Terminator: Dark Fate (Go See It!)

[Broomstick]

An oddly specific thing for an infiltration model to just have eh? Kind of a niche capability, given how uncommon time travel is for Skynet. It would have really come in handy if you were another T-800 sent back in time to track down a T-1000...

Or else the "time energy sense" was not, actually, developed for that purpose but for something else and just happened to be useful for detecting time travel.

Being able to sense energy might be useful for a Terminator - we see the future human resistance using electricity, so being able to detect energy use might help locate concentrations of humans. The Terminator future is post-nuclear, so being able to detect and avoid radiation hot spots might be useful, too.

It may even be that he built a time travel detector after reasoning that Skynet had clearly sent multiple Terminators into the past and more might arrive.

We are given zero detail of what, exactly, Carl is sensing or how.

It still makes no sense. Unless Carl or Sarah just happens to be within a few minute's travels to wherever that spot is, there is no reason for them to find the Terminators before they go incognito. For this specific movie, the Legion Terminator was not intercepted by Sarah anywhere near where he arrived at.

Even if Carl knows when and where a Terminator is arriving from the future there is still the problem that Sarah has to get herself to the location at the right time. It may be as simple as Sarah getting stuck in traffic for awhile and then having to track the Terminator down from the point where he appears.

[Patroklos]

We all agree that Sarah hunting down and killing Terminators by herself is stupid, right?

[Galvatron]

Does she only do it for revenge or does she have some sort of death wish?

[FireNexus]

An oddly specific thing for an infiltration model to just have eh? Kind of a niche capability, given how uncommon time travel is for Skynet. It would have really come in handy if you were another T-800 sent back in time to track down a T-1000...

It could be that this sense has other uses, and its dissemination led to the advent of time travel rather than vice versa. Considering that we’re coming up on the limits of our current computing technology without developing robots, it’s not out of the question that the terminator chip gets superconducting at room temperature through the exploitation of new physics.

It still makes no sense. Unless Carl or Sarah just happens to be within a few minute's travels to wherever that spot is, there is no reason for them to find the Terminators before they go incognito. For this specific movie, the Legion Terminator was not intercepted by Sarah anywhere near where he arrived at.

He never specified how long “before the event” this became obvious. Could be months, or years.

On a separate note, Sarah Connor's narration at the start of T2 could be used to lend support to the simultaneous push of Terminators into the past. While the first Terminator did alter the timeline, if they both traveled at the exact same time T-1000 could have arrived in the future altered 1995 because that's the only 1995 that now exists. In this case, the altered (by the actions in 1984) timeline 2029 would still have a different instance of Skynet due to the divergence but have no connection to the T-1000 the previous iteration sent back. This gets around the fact that the same Sarah Connor narration clearly states Skynet only sent two Terminators into the past. If you have to count 1984 T-800 and the T-1000 then there is no room for Carl. If you don't have to count T-1000 there is room for Carl, and Uncle Bob isn't sent back due to any action by this timeline's Skynet but rather because John remembers the necessity to do so.

Or the Sarah narrating before T2 was from between when they blew up cyberdyne and when Carl killed John. Narrator Sarah doesn’t know they sent back multiple terminators yet.

So much of this could be ironed out with a few minutes of thought. You can never get all of the paradoxes right, but every glance shouldn't bring up a new one.

It doesn’t, really. You’re just nitpicking. See the “Sarah’s narration” above.

[FireNexus]

We all agree that Sarah hunting down and killing Terminators by herself is stupid, right?

No. Sarah Connor doing that kind of thing is entirely sensible. She has no reason to live and hates terminators because they have taken away everything she has ever loved. Her being successful over and over again may require some suspension of disbelief, but she has been training to survive war against terminators for decades, so not that much.

We also get an implication that she’s teamed up with some high end bad asses given that she got a high-ranking military guy to give her top secret weapons and a cargo plane sight unseen.

[Broomstick]

There is also the fact that she actually does have the assistance of another Terminator, even if she's not aware the entity sending her information is a Terminator. Intel is important. Being able to get the drop on a murderbot is no doubt an advantage.

