18 replies to this topic

[MalodorousMonkey]

It's called the Grandfather Paradox. If you've seen the movie Interstellar, it's kinda the same thing. It turns out, though, that there are actually theories out there that make this sort of thing possible. Take the Novikov self-consistency principle described in the article linked above as an example.

[Kalimaster]

Let this be a lesson to you. Don't mess with time.

[Lily from animove]

Marack Drock, on 24 September 2015 - 06:39 AM, said:

The Terminator series makes no sense.

The first two Terminator movies contradict each other. In Terminator 2 it is known that Skynet is created because of the left over parts of the Terminator of the first movie... but! If that is true that means that Terminator would never exist in the original timeline because there would be nothing to create it. If Skynet is made from the Terminator technology then it couldn't exist because it made the Terminator technology meaning the first story should never have happened, meaning the entire series would never have happened... biggest plot mistake ever. If Skynet was made from its own Terminators it wouldn't exist because it wouldn't be able to be created because its own creations led to its creation.

This is why Time travel in any movie or tv show is just a load of ********. The paradoxes are insane.

Terminator movies also would never happen because Sarah on her own would not have John Conner, because John's father is Kyle Reese from the future, but if that is true the real future would mean there is no Resistance because there would be no Skynet thus meaning Kyle could not be sent back to impregnate Sarah.

This series makes no sense if you actually think about it lol. Also if the time travel machines only send back living tissue, why does a Terminator come back? Wouldn't it just send the skin on its own and leaving the technology like it is supposed to?

thats why its science fiction, They mostly added some stuff to be kinda interesting or funny. Also they probably would have made skynet anyways just slower.

Also, what if, sarah conners child , due to how she educated him would anyways start the restiance stuff? There is no need for the biological father being the cause for her son starting the ressitance. Could have been any other mans child as well. (unlikely but possible).

And the living thing porting, is truly a bummer. What would have stopped both parties from simply stuffing some guns in a (probably -nearly- dead) animal and let them travel over there too? Would have been too easy I guess.

How did the T1000 even get portet hes just a liquid metal stuff thingy.

REASON FO ALL OF THIS: its entertainment on low brain level, where the plot has the depth of a "intense love" movie.

Also I doubt timetravel backwards will ever be possible. It simply does not work. and if so, we already would knew about it due to someone already coming from the future to us.

Edited by Lily from animove, 24 September 2015 - 07:32 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Marack Drock, on 24 September 2015 - 07:34 AM, said:

I know for a fact it won't happen because if it did someone from the future would have screwed up by now.

And yeah. I tend to think about these things to much. My brain just doesn't turn off for these movies. I can put it aside for a mindless action movie, but if time travel becomes involved I am instantly thinking through through the film.

Anyone seen butterfly effect? That movie was good

but back to the terminators. Ok, lets get nerdy, REAL nerdy.

If we take timetravel into account what we see in the movies is probably not the current and initail "time loop"

lets imagine this is how evertyhign REALLY begun:

Timeline ONE:

Someone at mankind created Skynet out of usual development.
Skynet ****** up the world
Sally Randoms child started the resistance and screwed over skynet so skynet sent a terminator to kill Sally randoms child. Kyle Reece was sent back to save this child.
possibilities of that timeline:
Kyle Reece failed, the mother was killed, yet he was catched in the current timeloop, maybe he found a girl made love, maybe not. Anyways lets say this child or soemone else, by his knowledge about the future was raised or trained to resist. That child is now the new resistance leader.
Maybe reece even succeeded and saved the leader of timeline 1 but for some reason made a baby educating it.
It COULD be that this child now is going to be the leader isntead of the former Sally randoms child. - No one ever said, that when John Conner would die the resitance would not exist. You know leaders are also changeable, and someone else coulöd probably have done that step.
What if that child Kyle had was together with sarah conner, which he randomly met.

Now we have layed the entire foundation for the timeline we saw:

Loop 2 starting
Skynet again starts to raise, and has to send a killer, reece follows.
At this point John is resitance leader,
Skynet sends killer, John sends Kyle.
But they don't meet randomly now, they meet on intention and still make this baby.
.
.
.

This leads to where the movie is. The part of finding the chip of the first destroyed terminator is not at all a "must have" trigger for the creation of Skynet as well. That is a logic that the second movie seeds, but it is when taking all possibilities of various timelines into account still possible for Skynet being developed in the usual way.



Otherwise think about it, when the Terminator saved John in part and locked into the vault, how would he have survived originally when no terminator ever was sent back? Most likely answer is: The true story is not what we know because an alternate timeline, even when not happening exactly the same could still lead to the same result.


So everytime when you watch movies involving timetravelling they reveal unlogic things, but on the other side it never is clear under what conditions the other things happened, they may have triggered the same but under totally different conditions maybe even with totalyl different persons the movie does not show.

Edited by Lily from animove, 24 September 2015 - 07:57 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

Marack Drock, on 24 September 2015 - 06:39 AM, said:

The Terminator series makes no sense.

