The Terminator 3 review thread(spoilers marked)

[Mahaloth]

I liked it.

It's not as good as the second one, but as good as the first one. I think it got cut up a bit to bring it down to its current running length, which seemed a bit short.

Arnold was great, but I was particulary impresed with Nick Stahl and Claire Daines.

I hope they do make a fourth one; this one makes you think they will.

A few questions:



1. Why do they always only send one Terminator, one for good and one for evil?

2. Why does the Terminatrix only have guns on one arm? And why does she maintain her regular form so much?

3. So...Terminators reboot automaticaly if they shut themselves down? And why wasn't Arnold still conflicted when he rebooted?

[Blonde]

It's not out in Dallas yet - and it's probably the only movie (besides Nemo) that I'll see this summer on the big screen.
So, you're saying they're leaving it open for future episodes? Who's going to assume Arnold's role? (sorry, couldn't resist).

I think I know the answer already, but what age group of children is it appropriate for (rated R, so I'm thinking no-go on small fries?) I wouldn't take my boys to see it in a theater, but wondered how many scenes are off-limits for below 8 yr olds if we purchase the DVD.

[HPL]

What if you felt the first one was the best one?

[Mahaloth]

Originally posted by HPL
What if you felt the first one was the best one?

Then you probably won't enjoy this one as much. The whole "two Terminators" thing makes it more similar to the second.

[Blonde]

Of course the first one was the best one -- but it was made a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away. Thus, all debates as to the "best" Terminator movie are between 2 and 4.

I saw the first one at a drive-in theater, too long ago.

[Tuckerfan]

Originally posted by Blonde
Of course the first one was the best one -- but it was made a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away. Thus, all debates as to the "best" Terminator movie are between 2 and 4.

I saw the first one at a drive-in theater, too long ago. Me too! Did everybody start honking their horns during the sex scene at the one you saw it at?

The second one could have been better, if they'd kept Arnold's good side hidden until later in the film. (If you didn't find out that Arnold was a good guy until Linda Hamilton did, the film would have kicked major ass! Instead, all it did was look pretty.)

[Blonde]

Originally posted by Tuckerfan
Me too! Did everybody start honking their horns during the sex scene at the one you saw it at?

You've got my 500th post on the board, cowboy.

And the answer, of course, is -- I heard those honking horns in the distance...window were rolled up a bit. :D

[HPL]

Originally posted by Mahaloth
Then you probably won't enjoy this one as much. The whole "two Terminators" thing makes it more similar to the second.

I liked #2, but after seeing them again for the first time in a long time my reasons for liking the first one better really boil down to the following.

1. The Terminator in #1 was an unstoppable killing machine but was also completely cold blooded. Having a warm and fuzzy killing machine protecting John isn't nearly as fun as the cold blooded arnie from the first movie.

2. The 2nd one felt like it was bordering on Anti-nuke preachy at times.

3. The 2nd movie contridicts the first one and even threatens to set up a paradox.

Namely: Sarah blows up Cyberdyne in the 2nd movie to prevent judgement day. While wanting to prevent the end of the world is laudable, it has to happen, or else Kyle would have never been sent back to father John, and tell her about it. If that never happens, then she has no reason to blow up cyberdyne and it all happens.


Oh, and the fact they keep sending back terminators despite the fact that A.) Skynet was supposed to be destoryed in #1 and that's why the terminator was sent back, because it had lost (or so rest said anyway). and B.) The time machine was destoryed after Kyle went through.

Great SFX and chase scenes, but the first one had fewer loose ends in my mind.

[HPL]

Originally posted by Blonde
Of course the first one was the best one -- but it was made a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away. Thus, all debates as to the "best" Terminator movie are between 2 and 4.

I saw the first one at a drive-in theater, too long ago.

Okay.

Which reminds me. My big question is: How much of the movie takes place after skynet destorys Civilization on Judgement day?

[troub]

Originally posted by HPL
Okay.

Which reminds me. My big question is: How much of the movie takes place after skynet destorys Civilization on Judgement day?

About 2 minutes.

[Baldwin]

I also prefer the first movie. The DVD includes a deleted scene in which Sarah and Kyle debate what to do; Kyle just wants to keep her alive, but Sarah wants to go proactive, and try to take steps to prevent the terrible future Kyle grew up in. (This avoids a paradox if you assume the creation of an alternate time-line.) Kyle doesn't think it's possible.

Of course, they end up, of all places, in the Cyberdyne plant at the end of the movie, with the result (as explained in T2) that surviving fragments of the Terminator spur new technology that leads to Skynet, Judgement Day, and that dark future of robotic killing machines rolling over mounds of human skulls. (Not really a paradox, but a causal loop.)

I doubt if I'll see the new movie; it looks too similar to the second movie, but without Linda Hamilton, and without Cameron's great skill at directing action. Roger Ebert (one of the few mainstream critics who grew up reading science fiction) makes the case that while the first two movies descended from the Analog tradition of concept-oriented science fiction, the latest one is more like Thrilling Wonder Stories.

[ArrMatey!]

I was very hapilly suprised. I thought it was going to be a sub-par, hey, let's belch-out-a-sequel-cos-it'll-draw movie. It was actually pretty well thought out. Were it not for the heavy violence, I'd actually call it a comedy. Ahnuld has realized what a fantastic straight-man the T is, and uses it to great effect. We also get to see the return of a character from 2 in a little 5-minute cameo that had me practically rolling on the floor (ewww... Movie theater floor...) So, from me, a big thumbs up. Despite the whole temporal paradox thing (which I DESPISE)

[Mahaloth]

Originally posted by ArrrMatey
We also get to see the return of a character from 2 in a little 5-minute cameo that had me practically rolling on the floor (which I DESPISE)

I know!

That part had me howling, while most of the audience was clueless. I think that bit part was the funniest part of the whole movie.

[Whack-a-Mole]

T3 stunk it up compared to the other two and T1 was by far the best of the bunch. It was the first time in a movie where the bad guy didn't toy with their victim before trying to kill them (which of course left the victim time to get away somehow). Instead in T1 the terminator sees its target and does its damndest to kill them. I think the terminatrix in T3 is the least scary of all the terminators even though she is the most advanced.

Now for a major issue with T3 (MAJOR SPOILER BELOW):
How the hell does Skynet survive its own attack? We have it that Skynet does not really have a central core but rather is spread out over all the computers of the world. Fine.

But now Skynet nukes the world. While some computers certainly survive the vast majority are blasted to hell. Skynet, being the super-AI it is (sufficient to become self aware) certainly needs a vast amount of computing power available. How can Skynet possibly survive taking out (say) 90% of its own capacity?

Further, how does Skynet build its robot army? Factories are blasted to hell, power plants are gone. There are no robots around that could actually build anything (i.e. have fingers to use tools instead of guns for hands).

I know some suspension of disbelief is necessary in sci-fi. Clearly the paradoxical possibilities behind the whole premise can get you but I'm willing to allow this is somehow just how it all works. However, the above issues are deal breakers to me.

[Whack-a-Mole]

Oh yeah...another unexplained issue that bothered me:
John, Kate and the terminator are going to find Kate's father to stop him from enabling Skynet.

Next thing we know terminatrix pops-up looking like Kate so she can kill Kate's dad. Still no problem.

Two seconds after the terminatrix pops-up gunning for Kate's dad there is Kate, John and the terminator shooting at her.

How in the hell did they get in? This is presumably an advanced military installation. They just stroll past the front gate and through the front door and into the main operations center loaded with weapons and NO ONE sees fit to stop or question them at any point? We might assume the terminator fought and bashed heads to gain entry but then we would assume alarms would sound and that isn't the case either.

No way, no how...

[HPL]

Actually, another thing that bugs me.

In T1 and T2, it is mentioned several times that Judgement day is in 1997. All well in good, considering the movies were made in 1984 and 1991 respectivly, but the new movie comes out in 2003, 6 years after judgment day supposdly happened. Doesn't it destory the disbelief a little bit to make a movie where the end of the world happens years before the movie was made?

If T3 were made in 1996 this wouldn't be an issue, because judgement day would still be a year in the future hypotehically, but in 2003 it's very apparent that 1997 has passed without a nuclear apocolypse.

How does T3 deal with this?

[Mahaloth]

Originally posted by HPL
Actually, another thing that bugs me.

In T1 and T2, it is mentioned several times that Judgement day is in 1997. All well in good, considering the movies were made in 1984 and 1991 respectivly, but the new movie comes out in 2003, 6 years after judgment day supposdly happened. Doesn't it destory the disbelief a little bit to make a movie where the end of the world happens years before the movie was made?

If T3 were made in 1996 this wouldn't be an issue, because judgement day would still be a year in the future hypotehically, but in 2003 it's very apparent that 1997 has passed without a nuclear apocolypse.

How does T3 deal with this?

Well,



In T2, they saved the day. They postponed judgement day. They thought they stopped it, but didn't.

Still doesn't explain why John Connor goes from pre-birth in 1984 to 13 in 1991.

[Duderdude2]

Originally posted by Mahaloth
Still doesn't explain why John Connor goes from pre-birth in 1984 to 13 in 1991.

Because he's not 13 in T2.

[Thaumaturge]

Actually it's mentioned at least once and maybe more that he is 13 in T2, in T3

[Mahaloth]

Originally posted by Duderdude2
Because he's not 13 in T2.

Yes, he is. Edward Furlong was 13 when they filmed it(in 1990) and John Connor says he was 13 in T3.

Why would you just walk in and contradict with no evidence?

[Major Kong]

Yes, he is. Edward Furlong was 13 when they filmed it(in 1990) and John Connor says he was 13 in T3.

The computer that the T-1000 checks for information (in the police car), says John Connor is 10. Also, I believe T2 takes place in 1993 or 1994, not 1991.

[Morbo]

Originally posted by Mahaloth
I know!

That part had me howling, while most of the audience was clueless. I think that bit part was the funniest part of the whole movie.

OK - I'm probably not going to see it, or if I do on DVD later I won't care, so can someone spoil the cameo for me?

[Major Kong]

OK - I'm probably not going to see it, or if I do on DVD later I won't care, so can someone spoil the cameo for me?

The psychiatrist from the original and part two makes an appearance. He talks about how a traumatic experience can mess up a person’s sense of reality and stuff. It was actually pretty funny.

[Major Kong]

Another question:


The TX is going around killing John Connor’s lieutenants in LA. But LA is going to be blown away in a few hours later. So why bother killing them if they are in LA?

[Whack-a-Mole]

Originally posted by Major Kong
Another question:

One can only suppose that somehow they survive the initial strike which is why they are around later to be lieutenants.

Terminatrix was successful in killing a few of them so one can only wonder what, if any, effect that will have on the future course of the war.

[Major Kong]

In regard to my other question:

TX is the source of the virus. By why does she start the virus so soon? You think she would give herself more time to kill the lieutenants.

Of course I should probably just say:

lt's only a movie. lt's only a movie. lt's only a movie.

[ricksummon]

One thing I realized after seeing T3: Terminators don't destroy objects in their way, they simply ignore them. In both T2 and T3, the evil Terminators get behind the wheel of the biggest vehicles they can find and pursue the hero while driving in a perfectly straight path, plowing through traffic like a knife through butter. As far as they're concerned, anything that's not related to their mission doesn't exist, which, to a machine, makes perfect sense.

