Terminator 3 - SPOILER filled discussion

[Kai Lord]

Thought I'd branch off a new thread that allowed for spoiler filled discussion of the movies, and to get away from counterproductive tangents of the last one. So without further ado:

reapersaurus said:

"How's this for starters: how did the T-X get there, when they destroyed it all in T2?
I'd love to discuss these plot points, if (hopefully) we can start talking about spoilers now."

The T-X got there because in T2 they destroyed the work done by CYBERDINE, a private corporation. The US Air Force eventually developed the technology that led to the rise of the machines independent of Cyberdine's work.

Notice how in T2 Arnold refers to himself as "Cyberdine model 101" but in T3 he is the "T-101", which was in line with how the prototypes at the Air Force base were designated. A nice touch to indicate a similar, yet different timeline progressed after the events of T2.

This is basically how I see the entire timeline of the films:

Original Timeline

The military designs the machines that eventually take over the world.
Sarah Connor sleeps with some random guy and gives birth to John Connor, who through Kate Brewster's (Claire Danes) military connections, is able to unite the remnants of humanity and lead them to victory under his own leadership.
The machines counter by building the Time Displacement device, and going back in time to kill Sarah. This creates the second timeline, which overlaps the first.

Second Timeline

The Terminator goes back in time, as does Kyle Reese. Now they start changing how it goes. Sort of. The Terminator is trying to kill Sarah, but in doing so he would destroy any reason for the machines to use the Time Displacement device, therefore any reason to go back and kill her. If there's no reason to kill her, she doesn't die and John Connor leads the resistance and we have a nice little paradoxical loop because everyone is back where they started and the cycle continues.

Since T3 takes the perspective that time paradoxes are impossible, it determines that the events in the future are "inevitable", and MUST occur to keep history on its original course, free of paradoxes.

In T1, Reese impregnates Sarah, thereby replacing whoever the original father of John Connor would have been. This inadvertantly changes aspects of John Connor, because now he'll share genetics with Reese instead of who his original dad was, but fate will allow this as long as this new John still leads the human resistance to victory.

Concurrently, the first Terminator is destroyed in a Cyberdine factory, which causes Cyberdine to replace the US Military as creator of the machines. However, the rest of the "future" from this timeline still plays out, and we have two more Terminators coming back through time, more or less the same with the distinct difference of now carrying Cyberdine labels.

And here we have T2, which once again creates a new timeline, a third timeline.

Third Timeline

The Sarah/Reese John Connor is alive, and following in the foosteps of the original John, whose timeline was overlapped by the events of T1.

Now we have two CYBERDINE Terminators but their missions are the same, one to kill John the other to protect.

Both Terminators are destroyed, but all of Cyberdine's work is also destroyed, therefore erasing the new future caused by leaving the first Terminator in the hydraulic press, which itself was a change from the original timeline which led to the time travel in the first place.

So then we have the end of T2, with the Cyberdine timeline prevented, but now a John Connor that can't exist unless a soldier from the future goes back in time and impregnates his mother. But there won't be a soldier unless there's a war. A war they seemingly just prevented. Fate doesn't like paradoxes so...

The US Air Force picks up where Cyberdine left off, albeit several years behind, hence the no war on August 29th, 1997. Possibly some ex-Cyberdine personnel took their knowledge to the military after their building was blown up or maybe the military just coincidentally came up with the same ideas. Who knows.

What's important is that the USAF now creates the robots it was originally going to create all the way back in the Original Timeline, but since the timeline was postponed a few years, all the new technology developed in that time leads to even more deadly Terminators when they're finally created, such as T-101's that now have nuclear fuel cells and of course the T-X.

The war continues as it originally did back in the beginning, but the T-X goes back in time to try and kill John, just as the others did, but all she manages to accomplish is activating some Terminator and Hunter Killer prototypes that assist Skynet in destroying much of mankind. Unlike the other Terminators, the T-X doesn't actually change the future course of history in a dramatic way (Skynet would have nuked everyone regardless of whether or not she showed up) so there is no longer any paradox.

The only thing left was to reconnect John to Kate Brewster's father and the T-X (and T-101) assisted in doing that so ultimately, both man and machines move forward to the inevitable events that led to the creation of Time Displacement: The war itself, and John leading the humans to victory. Both events are on line to occur after T3, which makes it a perfectly circular story, free of paradoxes.

Pretty cool.

 

[Dark Jezter]

That's one of the best summaries of the terminator timeline I've ever seen.

T3 leaves open the possibility of at least one more Terminator movie that deals with the war between man and machine, and the prospect of that excites me. I want to see a full-scale ground battle between the machines and the human resistance, I want to see a young Kyle Reece make a cameo appearance, and I really want to see the transormation in John Connor where he changes from a frightened young man into the great leader who eventually directs humanity to victory over the machines.

