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Post by Forte21x on Dec 13, 2008 11:56:32 GMT -5
So far, it looks like they haven't really explored the possibility of Skynet giving itself technological advantages through time travel. At least not as much as they could. It wouldn't be impossible for there to be a terminator hiding in a closet somewhere with instructions on how to make a T-1000 or a time machine, allowing Skynet to skip all the older model terminators. Following that pattern the self-destructing chips are probably a new development in the future.
I like the fact they are developing John's character. But I still wish he was handling things better at times. The new twist with Reily makes a little more sense. It's one thing for him to just fall for a girl but Reily (through Jesse or otherwise) knows so much about John that she could come off as a soulmate.
There's another problem with the development of John's character. The title character is Sarah Connor. If John was acting like the leader everyone hopes he becomes already, it would almost marginalize Sarah. If John was being that leader and he disagreed with Sarah, who would Derek and Cameron listen too? This issue will have to come up but how do you pace it?
Off-topic: If Derek's team had survived whose orders would they take? John and Sarah (future leader and legend) or Derek (their commander)?
Despite the other characters' expectations of him, they don't really let John make decisions. Granted, he isn't ready for it yet. But everyone has secrets that they keep from John that could set him up to make the wrong decision. I'm not complaining, I find it very compelling. I just hope they explore this in the show.
I'm sorry if this was already brought up, I haven't looked through all the pages.
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Post by allergygal on Dec 13, 2008 12:48:09 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. Yeah, I prefer John as the smart tech guy, not the badass gun-toting fighter. We've got Sarah and Cameron and Derek for that. And while Sarah's not stupid about computers (at least she shouldn't be since we know she originally taught John how to hack an ATM), she doesn't exactly like them or keep up with the latest. She relies on John's knowledge and passes all that stuff off to him. We definitely got that in season 1 and I think we're starting to get it again now. I wish that whole John freak-out about killing Sarakissian and resulting rift between him and Sarah had played out better, but at least we seem to be past it now. And since the Mexico trip, John doesn't seem like such a douche anymore. He's obviously still got issues, but he's acting more like himself again. It was refreshing to see him back on a laptop, digging through hard drives and explaining things to Sarah in Strange Things. That, to me, has always been John's role. Yes, he's quite competent with a gun and knows how to handle himself in a fight (as he should be). We've gotten plenty of evidence of that. But the guy who's going reprogram machines, organize time travel missions and direct a battle against a technological enemy isn't a badass soldier. He's essentially a badass nerd. And with Cameron around to gradually introduce John to the very things he would have learned on his own in the future, he's already got a head start. Leaders aren't really leaders until they have something to lead. John's never going to wake up one morning and be all "Mom, Derek, Cameron... I'm in charge now and I'll tell you what to do." The story we know of John isn't that he's this great leader when judgement day happens, it's that he becomes a leader when the human race had essentially given up and nearly become extinct. And we know he spend 6 years in a Skynet prison camp before he leads the revolt. Sarah's been his sole role model for most of his life and we've seen her drive and determination. So when the time finally comes (if they don't stop Skynet), I have absolutely no doubt that John will find that same strength within himself to become the man Kyle would die for.
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Post by richardstevenhack on Dec 13, 2008 23:49:59 GMT -5
The six years in the Skynet prison camp is one element I have problems with. How did Skynet never know it had the future leader of the Resistance in the camp? Does it STILL not know? Because if it's still sending Terminators back to waste him (and by the way, when does Cromartie's replacement show up? There has to be one!), you would think that it would be interested in making sure it keeps track of John between now and Judgment Day.
Presumably immediately after Judgment Day, it would be hard to track John since all the usual mechanisms would be destroyed, and John would definitely be underground until he can organize the Resistance. Presumably the T-4 movie will address this, unless it slides in after John has already organized the Resistance to a certain degree. I can't tell from the trailers.
But you'd think Skynet would have had a clue that John was in one of its camps - or that by now in the future it would know - and then send a Terminator into those camps to look for him. After all, through interrogating human captives, it would have heard the story about John being in the camp and escaping with the aid of Kyle Reese. Sending a Terminator back a couple years to deal with that would seem to be a no-brainer - and hard to figure out how John Connor would avoid that.