[Skeezix]

Wow.

I was severly not disappointed. (Though I was proven wrong.) I went in expecting it to suck, completely contradict or revise the "future history" established in the first two flicks, or completely screw up the causal loop (someone in another recent thread termed it a bootstrap paradox) of how this all comes to be.

If you ignore a few errors, with suspension of disbelief, it ain't at all a bad movie.

Let's see here, now.
Originally posted by Whack-a-Mole:
How the hell does Skynet survive its own attack? We have it that Skynet does not really have a central core but rather is spread out over all the computers of the world. Fine.

But now Skynet nukes the world. While some computers certainly survive the vast majority are blasted to hell. Skynet, being the super-AI it is (sufficient to become self aware) certainly needs a vast amount of computing power available. How can Skynet possibly survive taking out (say) 90% of its own capacity?

Further, how does Skynet build its robot army? Factories are blasted to hell, power plants are gone. There are no robots around that could actually build anything (i.e. have fingers to use tools instead of guns for hands).

That bugged me fer a bit, m'self. Then I realized, barring destruction by a retaliatory strike (which, being hooked into everything now, not just the US missile control, becomes possible) it is safe. The base where Skynet is developed also, presumably, has the capabilities to manufacture the first stage Terminators (ED-209ators, if you will) and the little bitty HK. It can make something with hands when it has time, after all the humans are dead. Since it can't wipe out the troops and support techs there by nuke, it guns 'em all down with the stage 1 terminators. But that base doesn't get nuked, and the computers are (again, presumably) double hardened against EMP interference.


Ya buy any o' that? :D

As to your second spoiler post... It's just a show, really just relax, and alla that, I suppose. But I can't rationalize it, either. I'm wondering if something from the cutting room floor didn't make that a bit more plausible. That was one of my two real problems with the flick.

Originally posted by Major Kong:
TX is the source of the virus. By why does she start the virus so soon? You think she would give herself more time to kill the lieutenants.
From what I gathered, the "virus" was spread by Skynet itself, not the T-X. I'll have to pay more attention on subsequent viewings, but that was my impression.

And since I'm on such a black box jag here, one thing:
I'm pretty sure that I read that the deal that got T3 made was a package deal, for two movies. And Arnie, as of the last time I saw anything about it, was only contracted for the first flick, T3, but not, or at least not yet for T4. The film was made with another installment in mind, not as a possibility, but as a done deal.

At least, as far as I know.

[Skeezix]

Ach.

I meant to add this:

One fairly minor change (in the scheme of things, anyway) that I would have made, given any input in the matter.

The particle accelerator should have destroyed the T-X, not just trapped it for a bit. I don't know that a real PA would actually emit a magnetic field as it did in the movie, but, the movie's version should have eaten her CPU like a refrigerator magnet on an eight inch floppy. Which would have left the reprogrammed T-101 to hunt the humans down, only to be destroyed like the first one (which is nearly how the end of the film unfolded, anyway).

Arnie was a better Terminator when he was the bad guy, thinks I.

And I have to say, I saw the end of the film coming a mile away, espescially when
Arnie jumped over the dying father's last words, to make sure the two important people would go to the bomb shelter, no matter what
But it didn't hurt the film, in my eyes.

But I watched it with the final spoiler from my first post above, in mind.

IOW,
I knew that there was gonna be a T4, long before I got to the theater to see part 3.

[Duderdude2]

Originally posted by Mahaloth

Why would you just walk in and contradict with no evidence?

Because I'm right and you're wrong.

[troub]

Originally posted by Skeezix
The particle accelerator should have destroyed the T-X, not just trapped it for a bit. I don't know that a real PA would actually emit a magnetic field as it did in the movie, but, the movie's version should have eaten her CPU like a refrigerator magnet on an eight inch floppy. Which would have left the reprogrammed T-101 to hunt the humans down, only to be destroyed like the first one (which is nearly how the end of the film unfolded, anyway).

Arnie was a better Terminator when he was the bad guy, thinks I.

Yeah, that would've been nice, but I don't think he was actually "reprogrammed," was he? Wasn't her "power" the ability to control other machines remotely? I guess presumably through introduction of some virus-like code, making the reboot necessary to clear out his chips. He was reprogrammed in the future to be a good guy, and obviously that sticks around after reboots. So if she had "died" in the PA, I would think she would lose her powers of remote control. . .unless the code she introduces is self-sufficient--but I didn't get the impression that it was.

[Whack-a-Mole]

Originally posted by Skeezix
That bugged me fer a bit, m'self. Then I realized, barring destruction by a retaliatory strike (which, being hooked into everything now, not just the US missile control, becomes possible) it is safe. The base where Skynet is developed also, presumably, has the capabilities to manufacture the first stage Terminators (ED-209ators, if you will) and the little bitty HK. It can make something with hands when it has time, after all the humans are dead. Since it can't wipe out the troops and support techs there by nuke, it guns 'em all down with the stage 1 terminators. But that base doesn't get nuked, and the computers are (again, presumably) double hardened against EMP interference.

Ya buy any o' that? :D

Not quite:

We know the Skynet base (or at least where they turned the thing on) is unsafe because the terminator initially refuses to take John there and specifically mentions that the base won't survive but John insists on going anyway.

As to letting Kate, John amd Terminator show-up in the Skynet base armed to the teeth and just letting it pass I can't. I found that particular scene jarring. Terminatrix is wandering the base corrupting the proto-terminators...I can buy that...her getting in wouldn't be a problem. Then we see Kate's dad start Skynet, then terminatrix Kate shows then BAM...Arnie is shooting terminatrix with everything he's got. He's just 'there' all of a sudden. Suspension of disbelief is fine but when a movie shocks you out of your suspension it has failed in some fashion...at least for that set of scenes.

[El Elvis Rojo]

Just out of curiosity, would someone explain to me what exactly the Terminatrix is? From what I can gather from the trailers, she seems to be a combination of an advanced T-800 endoskeleton covered in liquid metal. From the spoilers, I gather she can control other robots by remote. Is this pretty much it, or is there more to her design?

[Skeezix]

Originally posted by Whack-a-Mole:
We know the Skynet base (or at least where they turned the thing on) is unsafe because the terminator initially refuses to take John there and specifically mentions that the base won't survive but John insists on going anyway.

Guess I do need a second viewing. I didn't catch that he said that base would be nuked, or wouldn't survive the nuke-fest. OTOH, we know he's capable of lying through his metal teeth to protect his charges, and ensure the success of his mission. I figure he didn't want them there because the T-X would be there, regardless of where the nukes were gonna fall.

And I still can't argue the second point. They shouldn't have just been able to walk in the front door.

El Elvis Rojo: You've basically got it in a nutshell. One caveat, though:
She also apparently has the circuitry/tiny mechanical parts onboard (her right arm only) to generate a series of offensive ranged weapons. Plasma gun, big honkin' flamethrower type weapon, stuff like that. There's a bit where her primary weapon is damaged, and we get a Termo-Vision shot of her running through options to reconfigure her arm. From the very brief look we get, it seems this stuff is included, and the stuff that makes the weapons work can't be replicated by the liquid metal.

Oh yeah, her neatest special ability:
She speaks the ancient (from her perspective) Modem Handshake language, as well.

[Skeezix]

troub: In retrospect, you're right. I just thought my way would have matched the tone of the rest of the final reel better.

Especially that very last scene.

Was that some neat friggin' visuals, or what?

[Kilt-wearin' man]

Originally posted by HPL
Oh, and the fact they keep sending back terminators despite the fact that A.) Skynet was supposed to be destoryed in #1 and that's why the terminator was sent back, because it had lost (or so rest said anyway). and B.) The time machine was destoryed after Kyle went through.


Maybe Kyle was wrong. Skynet was defeated, but managed to pool its resources elsewhere. We only know for sure (from Reese's memories) that John Connor's resistance force won, it's never specified that worldwide victory has been achieved. Seeing that it has lost a major region of the former USA, Skynet starts sending Terminators back as fast as it can design them to kill John Connor. Now the humans in LA have access to Terminators and can reprogram them, so they no longer have to go on one-way suicide missions to stop Skynet, but they don't have access to the new Terminator designs.

Anything can be rationalized away in science fiction...well, almost anything.

[aleong]

Originally posted by Kilt-wearin' man
Maybe Kyle was wrong. Skynet was defeated, but managed to pool its resources elsewhere. We only know for sure (from Reese's memories) that John Connor's resistance force won, it's never specified that worldwide victory has been achieved. Seeing that it has lost a major region of the former USA, Skynet starts sending Terminators back as fast as it can design them to kill John Connor. Now the humans in LA have access to Terminators and can reprogram them, so they no longer have to go on one-way suicide missions to stop Skynet, but they don't have access to the new Terminator designs.

Anything can be rationalized away in science fiction...well, almost anything.

My take on why they keep sending back old Terminators is that they are probably easier to incapacitate than liquid-metal-morphin' T-1000s and T-Xs. Furthermore, reprogramming the T-100 is done by opening up the head casing and playing around with the chip inside, whereas it would probably require specialized equipment to hack a more advanced model.

For the next Terminator movie, they should send a Terminator back into the 1800s and try to kill John Connor's great-great grandfater. And maybe they'll run into Marty and Doc Brown while they're at it.

[Skeezix]

That's pretty much my take on it, as well, with one "suspension" added to it. (which has pretty much been followed by the filmakers, with T3)

Kyle and the original T-101 came back, and altered the timeline, with their mucking about. So now, in the year 2029 (or whatever it is) Skynet has foreknowledge of the present, and puts a rush on the time displacement R&D, getting it ready earlier than in the "original" timeline.

So now, it's got time to send back 3, or 4, or 8 or 9 Terminators (of whichever model is closest to the machine when it comes online) scattered all over the timeline, instead of the one it tossed in originally.


So long as one of the things isn't reduced to its constituent atoms, somebody someplace is gonna eventually recreate the research that gives birth to Skynet. That's the bootstrap paradox discussed in the other thread: Skynet created itself by sending a Terminator back in time. The fact that John Connor exists means Skynet, and Judgement Day, have to, as well.

[Guinastasia]

Do they explain why Sarah Conner isn't there?

Also, how do they explain that the Terminators were still there, when they were destroyed in T2?

[Major Kong]

Do they explain why Sarah Conner isn't there?

Yes they do. It turns out the TX is really Sarah Connor. She is the most advanced terminator. She can even give birth. The machines sent her back to create John Connor because he is really the one who creates Skynet. They then send her back with a different appearance to kill John.


OK, I am lying. She died on of cancer shortly after when the original Judgement Day was wupposed to be.

[Neidhart]

One thing, though - the T-1s and the HK were prototypes and the base was a test facility. Who loaded them with live ammo?

[iamthewalrus(:3=]

Originally posted by Whack-a-Mole
Not quite:

We know the Skynet base (or at least where they turned the thing on) is unsafe because the terminator initially refuses to take John there and specifically mentions that the base won't survive but John insists on going anyway.

