The Terminator 2 paradox issue.

[furie]

Okay, this is really for me an Neal to battle this out, but...

Terminator 2 has always irked me. I think it's a decent enough action film, but it has a glaringly bad paradox plot hole.

I'm very much into science fiction, and time travel is something I've read extensively about both in fiction, and serious discussions about theoretical issues that fiction raise. It's something that fascinates me, like a fictional Rubik's cube I can get my brains twisting around.

By the way, this topic is utterly fatuous

So... The plot hole is simply this.

The arm recovered from T1 is used, directly, to make Skynet. Without the arm, Skynet could not go live at the precise time it did and go sentient at the precise moment it did and set about the chain of events that led to the future in which the first and second terminators come back from.

By destroying the arm that chain of events, the actual timing of it itself, is thrown out. As soon as that changes ALL of the future changes.

If there was a vague time and date when Skynet went live, then the paradox wouldn't exist. One rule in time travel is never specify an absolute and then break it. Fixed points in a time-line have to remain fixed.

The plot fails horribly at the point the arm is destroyed and the head scientist is killed (plus the chip research all obliterated). We'll not even get into the horrors of a self-creation paradox (they work very uncomfortably, but logically.

So, let the discussion begin

 

[marc]

It's called looking into it too much

For me t2 works fine, the whole time line is ok.

The extra ending shows what happens, but they made t3 lol.

Will post more when home.

 

[furie]

It's called looking into it too much

Nah, when an otherwise well made film has an obvious plot hole, the plot hole looks much worse when compared to the quality of the rest of the film. It takes what could have been a superb film and makes a mockery of it

For me t2 works fine, the whole time line is ok.

But it isn't, as explained above

The extra ending shows what happens, but they made t3 lol.

I've never seen the extra ending (is it required viewing to enjoy the original release?). Unless Sarah Conner wakes up and goes "phew, it was all a dream", then it can't fix the problem. Or, if it goes "all that arm stuff was actually a parallel research project to the original project and had no baring on the actual development of Skynet". Otherwise... Still broken...

 

[marc]

The war does not happen they stop it due to t2.

For me t2 works as they find the arm and chip so the speed up the development, which was always going to happen and still will.

Right stop posting at work will post later.

 

[furie]

The war does not happen they stop it due to t2.

That's fine as nothing has ever happened to Sarah. Kyle wasn't sent back, John wasn't born and the whole Skynet thing didn't happen. Essentially, history from T1 onwards is completely rewritten. That works

For me t2 works as they find the arm and chip so the speed up the development, which was always going to happen and still will.

That's really very shoddy though and never takes into account any kind of butterfly effect. Sarah and John's entire future is irrevocably altered by the change in Skynet's going live date. It no longer matches the future in which Skynet sent Terminators back in time. Therefore, nothing works any more. What if Sarah and John are in the wrong place when Skynet destroys the world. Skynet may always happen, but Sarah and John surviving the blast doesn't have to happen.

What if, because it's in a different year, Kyle is caught in the blast (he and his parent's have no knowledge of the future devastation). Maybe Kyle's bond with John was forged immediately after the apocalypse? Maybe it was because his parents where killed at a specific time. Maybe Kyle is knocked over by a bus that wouldn't have been there if the apocalypse had happened earlier.

John meeting Kyle, becoming friends and having Kyle sent back is the culmination of a huge number of chance encounters and effects. They have to meet in the exact same circumstances at the exact same time or Kyle will never be sent back. If Kyle is not sent back, then John is never born.

The end of the world is a pretty major event. It's effects are incredibly massive and the chances of anything playing out the same (and even of Kyle surviving) are millions/billions to one against. And that's only if you take T3 trying to patch things up badly as canon. On its own T2 doesn't work, with T3 it still doesn't work, but you also have a crap film

 

[Hixee]

Furie, you're actually a nerd.

 

[Ben]

Yeah, I took it as the arm only sped it up, but, they still managed to develop Skynet anyway.

Then I stopped caring and realised it's a film and went and did normal stuff like, drinking and having sex with people instead of caring... <////3

 

[marc]

Right for me it works for the reasons I gave.

By destroying the bits at the end and all the work meant the future changed what happens after is anyone's guess.