The possibilities are endless.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Second Timeline

The Terminator goes back in time, as does Kyle Reese. Now they start changing how it goes. Sort of. The Terminator is trying to kill Sarah, but in doing so he would destroy any reason for the machines to use the Time Displacement device, therefore any reason to go back and kill her. If there's no reason to kill her, she doesn't die and John Connor leads the resistance and we have a nice little paradoxical loop because everyone is back where they started and the cycle continues.

Since T3 takes the perspective that time paradoxes are impossible, it determines that the events in the future are "inevitable", and MUST occur to keep history on its original course, free of paradoxes.

In T1, Reese impregnates Sarah, thereby replacing whoever the original father of John Connor would have been. This inadvertantly changes aspects of John Connor, because now he'll share genetics with Reese instead of who his original dad was, but fate will allow this as long as this new John still leads the human resistance to victory.

Concurrently, the first Terminator is destroyed in a Cyberdine factory, which causes Cyberdine to replace the US Military as creator of the machines. However, the rest of the "future" from this timeline still plays out, and we have two more Terminators coming back through time, more or less the same with the distinct difference of now carrying Cyberdine labels.

And here we have T2, which once again creates a new timeline, a third timeline. [/B]

But, there doesn't have to be a second timeline. T1 is self contained in that at the end of the movie there is no paradox. If the Term had won, there would have been.
T2 introduced the paradox, and I haven't seen T3 yet, but T1 as it exists now is fine IMO.

 

[Kai Lord]

Re: Re: Terminator 3 - SPOILER filled discussion

But, there doesn't have to be a second timeline. T1 is self contained in that at the end of the movie there is no paradox. If the Term had won, there would have been.
T2 introduced the paradox, and I haven't seen T3 yet, but T1 as it exists now is fine IMO.

There does indeed have to be a second timeline, the one created in T1, or else there exists the paradox of Reese being John's father from the beginning. That's a paradox unless you subscribe to the idea that Reese replaced John's original father.

You're correct in that the first movie didn't need a second film to fix a paradox, however. It was T3 that fixed the one imposed by T2.

 

[Droogie]

Anyone notice the discrepancies with the dates and ages of the characters?

T1 was set in 1984, right?

T2, according to dialogue in T3, took place when John was 13 years old. That puts T2 in 1997.

But according to T3, Sarah Connor was diagnosed with leukemia and died after fighting her disease for

three years ...in 1997.

Also in T3, John indicates that the last film's events took place over 10 years ago, leading me to believe that the writers of the new film think T2 took place in the year it came out: 1991.

So either T1 was set earlier or T3 was set later.

Thoughts?

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

Anyone notice the discrepancies with the dates and ages of the characters?

T1 was set in 1984, right?

T2, according to dialogue in T3, took place when John was 13 years old. That puts T2 in 1997.

But according to T3, Sarah Connor was diagnosed with leukemia and died after fighting her disease for

three years ...in 1997.

Also in T3, John indicates that the last film's events took place over 10 years ago, leading me to believe that the writers of the new film think T2 took place in the year it came out: 1991.

So either T1 was set earlier or T3 was set later.

Thoughts?

It's been a while since I've seen the first movie, but did they specifically say it took place in the same year the movie was released? And in T2, I got the feeling that some of the gadgetry people used in it seemed to say that the film did not take place in 1991, but in some indeterminate time between 1991 and 1997.

 

[Kai Lord]

Anyone notice the discrepancies with the dates and ages of the characters?

T1 was set in 1984, right?

T2, according to dialogue in T3, took place when John was 13 years old. That puts T2 in 1997.

But according to T3, Sarah Connor was diagnosed with leukemia and died after fighting her disease for

three years ...in 1997.

Also in T3, John indicates that the last film's events took place over 10 years ago, leading me to believe that the writers of the new film think T2 took place in the year it came out: 1991.

So either T1 was set earlier or T3 was set later.

Thoughts?

T1 was set in 1984.
T2 was set in 1994, when John was 10 years old.
T3 was set in either 2003 or 2004, probably 2004 to keep the 10 year gap going.

However, T3 did seem to infer that John was in the 8th grade when he first met Claire Danes, which was right before the T-1000 showed up.

A 10 year old in 8th grade? I don't remember the exact dialogue, and you can wave your hand and just say Claire misremembered and got the grade wrong, but it does seem possible the writers simply forgot how old John would have been during the events of T2. They got all the dates right, just the age thing seemed to have been off.

It might have been due to the fact that while John was supposed to be 10, Edward Furlong was 13 years old when he played him, and they might have mistakenly gone off of the actor's age instead.

 

[Alzrius]

Re: Re: Re: Terminator 3 - SPOILER filled discussion

There does indeed have to be a second timeline, the one created in T1, or else there exists the paradox of Reese being John's father from the beginning. That's a paradox unless you subscribe to the idea that Reese replaced John's original father.

The problem with that though is that the nature of a temporal paradox is that, in this case, its an infinite time loop. While there (theoretically) is a timeline that was replaced, it was ALWAYS going to be that Kyle Reese went back in time to sleep with Sarah Conner. The nature of time travel in this regard means that there, practically speaking, never was a first timeline for the one from T1 to replace.

