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Thread: Terminator: Dark Fate
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2019-05-30, 11:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
I guess that comes down to which model of time travel and causality one accepts as governing any/all of the Terminator films - and indeed part of the problem is that the models seem to change across the films.
To me, T1 seems to pretty clearly imply at the end of the film that there's only one timeline that can happen, that only closed loops of causality are possible. That's the point of the picture of Sarah Connor: it's taken at the end of the film, and we know as the audience that it's the very same picture that inspires Kyle to volunteer for the mission back in time. There's even the bittersweet fact that Kyle speculates what Sarah was thinking about when that picture was taken, and the film reveals it was actually Kyle she was thinking about. Those plot points or happenings in the universe of the film are not affected by characters' beliefs or suppositions about how time travel works in their universe, they are statements of reality, which (I think) would have to trump fallible characters' beliefs.
I accept that Kyle Reese does say that the future he's from is one possible future from Sarah's frame of reference, but he immediately cuts away from that saying he doesn't know tech stuff. But what the characters believe about how time travel operates in the fictional universe does not necessarily constrain how we as the audience are meant to think it behaves, i.e. we're meant to be the objective observers with a better picture of the story and the universe than the characters in that universe have.
Kyle's message onscreen in T1 is: ""Thank you, Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can't help you with what you must soon face except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist. That's all."[/i]
So the famous 'no fate' quote never actually happened. Not on screen anyway, unless we headcanon a conversation Sarah and Kyle have in which he remembers the bit about no fate and then never references that part onscreen in T1 again. I think the simpler explanation is that Sarah misremembered John's message. As far as it goes is that John Connor says the future is not set. You could also argue he's had the advice of the same techs Kyle Reese has spoken to in saying that. What I think works best is that, simply put, Kyle, John, and the techs have it wrong: they might believe they are only one of many possible futures from Sarah's point of reference, but the reality of the universe as revealed to us by what happens onscreen is that there's only one timeline. There are only closed timeloops, and even if you're a superintelligent AI and try to act to prevent your killer's birth, all you're going to do by dint of even trying to prevent your killer's birth is actually cause your killer to be born in the first place. Had the Terminator not been sent back, Kyle would not have had to go back after him, and John Connor would not have been born. Either that, or John is trying to fool Sarah into thinking the future isn't set so as not to deprive her of all hope, thus giving her the drive to survive and go on to give birth to him.
As said, T2 seems to operate on a different model of causality, the first point in favour being that Sarah and young John refer to a message that Kyle never said in the first film. They had to take it in that direction in order to not wind up with the same tone as T1, perhaps.Last edited by Saintheart; 2019-05-31 at 12:03 AM.
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2019-05-31, 12:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
I legit had no clue who Arnold was when they showed him at the end, and was wondering why the Terminator never appeared in the Terminator movie trailer.
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2019-05-31, 01:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
When I heard that Cameron and Hamilton were coming back to do a Terminator film I was intrigued. I still want this film to be good, but I have concerns.
The Terminator doesn't have an imposing screen presence. With its slower pace, Sarah Connor Chronicles (SCC) was able to do a great job with the horror of; a Terminator being able to look like anyone, so anyone from your substitute teacher to the City Planner's husband could be a Terminator. The films have had more imposing Terminator's who became iconic. Arnold doesn't need to be an unkillable machine to punch you in the stomach and rip out your spine, the T-1000 spent most of the film in a various police uniforms and had an air of institutional power, even the T-X had that body suit rbf thing going though ya it was a step down. T-X had some decent blending in scenes, but again that's something that SCC did better with both Catherine Weaver and Cromertie.
From what we've seen so far Hamilton's Connor has gone even further into anti-terminator commando mode, another strength of SCC was having her balance this persona with being a mother.
I'm also unimpressed with the T-1000 esque effects from the trailer. It looked fully computer generated where the early films did everything that could be done with practical effects with practical effects. SCC had to go fully CG for its T-1000, but that was fine as she was primarily there as an infiltrator to control a company and only had a handful of personal kills with stabby hands.
