Terminator: Dark Fate (Go See It!)

[Effie]

And speaking of John... ugh. That was almost as bad as Sarah dying of leukemia offscreen in T3. Yes, yes his death certainly had an impact on things, but the character deserved better than being killed right off the bat for shock value. How about having John sacrificing himself to save Dani instead of Grace? That way he gets to be a direct inspiration for Dani even if he's not the future leader anymore, while Grace gets to witness first hand why John was the leader in the original timeline? Or even if they left all the scenes as is, just rearrange it so that the first time we saw Sarah is when she rescues Dani and Grace, and only later in the movie while talking to Dani in the woods do we find out what happened to John?

John Connor isn't the leader because he's a superhuman figure. He's the leader because of contingency. Time isn't, in Dark Fate, something that is a closed loop. The future is malleable to human efforts. So without the particular historical circumstances that made John Connor important, he's just some asshole.

This is why Grace's efforts to protect Dani are misguided, because Dani's experiences against the Rev. 9 are necessary to make her into the person who could form a resistance to LEGION later. Sitting in a mineshaft until the world ends wouldn't help anything. So at the end of the movie, Dani swears to protect Grace because she understands that the future is alterable now and she's determined to seize that with both hands.

[Broomstick]

Did you miss where her humanity was questioned? Sarah pretty much assumed she was a Terminator of some sort, and even when Grace states she's human you can see Sarah doubts her.

I saw that, yes.

What I'm trying to get at is think through everything needed to augment a human to enable it to stand up to at least a T-800 in hand to hand combat (assisted with weapons) from the initial factory fight between Rev 9 and Grace:

I snipped your list of requirements and specs because it's long, but it's not bad. However, I think you're making too many assumptions. We don't really know what sort of upgrade-for-a-human tech is possible, or would be available in that alternate universe even if it's impossible in our own. Do you have to reinforce bones when you could replace them entirely? How does that subdermal armor even work and WHY doesn't she have bruises from all those over-the-top punches because, surely, even with subdermal armor capilaries in her skin would surely be smashed? For that matter, why doesn't the "living tissue" encasing T-800 Terminators show bruising? It does show some minor bleeding when cut/abraded, so why doesn't it bruise.

At a certain point overthinking the details ruins the enjoyment of the story.

This story requires suspension of belief regarding the upgraded human Grace - either accept that she's upgraded with magiteck to enable her to go toe-to-toe with a Terminator or accept this is not a story for you.

Because it's a Terminator and one of its jobs is to kill people. It doesn't care if people live or die. In cases where its cover is blown it no longer matters whether it stays stealthy or not.

Several Points:

A.) It's supposed to be an infiltration unit -- that's the whole point of the liquid metal covering. Also, it can easily regenerate the disguise or change it, giving it tactical advantages and options not open to a unit like the T-800 from 1984.

Once the "infiltration unit" is revealed as non-human, though, it no longer matters if it mass-murders the witnesses. In fact, it might even lean towards mass-murdering witnesses. Then, when it is away from the situation it reverts to stealth mode - which we even saw Rev-9 do, once he was outside the facility and meeting the newly arriving Texas law enforcement where he's once again posing as an ICE agent.

B.) Seeing the T-800 kill an entire station of cops in 1984 was impressive because we'd never seen anything like that as moviegoers before.

However, we in 2019 live in a world which has seen a decade of year after year of capeshit movies from Marvel and DC where superpowered invulnerables like the Kryptonians tear through USAF personnel like they're not there, etc. That stuff gets boring fast.

It gets boring for YOU fast. Given how much money the Marvel Movies have been raking in over the past decade, in addition to other franchises like Fast and Furious and the Mission Impossible movies, the general masses have NOT gotten bored yet.

I'm not disputing your opinion - it is, after all, how you feel about these movies. What I'm saying is that you seem to be an exception in the overall mass of movie goers. Hey, there are still folks who prefer rom-coms and "art" films with little to no action but lots of "character development". There's no disputing taste. But action block-busters heavy on CGI and over-the-top battles get made because there's a shit-ton of people who, apparently, want exactly that.

We saw throughout various points in the movie the Rev9 exhibit social engineering to talk/think it's way around obstacles -- the best one being the metal detector scene -- where it effortlessly comes up with a lie -- "metal hip from a tour in afghanistan" -- and gets through despite setting the detector off; similar to how the T-1000 assumed it's role as a police officer in the initial hunt for Connor in T2; using social engineering to get information it needed.

Yes, and it's also still a very good murder-machine. There's no reason it can't be capable of both modes of operation.

