IMRICKJAMES

I've seen 2 and 3, but for some reason that escapes me I hadn't seen the original one yet...perhaps because I was 3 when it came out and it isn't exactly a Disney movie. Anyways, I come home and at 2am theres The Terminator. I watch it and now I'm confused as I can be.

Ok in the 2nd movie you find out that Cyberdyne develops all the technology and machines because they had the cybernetic arm from after the original terminator was crushed and destroyed in the 1st movie. So if thats true that means the future happens because the terminator was sent back in time to stop the future from happening. If he hadn't been sent back and destroyed then the future wouldn't have unfolded how it did and there wouldn't have been a need to send him back in time to stop the future from unfolding how it did.

Did I get that right? Its like a weird time travel dilemma / paradox. Not the same scenario but its sort of like, for example, going back in time and causing the death of a parent before you were born, thus keeping you from existing and going back in time and causing them to die...so you would be alive to go back in time, cause their death and keeping you from being born, etc etc.

Giantrobo

Right, and if john hadn't sent Reese in T1 then Sarah wouldn't have been knocked up with John.

I heard a Scientist on a radio show talking about time travel and the "kill your ancestor" paradox. They theorized that going back and killing your ancestor might open up alternative time lines so you still end up being born.

If I remember right in T3 John says that "judgment day" was going to happen no matter what they did and that there was no way to stop it. Granted, it's a plothole band-aid, but it still makes sense on some level.

Jackskeleton

Call it predestination paradox and call it a day. Seriously, it'll give you a headache if you try to think about it.

Had the machines never sent the terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor then she would have never met Kyle Reese who was sent back to stop the killing thus Sarah would have never met Kyle and John would have never been born.

But the machines had to send one of theirs back so that they could push forward towards giving cyberdyne the advancements so that the machines could eventually rise up.

So that being said, in some starting point before futures were altered, something had to be put into motion to get this ball rolling. More than likely some one who was in John Connor's place in a who knows when, later on down the line time line (as it would have taken cyberdyne longer to achieve that same advancements) had to send one of theirs to the past to try to stop cyberdyne which made the machines send one of theirs which possibly changed the future one step at a time to the point that we were in terminator 1.

It's simply a casual loop that has to happen and/or is changing slowly to what we are seeing currently.

matome

Ooh, my head hurts! I stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago

Jericho

Read this:

http://www.mjyoung.net/time/terminat.html

GuessWho

They should've just sent the Terminator to 1850 and killed John's great great great grandfather. Muskets would be no match for Ahnuld.

IMRICKJAMES

But then they couldn't have used all that cool robotic 80s music.

Ahnuld crushing somoene with violins playing in the background just isnt the same

Maxflier

So i'm not the only one who has seen 2 & 3 but not the original.

UAIOE

I've seen 1+2, but never 3.

I've never really tried to think about the hows and the whys of the first movies time travel...that would cause a severe brain meltdown.

Apone

But if Ahnuld missed a shot then it would give John's great great great grandfather plenty of time to run off through a cornfield.

The Bus

I saw the original when I was like 9. I don't remember anything except the eyeball popping out.

I also don't remember anything from Robocop.

Jackskeleton

Then whatever robot parts left behind would only speed up the process in which th machines took over the world.

This is why you don't go back in time!

Troy Stiffler

Sweet. It worked for Back to the Future, and tons of B movies and TV shows.

Linda Hamilton can be a badass dame. All of the guys from the first three can put mustaches on, and be conspicious ancestors.

PopcornTreeCt

The whole thing is kinda pointless because if the Terminator truly succeeded there would be no Terminator in the future to be sent back.

IMRICKJAMES

Yes, but if he succeeded he wouldn't exist...so he wouldn't be able to be sent back and be able to succeeded. That is why its not pointless!!

PopcornTreeCt

I suppose the point is that he never succeeds. Much like the end of the 3rd movie which nailed that point perfectly.

UAIOE

Eventually the Terminator would run into a Predator and then there would be some robot/alien fights on the prairie.

That whole story sounds like something Dark Horse would have put out.

Jackskeleton

Replace the terminator with an alien and you just described AvP2.

PopcornTreeCt

Replace the terminator with John Wilkes Booth and move up 15 years and you got an assassination. Ok, I got nothing.

DieselsDen

Without getting bogged down in too many technical details, it's easier (though less interesting) to realize that the fundamental premise of traveling through time into the past is false and impossible, so trying to apply logic is simply unworkable. It's like saying someone can physically fly like Superman, then wondering why the air friction or thinning oxygen at high altitude doesn't kill him.

In BACK TO THE FUTURE, the filmmakers described adequately and logically how time travel is possible as to appearing in the future because the DeLorean (with Einie in it) was "skipping" over a minute in time. But the movie casually avoid explaining how going backward in time worked with the flux capacitor. Again, the premise just doesn't make sense to begin with, so anything following it is equally invalid.

Jackskeleton

What's so hard to figure out about this? Someone from the future of time stream A is sent back to a certain point of time stream A. This person is now out of place and isn't effected by what he does. Back to the future's disappearing act shouldn't apply because marty was outside of time. So this person in the past effects something in time stream A. It is no longer going to create the same outcome as what happened in future time stream A. It will now be called time stream B. The person that came back in time, unless they have some means to get to the future of now time stream B is stuck in the past and must live through that.

Puzznic

Going back to the first post...

Before the first Terminator arrives, the skynet computer that caused judgement day was built by the US Military.

After pieces of the first terminator are recovered, Cyberdyne uses the future technology to help the Military complete the skynet computer sooner than in the original history.

In Terminator 2, the second Arnold T-100 arrives and helps the Conners stop judgement day. The only problem is the T-100 only knows of a history in which Cyberdyne helps the military complete skynet. By blowing up the cyberdyne building they postpone judgement day the extra number of years it takes the Military to finish skynet by themselves, as they would have in the history before the frist Terminator ever arrived.

fumanstan

Which is why T3 made sense to me

devilshalo

What the Terminators should have done, is gone back not to kill Sarah Connor, but to prevent Kyle Reese from being born. Sarah would never have to know about the future.

Shazam

Yeah, but Skynet didn't know any past details about Kyle Reese. They knew about Sarah Connor because she was around before the big boom.