As to letting Kate, John amd Terminator show-up in the Skynet base armed to the teeth and just letting it pass I can't. I found that particular scene jarring. Terminatrix is wandering the base corrupting the proto-terminators...I can buy that...her getting in wouldn't be a problem. Then we see Kate's dad start Skynet, then terminatrix Kate shows then BAM...Arnie is shooting terminatrix with everything he's got. He's just 'there' all of a sudden. Suspension of disbelief is fine but when a movie shocks you out of your suspension it has failed in some fashion...at least for that set of scenes.

Actually:
The terminator specifically mentions fallout in that area. The base, perhaps, will not be hit directly, but will be near enough that radioactivity would render any humans dead. I'd imagine that computers and other machines might have much higher tolerances to ionizing radiation (especially ones designed and used by the military.

[vandal]

Originally posted by Neidhart
One thing, though - the T-1s and the HK were prototypes and the base was a test facility. Who loaded them with live ammo?

It's a test facility, yes, but that doesn't mean that live rounds can't be used. I mean, the guns have to be tested for accuracy, stability, etc.

[HPL]

Originally posted by iamthewalrus(:3=
Actually:
The terminator specifically mentions fallout in that area. The base, perhaps, will not be hit directly, but will be near enough that radioactivity would render any humans dead. I'd imagine that computers and other machines might have much higher tolerances to ionizing radiation (especially ones designed and used by the military.

What about EMP? That should have wiped the Terminator's hard drive clean.

[Fnoonf]

Originally posted by Tuckerfan
The second one could have been better, if they'd kept Arnold's good side hidden until later in the film. (If you didn't find out that Arnold was a good guy until Linda Hamilton did, the film would have kicked major ass! Instead, all it did was look pretty.)

This is kind of funny. I was always of the same opinion, until I realized something. They probably did try to keep it a secret initially, though it probably spilled out somewhere along the line. T2 is my favorite action film, so I've seen it quite a number of times. Each time, I notice something new that strengthens my hypothesis that they were in fact planning to keep it a secret initially, at least in the film's editing stages. If you take a look at the movie's opening scenes (both Terminators being "hatched" from the future, both of them finding suitable clothes/disguises, etc.) you'll see that there's nothing overtly evil about the Robert Patrick character from the get-go. Sure, he kills the cop whose guise he will take, but Arnold roughs up the guy whose clothes he takes pretty good (as well as his whole gang).

Couple this with the fact that an audience who's seen the first film will automatically assume Arnie's the bad guy, and numerous subtle visual hints that the Robert Patrick character is there to do good (for example, when he pulls up in front of Connor's foster parents' home in the squad car, the camera lingers briefly on the "To Serve and Protect" crest on the driver's side door) and an "uninformed" audience probably has a pretty good reason to believe Robert Patrick's the big protector guy, not Arnold.

The scene in the mall, where Connor is trapped between the two Terminators in the narrow corridor and each of them is heading towards him further strengthens the theory. It's my guess that that scene was supposed to be far more climactic than it was; this was where the audience was supposed to suddenly gasp as Arnie steps on the roses, points the shotgun, then, amazingly, says "Get Down" instead of blowing young Connor's brains out.

That's my 2 cents, anyway.

Sorry for the hijack. I just found Tuckerfan's post intriguing, because I held the same opinion for so long.

[Skeezix]

Fnoonf, that's almost a verbatim transcript of the discussion Mrs. Skeezix and I had on the way to the theater, last night.

Had a tighter lid been kept on the details of T2, that scene would have had much more impact, I think. That's exactly what Cameron was shooting for, IMO.

The fact that you never actually see Robert Patrick kill the cop, explicitly, leads you to think of him as the next Kyle Reese, early on. And despite the fact that Arnold doesn't kill any of the bikers, he's a lot more brutal onscreen than the T-1000.


During the filming of that biker bar scene, Arnold wore the loudest, most outrageous jams that he could lay his hands on, making most of the rest of the actors have to work hard just to keep a straight face while filming it.


iamthewalrus(:3=: Thank you!
I didn't think I'd heard any mention of the base being physically destroyed, but I was doubting my memory. Prevailing winds will carry fallout a lot further than the blast zone of a nuke. And since Skynet is now tied into every missile launch computer (the virus that wasn't a virus) it can assure that no return fire will hit the production/test base.

Originally posted by Guinastasia:
Do they explain why Sarah Conner isn't there?

Also, how do they explain that the Terminators were still there, when they were destroyed in T2?
Major Kong covered the first question, but specifically, she was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after the end of T2, but despite being given six months to live, she manages to hang on until the original date given for Judgement Day, just to make sure the world doesn't go ka-blooey.

And as to the second bit I don't recall that it's ever specifically mentioned in the film, now that I think about it. I've long had the suspiscion that Cyberdyne had a decent off-site backup of their files, which was in government hands, leaving the creation of Skynet to the military, instead of the company.

Besides all that, Skynet has to come to be somehow, or Kyle Reese never would have gone back in time, to father John. By the movie's logic, once Kyle and that first Terminator showed up in 1984, the existance of Skynet was unavoidable.

There's a quick one-off by Arnold in T3 that Judgement Day is inevitable, and the events of T2 only postponed it.

But they never do outright explain it.

[Duderdude2]

Originally posted by Fnoonf
This is kind of funny. I was always of the same opinion, until I realized something. They probably did try to keep it a secret initially, though it probably spilled out somewhere along the line. T2 is my favorite action film, so I've seen it quite a number of times. Each time, I notice something new that strengthens my hypothesis that they were in fact planning to keep it a secret initially, at least in the film's editing stages. If you take a look at the movie's opening scenes (both Terminators being "hatched" from the future, both of them finding suitable clothes/disguises, etc.) you'll see that there's nothing overtly evil about the Robert Patrick character from the get-go. Sure, he kills the cop whose guise he will take, but Arnold roughs up the guy whose clothes he takes pretty good (as well as his whole gang).

Couple this with the fact that an audience who's seen the first film will automatically assume Arnie's the bad guy, and numerous subtle visual hints that the Robert Patrick character is there to do good (for example, when he pulls up in front of Connor's foster parents' home in the squad car, the camera lingers briefly on the "To Serve and Protect" crest on the driver's side door) and an "uninformed" audience probably has a pretty good reason to believe Robert Patrick's the big protector guy, not Arnold.

The scene in the mall, where Connor is trapped between the two Terminators in the narrow corridor and each of them is heading towards him further strengthens the theory. It's my guess that that scene was supposed to be far more climactic than it was; this was where the audience was supposed to suddenly gasp as Arnie steps on the roses, points the shotgun, then, amazingly, says "Get Down" instead of blowing young Connor's brains out.

That's my 2 cents, anyway.

Sorry for the hijack. I just found Tuckerfan's post intriguing, because I held the same opinion for so long.

Actually, that’s exactly how it was intended. James Cameron says so on the new commentary track that accompanied the new DVD re-release of T2. He sounded kind of upset though that it was virtually impossible to keep a secret due to the nature of interviews, etc. “So Arnold, what’s it like to play a good guy”? Anyways, it was definitely intended as a secret and they did a damn fine job of it IMO.

[Guinastasia]

Back when I had a crush on Edward Furlong when I was thirteen (and I mean a MAJOR CRUSH!) I had this book about child actors that featured him. Basically, it mentioned that the reason Arnold was playing the good guy was because people wouldn't buy him as the bad guy, or it wouldn't be "good for him," because by now he had married into the Kennedy family, was on the President's physical fitness council, etc. So it wouldn't work.

Kind of stupid, but there you go.

One thing I found interesting was that Robert Patrick's T-1000 was so much more evil, and so NON-threatening, because unlike Arnold, he could be more, "human." He smiled, he laughed, he joked. He played a cop, someone you could trust, etc.

And Arnold is this bad boy unemotional dude on a big ass bike.

[Svt4Him]

The problem with time travel, is if you analyze it too much, you loose the amusement of the movie. If they had d-day, or even pushed it back three years or so, then the first terminator would have not come when he did, as he was built from technology that had three additional years to make, and the whole thing gets messed up. That is also why time travel is only possible in the minds of sci-fi.

For a movie, the only reason I thought it was better is simply because of the gfx. Otherwise it didn't have a lot of great twists and turns. But then I didn't really expect deep dialogue with Arnold.

[handsomeharry]

as an aside, how does arnie look? i mean, the guy is in his mid 50s.

[Duderdude2]

Arnie looks just as he did in T2. It's remarkable.

[Skeezix]

Indeed, whether or not physical or CG FX were used (or quite possibly not) the man still looks damned good.

As I'm rewatching T2 (well, while I'm surfing the boards, not really watching it to the exclusion of other activities) I remembered one other thing that I wanted to mention.

At the end of the film, Arnold ends up with about half his synthetic flesh burned away. While I am a true fan of old-school mechanical and physical special effects, there are some things that you can only do really well with CGI.

When he looks directly at the screen, and it's obvious that the half of his face that's still got meat is really Arnold, and not a puppet, and you can see the background through the gaps in the metal of the other half (most noticeably at the jaw line)...

That was pretty freakin' spiffy.

[Menocchio]

It was okay, but I felt the movie suffered badly in comparison with the previous entries.

I was disappointed that they utterly dropped the themes of "no fate" from the second film. Everything is fated now, if the details can be tweaked.

Of course, the terminators' mission hinges on the theory that the future is potentially mutable, or else they'd know that trying to kill or prevent John is futile.

In the first film, it's stated that the Terminator was a last-ditch effort by a losing Skynet. In T2, it seems that there's at least one other plan and killer as well. Here, we have yet another, still more advanced model, and we learn that John is actually killed (implying that these two were sent back some time after the first two batches left). I also have trouble buying that John would be killed by one of the only forms he knows to belong to a terminator.

I also thought the humor was kind of forced.

[El Elvis Rojo]

Okay, spoil something for me: How is John killed in the future? Because if that happens before they send the terminator and Kyle back, that's really dumb.

[vandal]

Originally posted by El Elvis Rojo
Okay, spoil something for me: How is John killed in the future? Because if that happens before they send the terminator and Kyle back, that's really dumb.

It is revealed that...

he is assassinated by Arnie himself. The same model that is sent to protect him in T3.

[Major Kong]

he is assassinated by Arnie himself. The same model that is sent to protect him in T3.

Actually, it is the same specific unit, not just model.

[Guinastasia]

H'uh? Why-that doesn't even make sense?

[SuperNova]

Originally posted by Guinastasia
H'uh? Why-that doesn't even make sense?


Yes, the T3 Arnie is the exact same unit that kills John in the future. According to the movie, the robots sent that model of Terminator in to kill Conner because of his "emotional attachment" to it. After it killed him, the other rebels succeeded in capturing it and reprogrammed it to protect Conner after being sent back in time.

What I don't get is why future-Conner would be stupid enough to let a person who he KNOWS is a Terminator close to him. But I'm willing to suspend my belief because it got Arnold in the movie.

[El Elvis Rojo]

Hmmm...so, Supernova, does that mean that the terminators in the future are able to make T-800s that DON'T look like Arnold? I remember in the first one, the terminator that attacked the hideout in Reyse's dream looked nothing like Arnold, and it seems really stupid for them to make them all look the same if they're supposed to be "infiltration" units, but T-2 kinda gave me the impression they all looked the same. Do we see any humanoid ones that don't look like Arnie?