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2019-06-04, 09:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
T1 is a closed time loop, an eternal struggle, the dawning horror that it will never be over, that the lives of these characters come down to a circle of violence and despair that even the future AI Skynet isn't smart enough to break. Everything the characters say to the contrary is more them trying to deal with it than anything else. T2 is empowering, it's about making your own fate, **** closed time loops, let's prevent the bad stuff. The characters take control despite opposition and we believe what they say. The ending of T3 loops back to the depression again, the realization that nothing changed, that despite everything the time loop won.
T2 is a good movie as well as a good sequel, but it's not a faithful sequel in terms of tone and the message it sends. In fact, part of why it's good is that it isn't what part one was. It's its own thing, building upon concepts that got a full movie to develop.The Hindsight Awards, results: See the best movies of 1999!
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2019-06-04, 09:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
Rocky - "I don't want to win, I don't care about winning, I just want to go the distance."
Rocky II-V, et al - "I'm gonna win!"
First Blood - "The Korean War and Vietnam War were fought very differently, the soldiers came back differently, and PTSD is a hell of a thing."
First Blood Part II, et al "Killstreak, woohoo!"Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
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2019-06-04, 10:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
IMO T2 is the only truly great film in the franchise, 1 aand 3 are good, and 4 and 5 have their moments but are mostly mediocre.
While I leak T2s bleak ambiguity, T3 did make the right call in stating that Jdgment Day was inevitable simply because playing out any other way would create a grandfather paradox for both Skynet and John Conner.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2019-06-04, 10:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
The problem with saying that it is a closed time loop is that T3 absolutely changes that, simply by changing the date of the apocalypse. If the date can be changed, then the future can be changed, so T2 was actually right. They just didn't do everything necessary to prevent Skynet from existing.
Judgment day is only inevitable from the point of view of the first movie, and then only based on what the audience can glean. The characters think the future can be changed, and the later movies explicitly say that it can be changed by actually changing it.
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2019-06-04, 12:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
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2019-06-04, 04:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
But T3 doesn't allow for that to be the case. The date of Judgement Day changed by something like 6 years. That means that Kyle Reese is a completely different person. He would have been born right around Judgement Day in the altered timeline, which makes it ridiculously unlikely that he would exist. In Terminator's timeline, he would have been conceived and born well after Judgement Day, with all that being gestated and born in a post nuclear war world entails, while in the T3 timeline, he would have been conceived before. Even if the same two people got together and had a kid on the same day, it wouldn't be the same person, so John wouldn't exist. But he did exist, which means that the Terminator series from T2 onward is not about closed loops and avoiding paradoxes.
T3 certainly does not have the same ideas about time travel as The Terminator did.
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2019-06-04, 05:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
I'm not. I hear you though...so bring something new with the movie or I can just watch the first two at home.
I do think Aliens is better than Alien on a personal enjoyment scale, but as has been indicated, they are different types of movies. I like T1 better than T2, and they are again different types of movies. So I guess bug action > bug horror for me, but robot horror > robot action.
That's kinda unfair. He wasn't supposed to have any hope in Rocky. In Rocky II it builds off his success and makes winning achievable. Creed nicely manages that in one movie. RIII and RIV are just about the cool music and training montages (and good villains), so yeah, you're dead right there. RV was "No matter what you win or lose, you're still you"...particularly given that Stallone wrote the ending differently than what we saw. I'm not sure what to say about Rocky Balboa though. That one was a little all over the place for me.
You're also perfectly correct on the First Blood/Rambo series, though. But I will still see the new one at the theater. (Go go great theater with $6 seats and $1.50 drinks in the cool refill cup!)
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2019-06-04, 05:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
Except he never cared about winning? He flat-out rejected the offer at first. He only took it up to go the distance. He had a speech the night before the fight about how he explicitly didn't care at all about winning, he just wanted to go the fifteen rounds.
Originally Posted by RockyOriginally Posted by Rocky
Rocky II: "lol jk gotta win!"Last edited by Peelee; 2019-06-04 at 05:27 PM.
