Amph Come with me if you want to live: The Terminator Thread

yah when you have a future person send back a grunt in Terminator series I tend to look as it as less romantic and more paternal or at least commander and solider.

Of course, John sent back Kyle with romantic intentions in there. "Headbands, man, you love a woman who can rock a headband. I really need you to like girls who could look hot in a headband."

 

Indeed, that's why the score in this sequence contains "The Terminator" theme as Sarah enters the house to finish Dyson off.

Spoiler

Skynet did not program a secondary objective into Carl, which is why he didn't try to ensure Skynet's continued existence. It was implied in each film, save for "Rise Of The Machines" that Skynet only has secondary objectives available when it is deemed necessary. Skynet did not intend for the 1984 Terminator to become the basis for Skynet's existence. Uncle Bob stated that he would continue to function for over a hundred years on his existing power cell, until he shuts down. Meaning when they had carried out their objectives, they would have nothing else to do. The T-850 completed his objective in killing John, but was then later re-programmed for a new mission, to ensure that he and Catherine make it to Crystal Peak. The T-X had multiple targets that she had to eliminate and upload the computer virus that would infect Skynet and allow him to become self-aware. Pops had to do a lot of things between 1984 and 2017, since he couldn't go through through time with Reese and Sarah. Before 1984, Sarah was the one who had to teach him to not kill like John did with Bob. And like with two of them, Pops went along with Sarah's orders and her decision to stop Judgment Day.

Unlike all of them, Carl was left alone and had to learn about human life on his own. It's not unreasonable for him to reach those conclusions, after so many years.

 

After rewatching the first one for it's 35th anniversary, I managed to find a spare evening for Dark Fate. Here's my little review--basically, while it was definitely an improvement on most of the rest of the sequels IMO, and Linda Hamilton was great, it relied a bit too much on the first two. Decent action flick, but not the pop-culture marking entry the franchise needed...

 

Quite liked the movie. Enjoyed it far more than any of the last 3. My main query/gripe is

Spoiler

that no connection was established between Cyberdyne/Skynet & Legion. Are we expected to believe that completely independently a totally separate AI is going to create almost the same kind of tech including terminators? Then utilize the same time travel method & employ the same strategy in terms of eliminating the future resistance leader?? I was waiting for a connection, such as the founder of Legion worked at Cyberdyne up until the events of T2, & so the IP wasn't fully destroyed in that movie. Some link needed to be established, otherwise it's all just a coincidence that's far too improbable to swallow.

 

TBH, I didn't really think too much of it, because it isn't the movie that really seems to be made to stand up to close scrutiny. I mean, all sequels want to give us more of the same, but different. So I go in expecting more or less that, whether or not it really makes a heck of a lot of sense. This is the kind of movie that imho really can't be enjoyed without a jumbo-sized helping of suspension of disbelief.

 

Sure but my disbelief suspension can't support a giant sized co-incidence of that scale. I'd like to think that in a sequel (that probably won't happen) a link between Legion & Skynet would be established. They should've done so with a line of dialogue in this movie.

 

It's a take on the Singularity, a theory that creates terrible science bros but it's also pretty neat when it comes to fiction.

 

It's no different from John sending his father back in time to impregnate his mother.

Remember that the T-600's had rubber skin which made them easier to spot. The T-800 obviously has clone flesh and in a decade, the first animals would be cloned. It's fairly simple to believe that Skynet figured out how to grow flesh and blood around an endoskeleton. Not to mention that Bob and Pops both state that their skin will heal in time, thus allowing them to blend in with the human populace. Pops is the first one that we see who actually gets to do that, since all the others are terminated before they can do so. Though in the case of the 1984 T-800, infection had set in, as he didn't bother to treat his wounds. Bob was tended to by Sarah and Pops took care of it on his own after sending Sarah and Reese forward.

 

Two different AIs coming to the same logical/engineering conclusions is no different than evolution creating a bat wing and a bird wing, or a human eye and an octopus eye. There are only so many ways to "solve a problem."

(I'm attributing intent to evolution in this example only to make a larger point)

 