[Patroklos]

No. Sarah Connor doing that kind of thing is entirely sensible. She has no reason to live and hates terminators because they have taken away everything she has ever loved. Her being successful over and over again may require some suspension of disbelief, but she has been training to survive war against terminators for decades, so not that much.

The bolded part is what I was talking about. Her motivation is entirely understandable.

And she doesn't have the training to fight a war against Terminators. She is the only one alive who has fought one, in the extreme minority of effort roll alongside other Terminators or soldiers who DO have decades of fighting Terminators, for all of maybe a few days of experience. And if you remember the preferred tactic of BOTH those experts was to not even try fighting, let alone destroy them, but to hide and wait for Judgment Day. It was HER preferred tactic in T2 as well, btw. There is nobody who can train her for that because nobody has ever seen one in action and lived but her and John. She does have training from various places from people who know how to fight PEOPLE. That is certainly helpful. But then those very professionals (SWAT, etc.) get killed by the bushel themselves when encountering Terminators.

We also get an implication that she’s teamed up with some high end bad asses given that she got a high-ranking military guy to give her top secret weapons and a cargo plane sight unseen.

More of the same from T2, and she was barely useful there as far as fighting a Terminator in the sidekick roll while running away let alone straight up. That's kind of the point, because the Terminators are, well, freaking Terminators. An unstoppable force you can't fight back against, only run and hide from. This was the tension and the triumph of the first film that they barely did so by the skin of their teeth. There is a reason the resistance sent Terminators back in time to fight Terminators when they had the chance.

The whole thing cheapens the threat. Terminators are just some random mook now that a 60+-year-old mk1 human can take out one on one multiple times.

There is also the fact that she actually does have the assistance of another Terminator, even if she's not aware the entity sending her information is a Terminator. Intel is important. Being able to get the drop on a murderbot is no doubt an advantage.

As discussed, there is nothing about the situation where she gets the drop on any of them. At best she can start a search from the point of entry hours to days later. Given the whole point Terminators, what makes them a credible threat in the films besides their indestructibility, is their ability to operate indisguishably in the open, her finding all of them when they don't have any targets to make them expose themselves is equally implausible.

It seems to me they didn't have enough for her to do and they were insecure about her street cred as a badass for some unfathomable reason (probably because she looks as old and fragile as the equally inappropriately used Bruce Willis in those last Die Hard movies), so they shoehorned this in. All of this, and rolling Arnold out again (same age criticism as above), is just a distraction from the new heroes who themselves needed more to do (especially the new future leader).

[Broomstick]

A couple of points without quotes, because I'm not looking to write novel-length posts:

- Sarah could be bragging to at least some extent.

- As pointed out, if you are the TARGET of a Terminator you are pretty screwed and hit fast/run hard/hide is really the only available set of options. But Terminators are very single-minded and tend to ignore people who are not their target unless those people are either between the Terminator and target, or attacking the Terminator - so if those additional Terminators aren't targeting Sarah then Sarah probably can track them with minimal risk to herself.

- As noted by Grace, if you do engage with a Terminator the battle tends to be brief - either you disable it in the first seconds/minutes then get away (or maybe destroy it), or you die.

- Sarah does have the distinction of having survived being a Terminator target, albeit with help, and given the amount of firepower she brings to the first confrontation she is getting weaponry from somewhere, weaponry that can at the very least seriously inconvenience a murderbot. She NEVER attempts to take one on in hand-to-hand combat - you beat a Terminator through either superior knowledge, superior firepower, or superior cunning. Being superior enough in any one of those categories is a tough thing to do, but even if improbable are possible.

- Sarah does have intel from another Terminator although, as already noted, she is not aware that the source is the Terminator who killed her son.