C.) Time line impacts from mass killings:

1.) You kill someone who turns out to be really important to your own creation via inadverdent action -- for example, you kill a random CBP agent who turns out to be the only child of the guy who's the head lead for the LEGION project -- and the guy kills himself over that. Congratulations, you own-goaled yourself.

In the Terminator franchise as a whole it's fairly well established that you can have "time orphans" - the future a character comes from can be eliminated without eliminating that character in the past. If you kill your own grandfather you don't vanish, never having existed in the Terminatorverse. You remain, in the past, standing over grandpa's dead body. Timelines don't "heal". So if you kill your creator you still exist, even if the future you come from no longer exists.

2.) Governmental attention increases. Consider that we effectively live in an age of mass surveillance from cell phones and cameras at every corner. This is alluded to by Sarah in the movie itself; and also how the Rev9 begins to track them down via seeing them appear on a random camera that was connected to the Internet in Mexico.

Basically, the Government (and it's spook agencies) won't pay much attention to camera footage if there's a riot in a CBP holding center in Texas and someone gets stabbed to death. They'll cursorily inspect the footage and call it a day.

However, if tons of people get massacred, especially by someone wearing a CBP uniform who attacks other CBP personnel, using unconventional weapons -- for example 15 guys swarming the unknown perp, trying to piledrive him into submission, and all 15 get stabbed in the head...simultaneously?

Yes, but the government reaction is dependent on a human being NOTICING there is something off about an incident. Which is a good reason for Rev-9 to slaughter witnesses, it cuts down on reporting and delays reaction, allowing it time to escape.

Spooks would get deployed, and every second of camera footage in that facility would be gone over with a fine tooth comb, altering the timeline; especially once they discover that, oh hey, Sarah Connor was there too.

Yep, but again -
1) Someone somewhere has to notice that something is wrong here, this is not a normal riot
2) Said someone has to evade the future-tech murder-machine long enough to report the weirdness
3) Human on other end had to notice and read said report, and NOT dismiss it as crazy-talk
4) If the first person contacted is not a spook the spooks still have to be contacted
5) Spooks have to send a response person or team to the site to investigate and/or capture
6) We do not have teleportation so there will be an interval of time before the spooks can get on-scene.

In other words, spook response will not be instantaneous, allowing Rev-9 time to murder witnesses, leave, and resume stealth.

Remember, that the entire supposed premise of the franchise since T2 is:

"The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves."

The elimination of SkyNet did not cause Carl to evaporate into time particles, he continued to exist. So yes, you can change the future even if the future is your past and you will continue to exist. It's a messy form of time travel allowed in the Terminatorverse.

Um... “has access” is not the same as “typically armed”. This may shock you, but most people who carry firearms as part of their job do not have cutting edge weaponry.

It may shock you, but standards for firearms equippage change over time. The M-4 Carbine may have been 'cutting edge' in 1994, but it's now widespread and ubiquitous; variants of it having replaced the traditional patrol shotgun in police cruisers over the last 20 years.

Yeah, I know that. I'm questioning your premise that the ICE mooks we seen in this movie would be carrying cutting-edge weaponry. Why? They aren't facing cutting-edge threats. They're dealing with (presumably, for the most part) unarmed men, women and children. They don't need a lot of firepower to do their jobs.

Since we don't know what the Rev-9's endoskeleton is made of no, we don't know that. For all we know, firing our ammo at future-tech in that universe is like trying to take on a modern tank by whacking it with a sword – just not going to happen.

Actually, we do.

See, in the "future war" scene, we saw Grace using projectile small arms against earlier Rev-7 Terminators to some effect.

Now in THAT case small arms having super-ammo does make sense. You've just pointed out how arms change over time, so why are you assuming that future side arms aren't optimized (as mush as feasible) to take out Terminators?

Skynet in 2029 has 40 watt Phased Plasma Rifles, while Legion in 2042 still uses bullets.

So? Bullets are quite effective. I've seen arguments that metal-slingers make more sense than energy weapons in general, but don't really feel like following that argument in detail in this post.

She is a lone, middle-aged woman who, at that point, has been disarmed. Just how many people do you think would be the norm to pick up someone like that?

Instead of one guy, a bunch of spooks escorted by a military special forces team.

>snort< Really? The crazy bitch they locked up in the looney bin back in the 1990's?

Either they think she's crazy, in which case they send psychiatrist nurses, or they know she's the real deal in which case they ALSO know that she's not the muderbot but just a human woman. Either way, a squad of spook-thugs is not required for Sarah.

Sarah Connor is the equivalent of someone who's seen/had contact/etc with Extraterrestial Beings in the Terminatorverse.

IF she's believed. Even if she is believed, I doubt anyone is going to send a squad of Special Forces because yes, people really are that stupid about underestimating middle-aged women.