But humans being humans still went ahead with the work as let's face it people back up information at DR sites. Them destroying everything actually changed little and the terminator should have known this.

The terminators in the 2nd film were sent back from a later date in the war we assume and they new about the past due to records that were kept on John and Sarah.

The time line works due to the above they just forgot the DR.

Now if your talking about the fact that at the end of the 2nd film they destroy everything and as a result the 1st film cannot happen then I sort of see what you mean. But the 1st film had already happened so that gets cancelled out.

 

[spicy]

This thread hurts my head.

 

[marc]

It's a good topic though, time travel always is .

To my mind one film does it well and that is Star Trek 4 as they return the same time they left and don't change the past.

 

[kimahri]

:|

your all geekz!

 

[marc]

You don't want to be near Phil and I when we've had a drink lol

 

[Pokemaniac]

Might be a nagging question, but I'm a little more on the "bad decision" side of things. Being a super-intelligent computer and all, why didn't just the Skynet:

1) Send the Terminator back to a point in time when John Connor couldn't even stand on his own legs, and just finish him off then? Heck, just taking out Sarah before she grew up would have done the trick.
2) Send not one Terminator at a time, but a dozen or so?
3) Send a Terminator which can fickle a little with its battery cell, which is shown to explode like a small nuclear charge when tampered with? (If the entire "I cannot self-terminate"-thing is a problem, just disable it. It's a robot, dammit).
4) Failing the above, send a Terminator with basic knowledge of bomb making and a sense of stealth, and let it spend a few years back in time, trying to put together a decent plan instead of "all-out attack".
5) Screw the entire "let's kill John Connor" thing, and send a team of robot builders to build a Skynet of their own back during the Renaissance or something, and conquer the world easily?
6) Try again more frequently than "ten year intervals"?

 

[marc]

Why not kill Sarah's mum or dad, the fact being someone else would have done johns job.

 

[nealbie]

Okay, this is really for me an Neal to battle this out, but...

Terminator 2 has always irked me. I think it's a decent enough action film, but it has a glaringly bad paradox plot hole.

I'm very much into science fiction, and time travel is something I've read extensively about both in fiction, and serious discussions about theoretical issues that fiction raise. It's something that fascinates me, like a fictional Rubik's cube I can get my brains twisting around.

By the way, this topic is utterly fatuous

So... The plot hole is simply this.

The arm recovered from T1 is used, directly, to make Skynet. Without the arm, Skynet could not go live at the precise time it did and go sentient at the precise moment it did and set about the chain of events that led to the future in which the first and second terminators come back from.

By destroying the arm that chain of events, the actual timing of it itself, is thrown out. As soon as that changes ALL of the future changes.

If there was a vague time and date when Skynet went live, then the paradox wouldn't exist. One rule in time travel is never specify an absolute and then break it. Fixed points in a time-line have to remain fixed.

The plot fails horribly at the point the arm is destroyed and the head scientist is killed (plus the chip research all obliterated). We'll not even get into the horrors of a self-creation paradox (they work very uncomfortably, but logically.

So, let the discussion begin

Yes, but......

Two and a half years ago, I wrote........

T2 - My interpretation of the recipe is somewhat different. 2 robots come back in time, 1 to kill JC, the other to protect him and hopefully destroy t'other robot. Mother decides, "Hey why not stop judgement day altogether and destroy Skynet before it exists?" (ala T1). Said plan falls into place, building blows up, stuff destroyed, evil robot melted. In order to ensure that future items are not kept lying around, the items from T1 and t'good robot Arnie are also melted. However, JC is still alive, yet no robots and junk = no judgement day = no JC to send unwitting daddy back in time = no JC. :? Hmmm, therefore Judgement Day still has to happen somehow. Perhaps not everything was blown up fully? After all the explosion wasn't all that nuclear was it?


Therefore, T3 - More robots sent back in time, meaning, yes there was a Judgement Day. At various points JC goes to kill himself, but it is impossible, because good Arnie bot number 2 has to do it in the future. Again this ruins the suspense supposedly added through music to create an atmosphere, etc, etc. Skynet gets turned on (apparently unlike Daleks, Terminators do have emotions :roll: ), and everyone nukes each other, etc, etc. I can't believe how candidly I just spoke of a nuclear holocaust, I feel bad .

