k8ie
Corporal
Posts: 1,482
|
Post by k8ie on Oct 30, 2008 9:58:47 GMT -5
Judgement Day v.2.0 didn't happen until the Future!John that sent back Cameron and Derek was 28 (2011).
Realistically, the older John is on Judgement Day, the more authority he's likely to have with the survivors. And even then, he spent most of 2011-2021 in a work camp.
|
|
|
Post by richardstevenhack on Oct 31, 2008 6:21:53 GMT -5
I've never really got the point of Cameron jumping them seven or eight years into the future, when they could have jumped one or two for the same benefit if all they were trying to do was dodge Cromartie. As Sarah complained to Cameron, she had seven more years to get John ready. Even if she died in 2005, she would have had more years than the four they have now - and John would have been old enough to deal with her death and move on for the remaining four years.
Remember, John today is technically 24. But Cameron screwed up his life by wiping out eight of his years. When Sarah would have died, he would have been 22 - quite capable of dealing with her death and continuining his preparations for the war.
Maybe Sarah was never going to die of cancer in 2005. Maybe that was a lie.
Yet Derek and his team were sent back to approximately 2007 to "wait for Sarah and John." The logic there would appear to indicate that future John knew that was the period where the crux of things would took place - the best time to possibly stop Skynet once the Cyberdyne intervention failed.
The logic there would also indicate that Cameron knew this as well. Presumably she knew future John's plans. She jumped them to precisely the time period where things were going to be resolved.
Yet why jump six or seven years when they could have jumped one and then let time proceed normally? Derek's team was still going to be there when 2007 rolled around. Granted the time machine was good for only one shot - but that was all they really needed.
What was going to happen in 2007 was going to happen anyway, presumably. So why did Cameron jump them that many years, wiping out eight of John's years and leaving him only 16 with four years to go until Judgment Day?
My answer: gaining control of a sixteen year old would be a lot easier than gaining control of a 23- or 24-year-old in 2007. Cameron needed to control past John for her own purposes. If she jumped one year in to the future to escape Cromartie, she would have had six or seven years to get control of him. But when the crux of things occurrs in 2007, he would be 23 or 24 - and harder to control if she was unable to gain the control she wanted over him.
If SHE wants to control events in 2007, then she had to have a younger John who could be influenced in ways she needed. So she invented the lie that Sarah died in 2005 as an excuse to jump them to 2007.
Why not 2006? Well, she needed Derek's team as well. Unfortunately Vic screwed that up.
Of course, the most likely reason for all this nonsense is: the writers wanted to explain how the Connors got from the '90's where we last saw them in T-2 to the present day where present day audiences could follow the events easier. ;D
The rest of my speculation is a waste of time because that is the only real reason any of this has occurred. But if you want a "conspiracy theory" to explain why the inexplicable jump which caused John to be "not ready for prime time Judgment Day", this is it - blame Cameron and her hidden agenda.
|
|
traitorsgate
Sergeant
This is Cam. She's trained for an Off-World kick murder squad. Talk about Beauty and the Beast.
Posts: 264
|
Post by traitorsgate on Oct 31, 2008 7:45:22 GMT -5
Precisely, the one and only reason was in order to simplify production costs, nothing more. Set a series back in the mid-nineties then all your production has to be geared to match that era, which would blow the budget clean out of the water with ongoing costs.
|
|
|
Post by richardstevenhack on Oct 31, 2008 7:59:49 GMT -5
Reality intruding upon our show is such a bitch, don't you think?
|
|
|
Post by vicheron on Oct 31, 2008 23:36:10 GMT -5
There could be an advantage to jumping forward. If John doesn't jump forward then he would be 43 years old in 2027. Now he'll be 36 in 2027. If John thought that the war was going to drag on for many more years then being younger and not having to deal with the problems of old age could be worth the sacrifice of the potential loss of experience.
|
|
traitorsgate
Sergeant
This is Cam. She's trained for an Off-World kick murder squad. Talk about Beauty and the Beast.
Posts: 264
|
Post by traitorsgate on Nov 1, 2008 2:51:51 GMT -5
Bit of a stretch I'd have thought, there's sod all difference between your average 36 & 43 year old.
|
|
|
Post by vicheron on Nov 1, 2008 3:49:56 GMT -5
The difference will be much bigger in the post Judgment Day world when access to nutrition and medical care will be limited. Plus the age advantage will be more important as time passes. A 66 year old person will be much better off than a 73 year old person.
|
|
traitorsgate
Sergeant
This is Cam. She's trained for an Off-World kick murder squad. Talk about Beauty and the Beast.