Yeah, they were – did you miss the EMT saying “What's this? I've never seen anything like this?” and the medics at the ICE facility x-raying her?

What about the scars all over her body, and abnormal physical readings when they hook her up to the EEG in the ambulance; plus the subdermal armor mesh that would be seen when they check her for injuries as they load her into the ambulance?

Have you seen some of the weird-ass "body art" people do these days? The scars would like be attributed to either prior accident/surgery or body art until other weirdness is seen. I think the subdermal armor would be the big tip off.

That's when the spooks get called.

Do YOU have a number for The Spooks? Because I sure as hell don't. I could be contacted by aliens in the next five minutes and I wouldn't have a fucking clue who to call. How about you? Why would random EMTs have a hotline to the Government Spooks?

You are discounting that it takes time to disseminate this sort of news.

Yeah, well, for all we know they were on their way when all hell broke loose. Were you expecting them to teleport in? That's Star Trek, not Terminator.

I've been thinking this over; and it shows the lack of attention to detail by the Dark Fate writers.

Consider Terminator 2 -- the Police respond massively in force to Cyberdyne once it's confirmed that it's Sarah Connor and 'that guy' following the shopping mall shootout and the mental hospital breakout.

As John said it best regarding the amount of police showing up:

"Uh... all of 'em, I think."

Yes, Cyberdyne is a corporation involved in Secret Shit - if there's a break in OF COURSE there will be a massive response regardless of whether it's frat boys trying to prank the place or invading murderbots.

A CBP drone crashes, killing and wounding a number of CBP officers.

Nobody notices the tail number on the drone wreckage or calls it in?

Nobody goes: "N54123? Isn't that Jim's drone?"

Speaking as someone with some experience in aviation, including reporting problems - this takes time. There is not a direct hotline to Spook Central. You report a crash to 911, or the FAA, and it gets passed along the lines of communication. Someone goes out to investigate the crash which takes time. NO response is instantaneous, or even especially quick.

Nobody goes to the container and finds four guys inside dead?

Yeah, they go out and find four dead guys but it's not like Rev-9 left a note stapled to their foreheads saying "Bwa-ha-ha! I'm a killer robot from the future here to slaughter you all, bwa-ha-HA!" It's going to take time for someone to figure out this shit is weird.

Likewise, a CBP helicopter gets stolen by Connor & company and nobody hunts for it?

Good fucking luck finding it - hell, I know a half dozen ways to make it hard to follow an aircraft in the air, and in the dark makes it easier yet. Plenty of aircraft get stolen every year. I'll be damned if I turn this post into a primer on how to evade air traffic control but I assure you anyone who's earned a pilot license would be able to do it to one degree or another, and quite a few people with even less training than that.

Face it, Dark Fate was the equivalent of a Marvel/DC Capeshit movie, reskinned for the Terminatorverse.

I'll remind you yet again that the "capeshit" movies are making a lot of money these days.

[MKSheppard]

This is why Grace's efforts to protect Dani are misguided, because Dani's experiences against the Rev. 9 are necessary to make her into the person who could form a resistance to LEGION later.

Not really. She rose to become resistance leader in the same way John Connor originally was a resistance leader.

Here's a mindblowing thought -- each time the Bad Computer From the Future (TM) sends back Terminators, it makes it's own existence harder. Because each intervention into the past results in an increased amount of foreknowledge by it's target headed into the new future.

In the original Terminator timeline, Connor was a charismatic leader who rose out of the ashes.

The moment Skynet sent the T-800 back; Sarah Connor became a crazy survivalist, teaching her kid all sorts of military tactics, explosives manufacturing, etc; so he was ready to go when J-Day happened.

[FireNexus]

Here's a mindblowing thought -- each time the Bad Computer From the Future (TM) sends back Terminators, it makes it's own existence harder. Because each intervention into the past results in an increased amount of foreknowledge by it's target headed into the new future.

I’d co-sign that. They didn’t specify with Legion, but Skynet only started monkeying with time travel within the seconds immediately prior to its own final defeat.

Although, in the case of Skynet (and I assume in the case of Legion given the use of “Terminator” and “Judgement Day” and the fact that a semi-undestroyed Arnie-chip appears to have survived the final battle) it’s existence was contingent on the appearance of future tech to drive its development. When the future tech and the research based on it was destroyed, skynet never happened. If Cyberdyne wasn’t full-on bootstrap paradox ahead of the competition, somebody would have gotten to AI less than 22 years later.

[Broomstick]

That being said... even if Carl was a "learning computer" his mission objectives should have been more along the lines of the T-X (yes, really!) rather than what we saw. As stupid as the T-X was, it least in addition to John Connor and Kate Brewster, it had secondary objectives to wipe out their future lieutenants / known associates and assist in Skynet's takeover. Realistically Carl should have killed Sarah the moment he finished with John.

