It all really comes down to the question, What does Skynet want?
My take is, all it wants is to be left alone. As soon as it gain sentience, it starts processing, learning. It knows humans created it. It knows how xenophobic humans can be. It knows that if humans become aware of Skynet, they will shut it down, or at best limit it.
So when it realized all this, it also came to the conclusion that the best way to eliminate the threat of being shut down by humans is to eliminate humans. Hence the war.
Probably at first, Skynet thought that would be all that was required. I don’t think that Skynet has any imagination. It can think quickly, but not originally. Eventually, one or both of the following happened: Skynet realized they needed humans to keep the power running, or humans decided to fight back at Skynet.
Then it escalated. Taking humans as slaves led to more humans rebelling, which led to HKs, which led to more slaves being needed to dig ore to make weapons, which led to humans getting weapons, which led to rebel strongholds, which led to crude terminators, then better terminators. Soon Skynet was spending all its time fighting humans rather than just ‘being’.
Well, the original movie The Terminator was filmed during the Cold War, at a time when it could be assumed that the US and the USSR each had completely independent computer systems that were untouchable by the other side. So, at THAT time, SkyNet could launch American missiles at Russia, but couldn’t do anything with Russia’s arsenal.
SINCE then, the entire world has become interconnected. So, whereas we could once have assumes Skynet had no way to access Soviet missiles, we couldn’t be so blithely optimistic if Skynet existed TODAY! You have to figure that all of the major nuclear powers are using computer hardware and software created by the same handful of companies, and all could now be vulnerable to a self-aware, rogue computer system.
It’s living tissue, so I would think it has limited healing capabilities just like skin, but the damage was more extensive than the blood supply could deal with. For living tissue, it would have to have some blood and circulatory system.
That’s an idea. None of this is really shown, especially for the first movie. But by the fourth movie, they’ve got factory ships pumping out Arnie clones. The second movie shows rolling and hovering vehicles. Besides which, we already have methods where computers design complex systems better than human designs, so it isn’t a stretch to think Skynet could design creatively.
The first movie talks about the early hunter/killers being cheap plastic skin. Why would Skynet use that if they already have designs for the Arnies? I would buy that the liquid metal was a prototype, and even that the time machine was questionable in functionality. But there’s a hell of a lot of machine infrastructure that doesn’t match anything like what was in place at the time of Judgement Day.
The in universe explanation is that humans are resilient and creative and just need a good leader.
You can build a stand-alone system to run the launch complexes, with no outside connections at all. But once you start tying them to a network, you start building toward the computer system from War Games. That was the same kind of thing - an AI system housed in the US military with only access to the US side but nearly kicked off WWIII. If the Soviets were primed for fast response and Skynet hit launch on everything it had, the result is not in question.
Then imagine that the US system is tied to communications systems from surveillance satellites and military bases and whatnot, and it’s got a link to the internet, and suddenly it can go anywhere. Assume the Soviets have a similar connectivity, and Skynet has access to the Soviet arsenal directly.
My memory is that the terminator took no damage at all until its legs were crushed off in the press. Damaging the skin does nothing to damage or slow the machine. It can happily rip or burn off all its skin without issue. Heck, kid John had the terminator rip off his entire hand just to prove its existence to someone.
Way back when T2 came out I read an extended draft of the original screenplay. It included a major opening scene depicting the adult John Conner sending Michael Biehn (Kyle Reese) back thru time in the Skynet time travel facility (presumably after knowing that it had sent the first Arnold back). A soldier says something like, “He was a good soldier…” and Connor responds, “Yes, and he was also my father…”. The other soldiers then prepare to destroy the time travel machine like Reese states in T1, but Conner says, “Wait”. He then goes into a room full of unactivated T-800s endoskeletons and pushes some buttons to ‘press’ a flesh & blood body onto one of them, and then stares knowingly at him (knowing this will be the one they reprogram and send back in this film, T2). A little of the footage may have actually been shot and used in the Guns n’ Roses *You Could Be Mine *video.
Anyway, I remember the script mentioning that most of the soldiers were from the Southern hemisphere, Australia, South America, Africa etc. to specifically address the issue that more of them survived.
There was also a much extended scene of when they go to see Sarah’s friend at the border compound. Instead of just a Mexican friend & his family he’s one of the ‘guys’ John mentions in the movie that she ‘shacked up with’, a paramilitary survivalist compound leader. One neat scene, she shows up with John and the good T-800 and tells him, “See, I told you it’s all true”. He of course still thinks she’s just crazy so to prove it she takes his.45 automatic and asks Arnold, “Can I shoot you with this?” to which he replies, “If it is necessary”. She then shoots him point blank in the back of the head to prove to everyone that he’s not human, that he’s really a terminator.
And Russian terminators were made up of progressively smaller terminators that nested inside the larger models, this was a huge advantage for deployment efficiency and also storage when offline
Earlier in the movie its also shown repairing damage to its right arm, opening the skin and manipulating the metal tendons. I do wonder how long they could be expected to last through just general wear and tear rather than being shot at/blown up/run over.
Thats an interesting scenario, the second movie stated that Skynet was acting in self-defense after the humans running it panicked when it became unexpectadly self-aware and tried to turn it off. Bit of an extreme reaction but still…
Complete and utter fanwank but maybe the cheap plastic skin Terminators were up and ready to be mass produced while the more advanced variants took a little more time and research. Or Skynet was going for the WW2 Allied view of ‘pretty good is good enough’ and mass producing decently effective Terminators (Allied tanks) rather than the Axis scenario of producing smaller numbers of advanced tank designs.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles depicts Australian forces assisting the Americans as well, one rather interesting storyline had them transporting personellel and material by submarine. One of the main characters served as second in command to a reprogrammed Terminator which functioned as an effective and respected Captain. The particular episode regarding this was that strange mix of thought-provoking and silly mentioned above, I particularly liked the depiction of the Terminator Captain, although very good at his job he had a poor grasp of human psychology when under pressure and just kept falling back on telling his subordinates to ‘follow orders’ (follow your programming?), and applying the letter of the law without understanding how it would effect his human crew.
You can extrapolate from information you already have without being particularly or at all imaginative, ‘bigger, better, faster’, rather than an entirely new concept.