This is the problem with making up details about a character you haven't fleshed out yet in a real script - you can paint yourself into a corner you can't get out of.
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Post by vicheron on Dec 14, 2008 15:26:30 GMT -5
When did they ever say how long John was in a Skynet prison?
Not many people would even know what John looks like and it's unlike that anyone but the soldiers closets to John would even know that he was in a Skynet prison. Plus if Skynet ever learns what John Connor looks like then it would be making John Connor Terminators.
Even if Skynet does eventually learn that John was in one of its prisons, it can't send a Terminator to kill him for plot reasons. It's why it can't be allowed to send information or technology to its past self or it will be impossible to defeat. This has always been a problem with the plot from the first movie. Skynet didn't have to send the first Terminator on some crazy desperate mission to assassinate someone it had almost no information on. It could have sent the Terminator to an earlier version of itself with the most up to date technology and all records of Resistance tactics and strategy. It could allow Skynet to build the time dilation device and the T-1000 five or ten years earlier. Then the new Skynet can do it again, advancing its technology even further, and again and again until it gets Star Trek level technology that can easily defeat the Resistance no matter how good John Connor is.
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Post by richardstevenhack on Dec 15, 2008 2:07:36 GMT -5
Well, naturally I agree with all that. As I've said before, the entire franchise makes no sense on the face on it.
Still, it would make for interesting stories if some of the holes in the basic concept were actually addressed in some fashion. That's all I'm suggesting.
As for when John was in prison, I think Cameron referenced it with regard to Kyle Reese's internment. Whatever the figure was, it was long enough to make me wonder why Skynet didn't realize what it had there - or why it never tried to deal with that later via time travel. All I'm suggesting is that a plausible explanation might be interesting.
Even if it's nothing more than "I'm Spartacus!" if you remember that movie.
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Post by vicheron on Dec 17, 2008 16:42:18 GMT -5
There is clear distinction between present day John and future John. Future John seems to have pretty much accepted that things can't be changed. Why else would he use his real name? He knows that Skynet will eventually send Terminators against him. He could have just made up a name and lied about his background. He could have said that his name was "Brian Smith" and that he grew up in Kansas. Unless Skynet actually managed to capture and interrogate him, there's no way for it to know if he was lying about his name and his past. It's the same thing with all the other Resistance fighters, John could have just had them all lie about their identities.
When you think about it, the whole "no fate but what you make" message was really not supposed to mean that Sarah should change the future. She just interpreted it that way in T2. In T1, it was Skynet that was trying to change the future, Kyle and Sarah were actually trying to preserve the future. The point of that message was to tell Sarah not to let anything change history and have things play out the way they're supposed to play out.
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t101
Major
Posts: 716
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Post by t101 on Dec 17, 2008 17:16:18 GMT -5
He needs to keep some things consistent. Like say the matter of his conception. Also I'm assuming Cameron is not lying that John has sent them to 2007 to fight Skynet and Derek's group as well.
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Post by richardstevenhack on Dec 17, 2008 21:35:52 GMT -5
We could interpret the "no fate but what we make" that way, but I really doubt that was the intention. The intention was to convince her that the future didn't have to happen that way, and that it could be changed by their actions OR by Skynet's actions.
And if one DOES accept the notion that "the future is not set" - which is the other part of that line, which DOES indicate that it IS possible to change the future - or at least that both John and Kyle and Sarah believed that - then clearly all this business of John sending back people absolutely does mean that he expects them to change the past and thus the future.
I really don't know where you come up with your interprations of things, Vicheron. They are always the exact opposite of what seems to me to be the obvious and clearly intended interpretation.
The reality of the franchise is that it's impossible to know if the future is set or not. In one sense, it absolutely is. Actions have consequences and always will. Whether you can predict them or not is the problem. For the most part, you can only predict the very narrow short term - and sometimes not even that.