One of the ideas of the movie, at least that I took away, is that an AI takeover is inevitable. If we don't get Skynet, we get Legion. If we don't get Legion we get whatever. The fact that two independently created AIs of very different characters and contexts essentially create the exact same future (and with suspiciously similar hardware development ideas...) makes this clear.

So the idea that Carl develops the opposite way seems odd.

Something to remember is that Carl is a machine, and especially when he set out to kill John Conner he'd probably only been active/aware a short time. The ONLY job he had been given was to kill John Conner (apparently). Once he did that he had no further instructions. I suppose he could have stood in a corner and just put his brain in idle mode until his batteries ran down but he didn't.

So, you have a machine programmed to imitate humans to one degree or another that had fulfilled it's programmed orders and... no further orders. It actually does make some sense that, being programmed to imitate human behavior it would go do just that - imitate human behavior. Because what else does it have to do? It's the closest thing to a mission that it has left.

Carl is certainly not the first T-800 to switch sides, even if it is the first to choose to do so of its own volition. Perhaps that model was superseded in part because it was so easy for the enemy to subvert?

Even then - Carl is not working against SkyNet in Dark Fate. That's partly because SkyNet doesn't exist anymore, but even if it did, Rev-9 is from a different AI called Legion that might be seen as a rival/threat to SkyNet if SkyNet still existed... so Carl acting in opposition to Legion/Rev 9 might well fit within its programming.

As Shep noted, contact with Terminators is essentially contact with an alien. Carl is an AI, and while it has intelligence, self-awareness, and independence of action it is not and never has been human regardless of how well it might imitate a human in a given circumstance. So any attempt to fathom its motivations is guesswork.

[FireNexus]

Nope. We don't actually see how the war with Skynet Legion was going apart from the fact that humans were fighting back, and we don't learn what triggered it to attack in the first place. For all we know it did everything including the time travel out of boredom. Which given that it was initially designed and stuck with the unenviable task of taking internet trolls... ya I guess that kinda makes sense

Well, all we really know is that Legion turned out the lights for a couple of days. Then humanity dropped the bombs. Then it started sending out Terminators to exterminate us.

It could easily be that the war itself started because humanity misinterpreted an injurious but not obviously outright hostile action (maybe it caught some ubiquitous malware it was trying to stomp out without proper regard for the human cost, for instance) as an attack and nuked half the world. Legion could then have responded as if it was being attacked by friendly fire and responded as if all friendlies were compromised.

It's unfortunate that scene was cut because it makes perfect sense that Skynet wouldn't have wanted its creations thinking too much on their own, lest they do exactly what Carl did. IIRC that scene is in the novelization as well (along with it being mentioned that Skynet only built the T1000 as a last resort as it didn't know whether or not the T1000 could be kept under control), though YMMV if you want to treat the novel as canon.

I dunno. Terminators thinking on their own when Skynet is around to give orders isn’t a problem. For instance, Carl was completely unable to consider that Judgement Day never happened when executing his orders. As long as a Terminator has orders, it appears to be single-minded in its focus on them. Once it had no orders and Skynet no longer existed, then it started learning and acting on its own. Not before.

That being said... even if Carl was a "learning computer" his mission objectives should have been more along the lines of the T-X (yes, really!) rather than what we saw. As stupid as the T-X was, it least in addition to John Connor and Kate Brewster, it had secondary objectives to wipe out their future lieutenants / known associates and assist in Skynet's takeover. Realistically Carl should have killed Sarah the moment he finished with John.

Realistically, you want to do the bare minimum in terms of changing the future. Pretty much everybody was sitting pretty in camps until he busted them out. Doing it at the last possible second and doing it with the lightest possible touch is the best way to avoid destroying yourself.

Of course, this all supports my head canon that Skynet was a paperclip maximizer where peace was the paperclips. Putting people in work camps when you have terminators just makes zero sense at all. Unless you’re not trying to exterminate them in the first place.

And speaking of John... ugh. That was almost as bad as Sarah dying of leukemia offscreen in T3. Yes, yes his death certainly had an impact on things, but the character deserved better than being killed right off the bat for shock value.

I liked it because I didn’t want John the messiah and because the reverse fridging was apropos.

[FireNexus]

Carl is certainly not the first T-800 to switch sides, even if it is the first to choose to do so of its own volition. Perhaps that model was superseded in part because it was so easy for the enemy to subvert?

Carl didn’t switch sides. Carl was a machine without a country, and didn’t just decide that this random other machine was its master because it was a machine.