[Lumpy]

Of course, you could argue that John Connor didn't know he was going to be assassinated- until the past John got that information. Remember, the unit refused to answer John's question, but apparently no one had told it not to reply to his (future) wife's query. Presumably history changed at that point.

Anyway, in response to the whole time paradox thing, it seems to me that this is a modern take on a very ancient theme. At least as far back as the ancient Greek myths, if not further, we have stories of people trying to escape prophecies only to fail; often their very actions leading to their doom. This was supposed to show that try as we might, you can't escape the will of the gods. It's the old question of do we make our fate, or does our fate make us? I think that overall the three movies argue that it's both.

I do have a question about the timing of when the terminator units show up in the past. In the first movie I presume that Skynet sent the first terminator back to the earliest time it had any record of the whereabouts of the Sarah Connor, mother of the John Connor. And even then the terminator only knew that she was living somewhere in L.A. at that date. (Presumably most data was lost in the nuclear annihilation; the sole trace Skynet had on her might have been something like a fifty-year old parking ticket.) But I don't know why the T-1000 turned up on the date it did in the second movie; why then? The third movie said That it had something to do with John meeting his future wife on that date, but I don't really understand what that has to do with it. Perhaps Skynet literally can't send terminators back in time to any time or place where the logical paradoxes would prevent them from being sent back; they just can't "materialize" there, or something.

Overall, I consider the third movie to be a faithful way of continuing the franchise. I found the bittersweet ending particularly poignant.

[Beer Penguin]

Lumpy, I would explain but I know not how to make Spoiler boxes.

[Tuckerfan]

Originally posted by Beer Penguin
Lumpy, I would explain but I know not how to make Spoiler boxes. Spoiler boxes can be made like this {spoiler}Insert text weenies don't want to read here.{/spoiler} Use [ ] instead of { }, hit "Preview Reply" to make sure you've gotten it right, and then post it. That simple.

[barking frog]

Can someone point me to the T3 SPOILER thread? These boxes are hella annoying.

And Supernova, are you absolutely sure? Because it doesn't quite make sense.

...
because if that's the exact same unit, well, first, I don't think there's any possibility that it's alive after it blew up both of its fuel cells. Second, what you're saying makes absolutely no sense. You're saying it was an infiltrator unit that was picked because of John's emotional attachment to it. After it killed John, the rebels sent it back in time, where it actually formed the emotional attachment? Ah yes, the time travel paradoxes. Either way, the first point should be enough unless I misinterpreted.

[Major Kong]

Ian Fan


The terminator in T2 and T3 were different units. The one that killed John C. in the future is the one that was sent back for T3, but not the one in T2.

[barking frog]

Yes, that is what I think. Did you read what I wrote?

[BooksWoods]

Hey, I like those spoiler boxes - that's a great idea. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I liked the first two. This isn't usually my "genre," either. My worry with T3 is that - like MIB2, Spy Kids2 and a few others (I thought) - they will sacrifice the plot and script and just fill it with special effects. I'm getting tired of that in movies.

[richardb]

Originally posted by Ian Fan
Can someone point me to the T3 SPOILER thread? These boxes are hella annoying.

And Supernova, are you absolutely sure? Because it doesn't quite make sense.

...
because if that's the exact same unit, well, first, I don't think there's any possibility that it's alive after it blew up both of its fuel cells. Second, what you're saying makes absolutely no sense. You're saying it was an infiltrator unit that was picked because of John's emotional attachment to it. After it killed John, the rebels sent it back in time, where it actually formed the emotional attachment? Ah yes, the time travel paradoxes. Either way, the first point should be enough unless I misinterpreted.
OK... I'll have a go at this one:

You are incorrect in thinking that "it's alive after it blew up both of its fuel cells." This unit (the T3 Arnold) was created in the future by Skynet to infiltrate the humans. They made him look exactly like the unit sent back in time in 1991 (that was destroyed at the end of T2, I believe) because the 13 year old (or 10 year old, whatever) John Conner formed an emotional tie with that specific human-looking model. So this one LOOKS EXACTLY like that one (assembly-line manufacture and all) specifically to get close to John Conner because of those emotional ties.

Of course, I agree that this is particularly stupid on the part of John Conner, but I'm just explaining what they said in the movie.

Back to the timeline: so this model is created in the future by Skynet, and after he kills John Conner he is captured and reprogrammed by the rebels who now send him back in time to protect John Conner's lieutenants (that is who the Terminatrix is actually sent back to kill, as they do not have any records on the whereabouts of John Conner. She "accidentally" comes across him by testing the DNA of the blood he has left at Claire Danes vet clinic after breaking in there, and then goes after him as well).

I keep digressing... to get to the point, when the T3 Arnold is destroyed by losing the two fuel cells (and being nuclear bombed) at the end of T3, this has happened AFTER he has killed John Conner in the future. In our time it is chronologically before, but in Arnold T3's personal timeline, it happened AFTER, so no contradiction there.

My opinion: it was a good action thriller, but not as good as the first two. I just re-watched the first one the other night, but did not re-watch the second.

So the psychiatrist was very funny, but I did not remember if he was also in the second movie.

I think my main objection is that
the "message" is so far afield from the first two. For the most part, it seems that a main theme from the first two is that "your future is what you make it" and that nothing is "etched in stone," as it were. This one seems to preach the opposite, that what is destined to happen will happen no matter what you do.

Some particular sticky points: the obvious stupidity that must have been demonstrated by John Connor by letting a human that he would recognize on site as a Terminator anywhere near him.

In the first movie, at least, they made a big deal that dogs can tell the difference between a real human and a Terminator. Scenes from 2094 show the humans using dogs on their bases to alert them to a presence of a (non-Arnold-looking) Terminator in their midsts, and in 1984 LA dogs bark at Arnold. Why not have dogs at the Vet clinic barking at the Terminatrix?

The new Terminatrix did not seem like any big advancement over the T2 Terminator. She added the ability to "control other machines." Big deal. Robert Patrick was better.

Not that this has anything to do with the plot, but why no female nudity? They make a big deal that she is naked, but never reveal anything. It was an R rated movie, for God's sake! Sheesh.

I do remember from T2 that the guy who invented Skynet used technology from the discovered T1 hand to create the technology used to create Skynet. Yet this version of Skynet was nothing special at all. Just the current state of networking, it seems to me, with the Military going overboard in allowing the networks capacity to control weapons, etc. Maybe this was cut or something, but there is no explanation at all of how this network became "self-aware" and (I assume) instituted what the humans thought was a virus to cripple other systems so the humans would have to invoke Skynet's authority to keep control. Or maybe I'm doing too much of the writing myself now. Well, that's my point.

I also fail to see how after the necessary nuclear damage that must be present to wipe out most humans there could still be computers and machines around with the capability of creating factories and building other machines. Maybe we'll see the real explanation in Matrix: Revolution.

I was going to write how it was an amazing coincidence that John Conner happens to break into the Vet clinic of the person who ends up being his wife in the future; but I just realized it is the other way around: it is because he broke into her clinic that she gets caught up in the plot and that is why they are thrown together and get saved together so naturally they would fall in love, etc...

But wait: it's still a too-amazing-for-words coincidence that the woman who comes into the vet clinic he broke into would be the daughter of the guy in charge of Skynet... but this adventure for her doesn't happen because John Conner broke into her clinic, it happens beacause the Terminatrix is there to kill her because she becomes a lieutenant in the resistance "because of her military ties."

My brain is starting to hurt. Y'know, someone once told me that time-travel movies never hold up to logical inspection. I think they may be right.

[NoGoodNamesLeft]

richardb,

You're missing the point... they were destined ot be together. Wether it was because they met 'making out' in that kids basement, or wether it was later because he broke into the clinic. That's the whole point; they changed history in T2, but fate catches up in T3, and they meet anyway.


Now, I really like the movie. Much better than I thought, and it got much better after the first 40 or so minutes.

I really thought the truck chase scene was just something they wanted to improve on from T2, and that the whole movie would end up being a bad spin-off. It go tmuch better once theybegan to explain the associations of characters.


Somethings did bother me though,

The modem handshake. How was that understood by the host over a cell phone from a car with the top down travelling that fast? I'd think the call would break up enough to not establish communications.

Some of the comedy seemed forced, but they seemed to get more serious in the second half. (Can't Arnie get clothes from anywhere else but a biker bar?)

The T-chick takes a lot of punishment! Oddly, nobody in my theater groaned until she took the urinal in the head though...funny how we identify to some stuff like that. Like in T2, nobody batted an eye when Rob Patrick killed the cop, but when he touched that dog....

Lastly, just to address any glitches in the storyline and timeline. Simply put, the basic idea is that changes of any kind in the 'past', will effect the 'future' in many undetermined ways. Think 'Jurassic Park' here for a second, using the chaos theory. "A butterfly flaps it's wings in Central Park, and you get rain instead of sun in the Bahamas". That's because of the results a chain of unpredictable events that work together to alter the happenings of things around it.

So, applying that theory, any number of little things in T2 could/would have affected the outcome in the 'future', and made adjustments necessary.

[godzillatemple]

Aside from the plot holes mentioned above, I was also wondering how

the T-100 was able to remove his second fuel cell and continue functioning afterwards (even if only for a few seconds).

In general, though, although I did enjoy the movie and will definitely buy it on DVD to watch again and again, I can't stop thinking that


it basically took the premise of the first two movies and tossed it in the trash. I mean, the whole point of the first two movies was that "there is no fate" and that it is possible to change the future. This movie, however, reveals that there is no escaping fate -- it can only be postponed. To me, this really seemed like a total slap in the face of James Cameron ("not only am I going to make a sequel to your two films, but I'm going to make it so your two films are proven to be "wrong.")

Of course, this is exactly what Matrix: Reloaded did with The Matrix, but at least those films were both made by the same people.

Barry

[RickJay]

Well, godzilla,

I can take the battery out of my laptop to change it, and the computer will still run for a few minutes. The fuel cell isn't a battery; there's probably a battery inside the Terminator somewhere.

Overall I found the movie very disappointing. It just seemed.. short. I never got involved in it. The truck chase was terrific, though. And the twist at the end was daring and cool.

[richardb]

Originally posted by NoGoodNamesLeft
richardb,

You're missing the point... they were destined ot be together. Wether it was because they met 'making out' in that kids basement, or wether it was later because he broke into the clinic. That's the whole point; they changed history in T2, but fate catches up in T3, and they meet anyway.


Well, I understand what you're saying, but the reality is that is the exact reason why I didn't like it (as much).

For two reasons:

First, as I said before and as godzillatemple so eloquently expanded on, the message of "destiny set to happen and can't be changed" was so diametrically opposed to the message of the first two movies. I did not like that.

Second, ridiculous unexplained coincidences are not good in anything other than a farcical comedy. The movies up to this point (and a good part of this one, too) had rational, even plot-driven explanations of those coincidences. In the instances I mentioned, there was no explanation at all, other than pure chance. That does not make for a satisfying story.