Given the above, unlike someone extensively trained to fight other people Sarah's training has ONLY been about dealing with Terminators. She uses ranged weaponry and has no problem with running away when that's a good idea. She has no illusions about the Terminators being human despite their appearance. So... if she receives intel on an arriving murderbot it is conceivable that she could show up with incapacitating weaponry to either meet the arrival or track it, and will strike without warning while the Terminator is pre-occupied with hunting its target. After which, presumably, she disposes of it somehow or other, or maybe SHE calls the spook squad to pick up the bits and pieces (it would not be the first time a part of a government uses a "terrorist" or "criminal" to its own ends even as other parts of that same government is seeking to stop/arrest that individual)

So... I conclude that it is possible that Sarah Conner is a Hunter of Terminators, even though, yes, there is much improbable about the scenario.

But really, a screenwriter/director/producer shouldn't make the audience work that hard.

[Effie]

"Ugh it's impossible for someone to be so badass they could kill Terminators in reality".

I hope you all recognize that Terminator movies are fiction and formalist, right? Sarah Connor being able to kill Terminators is a symbolic shorthand to help us understand her personality and inner life- she is so devoid of purpose that she repeatedly tries to kill herself and yet is so hardened by life that she fails every time.

[Galvatron]

Does Sarah have to be badass or just well-armed?

I mean, the resistance fighters in the future were able to kill Terminators with plasma rifles and 101a was blown apart by a pipe bomb. So long as she was equipped with similar munitions (e.g. AP rounds, high explosives, etc.), I don't see why she couldn't take down each newly-arrived T-800 pretty easily. Especially since they'd have been naked and unarmed after having just traveled through time.

[FireNexus]

Does Sarah have to be badass or just well-armed?

I mean, the resistance fighters in the future were able to kill Terminators with plasma rifles and 101a was blown apart by a pipe bomb. So long as she was equipped with similar munitions (e.g. AP rounds, high explosives, etc.), I don't see why she couldn't take down each newly-arrived T-800 pretty easily. Especially since they'd have been naked and unarmed after having just traveled through time.

She showed up with an RPG to kill the rev 9. Given the whole pipe bomb susceptibility of the T-800, that was probably well enough armed. I can’t remember if she hit the naked rev 9 or with the coating on, so I can’t really say what that says about it’s durability without the skeleton.

[Broomstick]

She got both the liquid metal and the endoskeleton

For a T-800 I agree, she was probably sufficiently armed. The shape-shifters are the truly difficult bastards.

[tezunegari]

I can’t remember if she hit the naked rev 9 or with the coating on, so I can’t really say what that says about it's durability without the skeleton.

On arrival, Sarah hit the rev9-Endo first with her car, then targeted the rev9-liquid with her Fostech Origin-12 until it went over the railing, then switched to the M72 LAW hitting the rev9-endo.

The rev9-liquid seems to be easily penetrated by 12 gauge shotgun shells as Sarah's shots easily ripped big holes into it.
The rev9-endo, on the other hand, didn't seem to be damaged by the M72 explosion at all or superficially at most.

[Galvatron]

The T-1000 was especially difficult because it had no endoskeleton. Are the newer endoskeletons really supposed to be significantly tougher than the T-800?

[tezunegari]

The Rev9 endo appears far more delicate but it survives small arms fire, a direct hit with an M72, car impacts, a drop of several kilometers and M4 fire at point-blank range to its head without its abilities compromised even in the slightest.
It takes being shoved into a generator turbine to be damaged enough to reduce it to zombie-shambling.

And if memory serves, the pipe bomb from T1 only bisected the T-800 above the pelvis where the structure would be weakest with only the spine and the two pistons present.
two images to compare the Endoskeletons:

[MKSheppard]

A couple of points without quotes, because I'm not looking to write novel-length posts:

- Sarah could be bragging to at least some extent.

Well, she shows up with a Fostech Origin-12 automatic shotgun with a 30 round drum magazine PLUS a M72 LAW.

Interestingly, in the Desert Armory sequence in T2, you can see M72 LAW tubes in the armory. Presumably, Sarah went there after T2, once the T1000 was confirmed dead; to recover what she could from Enrique's armory; before heading further south to South America.

[MKSheppard]

Something they could have worked better on is the duality of the Rev-9. Instead of it being a mash up of the T-800 and T-1000, it should have been worked over to show clear advantages and disadvantages of each sub-form.