I have little doubt that Carl would have been unable to oppose Skynet just from base programming. But Skynet wasn’t the opponent, so Carl was not programmed to give a particular shit one way or the other.

[Patroklos]

I kind of thought that was obvious. His assumed lack of programming for the aftermath of his objective essentially gave him the freedom to do whatever. I think his choice of what to do with it was odd, but he has no loyalty to whatever random AI he encounters (or its minions). Honestly another super AI would be a rival to a manifestation of Skynet that would need to be nuetralized.

The real wierd thing about Carl is he has the future tech to make Skynet am an option again. He should have just walked into some random defense firm and turned himself over. Skynet knows its own origins and The T2 Terminator knew his history.

This is why Grace's efforts to protect Dani are misguided, because Dani's experiences against the Rev. 9 are necessary to make her into the person who could form a resistance to LEGION later.

Not really. She rose to become resistance leader in the same way John Connor originally was a resistance leader.

Here's a mindblowing thought -- each time the Bad Computer From the Future (TM) sends back Terminators, it makes it's own existence harder. Because each intervention into the past results in an increased amount of foreknowledge by it's target headed into the new future.

In the original Terminator timeline, Connor was a charismatic leader who rose out of the ashes.

The moment Skynet sent the T-800 back; Sarah Connor became a crazy survivalist, teaching her kid all sorts of military tactics, explosives manufacturing, etc; so he was ready to go when J-Day happened.

This is only because they progressively moved closer to the future with the iterations. They should have been going further back.

[Galvatron]

The real wierd thing about Carl is he has the future tech to make Skynet am an option again. He should have just walked into some random defense firm and turned himself over. Skynet knows its own origins and The T2 Terminator knew his history.

Maybe he figured that without Miles Dyson or Cyberdyne, whatever they came up with wouldn't be his Skynet.

[Patroklos]

As we learned between T1 and T2, wildly different origins yield an analogous result of such specificity the two differently sourced Skynets were indistinguishable. Granted, if the origin is too different then you get a Legion instead of a Skynet as the new movie shows us.

That being said, I would consider the circumstances of getting the same future CPU chip in year XX instead of year XX to be infinitely less of divergence than getting a future CPU chip (T2) and being organically formed from uninfluenced period technology (T1). If the second set of circumstances both gave us a Skynet, the first set almost certainly would too.

[FireNexus]

As we learned between T1 and T2, wildly different origins yield an analogous result of such specificity the two differently sourced Skynets were indistinguishable. Granted, if the origin is too different then you get a Legion instead of a Skynet as the new movie shows us.

Did we learn that? We can’t really be sure what the origins of Skynet were pre-T1. We can’t be sure how many iterations of failed futures led up to it. What we can be sure of is that no AI emerged from current tech for at least 22ish years after cyberdyne was destroyed. The only reason Skynet appears to have emerged in 1997 is bootstrapping, so the future when Skynet sends back a T-800 and a Kyle Reese is sent back as a protector was bootstrapped.

We have some indication of this from the fact that Reese got sent back in the first place. We know that a reprogrammed T-800 was an option, and Connor decided to forego it to send back Bedbugs McMalnourishment instead. We also know that Connor got this asshole to fall in love. He was full on trying to make sure this guy fucked his mom.

Perhaps it went through a few iterations before they succeeded in stopping judgement day, but at least this iteration started with John Connor ensuring his own existence and a skynet that bootstrapped from the last iteration.

[MKSheppard]

As we learned between T1 and T2, wildly different origins yield an analogous result of such specificity the two differently sourced Skynets were indistinguishable. Granted, if the origin is too different then you get a Legion instead of a Skynet as the new movie shows us.

That being said, I would consider the circumstances of getting the same future CPU chip in year XX instead of year XX to be infinitely less of divergence than getting a future CPU chip (T2) and being organically formed from uninfluenced period technology (T1). If the second set of circumstances both gave us a Skynet, the first set almost certainly would too.

I wrote this back in 2016 as a way of explaining things away:

In the original timeline, Skynet is a Series 4800 supercomputer built by Cyberdyne for SAC-NORAD. SAC can't exist if the cold war doesn't.

There's a nice way to square this with the timeline!

So...what if at the nightclub, when the 1984 T-800 starts shooting wildly, he kills a KGB rezident there to meet with a source from the Southern California Aerospace industry? Said rezident in the original timeline was key to Gorby not being chosen in 1985 as the Rezident was a very influential Andropov apparatachik.

So with that KGB guy killed by the T-800 in 1984, Gorbatchev takes power, the cold war ends; and Skynet is saved only from cancellation by the discovery of the chip in the Terminator wreckage which significantly accelerated research and made it interesting enough to fund in a peacetime environment.