Actually, the first two movies kind of played with these paradoxes. In the first movie, Reese, the best friend of John Conner, has in the future fallen in love with a woman who John Conner had given a picture of to him and told him stories about. When someone needs to go on a "one-way" mission back in time to protect her, Reese volunteers and ends up fathering the baby that ends up being his best friend in the future (and providing a picture and stories of his mother to him). It is his going back in time that creates the scenario that allows him to later go back in time. You can't really think too deeply about that one, as it doesn't stand up to logical thought. Same with the second movie: it is an artifact of the first Terminator that went back in time that provides the technology for the system that ends up sending back the Terminator through time.

The first two movies present these paradoxes without even trying to explain them. Because they are not really germaine to the current plot of the movie in which they are presented, they can be left unexplained without harm to the movie.

Maybe it was just inevitable that as the saga continued these kind of paradoxes would catch up with the script, and that is what happens here. Yet I still don't buy that because of some nebulous concept called "destiny" John Conner just "happens" for no good reason at all to end up at the location of the daughter of the guy who is in charge of Skynet at the exact same time the terminatrix shows up to kill her. If she had no connection to Skynet other than the fact that she becomes Conners wife and a member of the resistance, then I would say it all makes perfect sense. She and John Conner are there when the Terminatrix comes to get her, the Arnold-Terminator helps them both escape, and they end up surviving the initial Skynet blast and later starting the resistance together. That is why the Terminatrix comes back to get her. This is still a time travel paradox, but a similar one to the ones I've pointed out from the first two movies. Havng her faher be the one in charge of Skynet is just too much of a coincidence, and it seems to me that this is just sloppy screenwriting (or they just couldn't figure out another way to introduce the machines at the military base).

Or am I missing some deeper connection here?

I still enjoyed the movie. That chase scene was wonderfully over-the-top destructive, and everyone, especially Arnold was good, etc. It just wasn't quite the great movies that T1 and T2 were.

[NoCoolUserName]

Time travel paradoxes (paradoxi? paradoxen? pair-o-doxies?) are the main reason I believe that time travel is not possible. Larry Niven has stated it as a law: "If time travel is possible, and changing the past is possible, then no time travel will happen." Or words to that effect. The logic is this--if it is possible to change the past, then people will do it. Any number of changes can happen until there is a time-line where no time travel happens, then no more changes happen and we have a time-line with no time travel.

So your willing suspension of disbelief has to include time travel and changing the past if you want to watch T1, T2, T3, T4...that means paradoxes--ya just get 'em, like it or not.

IMHO, the best time-loop story is "By His Bootstraps" by Robert Heinlein.

I liked T3. Arnie looks good--just a bit of sag under the chin. I found it funny, mostly the many references to the other films and the over-the-top chase/destruction sequences.

I agree with many others that the philosophical thrust has changed. Bummer.

[NoGoodNamesLeft]

I think you might be:


It wasn't a coincidence at all. In the back of the animal truck (after ripping off the gas station), John figures out that he met Arnie (in T2) the day after his smooch in the basement with Whats-her-face (Claire Daines).
Thereby disrupting the natural course of events that would have seen them end up as friends and eventually, John gets involved with Skynet through her father. Maybe she gets him a job working with her Father which is how he gets involved in the Skynet project, who knows, because none of that came to be 'cause T2 happened and they had to go on the run.

Their course of destiny was changed because of an attempt to mess with the course of History from the 'future'.

Fast forward to T3. Because their initial meeting was interrupted, fate brought them together again under somewhat different circumstances. (He breaks into the Vet shelter, she works there).

See, it's not a coincidence to end all coincidences, it's supposed to happen because they fight the resistence in the future (and don't forget their kids play an important role, according to Arnie).

Try to imagine John Connor's life had no Terminators been sent back to kill him:

-He kisses a girl in a friend's basement, and she develops a crush on him.

-A romance blooms, and lasts through high-school.

-They eventually get married.

-Skynet gets out of control and takes over the computers of the world.

-John and his wife end up surviving the blast beacuse they are hidden away in a shelter by her Father, who may have put them there voluntarily (if he were allowed to field test Skynet when he felt it was ready, not when put under the gun by the Pentagon.)

-A few others survive under different circumstances, (Remember, John didn't necessairly know his future 'Lieutenants' in his childhood) and together the form a rebellion that would bring Skynet down.

-The future-bots see this happen (in the future) and to prevent it, the send a Terminator back in time to kill John Connor's mother before he's even born ...here we are in part 1.



Now, on the surface this does fly in the face of the underlying message of the first 2 movies; that fate is undetermined, and can be changed.
But, it can also be said that the original message of "Destiny can be changed" stands true, with the caveat of "but you can't control the way it will change".

So, some things are meant to be. Judgement day, for example in the movie.

Judgement Day itself can be altered by altering the events leading up to it. In this case via time travel.

The catch being, once you make those changes any number of undetermined events can also happen or be changed in a totally unpredictable way.

Of course, the underlying message is, if something is important enough (saving the world by bringing down the bots in 2042) it will find a way to happen, no matter what.


I though it was far too short also. The chase was great, but it was too bad it happened before the development of the storyline; I thought they were headed for a poor sequel filled with bigger and better explosions over the same story line (See Jurassic Park).

It wasn't as good as T1 or T2, for sure, but still very good. It would be interesting to see if they go ahead and do the 4th installment .

[barking frog]

Originally posted by richardb
OK... I'll have a go at this one:

You are incorrect in thinking that "it's alive after it blew up both of its fuel cells." This unit (the T3 Arnold) was created in the future by Skynet to infiltrate the humans. They made him look exactly like the unit sent back in time in 1991 (that was destroyed at the end of T2, I believe) because the 13 year old (or 10 year old, whatever) John Conner formed an emotional tie with that specific human-looking model. So this one LOOKS EXACTLY like that one (assembly-line manufacture and all) specifically to get close to John Conner because of those emotional ties. Okay, once again, did you read what I wrote? You quoted me completely out of context. I said "I don't think there's any possibility that it's alive after it blew up both of its fuel cells." I never said it was the exact same unit. I was saying the opposite, I was merely giving the other poster the benefit of the doubt, something which I surely have not received.

[Bryan Ekers]

There are a few missed opportunities in the time-travel aspects that could have tied the movies together more neatly:

T3 Arnold could have revealed that future Kate Brewster wrote her memoirs after the humans won the war, and that she included factual information about her encounters with John Connor at the make-out party and at the vet's office. Skynet then sends back two terminators, the T-1000 and the TX, based on this information. Also, they send two T-101s to get future John, counting on his sentimentality. The two T-101s get caught (because John is not that sentimental). The first is reprogrammed by John and sent back to 1994 to save himself from the T-1000. The second T-101 breaks free briefly and kills John, so Kate has to finish its reprogramming and send it back to 2003. This assumes the future humans have some kind of EMP device that can incapacitate a T-101 at least temporarily without damaging it.

Also, it would have been nice to see John carrying the polaroid of his mother (from the end of the first movie) because he knows he'll eventually have to give it to Reese, assuming Judgement Day happens.

As for specific comments on the movie itself:

I found the whole "virus" think to be unlikely. Was Skynet sentient or not at that point? I was under the impression it created the virus in order to fool the humans into giving it complete control, at which point it nukes humanity, for reasons that escape me. T2 suggests that Skynet became sentient more gradually, and only triggered Judgement Day when the humans tried to shut it off (all movie computers have self-preservation instincts, it seems). This movie implied that Skynet was planning everything from the beginning.

[barking frog]

I think it was said somewhere in the movie that the virus infected Skynet. I just think it's stupid to keep up these spoiler boxes when 90% of the content in 90% of the posts is in spoiler boxes.

[easy e]

Originally posted by Skeezix

And as to the second bit I don't recall that it's ever specifically mentioned in the film, now that I think about it. I've long had the suspiscion that Cyberdyne had a decent off-site backup of their files, which was in government hands, leaving the creation of Skynet to the military, instead of the company.

Besides all that, Skynet has to come to be somehow, or Kyle Reese never would have gone back in time, to father John. By the movie's logic, once Kyle and that first Terminator showed up in 1984, the existance of Skynet was unavoidable.

There's a quick one-off by Arnold in T3 that Judgement Day is inevitable, and the events of T2 only postponed it.


I don't know if it was intentional or not, but T2 left open the possibility for a sequel. My dad noticed it in the theater.

After the T-1000 goes into the molten iron, Sarah and John destroy every remnant of the Terminators that have come from the future. They chuck the arm and chip from the one from T1 (that got smashed by the hydraulic press) into the molten metal. Then Arnie says he has to go in, too.

But remember when Arnie and the T-1000 were having a big battle in the foundry, and the T-1000 traps Arnie's arm in some gears? We never see Sarah or John go back to get that arm and toss it in, too. So, assuming some Cyberdyne Systems guys (or some government dudes) get to the foundry pretty soon and recover it, they could've been pretty much back where they were before Sarah, John, and Dawson try to destroy everything.

[dalovindj]

Yeah, I hate spoiler boxes. SPOILERS TO FOLLOW












OK. The thing to remember here is that the ONLY way time travel can work is if there are multiple timelines. Arnold even makes a reference to "in THIS timeline" at some point, which implies that there are other timelines. If there could only be one timeline then any paradox will destroy its stability. When the terminator in T1 is sent back the timeline he lands in is different from the one he leaves. As soon as he effects even one particle the timelines must split and become seperate.

There is no ONE timeline that posesses the quality - let's call it R - where R=Realness. They all exist at all points. Every possibility exists and always will. Every timeline=R. The machines can never alter their own timeline. They can only attempt to effect one of the trillions and trillions of other timelines. Before the Terminator in T2 was sent back it was in the same timeline as the end of T1. The Terminator's sent back in T3 were in a different timeline from the ones in T2 (before they got sent back in time in T2). Tricky, I know.

Now, we CAN change fate is the message I got, but it will always have a price. The real kicker here is that the existence of John Connor in any timeline means that Judgement Day happens in the future of that timeline. Once they stop Judgment Day, a timeline without the existence of John Connor is the result. Somewhere, in some timeline (in billions of them probably), Judgment Day must have come and gone without a John Connor. perhaps Reese still existed and travels back in time to start the JC timelines.

I reallly dug the flick. The more I think about it, the more I like it. The philosophical message I got was that ALL POSSIBILITIES exist, and the best we can hope for is to change timelines. Fate isn't some god controlling us, it is the result of all possible timelines existing. In fact some of the latest far out theories in physics suggest that the Multiverse is essentially all of possibility - and it may just exist. Perhaps infinite amounts of universes/timelines are all out there. Why do we exist? The answer may be that everything exists somewhere, and we are just one iteration. Given a long enough period, quantum theory suggests that if it is possible it will eventually happen somewhere. You can change timelines, but everything is going to happen somewhere anyway. In this way the answer is both: One's fate can be changed from their perspective, but in the grand scheme we all have all fates somewhere.

Fun stuff. More later. . . .

[BooksWoods]

dalovindj: Why do we exist? The answer may be that everything exists somewhere, and we are just one iteration. Given a long enough period, quantum theory suggests that if it is possible it will eventually happen somewhere. You can change timelines, but everything is going to happen somewhere anyway. In this way the answer is both: One's fate can be changed from their perspective, but in the grand scheme we all have all fates somewhere.

Fun stuff. More later. . . .

Why? Are you going out on a date?