The first two Terminator movies contradict each other. In Terminator 2 it is known that Skynet is created because of the left over parts of the Terminator of the first movie...

It has been so long since I watched through them both--but did Terminator 2 really say that somewhere? That's interesting...

But I never paid attention to the nitty-gritty details of the Terminator films--I was there to watch Schwarzenegger kill stuff and I must admit--I always thought the second film was a joke. That is probably why. I only have ever cared for the first one.

Like you point out--time travel plots are bogus. I take any movie with time travel with a grain of salt. The only series that remotely does it well is Doctor Who but there was this little gem of a book from years ago I read as a kid that I still remember to this day:



It was a fantastic read--however, don't quote me on that as it has been just shy of thirty years since I've held a copy of it in my hands.

[Kyone Akashi]

Mister Blastman, on 24 September 2015 - 09:13 AM, said:

It has been so long since I watched through them both--but did Terminator 2 really say that somewhere? That's interesting...

Yeah, remember the programmer Sarah wanted to assassinate, because the T-800 told her he was the most important contributor to the Skynet project? And how he had the first Terminator's hand and the brain chip to work with, salvaged from the leftovers at the metal factory of the first movie's showdown?

I'm still going with the "multiple timelines" theory, though; it's the only way to bring a modicum of sense into it. In short, T1 merely changed when and how Skynet gets made and who John Connor's father was, and this change only took effect for the timeline that was created when Skynet sent the first T-800 to kill Sarah.

This means that the original timeline was never affected in the first place - which is actually a prerequisite for why Skynet manages to send the T-2000, or for the resistance to send Reese. After all, if John Connor was so critical to the resistance, it would have effectively ceased to exist the moment the T-800 enters the time travel machine, and there would have been no way to send someone after him to protect Sarah.

Thus, ironically, Skynet as an A.I. may have always been doomed to send the T-2000, even if the first Terminator had succeeded in killing Sarah. The resistance is still there. Conclusion? The T-800 must have failed. Send the next batch!

In the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV-series, this theory is actually woven into a couple episodes. There are characters meeting one another from the same place and the same year, but they're not from the same timeline, and thus confused by each other knowing a different history.
It's complicated.

Ultimately, I absolutely agree that time travel is a messy concept for stories, which tend to work only if you are willing to suspend higher brain functions in favor of simply enjoying the ride.

Lily from animove, on 24 September 2015 - 07:28 AM, said:

And the living thing porting, is truly a bummer. What would have stopped both parties from simply stuffing some guns in a (probably -nearly- dead) animal and let them travel over there too? Would have been too easy I guess.

Yeah, that was a huge oversight back then. Skynet can grow artificial tissue, so why not build guns encased in meat?

Though actually, later writers tried to alleviate this detail, as the T-X from the third movie was in fact built with internal weapons. Maybe Skynet just isn't as creative that it'd get this idea right away, and instead works on a trial-and-error basis, churning out ever more advanced models of Terminators.

Edited by Kyone Akashi, 24 September 2015 - 12:11 PM.

[Lily from animove]

@Marrock, you think too linear with only a single possible loop, you need to think more parallel, changing a timeline creates an alternate timeline. and this cna cause multiple possible timelines depending on the number of loops. and ther eis never a need that a changed timeline would prevent the initial and broken timline to happen again with a later loop.

Kyone Akashi, on 24 September 2015 - 12:06 PM, said:

Yeah, remember the programmer Sarah wanted to assassinate, because the T-800 told her he was the most important contributor to the Skynet project? And how he had the first Terminator's hand and the brain chip to work with, salvaged from the leftovers at the metal factory of the first movie's showdown?

I'm still going with the "multiple timelines" theory, though; it's the only way to bring a modicum of sense into it. In short, T1 merely changed when and how Skynet gets made and who John Connor's father was, and this change only took effect for the timeline that was created when Skynet sent the first T-800 to kill Sarah.

This means that the original timeline was never affected in the first place - which is actually a prerequisite for why Skynet manages to send the T-2000, or for the resistance to send Reese. After all, if John Connor was so critical to the resistance, it would have effectively ceased to exist the moment the T-800 enters the time travel machine, and there would have been no way to send someone after him to protect Sarah.

Thus, ironically, Skynet as an A.I. may have always been doomed to send the T-2000, even if the first Terminator had succeeded in killing Sarah. The resistance is still there. Conclusion? The T-800 must have failed. Send the next batch!

In the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV-series, this theory is actually woven into a couple episodes. There are characters meeting one another from the same place and the same year, but they're not from the same timeline, and thus confused by each other knowing a different history.
It's complicated.

Ultimately, I absolutely agree that time travel is a messy concept for stories, which tend to work only if you are willing to suspend higher brain functions in favor of simply enjoying the ride.

Yeah, that was a huge oversight back then. Skynet can grow artificial tissue, so why not build guns encased in meat?