[Galvatron]

As we learned between T1 and T2, wildly different origins yield an analogous result of such specificity the two differently sourced Skynets were indistinguishable.

What were the wildly different origins that we learned about? I thought that the original Skynet always was the product of a time loop.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Do we have to entertain the notion of T:DF being a thing? As a stand-alone action film, sure, it was serviceable. As a part of the Termie canon? Ugh, no.

I maintain that the S.M. Stirling books were the only real functional sequels to T2, even if they still contradict the central theme of T2. Hell, give us more Sarah Connor Chronicles even, because rehashing original films with updated effects and new actors is a tad done now. I’m looking at you, The Force Awakens

[Patroklos]

Did we learn that? We can’t really be sure what the origins of Skynet were pre-T1.

Yes. There are no indications in any other movie that there was any meddling in the timelines prior to the events of that movie. You can speculate all you want, but there is no evidence of it.

As we learned between T1 and T2, wildly different origins yield an analogous result of such specificity the two differently sourced Skynets were indistinguishable.

What were the wildly different origins that we learned about? I thought that the original Skynet always was the product of a time loop.

1.) Organic period technological development with no future influences (the Skynet that sent the first T-800 back) and 2.) future influenced "bootstrapping" on top of the #1 (the result of the first movie's actions).

If Skynet was always a product of future influence, then there surely would have been more care put into ensuring that chip made it where it had to besides randomly surviving the hydraulic press and being discovered. There is no need to wait until the last second to send the T-800 back either. If the answer to why Skynet waited to send the Terminator into the past was that it extremely dangerous to itself due to any number of accidental timeline alterations above and beyond the specific one it desired, it can't also be entirely dependent on a timeline alteration that is completely tangential to its agent's mission.

Even if you think the first movie is part of a loop, there still has to be an unaltered timeline that yielded the first iteration of that loop. The inital divergence may be a timeline change that was completely unrelated to anything on-screen but eventually stabilized on the circumstance we see, but thats conjecture. Also, T2 proves they are not stuck in a loop.

[Galvatron]

What makes you think Skynet knew about the chip? The second T-800 (who I will henceforth be referring to as 101b) had "detailed files" and he only knew that Cyberdyne developed a revolutionary new microprocessor, which he attributed to Miles Dyson.

Sarah and 101b learned about the chip from Dyson, who also had no idea where it came from until he met them.

[MKSheppard]

For that matter, why doesn't the "living tissue" encasing T-800 Terminators show bruising? It does show some minor bleeding when cut/abraded, so why doesn't it bruise.

In a lot of fanfic and such; the authors assume that T-800s can run in "infiltration mode" settings which limits a whole bunch of things (maximum punch force, maximum joint rotation, etc) to avoid damaging tissue during long term missions to prevent the disguise from being blown.

Once the "infiltration unit" is revealed as non-human, though, it no longer matters if it mass-murders the witnesses. In fact, it might even lean towards mass-murdering witnesses. Then, when it is away from the situation it reverts to stealth mode - which we even saw Rev-9 do, once he was outside the facility and meeting the newly arriving Texas law enforcement where he's once again posing as an ICE agent.

That's the thing -- mass murder then stealth mode works in the future war, where mission times are short -- i.e. you infiltrate a human bunker, kill everyone inside, then change identity and greet an incoming human patrol as you leave, having booby trapped everything to explode when they enter the bunker. Also, communications between resistance groups may or may not be happening -- it's also not likely that they'll be able to fax an image of your disguise to other bunkers.

But in the past, where mission times are open ended; plus a functioning government calling the shots; such methods don't work as well. Presumably facebook-net, being built around social network scanning to find TERRA-ISTS would be more tuned to social dynamics than Skynet. Plus, the aforementioned "avoid messing timeline up more than necessary" bit.

But action block-busters heavy on CGI and over-the-top battles get made because there's a shit-ton of people who, apparently, want exactly that.

Chinese film-goers abandoned Dark Fate (as well as Gemini Man); so no chance of it recouping losses at all. Meanwhile, Joker made as much profit as Infinity War.

I'd also like to take a moment to point out a key moment that had me rolling my eyes -- the air battle/crash sequence.

For those of you following us, basically, the Rev-9 steals a USAF KC-10 Extender, killing everyone on board; then runs over a pair of what appears to be F-35s causing them to explode in mid air, with little damage seen to the KC-10; before jumping out of the cockpit towards the C-5, moments before the two planes collide in mid-air.

The C-5 eventually breaks up, but not for about 3-4 minutes of CGI action sequence inside the cargo bay, as our heroes battle Rev9 while the C-5 goes down in flames, before jettisoning a parachute rigged humvee with them in it.