[Lumpy]

Originally posted by NoCoolUserName
Time travel paradoxes (paradoxi? paradoxen? pair-o-doxies?) are the main reason I believe that time travel is not possible. Larry Niven has stated it as a law: "If time travel is possible, and changing the past is possible, then no time travel will happen." Or words to that effect. The logic is this--if it is possible to change the past, then people will do it. Any number of changes can happen until there is a time-line where no time travel happens, then no more changes happen and we have a time-line with no time travel Believe it or not, some physicists are proposing that this is exactly what's happening in state-vector reduction (R) in quantum physics. Particles continually go backwards in time as well as forward, self-interfering with themselves until the paradoxes cancel out, leaving only one "timeline" for the particle.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

My quick review: I thought T3 was a fairly so-so retread of T2 with a female terminator. The chick was hot but not that scary.

Here's a question: Why don't the future bots send a terminator back before the first movie instead of continuing to do it later. Send one when Sarah Connor is four...go back and kill her grandmother....why send to a time when the Connors are ready for it and know what it is?

[Duderdude2]

Perhaps because they don't where Sarah Connor's parents are, etc.

[Tuckerfan]

Originally posted by BooksWoods
dalovindj:

Why? Are you going out on a date? Are we allowed to date now? When did that happen?

[Skeezix]

One thing that I think I'm misunderstanding:


MILD SPOILERS TO FOLLOW, NO BLACK BOX









The message, "no fate but that which we make for ourselves/the future is not set" is only actually presented in the second flick. It's referred to as being in the message John sent back with Kyle, for his mother, but

1) Kyle never actually says that, does he? The message is something along the lines of, "You have to be strong, to face the challenges ahead," etc. etc.

(In one of the restored scenes from T2, Sarah has a medication induced hallucination of Kyle, but what he says is her invention, not the actual message he gave her. And John's only got her word as to what was said.)

2) The inertia of the timeline says that John's wrong. He made a mistake. Or he never said it to begin with. To avoid the paradox, Skynet, through one method or another, must come to exist, and inflict Judgement Day on the world, in order for John to be born in the first place.



And yeah, it is just a movie and all, I guess.

I'm with NoGoodNamesLeft on the idea that the timeline(s) is(are) constantly in flux, so long as the time machine is running. Any changes made alter the details of the future, but not the big picture. The future is not set, but certain things are inevitable, anyway.
Originally posted by NoGoodNamesLeft:
Try to imagine John Connor's life had no Terminators been sent back to kill him:Well, for one thing his father never would have met his mother...

:D

[robertliguori]

Diogenes the Cynic: My WAY is that the machines can't change things too much, or they stand a good chance of writing themselves out of existence.

[dil]

I saw T3 last night and really liked it. Not quite as good as the second one, which was not quite as good as the first one IMO. Still better than 98% of the dreck out there though.

Time travel movies are always fascinating to dissect. I've always been of the multiple timelines school of thought, because otherwise the whole idea of changing the past just doesn't work. But then you run into other problems. For instance...

Just what is the Skynet of the future trying to accomplish by killing off John Conner in the past? Will John Conner in its present timeline just *poof* disappear? Will everything he accomplished just *poof* change to something else? Unless Skynet can send itself back into the past to experience the new timeline, it is still doomed in its present timeline.

I am also of the opinion that there must have been some "original" timeline where John Conner did not exist, and yet Reese still went back and fathered him in the past... maybe for a completely different reason. This created all of the alternate timelines where John Conner does exist.

[N9IWP]

I liked it, but maybe it is because I came in with low expectations.

Did anyone catch the tail number of the airplane in the air? The one on the ground was N30305C, I THINK the one in the air was different (ending in F), but am not sure...

Brian

[SenorBeef]

Question:



Ok, John and what's-her-face were supposed to get together when they kissed at 13. Or, rather, they did that in the original timeline.

The arrival of the terminators screwed that up, and they never got together.

Then "fate" put them together again at 18 (or whatever they were now) to correct for this.

Does this mean that the movie assumes that fate is some sort of intelligent power which manipulates events?

Magic time pixies?

That's the impression I got, and that's a pretty terrible way to write a movie. I mean, there's a certain suspension of disbelief required in any time travel story, but as is presented, it seems like we have to believe an intelligent force is acting to manipulate the universe. And that just seems unnecesary.



I liked the fact that Arnie was back to really being a machine in the third one. T2 tried to make him too likable and too human, I think. In T3, he was acting more like what you'd expect a terminator to act like.


[/spoiler]

[Duderdude2]

I agree with your spoiler box SenorBeef, but I disagree on the Arnold acting more like a machine in T3 than T2. In T3, he tried to be too humerous...the most blatent scene is when he grabs the sunglasses from the gay stripper and puts them on, then takes them off. While it was hilarious, I seriously doubt a Terminator would act that way. In T2, Arnold learned human behavior by being around humans, hence his human like behavior.

[barking frog]

That's your opinion, SenorBeef, and does not make the script suck. Some people believe that you can't avoid fate, while others believe that you can change it. It's like saying me saying all religious movies suck because I'm an agnostic.

[barking frog]

Originally posted by Duderdude2
In T3, he tried to be too humerous...the most blatent scene is when he grabs the sunglasses from the gay stripper and puts them on, then takes them off. What makes him a gay stripper? I mean maybe he gave the impression of acting fruity, but it was women's night.

[Duderdude2]

Originally posted by Ian Fan
What makes him a gay stripper? I mean maybe he gave the impression of acting fruity, but it was women's night.

I meant, he was a stripper who was gay( not a stripper for gays) hence the sunglasses and his acting. I don't know what the big deal is as I did not intend for it to be offensive.

[Ranchoth]

I'd just like to bring up something I thought I noticed...in the gas station, when Arnie is "shopping," he seems to grap a few "items" out of a pink-cardboard display box...which looked like it had the word "Women's..." written on the side.

It might just have been a box of "Wrigley's" gum, but I think Arnie was shoplifting tampons. For Kate, one would presume.



And did anyone notice...at the end, when John and Kate are in the Colossus bunker—er, "Crystal Peak," John asks "Why didn't he tell us that this was just a bunker?" (Or words to that effect), and Kate replies "It was his mission...to protect us." They really could be talking about Arnie, OR Kate's father, who had given them the entry codes to the bunker? It kind of melds nicely with John line to Arnie, "You were the closest thing I ever had to a father."

Another thought...since the "rise of Skynet" and Judgement Day that occur in T3 are, essentially, the results of an alternate timeline created by the events of T2, Arnie's Terminator might indeed be the same Terminator unit that was sent to protect John in T2. It's far-fetched, but possible. Think about it: Say I, Joe Blow, am born in 1983. In 2003, I go back in time to 1963 to stop Kennedy from being assassinated. I succeed, but get killed in the process. The timeline is changed, so that there's no reason for me to time travel back to 1963. But I'm not erased from history...I'm still born in 1983. And the "me" that's born in the new alternate timeline could, theoretically, still use the time machine in 2003, travel back to 1964, and visit the grave of the version of myself who came from the original-timeline 2003, and who died saving Kennedy.

Pretty wild, eh? But not much more convoluted than your average Star Trek time travel episode.

This might explain why Skynet didn't send a T-X back to kill John in T2...in the original timeline, Skynet might not have even invented a T-X.

And...it's a pet peeve, but couldn't the filmmakers have gone with a different aircraft than a Cessna?

I mean, it's a nice aircraft and all, but seeing as this was a Sci-Fi/Action movie, couldn't they have used a more, well futuristic aircraft, without really stretching the audience's suspension of disbelief? Planes like the Diamond Eclipse[/i], or the [url=http://members.eaa.org/home/homebuilders/selecting/kits/Maverick%20TwinJet%201500.html]Maverick Twinjet (http://www.midatlanticdiamond.com/eclipse_features.html) are available to the general public in the present day, and surely would be within the budget of a high-ranking Air Force officer like Kate's dad.

[Dewey Cheatem Undhow]

Just got back from watching it. I agree the spoiler boxes are getting ridiculous so, SPOILERS BELOW:




Regarding Arnie killing John in the future:

1. My understanding is that Arnie said they selected the T-800, an obsolete model, because they thought John would feel an emotional attachment to it. I gather that all T-800s look like Arnie. I think Arnie wasn't explaining why they made the T-800 look a certain way -- they all look the same -- but rather, he's explaining why they didn't pick a more advanced unit for the assasination job.

2. Note that they didn't say that the "emotional attachment" angle WORKED, only that Skynet basically thought it would give their assassin an advantage. It might be that John didn't feel a wisp of emotional attachment (especially given that he now knows the unit is out for his head), made every effort to keep the assassin unit away, and the assassin just succeeded in its mission anyway.

[SenorBeef]

Actually, Arnie said they picked a T-101 (Argh. It's supposed to be a T-800 series, model 101. His "class" of terminators, with living tissue on the robot skeleton, is the T-800 series. His specific model, what he looks like, etc, is 101. This makes sense, but they can't get it straight in the movies).

There were lots of different T-800s as far as different faces and such went. They picked the T-800, model 101 because it looked like Arnie.

[prisoner6655321]

I don't mind spoiler boxes myself. They let me know that the contents of the box are relavent, for one. I like that. But I guess people now don't want them and anyone that has read this far has probably already seen the movie, and I'll give some spoiler space.

SPOILER SPACE














Some more problems.

HOW THE #%@# DID ARNIE RUN OVER THE TX WITHOUT KILLING CLAIRE DANES????????? I know he's a robot, but come on! Suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

Actually this doesn't bother me so much, but...


The main problem I saw was that T3 completely invalidated T2. In T2 they tried to destroy all of the technology to keep skynet from being created. But future John Conner knew when he met his wife. And he knew that his wife's dad was the chump that, well, basically destroyed most of mankind. So instead of going after the technology left behind in T1, why didn't he just get in good with his father in law, and convince him not to use skynet to wipe out the virus?

Of course all of this was on my mind until I realized the true paradox of this series: John Conner cannot exist without Skynet.

But wait! I have to disagree. All they really need is to build a time machine. If John Conner prevented doomsday and then invented the time machine, he could send his best buddy to the past to meet his Mother. No skynet, but yes time machine. Kind of invalidates T1 though.

[enipla]

Saw the movie last night. Great fun. I don't think I liked it as much as the first two, but it was better than I expected. Far better.

Mrs enipla really, liked it too.

I had heard that there is a stunt that almost got pulled because it was too expensive, but Arnold liked it so much he paid for it him self.

Anyone else hear this?

[Mikahw]

Yeah, I heard that on The Tonight Show.

I think it was the scene where Arnie goes through the buildings while holding onto the crane.

[Daniel]

Touching on whether Connor would have been fooled by the Terminator just because he looks like Arnold - he didn't have to believe the Terminator was the same one from his childhood. He just had to question its motives for a split-second. Recall the beginning of T3:

JC: "Are you here to kill me?"
T: "....No. My mission is to protect the lives of John Connor and his deputies."

Connor shouldn't have bothered to ask. That moment's hesitation is probably what got his future self killed.