So the idea that sending someone back to change something is necessarily either going to work in changing the future situation that you want changed, or that it won't change things for the WORSE, is a pretty lame idea. If it works, your present is changed and therefore you can't know whether what you did worked or what to do next if it didn't because now the past is changed from what you know.
All you can do is try to deal with the present and hope that the future turns out better. The present day Connors should be appropriately concerned with dealing with the present and trying to stop Skynet from ever existing. Future John should just let well enough alone and let them deal with it. Skynet would be well served to do the same except that it stands to never have existed if the Connors succeed in their mission.
The fundamental error of Skynet was in trying to change the future. That caused information transfer back to the past which alerted people to its existence and the consequences thereof. Had it never done that, it would have existed, Judgment Day would occur, and John Connor might not have ever existed. Even if John did exist in the future in his future role, it still wouldn't have changed that much if Skynet had succeeded in killing him.
And with every Terminator that comes back, Skynet gives past John more information to use against it in the future.
So it's caught between a rock and a hard place - if it does nothing subsequent to the original Terminator, it's been exposed, and if it tries to kill the Connors in the past or insure its own creation, it just leads directly to more exposure and more likelihood of never existing.
This is the fundamental error. And I'd prefer to see future John not fall into that trap. The only way future John can defeat Skynet is in the future - unless he gets lucky and Skynet never exists in the first place. Future John really can't do anything to make it more likely that Skynet never exists. And the writers should see that, which means stuff like the blood wall should never have been done.
This is the simplest interpretation that should be used in the show. Minimize the hints from the future - all they do is complicate the situation and make it LESS likely that the Connors will stop Skynet from existing. And this is exactly what we've seen this whole season - all the hints from the future have allowed Skynet's growth to proceed unimpeded as the Connors chase after fundamentally irrelevant matters that will only matter if Skynet comes into existence and Judgment Day actually occcurs. And even then, most of these situations only matter in terms of one benefit or another for the Resistance, which might well be irrelevant even if things do work out badly.
I think it was James Middleton who said that what the Connors do might actually advance the date of Judgement Day. Clearly this is what we've seen this entire season.
And THAT'S what irritates me about the show - the "heroes" are screwups because the writers want it that way because they think it's a "cool" concept to complicate the past with the future. And all that ends up doing is messing with the characterization of the "heroes" and complicating the story lines until they end up jumping the shark - which is inevitable if they keep along this path.
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Post by vicheron on Dec 18, 2008 4:24:47 GMT -5
Who was trying to change the future in T1? It was Skynet, it was trying to kill Sarah Connor to prevent the birth of John Connor so that it can win the war against the humans. Kyle Reese was sent to preserve the future. He was supposed to stop Skynet from changing the future and that's exactly what he did.
This is the entire message John had Kyle give to Sarah, "Sarah, thank you. For your courage through the dark years. I can't help you with what you must soon face, except to tell you that the future is not set... there is no such thing as Fate, but what we make for ourselves. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist." John's not saying that just because the future is not set, Sarah can go on doing whatever she wants. He's saying that Sarah cannot become complacent and wait for destiny to play its part. It is precisely because the future is not set that Sarah has to work to make sure that things happen the way they're supposed to.
It's an existential paradox explored by many philosophers and psychologists. The idea of destiny and freedom being intertwined and interdependent is an idea that Rollo May really focused on. The idea is not that you cannot change destiny but that you must exercise your freedom in order to fulfill your destiny. Fate is not an ominous force that limits your freedom, it is there to challenge you to exercise that freedom. Sarah and John cannot simply be content with the idea that John will eventually become the leader of the human race, they have to work towards that fate. Complacency will be their undoing, the paradox is that accepting one's destiny will lead it to become unfulfilled.
As for Skynet's actions being its own undoing, it's a theme that has been with stories, myths, and legends for all of human history. Skynet is a lot like Kronus, who was destined to be overthrown by his own son and tried to prevent the prophecy from becoming fulfilled but in the end it was that very act of trying to defy fate that ultimately led to the prophecy to be realized.
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Post by richardstevenhack on Dec 19, 2008 7:40:48 GMT -5
OK, if we accept that the whole point of the franchise is that Sarah is merely trying to keep John alive, and everything else is fixed, then the entire TV series is basically a waste of time.