You say "no different" when in fact there's barely any similarity. On the one hand we have hundreds of millions of years of natural selection that separately establishes that creatures gain a survival advantage via flight, or via light sensors that eventually develop into more complex eyes. Compared with two instances of AI both within the same timeframe deciding to exterminate humanity with near identical methods: killer robots who look human & who become time-traveling hitmen. There are two major problems here. One is that it's a weird-ass plan. It's strange & distinct, so therefore not one that you can just claim to be "inevitable" for every sinister AI to adopt. If you were thinking of the most practical & logical way for sentient machines to "solve the problem", ie kill off humanity following nuclear attacks surely you'd start with biological & germ warfare, maybe deadly toxins, then work your way through to flesh eating nano-bots etc etc. Maybe when you get to around the 50th option you'd get to gun-toting soldier style robots. That's what makes Legion, supposedly a completely unrelated AI coming up with the same tech & same strategies a mind-boggling unlikely co-incidence.
Then there's the pre-destination paradox the first two movies established. We get a neat closed time loop where Kyle goes back & fathers John, but also the T-800's arm & cpu are recovered by Cyberdyne. In T2 Dyson says they based all of their research on those items. So now in this film we're expected to believe that a wholly independent unrelated AI becomes a near clone of Cyberdyne, with all of their weird & distinct methods of killing humanity, but this time without the T800 hardware to point them in that direction! Naturally it's too much to expect time travel paradox movies to ever marry up perfectly, but this is a bridge way too far in terms of silliness. A quick exchange of dialogue perhaps explaining that someone at Cyberdyne prior to T2 leaked research to a competitor, or to the government, or that the founder of Legion worked there would've easily solved this problem.

 

headcanon to explain the differences:

Spoiler

Matt Smith as Skynet manipulating things through different timelines.

Okay, not really, but yeah, it's too much of a coincidence.

 

It's basically a reboot of the first two Terminators, although the new Terminator provided a twist that others didn't (T-1000 or the T-X).

 

When you're at the cinema, you're never alone...unless you're in an empty theater.

 

Maybe you can ask an usher to keep you company? If the theater's empty they won't be very busy....

 

I actually love that. Smithnet basically was the Uber-Skynet jumping across timelines so it could make sense in some timeline he made Legion.

Genisys gets a lot of flack for going all crazy alt timeline stuff on it but that's one of the reasons I kind of dug it.

The similarity of Legion to Skynet really does seem like something that would be explored in a continuation but since that looks incredibly unlikely (and every Terminator movie since T2 has basically done it's own thing), I say Smithnet is kind of the catch-all answer to anything, especially since Legion just being Skynet again is really improbable but, hey, time travel and alt realities and so forth.

Aside from all that stuff, I am a bit surprised that Dark Fate didn't do as good as Genisys did in China, and how audiences would respond to that one but not this one. Dark Fate basically did about Genisys numbers in North America (but slightly less) but in China it did way less than Genisys.

 

I wonder how you say "franchise fatigue" in Mandarin.

 

The scenarios are different enough to excuse it from being an outrageously unlikely co-incidence? I wouldn't say that. The Rev-9 is just a composite of the T800 & T1000. Really it's a logical, even likely evolution of technology that I'd expect Skynet to have arrived at given they'd created those two models. Some link between Skynet & Legion in terms of R&D seems obvious, & frankly essential to maintain plausibility here. They have to've had a shared IP lineage, at least prior to T2. You mentioned TFA earlier. Well at least in that movie it makes in-universe sense for the First Order to have Imperial tech. They evolved from the Empire. This thing with Legion would be like some new faction from a distant part of the galaxy who've never heard of the Empire & have no connection to it showing up with almost the same Star Destroyers & TIE's & Starkiller Base.

Yeah I'd imagine they would've explained the connection in a sequel. What's just as likely though is that they needed Terminators for this film but they wanted this alternate timeline, but Cameron also didn't want to diminish T2. So he's tried to have his cake & eat it too. He'd know that for this to make a lick of sense the Cyberdyne IP clearly wasn't fully destroyed in T2. Somehow it's been continued on with & incorporated into Legion. Yet if the film says that, via say the founder of Legion being Dyson's old lab assistant, then the sequence of destroying Cyberdyne in T2 becomes redundant. Basically the route he's chosen is a cop out, & he just hopes the audience rolls with it & doesn't raise these questions. His other problem is that by stating that Legion is completely unrelated he also undercuts the time paradox he established. Bcs Legion has somehow inexplicably managed to create Terminators without the T800 hardware left behind in T1. Which according to Dyson even Cyberdyne wouldn't have been able to accomplish. Anyway, it seems that Dark Fate is destined to be yet another narrative dead-end for this franchise, so I guess none of this really matters.

 

Unless I'm mistaken Legion nukes the human populace as well. It's just that they precede this with a cyber attack. Add to that we again have time-traveling Terminators as assassins. That part is a pretty out-there & strange way for an AI to choose to exterminate humanity, given all of its myriad options. Many of which would make far more sense & be far more effective & efficient. Which is fine, in one instance. However when virtually the same thing happens again in a case where the genesis of the AI is supposed to share no relation or lineage, that's when we enter the realm of implausible co-incidence. So, each to their own but I think you're being extremely generous towards the story here. It seems you're happy to buy the central conceit that they're pushing, which is "any malevolent AI will always inevitably = time-traveling Terminator assassin robots". It's just such a no-brainer that any R&D connection between Skynet & Legion isn't necessary. We'll agree to disagree on that. In any case, as I said in the beginning I liked the movie for the most part. The underlying concepts & lore might be considerably dumbed down compared to T1 & T2 but it's one of the better pure action films I've seen in a while.

 

well said