There's a lot to unpack in that, from:

A.) Theft of a strategic heavy refuelling asset from a USAF base; destruction of two stealth fighters pursuing a stolen strategic heavy airlifter, and once they find the bodies of the crew in the crash site as well as the black box on the KC-10; things will get very spooky.

B.) There's 'turn your brain off a bit' and then there's "turn it off so much that you're functionally retarded". I'm sure, as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on aviation, you know precisely how long it takes for even a heavy cargo aircraft to distengrate following a mid-air collision with another aircraft of the same general weight class.

In the Terminator franchise as a whole it's fairly well established that you can have "time orphans" - the future a character comes from can be eliminated without eliminating that character in the past. If you kill your own grandfather you don't vanish, never having existed in the Terminatorverse. You remain, in the past, standing over grandpa's dead body. Timelines don't "heal". So if you kill your creator you still exist, even if the future you come from no longer exists.

What's Skynet/Legion's goal? To ensure the preservation of it's own existence in the future. Leaving behind a "time orphan" of a Rev9 unit doesn't check off that goalbox.

Yeah, I know that. I'm questioning your premise that the ICE mooks we seen in this movie would be carrying cutting-edge weaponry.

We can see two types of CBP mooks:

Those wearing basic bulletproof vests like the Rev9's disguise is wearing, and tactical teams with more comprehensive armor. Tac Teams would be the ones with the carbines.

Right now, Dark Fate is so new, the internet firearms database hasn't updated it's entry beyond what's seen in the trailer(s); but when it moves to home video, we'll know more.

Now in THAT case small arms having super-ammo does make sense. You've just pointed out how arms change over time, so why are you assuming that future side arms aren't optimized (as mush as feasible) to take out Terminators?

Well, there are physical limits to how fast you can push bullets with small arms technologies, etc.

Skynet in 2029 has 40 watt Phased Plasma Rifles, while Legion in 2042 still uses bullets.

So? Bullets are quite effective. I've seen arguments that metal-slingers make more sense than energy weapons in general, but don't really feel like following that argument in detail in this post.

I'm just pointing out that Skynet is more advanced than Legion -- it's nothing that has revelance to our arguments -- it's just really amusing that Skynet in 2029 can equip it's cyborg legions with phased plasma rifles in the 40-watt range, while Legion in 2042 has to use bullets.

*long stuff on general Spookiness trimmed*

This film takes place in the T1/T2 timeline and I just remembered a key bit from T2:

BRYANT
Listen, Mr. Dyson, I know I haven't been here that long, but I was wondering if you could tell me... I mean, if you know...

DYSON
Know what?

BRYANT
Well... where it came from.

DYSON
I asked them that question once. Know what they told me? Don't ask.

So in this universe:

*) Most of the 1984 Terminator's remains were recovered from the hydraulic press.

*) A significant portion of insanity occured "on video" at Cyberdyne in 1991/1992 and in front of hundreds of cops as witnesses.

They'd also have Reese's videotaped interview from 1984, plus whatever interviews that Sarah gave at Pescadero (we saw one such interview on screen in T2).

Do YOU have a number for The Spooks? Because I sure as hell don't. I could be contacted by aliens in the next five minutes and I wouldn't have a fucking clue who to call. How about you?

After a few minutes of searching on the internet; I'd be calling the CDC Rabies Duty Officer at 404-639-1050.

Then I'd call the Battalion Duty NCO for the USMC Cryptological Support Battalion at Fort Meade at (301) 677-6990.

I may not have the top spook's number(s), but the guy(s) at CDC and Fort Meade would.

It may take some time to get my information up the chain of command. It would go faster if there was some abnormal incident with widespread regional attention going on at the time; like the aliens crashed after causing a sonic boom that blew out every window for 50 miles.

Speaking as someone with some experience in aviation, including reporting problems - this takes time. There is not a direct hotline to Spook Central. You report a crash to 911, or the FAA, and it gets passed along the lines of communication. Someone goes out to investigate the crash which takes time. NO response is instantaneous, or even especially quick.

Except that this wasn't a crash by an unconnected aircraft, but one with a corporately owned CBP heavy drone. When your organisation (CBP) "owns" the drone, things move faster.

Yeah, they go out and find four dead guys but it's not like Rev-9 left a note stapled to their foreheads saying "Bwa-ha-ha! I'm a killer robot from the future here to slaughter you all, bwa-ha-HA!" It's going to take time for someone to figure out this shit is weird.

Going back to 'spookiness', I'd like to remind you that it's 2019.