Though actually, later writers tried to alleviate this detail, as the T-X from the third movie was in fact built with internal weapons. Maybe Skynet just isn't as creative that it'd get this idea right away, and instead works on a trial-and-error basis, churning out ever more advanced models of Terminators.

maybe not skynet, but form mankind I expected better, or maybe too much

Edited by Lily from animove, 25 September 2015 - 01:31 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Marack Drock, on 25 September 2015 - 01:46 PM, said:

I do think that way but I also don't subscribe to the multiverse theory.

Why not? it's most simple and logic.

Simple example, I travel back in time and kill obama. Do you think USA would not exists or be without President today?
They still would be, there just having another President.
probably only a few things in politics would have truly changed.

If you ordered a pizza 2 weeks ago and I would travel back in time and kill the guys making those pizza would you have gone to bed hungry? you probably bought and ate something else.

Some things would not change as much as some think it's relevant. Connor was not the only survivor, and survivors would simply have ordanised themselves regardless of him being alive or not.

[Kyone Akashi]

These paradoxes can be averted if you just use multiple timelines existing simultaneously, though. Taking your example about killing your father, if you travel back in time you'd essentially exist twice on that timeline -- your time-travelled older self, and your future self which may or may never be born, depending on if you really go through with your plan to kill your father. Since you are from a different timeline, your existence does not depend on whether you are actually born in the one you travelled to.

It's like an alternate dimension. Sliders-style. I thought that's what people meant in this thread when they mention "multiverse"? The funny thing is, scientists are still debating this theory, so there arguably is some merit to it. And if this exists, time travel could actually be done, because you cannot break the order of the universe even if you completely mess up one timeline's past, as the barrier to your original timeline could act like a failsafe that prevents any consequences from affecting anything but the timeline you just edited. And that timeline is simply going to unfurl in a different manner, still separate from your own.

There is no logical need for a multiverse to exist in the scientific sense as I, too, do not believe in backwards time travel being possible (you can slow time down or speed it up, but you can't roll it back). But in the context of a discussion like this, I think it's necessary to bring sense to how the franchise dealt with the topic. Unless you'd just want to go the easy way and consider the exercise futile because, in the end, it's just fiction.

[Kyone Akashi]

Marack Drock, on 28 September 2015 - 06:39 AM, said:

Still serves no purpose as there is a timeline then with everything normal without you travelling back in time, meaning the multi-verse would still serve no actual purpose.

True. But would the people know/realize this?

Marack Drock, on 28 September 2015 - 06:39 AM, said:

Plus its never directly said if there is a multiverse in the Terminator. Everything has the same timeline otherwise there would be no need to go back in time and kill John, because there would be a timeline where he didn't exist thus giving Skynet no reason to go back.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series and some of the novels actually deal with this subject.

"Core memory also records that I became self-aware years before the date to which I transported the I-950. There is a set of records in which I arose without transtemporal Interference from Cyberdyne's original research; another in which the second Cyberdyne facility produced me after Sarah Connor destroyed the first; a third has now arisen in which she destroyed both facilities. Temporal travel has introduced an element of fundamental uncertainty to the very fabric of existence. Different world lines, different sequences of events, coexist in my records - and therefore presumably in reality - in a state of quantum superimposition. Yet the timeline loops cannot remain closed. The snake cannot devour its tail forever. At some point only one set of timelines will remain.

Yet the course of events contains favorable elements. My best efforts to destroy the Connors have failed, despite stochastic calculation indicating a very high probability of success. I can only assume that the space-time continuum itself is attempting to force events back to the original timeline, one in which I was created, succeeded in destroying the human civilization, and then defeated in my attempts to eliminate the surviving humans by John Connor's Resistance army. It seems there is a certain elasticity to history; time travel can bend the fabric, but it seeks to spring back."
-- Skynet

Mind you, I think the above explanation is needlessly complicated (to the point of ridiculousness) because it tries to marry a whole set of different and only vaguely defined approaches to time travel from several different products to the in-universe intentions of a hyperintelligent AI. A convoluted attempt at retconning everything into purpose, when better fixes would have been available by simply assuming that Skynet can actually be wrong.

It would have been much easier to simply have Skynet send out the Terminators because its computations do not subscribe to the multiverse theory even when it does apply, and the Resistance sends someone after them because at this point the humans don't even have any scientists left who could understand the problem.

And as mentioned earlier, in the TV series you actually have people from different histories / parallel timelines meeting one another.

Edited by Kyone Akashi, 28 September 2015 - 07:30 AM.

[Kyone Akashi]

Good point about the canon -- it's difficult to assess what is and what isn't. I don't know if there has been any official word on that subject. That being said, the TV series actually got quite good towards the middle (only to get worse again towards the end).

I'm still on the fence about Genesys. I want to watch it just for the sake of completion (even the other two new movies had some good parts), but that trailer was just ... ugh. Not to mention the title being so incredibly cheesy. Seriously, who comes up with that sort of stuff?