Posts: 264
|
Post by traitorsgate on Nov 1, 2008 5:55:09 GMT -5
Don't you be hatin' on old folk, what goes around,comes around.
|
|
|
Post by chrisimo on Nov 2, 2008 4:46:19 GMT -5
I think one reason why John doesn't want to accept his future because he still believes it can be stopped. As soon as Judgement Day happens he will give up all that hope and transforms completely into the leader he is supposed to be.
|
|
|
Post by xone93 on Nov 2, 2008 8:15:34 GMT -5
"Although John’s mother had told him about his father, and what was destined to be, he hadn’t really wanted to accept it. In fact, for a time, John rebelled against the whole idea of “his destiny.” Until the war came, that is, and the machines rose, and everything that Sarah Connor had told him came heartbreaking to past, each horrifying event like the tick of a cosmic pounding out history with blind cruelty. "
This passage is taking from the Terminator 2 Judgment Day, a novel by Randall Frakes, which is based on the screenplay by James Cameron and William Wisher.
I think the writers are following the official novel this is canon to most people. What do you all thing?
|
|
|
Post by richardstevenhack on Nov 25, 2008 2:01:41 GMT -5
After tonight's episode, episode 10, the question has to be raised:
Is John Connor the one who can win the war against the machines - or is he not?
Because the premise of Jesse's plot is that John Connor is being misled by Cameron, causing him to make "questionable decisions" and costing lives and possibly threatening the loss of the war.
The speculations of some of the fans here that the future war is going badly for the humans as a result of events in the past also brings that into question.
Or is what we are seeing here merely another version of the "greys" - the turncoats to the Resistance? Is Jesse merely a faction of the Resistance who chafe under Connor's leadership and would prefer to do away with him and run things themselves?
It's clear from the series that John Connor's biggest problems both in the past and the future is not Skynet, or Terminators - but other humans - even his mother and his uncle.
Nobody can be trusted to be both reliable and competent. Even Cameron, normally both in his eyes, got glitched.
In the original "T-1" story, Kyle's exposition was that it was John Connor who "turned it around" - who created the Resistance, who sent him back, blew up the time machine and thus "we'd won". The implication was that John Connor was predestined to win the war.
"T-2" made a crack in that assumption, but not much of one. "T-3" made a bigger crack, in that Connor assumed the war had been stopped until it actually happened.
The series appears to be making a HUGE crack in that assumption by depicting the teenage John Connor as "not ready for prime time" as a Resistance leader, and being tossed back and forth between his mother and his uncle, and subject to influence by a Terminator, with no bearings and no control over his life.
Not to mention no planning for the Resistance, no pre-organization of the Resistance, and no preparation for the war at all other than some normal schooling, some military schooling, and his hacking skills.
The "myth" of John Connor, the "leader of mankind", seems to have taken some serious hard knocks in recent episodes.
How do people think this dichotomy is going to be resolved?
Is John going to develop into the man he's supposed to become? Are John - and Cameron - going to pull themselves out of the current mess they're in and somehow pull it together before the war starts?
|
|
t101
Major
Posts: 716
|
Post by t101 on Dec 10, 2008 6:16:32 GMT -5
John's petty rebellion against mom has made him look stupid a good number of times. Plus a number of dumb mistakes involving Riley. Plus the very image of him frolicking with Riley or not really doing anything when the others are working on a mission. All have created a decent backlash against his portrayal.
No wonder there are people jumping on the Lauren from last episode band wagon. Here we have a kid John's age who's been practically flawless in the face of the same destiny. Granted I do think the comparison is faulty because Lauren isn't any different from John when he has his head straight like say in Goodbye to All That and at the same time we didn't have 2 seasons of picking her apart, just one episode to get the best of her across.
Nevertheless, they should have done a better job of balancing between John's flaws and his potential. Hopefully we've had enough of emo John and the remaining episodes will actually focus on him "becoming a man" like we were promised.
|
|
|
Post by aceplace57 on Dec 10, 2008 14:41:40 GMT -5
The writer's have a serious problem with the John Connor character. Fans want a strong, bad ass leader.
But, most of the actual fighting falls on Cameron's shoulders. Fans love her and it's hard (now) seeing the show survive without Cameron. Sarah and Derek are also strong physical characters that kick butt. The show doesn't need another Rambo. It would be a mistake to push John in that direction. That's a dead end for the character.
There's an important role for John Connor. But, I don't think it's fighting Terminators Mano-a-mano. That's the least important role he could play. It would be a complete waste of his intelligence, cunning and leadership potential.
So... Why not let John emerge as a hero/leader in other ways? Bring back his computer and electronics knowledge. John could be the key person that finds leads to Skynet. John could get leads to emerging AI & Robotics technology through blogs, Twitter and My Space. Find out what people are developing and who they work for. You don't need a Wall with bloody handwriting. Let John find the information. John can Target company's that are potential threats. John can use his computer as a weapon, freeze assets, and destroy credit lines. John has many ways to bring down a start-up company that is developing dangerous technology. Remember how Sandra Bullock's identity was erased in The Net?