That's the nature of temporal paradoxes - they can't be resolved (at least not with linear thought).

You're correct in that the first movie didn't need a second film to fix a paradox, however. It was T3 that fixed the one imposed by T2.

It did, and in an interesting manner. While it holds that you can change the future, the best you'll be able to do is postpone events from happening. They'll still happen - history is self-correcting along a single course.

Notice how in T2 Arnold refers to himself as "Cyberdine model 101" but in T3 he is the "T-101", which was in line with how the prototypes at the Air Force base were designated. A nice touch to indicate a similar, yet different timeline progressed after the events of T2.

That part irked me. That's obviously a mistake by the producers more than anything else. The extended version of the T2 DVD shows, when Arnold boots up after having his switch toggled to "Read and Write" that he is a Series 800 Model 101 Terminator; a T-800. I understood from somewhere that the 101 refers to the type of skin covering he has (so 102 could be, say, the Stalone covering we saw in Last Action Hero).

However, it is possible to resolve that discrepancy by saying that Skynet from the altered timeline built newer models of Terminators faster. The war still ends in 2029 (though pockets of fighting seem to remain, since John Conner is killed by a Terminator in 2032), but it has lost six years of time to begin with, since Judgement Day was delayed, so maybe the other timeline's T-800 series were produced earlier here, early enough to just be T-101's.

It might have been due to the fact that while John was supposed to be 10, Edward Furlong was 13 years old when he played him, and they might have mistakenly gone off of the actor's age instead.

That was probably it. The age thing is the most problematic of the series. Another (albeit somewhat minor) discrepnacy is the following:

If Kyle Reese met Sarah Conner in 1984 (which he did), and John Conner was 10 when T2 happened in 1994 (which it did), then Kyle Reese and Sarah had to have met in early 1984, given a 9-month pregnancy.

Now, considering that John Conner was 10 when they took out Cyberdyne, that means that had to have happened after his tenth birthday, meaning it was during the last few months of 1994 (October through December).

Given that, there were less than three years between the events of T2 and Sarah Conner's death, since she died in August 1997 anyway (since August 29th was Judgement Day, she died only a day or two after that). That means that John Conner was slightly off when he said she "fought for three years" against her leukemia.

Of course, he could have just been rounding.

 

[Kai Lord]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Terminator 3 - SPOILER filled discussion

The problem with that though is that the nature of a temporal paradox is that, in this case, its an infinite time loop. While there (theoretically) is a timeline that was replaced, it was ALWAYS going to be that Kyle Reese went back in time to sleep with Sarah Conner. The nature of time travel in this regard means that there, practically speaking, never was a first timeline for the one from T1 to replace.

Sure there was an original timeline. It was the one that led up to the machines building the Time Displacement device in the first place. Once they used it, that's when the timelines started changing.

So the John Connor that Reese worshipped and would have died for actually wasn't his son, because before the TD machine was built John would have been conceived by a man from Sarah's original time.

But when Reese went back and became the father, not only did they overwrite the original timeline, they also would inadvertantly change Reese's past during the war because the John Connor conceived by Reese for the new timeline would be slightly different than the original John that Reese followed, if not for different genetic traits than the subtle nuances the new John would no doubt display knowing that Reese was his father.

As long as John "Reese's son" Connor still behaved in a manner admired by Reese, and still gave him Sarah's picture, then fate could (and did, according to T3) work itself out and move beyond the "Reese loop". It isn't a paradox, just a loop. It would only be a paradox if it was a self-created loop, which it wasn't.

That part irked me. That's obviously a mistake by the producers more than anything else.

Nah, its consistent with the designations given to the prototypes in the USAF base (T1-2, etc.), which would naturally be different than those given by Cyberdine, a private corporation that was erased from the future timeline.

 

[Alzrius]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Terminator 3 - SPOILER filled discussion

Sure there was an original timeline. It was the one that led up to the machines building the Time Displacement device in the first place. Once they used it, that's when the timelines started changing.

So the John Connor that Reese worshipped and would have died for actually wasn't his son, because before the TD machine was built John would have been conceived by a man from Sarah's original time.

The thing is, that was already after Reese had existed and died in 1984. There is no beginning to these time loops. John Conner's only father in any timeline is Kyle Reese. That's what makes it a paradox. T1 as it ends is still going to be the future before the Time Displacement device is built, but Reese is still there, so by definition that's the same as what you propose.

It's an infinite time loop that always exists, presupposing any prior timeline there.

Nah, its consistent with the designations given to the prototypes in the USAF base (T1-2, etc.), which would naturally be different than those given by Cyberdine, a private corporation that was erased from the future timeline.

It's consistent with itself, but its not consistent with the other two movies in that regard. Most people can tell you offhand that Arnold is a T-800 Terminator. This just confuses the issue.