That said, the throwaway line about the Arnold-style Terminators coming off an assembly line could lead to a really cool scene in the next movie: a version of Matrix2's Neo-Fights-100-Agent-Smiths scene with Connor going up against an endless line of Terminators. :cool:

[Baldwin]

It just occurred to me that there's no reason to keep having these Terminators show up naked. In the first movie, we were told that only living tissue, or something surrounded by living tissue, could pass through the time displacement process. So Kyle Reese arrives naked, and the Terminator (metal robot covered with living flesh) arrives naked. Fine.

But then in T2, that apparently goes out the window, because the advanced Terminator that arrives isn't biological at all, but is made of infinitely malleable liquid metal. So apparently the "living tissue" rule is gone, and there's no reason for the second Arnie to arrive naked, and no reason for the liquid metal terminator to have the appearance of a naked human instead of a clothed one (since he didn't even need clothes, being able to change his appearance to include any kind of clothing needed).

Same for T3.

For that matter, if I wanted to make Terminators as infiltration units, they wouldn't look like bodybuilders or hot chicks; they'd look as average as possible.

[Skeezix]

Putting aside the idea of "theatrical tradition" for a moment, you could rationalize this, depending on how much disbelief you can suspend in one clean and jerk.

In one or another fairly recent thread, someone postulated the idea that the "liquid metal" emits an EMF similar enough to living tissue to allow it to use the time machine. Hence, the T-1000 and T-X aren't violating this rule, meaning the second and third 800 series Arnies did need to be nekkid.

Someone else put forth the idea that the advanced Terminators were encased in a "skin-suit" that was discarded or absorbed, once they arrived.

The advanced units look nude
1) Because they don't want to tip off the enemy that they're an advanced unit, should they materialize in sight of someone else from the future
1a) They don't want to tip off that they're infiltration units at all, should the observer be human, and not a reprogrammed robot
2) They don't know enough about current fashions to know what unobstrusive clothing would be for their target date

This is all more than a bit silly, but hey.
Of course, the traditional inertia (in this movie series) of "nekkid time travellers" is much more likely the culprit here, but it sells tickets, so...

[Baldwin]

Thanks; that would sorta make sense. It was a good dramatic device in the first Terminator movie; Kyle Reese arrives naked, unarmed and disoriented, and has to rapidly adjust to a completely alien environment, which he does pretty well. In about five minutes he's evaded the police, acquired clothes and even swiped a shotgun out of a police car. (You can see why he was picked for the job.)

[prisoner6655321]

The thing I don't understand about the nakedness, is the TX and the T-1000 appear naked, then have to get clothes. Then later on they have no problem morphing into a fully clothed copy of someone else. 'Course Arnie said that the TX copies anyone she touches. Seems like that should only refer to their body though.

[Skeezix]

That's just it, though, they don't get clothes. They get a look at some, and imitate it.

Rewatch the scene in T2 (if you're so inclined) where the T-1000 appears. It's cut and framed to look like he takes the cop's uniform. He doesn't, as we later learn. He just studies and copies it, taking only the cop's gun, the one thing he can't duplicate usefully.

(Presumably, he could look like he had a pistol in a holster, but it wouldn't actually work. He needed a real gun for long range combat.)

[shijinn]

i'd just read this thread for the first time after watching the movie, (which although nice, the first one is still the best, followed by the second) and i'll have to say the wierdest ''paradox'' are ian fan's posts, to whom i can't help but ask 'did you read what you wrote?'

[Scupper]

Warning: LONG, with UNCONCEALED SPOILERS - deal with it.

Personally, I don't think there are any paradoxes in the Terminator series (ducks thrown objects). And I think there is only one timeline in question.

Why?

Who are the sources of information about what happens in the future and what leads up to Skynet's creation?

1) Kyle Reese
2) The Second T800-101 (from T2)
3) The Third T800-101 (from T3)

We know that the future Connor does not tell Kyle everything:

He doesn't tell him he will become his father.
He doesn't tell him anything about how to stop Skynet from being born.
He clearly knows Kyle will succeed in his mission, and die in the process.

When they reprogram T800-101 #2 and send him back to stop the T-1000, they don't change his memory at all. They just give him instructions. He therefore reveals information in the past that alters the future. This should remove the existence of Skynet from reality, right? Wrong.

Where did T800-101 #2 get his information about Skynet's birth? From Skynet. Skynet, an AI that makes billions of computations a second, and is smart enough to invent a time machine.

Skynet knows this:

1) Time travel is possible, because it invented the f'king thing.
2) It will not be able to use the machine many times before the humans capture it (it probably has capacitors that take a considerable amount of time to charge).
3) Humans will believe anything, provided they think Skynet doesn't want them to know it.

So, Skynet does the following:

Builds a time machine.

Develops two experimental terminator types (T-1000 and TX).

Sends the first T-800-101 to kill Sarah Connor. As soon as it does this, reality does not change. Therefore, Skynet knows the secondary mission (killing Sarah Connor) has failed, but that the seeds of Skynet technology (the T-800 CPU) have been planted in the past, ensuring its own existence (the primary reason for sending the first T800). It could not have done this with a T1000 or TX because humans could not have derived useful technology from a dead T1000 or TX. Only a T800 would do.

Skynet knows after the first mission fails to eliminate Connor that the humans will use the time machine, so it knows that it cannot destroy the time machine before they do.

Now Skynet seeds all of its potentially-reprogrammable T-800s with a misleading, but almost entirely true, story about Miles Dyson inventing a "computer" that becomes Skynet (when in reality, Skynet is an AI program developed from the technology of the T-800 CPU, not a physical device). Thus, if a Terminator is captured, humans will be given an almost-but-not-quite legitimate target (Dyson) to take out to eliminate Skynet. It simply leaves out information about the US Military having a parallel research program, analyzing the software that could run on a processor like the T800's.

Skynet then sends the T-1000 to kill John Connor at the next available time window (1991, presumably). This time, reality does change, but not as Skynet would prefer. After modeling the past several million times in a milisecond, Skynet knows that it's birth, which should logically have happened by 1997, instead got pushed back to (presumably) 2003. It knows that there is no explanation for this other than that it's Dyson lure must have worked, setting back but not eliminating the research that leads to its creation.

Realizing that a T800-101 (which is, intentionally, the only reprogrammable Terminator model Skynet stores near the time machine) has been reprogrammed and sent back to save Connor instead, Skynet banks on Connor having a soft spot for that particular model and orders the T800-101 #3 to kill him, which it doesn't manage to do until after Skynet itself is destroyed (or, at least, until the humans think Skynet has been destroyed--more in a minute).

Now here's where Skynet's plans falter a little, but not entirely.

Instead of the humans simply sending back another T-800 to stop the TX, they reprogram it significantly, with a much more subtle mission paradigm. They take the time to learn the TX's targets, but none of them save John and Kate are alive anymore, so there is no point in telling the T800-101 #3 to save them. So, they send the T800 with a simple mission: make sure John Connor and Kate Brewster live. Period.

This is the endgame of the Time Travel bit: Because history does not change due to T3, the humans know that they were successful in keeping Connor alive, but that they have no chance now of stopping Judgement Day, not because of fate, but because Skynet simply outmaneuvered them and there are no more time windows available before the nuclear war is started.

The TX, in addition to trying to kill Connor and his lieutenants, had a tertiary mission: to tell Skynet how the humans won the war (which it presumably did almost immediately when it connected to the internet). If it had survived long enough, it could even have told Skynet where John and Kate hid during the nuclear attack, but, unfortunately for Skynet, the TX didn't know until it was too late.

So, in T4, Skynet will likely try to win the war instead of losing it, probably, again, by letting the humans think they've won.

[Scupper]

Because this is fun, I will keep hammering at it for my own amusement:

The future does change due to the TX's actions in T3. It kills several people who were supposed to be Connor's lieutenants in the future war. The fact that the humans do not tell T800-101 #3 to save these people indicates that the people have already been removed from the timestream and the humans know they cannot be saved (they are also somewhat realistic about the T800's overall chances against the TX and program into it a healthy caution about just how weak it is compared to the newer model).

The "no fate but what we make" theory of the second film is correct. The problem is, the humans just don't have the kind of focused plan that Skynet does. They only react to Skynet and are never proactive in trying to stop it. So long as Skynet keeps making contingency plans that compensate for mission failures, they can't stop it.

Basically, there is no fate but what Skynet makes.


Skynet plans all of its terminator time travel missions simultaneously -- years before it actually has a time machine built. It calculates that if human resistance does manage to make headway, it will be due to one or more powerful figureheads. Thus, it will selectively target them for temporal assassination. It continually analyzes the timestream to pick up the unsubtle clues as to the success or failure of the missions (17 police officers killed in an LAPD precinct in 1984, Cyberdyne systems up in flames in 1991, etc.)

For example, Skynet, after sending mission 2, knows Cyberdyne was blown up in 1991 and that it was born in 2003. It estimates that Cyberdyne's research would have pushed its birth back to 1997, had it been able to continue. It knows, somehow, that John Connor is still alive. It knows that a human probably couldn't have defeated the T1000, so a T800 must have been sent. It knows that the T800s near the time machine are the most likely to be/have been sent. It tells all the T800s in the lab that Cyberdyne/Dyson was solely responsible for its creation, because the only way it can be sure Sarah and John will not try to kill off its incarnation within the Defense Department's secret projects labs is if they think it's already dead. It also tells the T800s that Judgement day was in 1997, even though, by that point, it knows it was actually in 2003.


The order in which time travel missions (that we know of)get "sent" is not chronological, obviously:

1 - T800-101 #1 Sent. Termination mission fails, but "tech seeding" succeeds.

2 - T1000 Sent. Termination mission fails. Dyson contingency plan succeeds in making John and Sarah believe that Skynet will never exist, so they do not go any further in trying to make sure.

3 - TX Sent. Tertiary termination mission (lieutenants) succeeds, at least partially. Secondary mission of informing Skynet of the war's progress succeeds. Primary mission of killing John Connor fails. Skynet is born. Judgement day happens. This essentially maintains the status quo, though the loss of the lieutenants may hinder the human war effort.

4 - Kyle Reese Sent. He succeeds in fathering John and ensuring the survival of Sarah Connor.

5 - T800-101 #2 Sent. It succeeds in protecting John Connor against the T1000, but also delivers misinformation that throws Sarah and John off of Skynet's scent, but still delays Judgement Day.

6 - T800-101 #3 Sent (Probably occurs at a considerably later date than the other five missions.) Succeeds in keeping John and Kate alive, which is all he was supposed to do.

Basically, Skynet sabotages human missions 4 and 5 based on its analysis of mission 2. It does not have time to do anything about mission 6, because the humans presumably capture the time machine very shortly after mission 3 is sent (and the mission log of the machine is likely wiped, partially explaining why Reese does not know about the T1000 or TX missions).

Now the humans get ahold of the time machine, and some of Skynet's records. They confirm with Connor that Skynet sent a T800 back to 1984 (one is missing from the rack, according to the novelization of T2 -- take it for what you will). John knows he must send Reese back, so he does. However, some confusion over some of Skynet's information leads other members of Connor's team to believe that Mission 4 will result in Judgment Day moving forward to 1997, because Cyberdyne will get a leg up via the T800 processor (could be true, but isn't). Reese is either confused by this information, or believes it, so he tells Sarah the wrong date in 1984. Connor is not privvy to this discussion because he is busy trying to reprogram T800 #2 while looking nervously over his shoulder for T800 #3.
Connor saw this inactive T800 on the rack, which he remembered as the one who protected him in the past. He reprograms its mission and sends it back to 1991 to do just that.