I could see John building the resistance through the Internet (before J Day wipes it out). Making important contacts with people World Wide. Remember the The Lone Gunmen from X-Files? John needs to recruit hackers like that to help take down Sky Net.
I'd like to see John as the ultimate hacker warrior. Base him on characters like the kid in War Games, Sandra Bullock in The Net, Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) in Swordfish, and the characters in Sneakers. That John Connor will have the skills to reprogram Terminators in 2027.
|
|
|
Post by richardstevenhack on Dec 11, 2008 20:54:31 GMT -5
It would be good to see John leveraging his computer skills. We have seen a little of that in the episode with Dekara Corporation. There's little doubt in my mind that John's primary advantage in dealing with Skynet in the future will be his hacking and programming skills - the reprogrammed Terminators are just the tip of the iceberg. If Skynet is a distributed AI, the ONLY way the Resistance is going to bring it down is by hacking it. Trying to find some "bunker" where the AI mainframe is located is unlikely to be successful.
Unfortunately it also looks like the T-4 movie is basically going to be a standard war movie, with a lot of shooting and battle scenes, but no hacking.
The problem with focusing on hacking is that computer hacking plays poorly on both the big screen and the little screen - unless you play games with huge monitors and special visual effects - which in turn make the hacking look unrealistic (see "War Games" from the old days). The last movie to do any significant hacking was "Live Free and Die Hard" - and that was a success primarily because it was interspersed with insane action stunts. Plus it tends to bore the non-technical audience. (You'd wonder why the high-tech stuff the mad scientist comes up with on "Fringe" doesn't bore them.) So I don't expect we'll see much of that in the show, unfortunately.
Still, I think they haven't done too badly showing John's hacking skills in the first season anyway. They might want to do another episode where he hacks a Terminator chip - but since they've introduced "self-destructing chips", my guess is we won't see any more of that.
In fact, there's a major problem. If the show wants us to believe that the actions of the current characters are changing the future, and if it's already been established that John and the others have changed the future, then the introduction of the "self-destructing chip" pretty much demonstrates that Skynet has learned about reprogrammed Terminators and its design change pretty much destroys any chance Connor will have of reprogramming Terminators in the future from this current time line. That is a HUGE blow to the Resistance, and in fact pretty much renders Cameron the ONLY remaining Terminator in the future, assuming she survives past J-Day and into the current time line future that could be reprogrammed.
What that means is that John is now TOTALLY RELIANT on Cameron for ANY knowledge of how Terminators work in the future!
Take out Cameron and John Connor will now be deaf, dumb and blind with regard to how Terminators work, as well as having NO Terminators to assist the Resistance in the future.
I wonder how this will be dealt with in the upcoming Terminator sub captain episode. If that whole episode isn't about a Terminator going bad, I'd be mighty surprised.
Either that or you have to assume that things like the Terminator chip design change have no effect on the current future time line. Which again just means that the writers are being inconsistent. We're supposed to believe that the Connors have changed the future so that Derek doesn't remember his brainwashing because it never happened (for no known reason, by the way), but the fact that Skynet has now eliminated any chance of John reprogramming Terminators in the future doesn't count.
In other words, we have to believe that despite the fact that Skynet has changed the design we have to assume that it didn't do that UNTIL John reprogrammed a number of Terminators, including Cameron. But if Skynet knows that John has reprogrammed Terminators in the future, it would be trivial for it to ensure that it always DID include the "self-destruct" mechanism in the Terminator chip design in the past. Just send a Terminator back to Skynet's point in time where it designed Terminators and have it convey to Skynet the design change.
This opens up a whole can of worms which relates to my earlier suggestion that if the future John knows his whole past, why not send back someone with a 32GB flash drive up his butt that contains everything John needs to survive until his future point in time when he sends the guy back? Instead of sending some shot up guy who scrawls hints on a wall.
Bottom line: none of it makes sense. So just let it go.
|
|
|
Post by bowman on Dec 12, 2008 16:17:59 GMT -5
I doubt the 'self destructing chip' is an insurmountable obstacle. That's just illogical.
Take copyright violations and copyright protections. There's always a new digital rights management package out there being used to protect games and DVDs, always more intrusive, restrictive and destructive, but the hackers never fail to circumvent it soon after the first product using it is released.
In fact, some episode or bits of one as a subplot could be used to showcase John and Cameron trying to figure out how to avoid the selfdestruct, retain the chip and reprogram it. He still hasn't learned reprogramming them in the first place, just reading them, and that could also be used in further episodes..
|
|