Like, the Liquid Metal Subform can take all sorts of bullet fire and regenerate, but it's relatively weak in strength and short ranged (cannot go further than x feet away from the "main station"); while the endoskeleton is strong, but can't regenerate and can be damaged.

[MKSheppard]

The whole thing cheapens the threat. Terminators are just some random mook now that a 60+-year-old mk1 human can take out one on one multiple times.

In T1, a generic Ithaca 37 pump action shotgun with generic hunting slugs was enough to damage a T-800 enough that it had to retire to it's hideout to repair damage to it's hydraulic arm before it could continue with it's mission.

Given that in 2019; genuine armor piercing rounds exist for 12 gauge shotguns...

[MKSheppard]

I think what hurt the movie's showing (besides a repetitive formulaic plot we saw before in Genisys); was the pre-release presser controversies by the director Tim Miller; when he hyped up Grace and made her general appearance a bit political.

A more correct answer for him to have done was: "Look, she's from the future where you're hunted by killer robots; you can't grow G size tits if you're constantly starving; and long hair provides killer robots an easy way to grab your head and break your neck."

That would have settled it much better -- remember who the target demographic of a TERMINATOR franchise film is.

[FireNexus]

I’m seeing it again, and it looks like Sarah showing up at that place despite it not being where Terminator landed isn’t that unreasonable. I’m pretty sure the highway where Sarah showed up is around where Grace landed (Which was right under a highway). So she was 12 hours or so late, and the chase just happened to end up backstage that spot around when she was investigating. Probably she noticed the chase or heard it on a scanner or something and thought “sounds very terminatory.”

[Dark Hellion]

Something they could have worked better on is the duality of the Rev-9. Instead of it being a mash up of the T-800 and T-1000, it should have been worked over to show clear advantages and disadvantages of each sub-form.

Like, the Liquid Metal Subform can take all sorts of bullet fire and regenerate, but it's relatively weak in strength and short ranged (cannot go further than x feet away from the "main station"); while the endoskeleton is strong, but can't regenerate and can be damaged.

I believe we actually did see this in the film. The endoskeleton did not seem to have particulary impressive physical strength or speed, especially compared to Grace or Carl. It was however extremely durable (somewhat ridiculously so), presumably to serve as a base-station for the Liquid Metal. When the liquid metal is on the endoskeleton we see the Rev9 have higher strength, suggesting that the alloy forms some kind of musculature which gives the Rev9 superior strength and speed. The Liquid Metal is seemingly very strong and quick even when seperated but seems very easily damaged and disincorporated. I would assume that the Rev9 begins with a large excess of the polyalloy which is slowly damaged over the mission.

[chimericoncogene]

I've always been of the opinion that organized military force would allow for pretty rapid destruction of 800-series Terminators sent back into the past (one antitank rocket through the back and bye-bye endoskeleton), so Sarah Connor getting the drop on 800-series units as they chronoport seems entirely reasonable.

Maybe she was just late to the party this time, and the job usually consists of laying a few command-detonated antitank mines under the expected chronoport location (or not, GPS isn't quite accurate enough for that unless Carl has DGPS). On a side note, I always thought it was somewhat silly to give combat robots a multi-year nuclear power supply (it can be justified if prolonged infiltration missions are common, or if those nuclear/radioisotope (it's never really clear what they are) batteries aren't as long lived as they are sometimes made out to be). Are those combat robots going to live long enough to enjoy their radioisotopes?

Powered armor rules seem to apply (more or less) to humanoid Terminators where armor and firepower are concerned. That awful G Harry Stine Warbots novel had drum-shaped dalek-like killbots for better armor protection. For some reason, the drone (rover/UGV?) operators have to be on the same battlefield to run the warbots, which kinda means you lose many of the advantages of the rovers.

I still want to see a better liquid metal terminator with no endoskeleton. Split capability? Or one of those I-950 cyborg things (but on the bad guy side, and with less augmentation and more spying).

[LadyTevar]

BAD chimericoncogene! NO THREAD NECROMANCY!
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