[Fury]

"The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves." - is basically admitting that you can't change the past no matter how hard you try, but that doesn't mean you can't change the present and forge your own path into the future.

Dude... WTF? This is a series that's all about time travel. There is no past, present, or future except from a relative frame of reference. Skynet's present is our past. Our present is Skynet's future. Saying "You can't change the past but you can change the future" is meaningless gibberish in this context.

Some people actually think this much into a movie or series of movies? Interesting.

[Ulala]

*shrugs* I just didn't like it. The T-X was hot, but so what?

[Kosh]

Thing is that even though Cyberdyne's research was destroyed, they still would have come up with the "neural net processor" more or less akin to what Skynet uses, but it would have taken them longer to do that. That is really the only thing that would have changed. The military's desire to have something like Skynet would not change (and, IIRC, the US military is working on something Skynet-ish, although at this stage it is less advanced then it was in the movie).

Because the desire is there and the technology will in-evitably come along, judgement day is pretty much cannot be avoided.

And the reason we like to think about this is because it provides a very dark, somewhat realistic (of course not completly, but the concept is certainly realistic), interesting view of the future.

 I don't know why I like the idea of the human race getting pw3d and almost wiped out by a super-intelligent defense computer so much, but that is the series' biggest attraction for me.

[an0n]

Dude... WTF? This is a series that's all about time travel. There is no past, present, or future except from a relative frame of reference. Skynet's present is our past. Our present is Skynet's future. Saying "You can't change the past but you can change the future" is meaningless gibberish in this context.

It's a movie about how time travel doesn't allow you to change the past, present or future, regardless of your relative perspective.

As soon as you send someone back, it's because you were meant to. They affected the past by sending back Reese and the Terminator, but they never changed it.

Thus, your ultimate end is only ever 'fate' after you've tried to meddle in the past and created a predestination paradox.

They could do as they pleased in the past, present or future (in absolute terms) and their actions would forge their own future. But by sending things back in time, they effectively sealed the sequence of events between the thing arriving and them sending it - as the predestination paradox is impossible to break.

Thus, the only things in the Terminator universe which are predestined to occur are the things that lay between the arrival and the dispatch of the various time-travelling agents.

[karajorma]

T1 and T2 set up a universe where there is no such thing as predetermination. You can't simply change something in the past and have that affect something in the future. If you change something in the past the entire timeline you were in is gone. Skynet wasn't trying to save itself by killing Sarah Conner. It knew it was ****ed whatever happened. But it could rewrite history so that there would be a timeline where Skynet would win.

It was a last desperate throw of the dice by a machine that knew it had lost.

Making it so that it was all fated to happen was one of the big reasons I hated T3.

[ZylonBane]

The Terminator was just supposed to be a cool time-travel movie with robots and sex and explosions. The time-loop thing with the guy who got sent back being John Conner's dad was just the typical "Ah it always happened this way" cliche that time-travel flicks rarely have the strength to resist throwing in.

[an0n]

You can't simply change something in the past and have that affect something in the future. If you change something in the past the entire timeline you were in is gone.

Unless it's a predestination paradox - which is what the whole thing was about.

'No fate' was saying that the only fixed events were those that were the result of a predestination paradox - everything else was up for grabs. The temporal fudgery, the creation of the paradoxes and the results of those paradoxes are the fates they 'make for themselves'.

It's to show that future-Connor knows he has to send Reese back and do all that other **** to start the War, so that mankind can defeat SkyNet and survive the holocaust.

He knew he'd won, and he sent Reese and the T-800's back simply to make sure things played out as they had - where he could be assured of victory over SkyNet.

[TrashMan]

Meh...you see...this is why I hate time travel ANYWHERE.. it allways sucks in the end...

[Mefustae]

Meh...you see...this is why I hate time travel ANYWHERE.. it allways sucks in the end...

What about the Back to the Future trilogy?! Nobody hates Back to the Future.

[Flaser]

You can't simply change something in the past and have that affect something in the future. If you change something in the past the entire timeline you were in is gone.

Unless it's a predestination paradox - which is what the whole thing was about.

'No fate' was saying that the only fixed events were those that were the result of a predestination paradox - everything else was up for grabs. The temporal fudgery, the creation of the paradoxes and the results of those paradoxes are the fates they 'make for themselves'.

It's to show that future-Connor knows he has to send Reese back and do all that other **** to start the War, so that mankind can defeat SkyNet and survive the holocaust.