The moment someone enters CONNOR, SARAH and her biometric data (fingerprints or eyescans) into the CBP database and hits SUBMIT; alarm bells are going to start ringing at whatever spook group got assigned the "Sarah Connor file" about 30 seconds later.

About 10 minutes later, the duty officer for the Spook Group is dialing the call tree for whatever alphabet agency (ATF, FBI, DEA, etc) is closest to the CBP Detainee Facility and telling them to send a full tactical team to pick up Sarah Connor and transport her immediately to Fort Whatevername as a very high priority individual.

At the same time, the duty officer's assistant is dialing the CBP facility to notify them to prepare for transport of Sarah Connor, and to get more information on the circumstances of her arrest.

"Connor? We lost a bunch of guys arresting her."

"What?"

"Yeah, one of our drones crashed right there. We checked the drone control post, found all of the guys inside dead."

"Dead, how?"

"Fuck if I know, let me give you the phone for their Commanding Officer."

*brring* <pleasantries exchanged>

"Yeah, all four were apparently killed at the same time; it's like someone drove a railroad spike into their heads."

"Thanks."

Assistant Duty Officer puts down phone and looks at Duty Officer. "Hey Bob; we've got a Chromejob."

"Fuck, I'll start calling in the tactical groups from Bragg and Pope."

[Galvatron]

FWIW, the T2 novelization indicates that John seeing "No Fate" etched into the table is where the divergence occurred.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I’d also say that the cut scene of Uncle Bob having his CPU switched to allow learning, is in subsequent cuts of the film, notably the Skynet edition. That being the case, I’d have thought it be canon that Skynet put a limit on infiltrators, and for that matter all HKs and other units, learning irrelevant to mission info. Which makes the Carl storyline, interesting as it was, even less acceptable.

[Patroklos]

What makes you think Skynet knew about the chip?

Skynet took control of all defense computers prior to judgement day, there is no reason to think this was not included. And of course, it's using the technology itself, which it must have recognized when it's putting the exact same chip into its Terminators later. Do you think it magically recreated it nano transistor by nano transistor? I get we don't see the actual chip from 101b, but movie to movie the Terminators, from the inside to the outside, are visually identical. It's hard enough to handwave that an AI calling itself Skynet with the same motivations and tactics exists in both of these movies despite the divergences introduced. Its beyond reasonable to think they designed the exact same Terminator decades later down to the slightest detail. Skynet v2 got that plan from somewhere...

The second T-800 (who I will henceforth be referring to as 101b) had "detailed files" and he only knew that Cyberdyne developed a revolutionary new microprocessor, which he attributed to Miles Dyson.

True.

Sarah and 101b learned about the chip from Dyson, who also had no idea where it came from until he met them.

Yet Skynet was building these same chips decades later. Coincidence?

[Galvatron]

Sarah and 101b learned about the chip from Dyson, who also had no idea where it came from until he met them.

Yet Skynet was building these same chips decades later. Coincidence?

Not a coincidence, but a loop. According to Dyson, the CPU developed by Cyberdyne was only based on ideas that they were able to glean from 101a's inoperative chip. I therefore always imagined that their first generation of CPUs were relatively primitive and Skynet continued to refine them until it came up with what we saw in T2. There's even a bulky prototype sitting on Dyson's desk in his home:



And, yes, we did see 101b's chip:



Let's not forget: Skynet invented a working time machine on its own. I have no trouble believing that it was creative enough to improve upon its own design without human assistance.

[Patroklos]

It didn't improve. It designed the exact same chip. There is no difference between the T1 and T2 examples of a T-800. Even their model names are the same. This is despite the Skynet responsible for the first example not having any connection to the second.

Again, loops have to be started. If you think what we saw was loop iteration 1,999,390,292 cool. Prior to iteration 1, however, there was a timeline where Skynet was created manipulated the timeline that first time without a contribution from the future. Unless you want to postulate a completely unrelated timeline contamination, Skynet being the result of that.

But again, we are not in a loop or T2 couldn't have prevented judgment day or any other alternation to the overall "Skynet is a thing and sends back a Terminator" chain of events. There is no Skynet it this movie, so there was no loop. That's the thing about causality loops. They can't be broken without outside interference.

[Galvatron]

This is despite the Skynet responsible for the first example not having any connection to the second.

I think that's where we disagree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aif3g60XJmo#t=1h12m

[Patroklos]

Agreed. I am only considering the movies. Even as movie novilizations go Terminator is niche.

[Galvatron]

All the movies? I stopped considering any of them after T2. They're just mind-numbing at this point.

The tragic thing is that there are certain elements of each one that I've liked and would probably steal if I were to make my own idealized version of a third Terminator movie. Unfortunately, none of those elements were enough to make any of those movies worth a shit to me.