I find that far too simple an outlook. Once again, I think the interpretation is too narrow.
Not to mention that, as YOU pointed out, it was Uncle Bob in T-2 that suggested going after Skynet by destroying the chip so that Cyberdyne couldn't create Skynet. Even though, as I said, he was merely going along with Sarah's determination to do that. Had John programmed him to merely insure his own survival, as you insisted earlier, than why would he have done that? He should have actively prevented John from putting himself at risk by doing that, against orders from present John or not.
It was only in T-3 that the notion that Judgment Day could not be stopped and that the only mission of the Terminator was to insure Connor's survival became the main focus of the franchise.
And as you pointed out, T-3 has nothing to do with the series.
See how fast you can talk yourself in to a corner?
Sorry - the only logical way to deal with Skynet is to try to stop its creation. Then you don't care about Terminators coming back to kill John. There are no Terminators, the future is over. Now, whether that is possible or not is another question.
But for someone to say, "the future is not set", and therefore the ONLY thing you can do is keep one guy alive so that the rest of the future IS set - man, that makes no sense whatsoever.
If the future is set so that Judgment Day cannot be stopped, then the future is set and John Connor cannot be killed no matter how many Terminators they send back.
That fact destroys your entire interpretation. Give it up.
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Post by vicheron on Dec 19, 2008 18:48:09 GMT -5
You're completely missing the point. Just because there is predestination does not mean that John Connor can do whatever he wants and still save the human race. It's not like if he stood in the middle of Los Angeles on Judgment Day, the nuke won't vaporize him. When he fights the machines, bullets won't magically bounce off of him and Terminators aren't just going to self destruct for no reason. Your interpretation of fate is completely misguided. Destiny does not give anyone a free pass on anything. It's something that John Connor has to work towards.
It's called a paradox for a reason. The very fact that they think they can change their fate is what causes them to fulfill it. If future John had instead told Sarah that everything is set and she doesn't have to worry about it then she would have had no reason to learn to become a soldier and train John to become the leader of the Resistance. John would have been completely unprepared to fight Skynet and he would have lost.
Also, just because there is predestination does not mean that everything is pointless. Have ever read Oedipus? You know from the start exactly what's going to happen and yet the story has endured for thousands of years. The story is about how fate intertwines with free will. The whole story is predestined and yet there was no divine hand from the heavens guiding people's actions, no one had their mind or body taken over by the gods to fulfill the prophecy. Everything they did was of their own free will. However, in the end they arrive at a conclusion that was already foretold. Fate is not something that people can wait passively to be fulfilled. It requires that element of free will that allows people to choose. Nothing in Oedipus would have happened if everyone had just accepted their fate. If everyone had instead just given up their free will then the prophecy would not have been fulfilled. That is the paradox.
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Post by allergygal on Dec 20, 2008 3:54:57 GMT -5
When did they ever say how long John was in a Skynet prison? Cameron said it in Dungeons & Dragons when John asked her what she knew about Kyle Reese. "Imprisoned at Century Sector Work Camp with John Connor, 2015. Escaped with John Connor, 2021."
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Post by richardstevenhack on Dec 20, 2008 22:11:41 GMT -5
Thanks, Allergygal, for the exact quote. I couldn't remember the exact reference.
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Post by Forte21x on Dec 20, 2008 23:43:55 GMT -5
I imagine John would have to be 1 part action hero to 2 parts nerd. After all, he's going to have to do his own legwork before the resistance is set up. I'm actually really curious about what his life is like immediately after JD, before people accept him as the savior of humanity. That might be in T4's strikezone instead of the show.
But I always thought John's greatest strength would be his ability/desire to reach out to people. You got to see a bit of it with Martin. I want to see more of it because I think it reveals a lot about him and Sarah. Derek can teach him how to be a killer. Cameron can teach him about terminators. His sense of morality comes from Sarah. He's not identical to her in that way, especially while he's just 16. But I think that's where Sarah has left her mark on John most.
Jesse even alluded to that kind of quality by saying something like: There's a reason people will follow him through hell.
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