doesn't know about the missions from T2 because they haven't happened yet/happenin a new timeline created by the events of the first film.

[Tribble]

If there are divergent timelines (the dialog from T-1 strongly suggests this), in the original timeline the T-800 and Reese may have been the only ones sent. IMO here is how it played out:

1. Just before it's destruction Skynet sends a T-800 back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor.
2. John Connor and Co. take over the time displacement equipment.
3. Upon learning what Skynet did, they figure out that since John is still alive and no one remembers a T-800 being sent to 1984, time travel must have caused a divergent timeline to form (hence the "one possible future" line).
4. John Connor realises that "the future is not set" and a divergent timeline can be altered. He doesn't want Skynet winning in ANY timeline, so he decides to send Reese back.

IMO the viewer never gets to see the original course of events (apart from Reese's flashbacks in T1) and each movie represents a different timeline.

[TheHammer]

Despite what Reese may have said, Terminator 1 is entirely consistent with a single timeline time travel. It actually is one of the better movies to handle it. None of what they do "alters the future", it merely fulfills the history that Kyle Reese already knew. The machine could never win via time travel. If it did, it never would have sent a terminator to begin with. The fact that John Connor was there meant that the Terminator had and would fail. John Connor knew that he had to send Kyle back, not only to stop the terminator, but to become his father. Any future where Skynet didn't exist, also meant that John Connor would not exist.

Its only in T2 where the concept of "changing the future" is introduced (but not confirmed until T3). But again, in those scenarios you aren't really "changing the future", you are merely impacting a parallel timeline. Any scenario where Skynet sends back a time traveling assassin means Skynet has (likely) already lost in that timeline - and nothing will change that.

[Tribble]

T1-T4 are all considered canon, and the only way that could work is if there are parallel timelines. We don't know if T1 is the "original" timeline, or if it's a parallel timeline which happens to have a self-contained paradox. I'm assuming that it's not the original based on what Reese said, but your idea is equally applicable.

[TheHammer]

In a parallel timelines scenario, there is no "original" timeline. They all are happening concurrently and at infinite points in time. When you "time travel" you can travel to a time that is so nearly identical that it seems indistinguishable from your own. You can then affect that timelines history, but not your own.

[Thanas]

T1-T4 are all considered canon, and the only way that could work is if there are parallel timelines.

This is in fact the truth, or at least the reason why T:SCC was ever made.

[Tribble]

Perhaps I am misusing terminology here.

What would you call the timeline where time travel was not really involved in it at all? Where John Connor was born from an unknown parent who died before the war, Skynet came online via a breakthrough in research rather than re-engineering the arm and chip from the first terminator, John won the war with his abilities alone rather than having prior knowledge of events, and with the only impact of time travel being that Reese and a T-800 left and never returned?

Would it be another parallel timeline? Or would it be a "main/original" timeline with all the other timelines branching off of it?

[Thanas]

Perhaps I am misusing terminology here.

What would you call the timeline where time travel was not really involved in it at all? Where John Connor was born from an unknown parent who died before the war, Skynet came online via a breakthrough in research rather than re-engineering the arm and chip from the first terminator, John won the war with his abilities alone rather than having prior knowledge of events, and with the only impact of time travel being that Reese and a T-800 left and never returned?

Would it be another parallel timeline? Or would it be a "main/original" timeline with all the other timelines branching off of it?

The latter.

[TheHammer]

Perhaps I am misusing terminology here.

What would you call the timeline where time travel was not really involved in it at all? Where John Connor was born from an unknown parent who died before the war, Skynet came online via a breakthrough in research rather than re-engineering the arm and chip from the first terminator, John won the war with his abilities alone rather than having prior knowledge of events, and with the only impact of time travel being that Reese and a T-800 left and never returned?

Would it be another parallel timeline? Or would it be a "main/original" timeline with all the other timelines branching off of it?

"You're not thinking fourth dimensionally" - Doc Brown

That history never happened. Kyle Reese was always John Connor's father. Without him there is no John Connor. John's knowledge of the future abilities was a big part of what made him so effective. He had his whole life to prepare. Further, there was no skynet, at least not in the timeline Kyle Reese came from, without the chip and arm from the first terminator.