I stand by that. Yes, Terminator 2 does have that paradox. However, the existence of the third one cancels T2's paradox and creates new ones, ergo stopping the 1991 film being ruined by something as silly as wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff.

I totally agree with you, that those things are unexplained within the individual scope of T2, however the "canon" scripting done by Cameron (before he let some plonker loose with it in exchange for a wad of cash), does get rid of the unanswered questions arising from simply viewing Judgement Day.

Everything was supposed to happen the way it did. It's just a failing on Cameron's part as the writer that he left such a gaping hole in his world's dynamic by ending the series after a second film. Whilst it only serves to be funny, and not good, as a visual spectacle. Rise of the Machines also serves the invaluable role of stopping Judgement Day of falling just shy of perfect.



Now about that nuclear holocaust........

 

[marc]

If they had included the proper ending to T2 then T3 could not have happened, he filmed it they did not want it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z52e7y5RHYg[/youtube]

 

[nealbie]

If they had included the proper ending to T2 then T3 could not have happened, he filmed it they did not want it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z52e7y5RHYg[/youtube]

This. Pretty much.

The producers and studio owners wanted it to be left open-ended to continue the cash-cow. Can't blame them, but it created the paradox.

Never thought I'd use that word so much on CF. Makes me all happy and giddy inside. ^_^

 

[spicy]

Shame they didn't use that ending, makes a lot more sense.

Also if they used that ending this thread would never have been created, but maybe that's why the ending was never used because this thread always had to be created.

 

[furie]

Furie, you're actually a nerd.

And this surprises you? :lol:

having sex with people instead of caring... <////3

I did that too, but what to do with the rest of the time together after the 30 seconds are over?
---

Neal, you've never explained away the butterfly effect issue.

The time line fails because there's a 7 year difference between the two apocalypses. The world was meant to end in 1997, and Sarah Conner was meant to die later that year.

Now, Neal/Marc, go back to 2004. Then go back to 1997 and see how different your lives were between those two points. Go from 2004 to now and do it too. What difference would it have made to who you know now, and where in the world you are now, if a nuclear explosion had happened in London, Sheffield and Glasgow (random cities in the UK) and flattened them in 1997 and then 2004.

The entire time line relies on Kyle being sent back in time in 2029 to 1984. For Kyle to be sent back, he needs to be alive. His parents need to have survived. He needs to have lived the same life, been in the same place and everything to allow him to meet John Conner in the exact same circumstances. John also has to be in the right places at the right time. As Sarah lives beyond 1997, the movement of John and Sarah will change. They could end up in a horrific car crash and die. They might not.

Whatever happens though, if the exact events leading up to Kyle being sent back do not happen (they don't, both T2 and T3 stop that), then you have a grandfather paradox. Skynet going live later solves nothing, it just compounds the issue really and makes the chances of stopping John and Kyle getting together and of John being fathered much higher.

In fact, I'd say that it's even worse in that Skynet has actually succeeded and stopped John from being born. Which has led to Skynet never needing to send a Terminator back in the first place, so Kyle was never sent back so in reality, no John, doomsday in 1997, no resistance and the timeline rights itself - voilà. Well done Sarah, you just killed your son (not that you'd know about it, because you would never have had him). So T3 actually compounds the issue and makes T1 and T2 not happen. It doesn't fix T2's paradox, but rather negates the entire story - a bit like fixing your aphid problem by using napalm.

Pokemaniac, come on! Have you not heard of Suspension of disbelief? :lol:

 

[nealbie]

I've said before that the butterfly effect doesn't wash with me - or bathe for that matter. But can't be bothered to find my post this time. You know about 50 pages of the "Now Showing" thread is Taylor, right?

I believe in time in its dull plodding linearness. Doctor Who says that anything that's supposed to happen will, and anything that crosses its own timeline becomes fixed, the journey just alters to the conclusion. Which will always be as it should be. Something I totally agree with.

The fact they postponed judgement day is irrelevant. All of the stuff before still took place. John didn't vanish and Sarah wasn't still at the café with her irritating pet lizard. Cameron's ending for T2 annoys me, because in that story arc, John should not exist. Which is why I'm glad it was cut. As naff as it is, T3 is a much better explanation.