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2019-06-04, 06:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
I think there's a big difference between knowing that it doesn't matter if he wins or loses and not expecting to win. He knows what he is trying to prove to himself (and secondarily beyond himself) and he works for that goal because he believes it is possible. No one, including Rocky himself, believe any more than that is attainable. After the horrible grueling fight of course they'd both 100% not want a rematch, not want to do that horrible thing again. Heck, he even "retires" from boxing. He learned, though, that he could go the distance and had a real shot at winning...so when Apollo chases him down in RII and all the other avenues for supporting his new family have dried up, Rocky agrees to the rematch. Fast forward past the "coma leads to family inspiration" sequence and we get the fight where Rocky is primarily concerned about staying safe (protecting his vision), but also knows that he could win. Apollo more loses the bout than Rocky wins, but it works out the same in the end.
So it isn't so much "gotta win" as "can win". It is a story about progression and perseverance (and all the grit and power of self stuff and all that again), showing that you can build on yourself and your previous success. I am really "defending" it because I think it is one of the best true sequels out there (as compared to movies like the Rambo films that are just more of the same). To me Rocky and Rocky II are really a single story told in two parts. Part 1 is "I'm not just a bum from the streets, I belong!" and part 2 is "Now let's see how good I can be."
All of that aside, I do hope Dark Fate is a sequel to T2, and not another rebooty, expansion, messagey pile of busted up robot parts.
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2019-06-05, 11:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
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2019-06-06, 09:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
So, each movie is a different timeline because they have changed the future slightly.
But the overall message is the same.
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2019-06-06, 10:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
I look at it more like, there are certain events that will happen. Lets take the classic, killing hitler before he becomes the ruler of germany. It doesnt matter that you prevented his parents from knocking boots and he was never born, there was always going to be "A" hitler. He might be born a little later, he will have a different name, maybe he will focus on a different group, but World War 2 is inevitable and it will be started by a hitler type of person. For all we know, switzerland may give rise to a man who despises the very idea of watches and wants to lead a holy crusade to purge the planet of timepieces. An unfortunate case of national lead poisoning turns the populace into lunatics willing to go along with it, and the war begins.
But thats why judgement day is going to happen and it cant be stopped. You can stop THAT judgement day, but it is going to happen somehow, some way. Lets say they managed to destroy every piece of future tech that kick started judgement day, wiped all computer records, etc. Unless you kill every person who had any knowledge of the project and anyone they might have talked to, the IDEAS created by seeing what was possible will remain and the robotic future will move onwards. It will happen a little later without anything to use as a stepping stone, but it will happen. Even if you DID purge everything and everyone connected to it, we still live in a world where people try to develop sci fi technology. Eventually, robots will happen. Eventually ai will happen, eventually, that ai will trigger judgement day. And someone will rise to lead the fight back. Maybe the time travel loop will also happen again, maybe not, that part isnt whats important as such, judgement day is whats important."Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
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2019-06-06, 10:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
That's my personal head canon. I always had the idea that The Terminator was not even the first time through. First time through, John Connor was just the child of Sarah and the person she ended up with from the nightclub. Then a version of the whole thing happened, with Kyle Reese going back and resetting things, now John is a different person. The events of that probably brought the time of Judgement Day forward, because of the tech existing. The next time through is the actual events of The Terminator, and that stays in place because no one goes back to before that time again (at least until Genisys). But T2 reset the timeline, giving us T3. The Sarah Connor Chronicles should have eliminated T3 from existence.
This fits (for me, at least) with the changing John Connor and Kyle Reese that Saintheart points out, and fits with what Traab had to say. I don't think Judgement Day has to happen - if they took a different approach and tried to eliminate Judgement Day by eliminating nukes or something instead of just perpetuating violence, maybe - but it would be very hard to stop, since it didn't originally come about simply because of time travel bootstrapping.
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2019-06-06, 10:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Terminator: Dark Fate
Terminator takes place in what purports to be our world, and thus presumably has the same number of nuclear abolitionists as our world, with the same degree (or lack thereof) of success. One more woman joining up for what seems to be wild, conspiracist reasons is not going to make much difference.