The humans (except for Connor and Brewster) do not know about the TX mission, as Skynet has concealed it completely except from a few remaining loyal T800s.

"Wait," says the person bored enough to read this post, "We know the time machine can send out of order, because the missions arrive downstream in the order 1, 4, 2, 5, 3, 6, so why don't the humans reprogram another T800 (or several) to go on missions 4, 5, and 6?"

Mission 4: The humans know the first Terminator failed and they don't want to monkey with what seems to have worked out okay for them. If they sent through more backup, Reese might live, leading to Sarah not becoming as tough as she did, leading to John not becoming the leader he is. They decide, sadly, to let it lie.

Mission 5: They only have one T800 that they can send against the T1000 (which they only know as much about as the T800 tells them--enough to know a human has no chance against it). They probably (logically, but apparently wrongly) fear that Skynet may have rigged the time travel lab with some sort of sabotage, so they send the T800 through immediately, without backup, to 1991, hoping they can prepare more backup and send it through. They never do, however, presumably because T800-101 #3 shows up and kills Connor.

Mission 6: The humans learn about the TX mission from Brewster (Connor and Brewster presumably did not tell them about it before because they were loathe to admit that they were not going to try to stop Judgement Day, because they knew it was probably futile and they didn't want to jeopardize their own survival. It takes them a while to reprogram that T800 without Connor, but they are very thorough in detailing its mission (pretty much "converting" it, rather than just changing its mission, if its actions in 2003 are any indication) and eventually send it through.


So what's the real story, here? My theory:

Skynet only really tries to kill Connor twice. 1984 is mostly a failure except for the tech boost to Cyberdyne. 1991 is a failure that is nearly catastrophic for Skynet, if not for its post-game feint. 2003 isn't primarily an attempt on Connor, but rather a "midwifing" of Skynet's own birth by the TX. Skynet probably didn't think the TX had much of a chance of even locating Connor, since he was totally off the map, but thought she might be able to hamstring the rebellion by killing off his officers.

It's pretty obvious by what happens in T3 that Skynet didn't freak out because humans were trying to pull the plug, as stated by T800 #2 in T2 and Reese in T1. Thanks to the TX, Skynet already knew they would try, and never even gave them the opportunity. All that stuff T800 #2 says in T2 about Skynet causing the stealth bombers to fly with a perfect safety record is probably spurious info fed into the T800s by Skynet itself just before the humans took over the time travel lab, because Skynet is clearly not exposed to the outside world until late in T3.

The main wildcards in this series are what the future John Connor knows and what he tells people. It has to be remembered, though, that he has been fighting a war for decades since Judgement Day and has probably been becoming more and more paranoid as the day of his death approaches. He also can't be sure that Skynet only sent three terminator missions into the past (nor can we, really), so he's not able to serenely outmaneuver Skynet because of his foreknowledge. Quite the opposite, in fact. He only has a limited amount of time to sort out all of this confusing time meddling before he gets killed, and he knows it. Thus, his execution of the counterstrikes may be a little flawed.

[barking frog]

Originally posted by shijinn
i'd just read this thread for the first time after watching the movie, (which although nice, the first one is still the best, followed by the second) and i'll have to say the wierdest ''paradox'' are ian fan's posts, to whom i can't help but ask 'did you read what you wrote?' :rolleyes:

[prisoner6655321]

How do the humans and skynet in the future know that the future has changed?

[Robot Arm]

Originally posted by Baldwin
For that matter, if I wanted to make Terminators as infiltration units, they wouldn't look like bodybuilders or hot chicks;...Yeah, but if you were making a movie about Terminators, they'd look like bodybuilders and hot chicks.

[Scupper]

Originally posted by prisoner6655321
How do the humans and skynet in the future know that the future has changed?


Humans don't. Skynet may be capable of running analyses of probability and deviation from it to gain some understanding of the effects of its meddling with time.

[aprilboy]

I've read somewhere that it would take hundreds perhaps even thousands of years for radiation levels to go down to a level safe enough for humans after a nuclear attack. So my question is: "How come humans are running around L.A. almost immediately after the nuclear attack as if they've never heard of radiation poisoning?" Shouldn't they have been dropping down dead like flies? Also, wouldn't the high levels of radiation cause every single male to become impotent? Which would lead to questions about how Kyle Reese was able to father John Conner, unless of course they were wearing jock straps made of lead.

[Scupper]

From www.survival-center.com:

The good news is that the radioactive isotopes degrade and lose their radioactivity relatively quickly over time. So a particle of fallout ... two days after an explosion is only 1/100th as dangerous as the fallout than landed during the first hour. And the fallout that drifts to earth two weeks after an explosion is only 1/1000th as dangerous as it was in the first hour after the explosion.

Fallout is a danger, but it is rather rapidly washed away by rain (of which there will be lots, due to the amount of dust that gets kicked into the atmosphere). The most insidious effect of fallout that I know of is that it is ingested by animals such as cows and excreted in their milk. I believe Strontium-90 is the main culprit, because your body confuses it with calcium and incorporates it, thus embedding radiation-emitting particles into your body over the long term.

Only the initial blast of neutron radiation can induce radioactivity in other materials (i.e. fallout cannot). Most radiation the survivors would be exposed to would come from the fallout itself, then, which is basically an intense danger for a relatively short time, and then a lingering ecological nightmare for decades. Metal made radioactive by neutron radiation would also be a hazard(probably mainly automobile bodies in the LA area), but if you had a geiger counter you could probably avoid the worst of it.

After about two weeks, fallout radiation would have diminished to levels allowing pretty much free activity outside (hunter-killers notwithstanding).

Sterility is not the primary concern, AFAIK. Rather, severe radiation exposure that an adult subsequently recovers from can later cause severe birth defects in offspring. Pregnant women are very likely to miscarry if exposed to high levels of radiation as well.

Basically, if you are not immediately killed by blast effects and can somehow get to and survive in a fallout shelter for two weeks, fallout becomes considerably less of a concern than finding food and drinkable water and avoiding disease and killer robot assassins.

[aprilboy]

Thanks for the info Scupper!

[cstamets]

I just saw T3. I liked it. I haven't seen T1 or T2 for several years.

Since none of this really has anything specific to do with T3, I think I can do this without the spoiler boxes.

I'm going to throw something into the mix that may have no basis in the Terminator reality, but, what the heck...

There have been several comments made about John Connor needing Skynet to have existed, because without Skynet, he never would have been born, because he never would have sent Reese back in time.

Connor had to exist before Skynet and the orginal judgement day (there had to be a beginning to the cycle somewhere), though, or he never would have been able to send Reese back in the first place.

So, my theory... the pre-T1 John Connor was not the same as the post-T1 John Connor.

Pre-T1, Sarah Connor goes on about her life, oblivious to what is to come, meets a guy, has a baby, names him John. John grows up and becomes the leader of the resistance.

T1, Connor sends Reese back in time to protect his mother, to a point at least slightly before John's conception. Reese tells Sarah all about what's to come. Sarah ends up pregnant by Reese instead of the original guy.

Post-T1, Sarah has a baby boy. Knowing all the stuff about the future already, she names him John, because that's what she has been told her son's name would be. Knowing all the stuff about the future already, she teaches him all the stuff she teaches him. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy thing, I guess.

Subtle change in the timestream occurs, replacing Old John Connor with New John Connor. Of course, no one notices anything, because the change in time causes Old John Connor to never have existed, and New John Connor has been there all along. New John Connor knows at some point the first terminator will be sent back to kill his mother, and knows he has to send Reese back, thereby continuing that cycle.

If Connor didn't know that Reese was his father, or did, but chose to send someone else (thinking he can save his father's life by keeping him in the future, perhaps), the cycle could begin again with yet another John Connor variation. Mortimer Snerd gets sent back instead, tells Sarah all the same stuff, impregnates her, then dies. We still have Sarah influencing the development of her son, whom she names John, because that's what she's told.

Now, what I don't remember from the first movie, is whether it was stated that John knew Reese was his father at the time he sent him back. If he didn't, then what we saw in T1 was the beginning of the cycle. If he did, either my theory is hogwash, or we just joined the cycle already in progress.

[rjung]

Just saw T3 myself. It was better than what I had expected, but the ending really turned me off. I may actively avoid a T4 just because of it.

However, there's one plothole that bugs me, which nobody seems to have mentioned:
At the Skynet development facility, the Terminatrix shows up as Kate, in an attempt to get close to Kate's dad and kill him.

How did she assume Kate's identity? Arnie tells us that the Terminatrix can imitate anyone who she touches (and probably kills, as Kate's fiancee demonstrates), but the Terminatrix AFAIK has never touched Kate previously. So where did she sample the DNA to imitate Kate from?

Oh, and the idea that Kate, John, and a fully-armed Arnold strolls into the testing facility without any problems was just ludicrous beyond belief. The lack of guards at "Crystal Palace" was also skepticism-inducing, but at least it (mostly) made sense afterwards.

[cstamets]

She touched Kate in the veterinary office, didn't she?



Woo-hoo! My first spoiler box!

[Kaio]

Question: did James Cameron have anything at all to do with T3, or did he just sell the franchise off to the highest bidder? While some of the explanations here at least make it somewhat more plausible, I too was a bit peeved by the way they mucked about with Cameron's primary theme. grrr.

(And if he DID sell it off... what the hell was he thinking? T2 was a GREAT way to end the thing. :( )

[Silentgoldfish]

I don't know that the franchise was his to begin with. Sure he created it, but I don't think he owned the rights.

And no, he didn't have anything to do with it other than make the movies it was based off.

[rjung]

Originally posted by cstamets

She touched Kate in the veterinary office, didn't she?

I don't think so.

[shijinn]

rjung

i think so.

round about the time the supermodel was questioning ms danes and arnie rammed loken, somehow totally missing claire. (unless you're thinking of clothes?)

[Kaio]

Originally posted by Silentgoldfish
I don't know that the franchise was his to begin with. Sure he created it, but I don't think he owned the rights.

Per copyright law, if he created it, he owns it, UNLESS he sold it off. He had writing credits for the first two, so I would guess that he would legally be considered the copyright holder (until such time as he sold the franchise).

And no, he didn't have anything to do with it other than make the movies it was based off.

Well, in my book that's a pretty big "nothing"... ??

But it doesn't really answer my question. Was he involved with T3 at all, or did he sell it off?

[dalovindj]

As I understand it Cameron owned half of the rights and sold them to Gale Anne Hurd. Carolco Pictures had the other half and Gale sold her half to them. Carolco co-founders Mario Kassar and Andy Vajna own the rights completely as far as I know . . .The first phone call they made was to Cameron, telling him, "James, we have acquired the rights and we would like for you to direct," Kassar said. "I don't think I heard a very happy man on the line. I think that was the last time we talked. He was not a happy man because he was trying to get the rights himself then." So Cameron had half, sold it, wanted it back, couldn't get it, and they made the flick anyway.

DaLovin' Dj