He knew he'd won, and he sent Reese and the T-800's back simply to make sure things played out as they had - where he could be assured of victory over SkyNet.

Actually that is one of the central motifs for John Conor in the books I read.
Don't bother looking them up, they were written by a Hungarian guy in the 90', and had the best damn portreyal of both Skynet his minions and the war.

Conor knows he's going to win - and that he's going to be alive when the war ends. What he doesn't know is what 'living' will entitle. All the times when the crap hits the fan he wonders what the price will be....
Being burnt, deformed, or plainly cut up like a marionette.....those kinda things go though your mind when your bunker is about to be atomised and you know you'll 'survive'.
(After the initial phase of the war (when Skynet was running death camps that would put the best nazis to shame) the AI decided to nuke any place John turns up. It doesn't use the nukes in a widespread fashion though as even the initial holocaust casued extensive damage to the infrastructure....and unlike humans it needs the power on, the computers running, the factories churning out new units.)

[aldo_14]

You can't simply change something in the past and have that affect something in the future. If you change something in the past the entire timeline you were in is gone.

Unless it's a predestination paradox - which is what the whole thing was about.

'No fate' was saying that the only fixed events were those that were the result of a predestination paradox - everything else was up for grabs. The temporal fudgery, the creation of the paradoxes and the results of those paradoxes are the fates they 'make for themselves'.

It's to show that future-Connor knows he has to send Reese back and do all that other **** to start the War, so that mankind can defeat SkyNet and survive the holocaust.

He knew he'd won, and he sent Reese and the T-800's back simply to make sure things played out as they had - where he could be assured of victory over SkyNet.

Actually that is one of the central motifs for John Conor in the books I read.
Don't bother looking them up, they were written by a Hungarian guy in the 90', and had the best damn portreyal of both Skynet his minions and the war.

Conor knows he's going to win - and that he's going to be alive when the war ends. What he doesn't know is what 'living' will entitle. All the times when the crap hits the fan he wonders what the price will be....

contradicted by the movie now, natch.

[Mefustae]

But Connor is alive when the war ends, it's several years afterwards, when he's settled down with kids, that he's assassinated.

[aldo_14]

But Connor is alive when the war ends, it's several years afterwards, when he's settled down with kids, that he's assassinated.

?

Not from what I remember, because how else would there be that T-X thing to have to destroy if there wasn't a war on?

[Mefustae]

Ach, screw making a long post. The war was over, SkyNet wasn't destroyed yet, last-ditch effort to stave off destruction.

[Kosh]

Apparently you can bypass this by editing the path in install.dat

It still doesn't work for me.

Ach, screw making a long post. The war was over, SkyNet wasn't destroyed yet, last-ditch effort to stave off destruction.

Which pretty much contradicts the first and second movies. It was pretty explicitly stated (at least in the first one) that Skynet was killed off just as the Terminators went through time.

[Mefustae]

Let's just settle that the universe, while shiny, is ridden with plot-holes.

[Kosh]

Most of these plot holes exist because of T3, which did **** up the series pretty good.

[Mefustae]

Very true, but Kristanna Loken made up for most of the problems. Not all, but most.

[Colonol Dekker]

I've nwever hated a films subtext so much in my life as T3, i rember back in 91/2 whenever it came out watching on VHS, It was great, like robocop 2 but darker. T3 is a good film to watch even if you're a purist as long as you ignore the "cock ups" BTW  on the T1 DVD theres an original script which talks about how Kyle was on of 2 people sent back in time except the unit didn't generate a displacement field and poor old bucko number two ended up phasing in occupying the same space with a fence/fire escape. And old Corporal Hicks had to snap his neck, Also He was a ninjaesque hard ass, in the scene where he runs through the department store naked, Before the cops enter, he catches a doberman while its in mid-leap and breaks its neck deftly.

The Terminator 2 disc special edition.

No such joy with the T2 Tin though.

[an0n]

Yeah, Sumner was the second guy. I thought he phased into a wall though.

And my take on the whole SkyNet thing was that Tech-Com stormed the Cheyenne Mountain Complex and took out the SkyNet mainframe - crippling it's ability to exert tactical and strategic control. So all the machines would still be out there, but they'd basically be running in dumb mode without the Mainframe giving them proper intelligence - which would make them far easier to pick off and devoid of any unified retaliatory capacity.

The Terminator that killed Connor was probably already on-mission when SkyNet went down. But the way it's put in the film it sounds like time changed, the war lasted longer, Connor never made it to the end and his kids took up the fight when he died.