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Terminator is better than Terminator 2, and as cool as it is Terminator 2 should never have been made (or should have a different script).
I know the mob is raising the pitchfork, but hear me out, there are two main ways time travel can solve the grandparent paradox, these are Singular Timeline (i.e. something will prevent you from killing your grandfather) or Multiple Timeline (you kill him but in doing so you created an alternate timeline). Terminator 2 is clearly a MT model, because they delay the rise of Skynet, but Terminator is a ST movie. The way you can understand it's an ST is because the cause-consequences form a perfect cycle (which couldn't happen on an MT story), i.e. Reese goes back to save Sarah -> Reese impregnates Sarah and teaches her how to defend herself from Terminators and avoid Skynet -> Sarah gives birth to and teaches John -> John uses the knowledge to start a resistance -> The resistance is so strong that Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah -> Reese goes back to save Sarah...
The awesome thing about Terminator is how you only realise this at the end of the Movie, that nothing they did mattered, because that's what happened before, the timeline is fixed, humanity will suffer but they'll win eventually.
If Terminator was a MT then the cycle breaks, i.e. there needs to be a beginning, a first time around when the original timeline didn't had any time travelers. How did that timeline looked like? John couldn't exist, which means that sending a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah was not possible, Reese couldn't have gone back without the Terminator technology, which they wouldn't have unless the resistance was winning, and if they are winning without John, the Terminator must have gone back to kill someone else and when Reese went back he accidentally found Sarah, impregnated her and coincidentally made a better commander for the resistance which accidentally and created a perfect loop so that next time he would be sent back and meet Sarah because she was the target (what are the odds of that). Then why is the movie not about this? Why is the movie about the Nth loop after the timeline was changed? The reason is that Terminator was thought as a ST movie, but when they wanted to write a sequel they for some reason decided to allow changes in the timeline which broke the first movie.
I love T2 so I’m simply upvoting your passion for T1.
Ah! A fellow holder of the belief that time travel stories are better when they are internally consistent! I hate e.g. Looper for having time travel that makes no goddamn sense. It takes me out of the story when the characters are literally watching the timeline change before them as it magically radiates out from one point. And then our protagonists somehow remember the original timeline... Bah.
...So I must ask - have you seen Primer? If not, maybe you'd like it!
Of course I've seen Primer, enough times to understand it even (I hope), it's my favourite time travel movie.
If you want your time travel to be internally consistent go watch "FAQ about time travel" it's British, low budget, mostly consistent, and hilarious.
Not to mention that it's fucking stupid to have all your infiltration units have the exact same face and body. The first movie even showed other terminators with different faces, so why is every T-800 Arnold?
That said, T2 is one of my favorite movies.
This tries to play on the idea that skynet is terrifyingly smart in some ways, but still deficient in others.
It doesn't really "make sense" but it's the whole reason there's a chance of an "ongoing" conflict between humans and skynet. If skynet was as smart as it should be, humans would be long gone.
My head hurts.
Never watch Primer.
You would love the episode in S4 of Miracle Workers which addresses this scenario.
Basically, the Terminators are in an endless loop killing Johns and being killed by them. It's just a boring job for them now.
I really, really appreciate this unpopular opinion, it made me see things in a different light. Unfortunately, the convincing you just did pales in comparison to how good Terminator 2 was. It wasn't just a cool flick, a sequel, a "time travel movie", etc, it was something special and it was amazing. But I fully understand and appreciate when time travel in movies doesn't make 100% sense, because it almost never does ..
How do you feel about Tenet?
As an action film it's okay, but I forgot most about the movie, which tells me I didn't had any strong feelings about it.
Fair enough, it just outdoes any dissonance between T1 and T2 by a factor of 10, hence being curious about your thoughts ;-)
David?
Love him as the doctor.
i’m like way, way late on this, but i just stumbled on this thread and have to say your analysis is well thought out and you explained time travel narrative structures very succinctly.
but your analysis completely falls apart because, and i’m not sure how, but you missed the entire fucking point of Terminator 1. In the extended edition of T2 there’s a scene in the first 15 minutes where Kyle explains it again for those in the back.
added in T2,
That’s what Kyle comes back to explain to Sarah. Until she understands that message and acts on it, Kyle is acting in a “ST” structure. Once the terminator is destroyed by Sarah, the MT is opened up. We can speculate that Kyle was supposed to kill the terminator with his last pipe bomb, but really any moment could have caused that schism. What’s important is that Sarah is now self-reliant in terms of killing machines. Fate is what Sarah was fighting, almost a meta-antagonist. That is her struggle through the entire Terminator franchise.
Terminator 1 is a time travel story that starts as a ST narrative, and by Sarah’s actions in the final act, becomes a MT narrative. T2 just further explores the opened-up MT narrative. There’s no inconsistency between the final moment of T1 and the opening of T2. Your gripe seems to be entirely with the first movie based on a limited understanding of the larger themes and philosophies explored in the narrative.
Terminator 2 is a damn fine sequel and a hell of a film on its own merit.
Kyle says that, he also talks about possible futures, but Kyle has no understanding of time travel
He doesn't even know why he has to travel naked, his answer is:
Also the quote you mention is part of the phrase that John Connor made him tell Sarah:
But here's the thing, John says that to Sarah possibly because Sarah told him about it and how that exact phrase kept her going, knowing that the future was not set.
I don't get why you're speculating that Kyle was to kill the Terminator, but:
She was always alone and sad in that photo, Kyle had always died, and she had always run away, to me she always killed the Terminator.
If you claim T1 is MT, let's call timeline 1 the one Kyle comes from, and timeline 2 the one we see most of the movie, also there's a timeline 0 where no time travel happened, with that in mind there are a few questions:
I thought everyone (skynet, the resistance) thought it was ST as of T1, but that was wrong, as seen in T2.
Also Eddie furlong is fucking insufferable
You've way over analysed it. It'd be like pissing on Star Wars because the Force has no basis in science.
As someone who enjoys the magic systems of Brandon Sanderson, I do piss on Star Wars for not having a logical basis for The Force.
Actually it's not that bad. Harry Potter is much worse.
No, the problem is internal consistency, in Star Wars the force works the same way in all films. But imagine if on one movie someone was shown using the force to move objects, and on the next movie the same character was shown trying to reach for something important and failing and not using the force and when asked he replies "it's not possible to move objects with the force". That's the problem here, internal consistency, on one movie it's said it works one way, on the other it's said it works differently. I love both movies, I just think T2 shitted on one of the main things from T1.
Except the prequels establish force powers that we never see again and so do the sequels. Like force super speed in the phantom menace.
Just because you don't see them again doesn't mean they're impossible.
https://youtu.be/-QPJoRWz8Sc
You're right
And you know how they explained time travel not making sense in Doctor Who? They called it "wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff" and hand waved all that shit away.
And that's fine, but if one Dr. Who explained time travel in detail, showing things that would be impossible, the next doctor shouldn't violate those rules, it's about in-universe consistency.
I'll go ahead and guess that you haven't seen much doctor who :)
Dr who has av lot of qualities, consistency is not one of them (and it's OK)
You are correct, I haven't. But if the next Doctor said Time travel was impossible and spent the entire show not time traveling (because time travel is impossible) I bet that would raise some eyebrows.
No, the "Single Time Line" bit is a basic feature of T1, part of what makes it great, that T2 simply throws away.
I'm so glad I saw the films as a young kid then. To me it was just a cool horror film with a murder bot and the second was Arnie the robot hero!