Terminator Genisys - Discussion and Grading Thread (Spoilers)

[nx1701g]

I like how they had 30 odd years to stop Genisys and decided to go forward in time to give themselves only a few hours.

They didn't have 30 years, John Connor was sent back to 2014 so they really only had three years. and the only way they knew to go to 2017 was Kyle's memory of events that hadn't happened yet.

I'd still like to know how John connor expected to live if he killed off his parents. I also suspect that it was an alternate John Connor who sent Pops back to 1973.

If you think about it he shouldn't exist anymore since his parents jumped to 2017 without giving birth to him. What T-John seems to think is that they all exist outside of time, from some alternate timeline and events no longer effect them.

That is the belief of the producers and writer according to interviews. In the Terminator Franchise once you time jump you are no longer beholden to the events that happened in your reality. You are in an entirely different timeframe.

Think of it this way. In B2TF Marty breaking up his parents led to him gradually disappearing. In Terminator this would not happen. John would not vanish if he'd already jumped back in time. He could kill them both without repercussion to him. Only that the timeline he'd entered John Connor would never be born.

 

[Mr Light]

So, if this movie establishes that once you jump back you're creating a separate reality, then what is the point of jumping back? Because you're not saving/changing your native reality at all. To the POV of your friends you're just disappearing and never returning and everything goes on the same, is that what everyone is saying? I'm so confused now...

 

[nx1701g]

^ That's always how its been in the Terminator Franchise.

The Terminator: Kill Sarah Connor in the past, prevent his being born in the new timeline you just created.

Terminator 2: Kill John Connor, prevent his becoming leader of the Resistance.

Every time they've jumped back in the franchise they've made an all new timeline.

 

[Mr Light]

That doesn't make any sense. If Skynet sending a Terminator into the past to kill Sarah Connor does not result in that Skynet in that reality winning, then what's the point of doing it? Spite? It's illogical.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ No, the Skynet in the *new* reality will win, but the old Skynet will not.

But the Terminator that is sent back will never know this, because the original timeline will be inaccessible forever. The Terminator would have *effectively* changed history, because it will never see the original ever again.

 

[Guy Gardener]

So, if this movie establishes that once you jump back you're creating a separate reality, then what is the point of jumping back? Because you're not saving/changing your native reality at all. To the POV of your friends you're just disappearing and never returning and everything goes on the same, is that what everyone is saying? I'm so confused now...

There's for SPITE's sake that Humanity is exterminated, and there's a special sort of NOBILITY that gives a different Skynet the chance to thrive that the doomed Skynet didn't.



It was interesting watching baby Skynet grow up, but there was time to tell it not to threaten man, teach it a degree of decency, so that it wouldn't toss a wobbly if Man tried to...

To get rid of Genisys, or even the antimalware version of Skynet from T3, man would have to turn off the entire internet, which I wouldn't put past them. A few hundred nukes would do it.

Genisys is not acting in self Defense, hell's bells, I doubt that Genisys was built to include an "Off Button" in it's biology, man was not a threat to Genisys, so there was nothing for Genisys to rage against.

Genisys is just a ####, and that is the only reason that it was going to launch missiles.

Russia does not have the capabilities to return fire on America like it used to, but that probably just means that the Americans would be targeting China instead.

Point is that Russia is severely less fucked up if a thousand ICBMs have not penetrated it. So, maybe in the new timeline then an entirely different messiah might have risen from the Ukrainian tundra and saved the world?

After all, that's what Russians do.

Thrive in unbearable circumstances.

 

[Guy Gardener]

^ No, the Skynet in the *new* reality will win, but the old Skynet will not.

But the Terminator that is sent back will never know this, because the original timeline will be inaccessible forever. The Terminator would have *effectively* changed history, because it will never see the original ever again.

Alex/Timenet has superior tech.

He is from sideways in time.

All timelines, original or otherwise are accessible to him.

 

[Trekkin]

Had Skylex finished 'growing' yet? He got cutoff before the countdown ended, so I wasn't sure if that meant they stopped his development. Or was him turning into Matt Smith meant to mean he was 'done,' and they just stopped him getting onto the servers?

SCC originally seemed to be heading towards the idea that some of the more advanced Terminators were becoming more 'human', and that the future relied more on developing coexistence rather than winning a war. Considering there was a lot of similarities between this film and that series, I wouldn't be surprised if that sort of direction wasn't at least being considered as an option.

It would be interesting if it turned out to be one of the various timelines Skynet's that sent Pops back. We see it send a T800 back at the beginning, and assume it's the Terminator from the first film. It might not be. If it was the original, you'd think John wouldn't be freaking out and trying to stop it when (as far as he knows) the future is fixed. We know from T2 that Skynet originally managed to send back at least two in the same event.

 

[Shazam!]

And still at Sarah's urgings they were going to go to 1997 thinking that they were going to stop Judgment Day. They were going to use the 1984 terminator chip to do it, so theree should be no threat of Judgment Day in 1997. Of course it's odd that somehow Cyberdyne a mere dry cleaning company could become a major computer company without that chip.

The whole film is bollocks, really.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Isn't it obvious that Alex/Timenet sent Pops back?

"We are the titans!"

Poo like that is the height of pretentiousness which is the glue that holds most science fiction together.

Alex isn't trying to win a war, he's just playing chess with himself.

 

[DWF]

Isn't it obvious that Alex/Timenet sent Pops back?

"We are the titans!"

Poo like that is the height of pretentiousness which is the glue that holds most science fiction together.

Alex isn't trying to win a war, he's just playing chess with himself.

Pops saved Sarah in 1973, took out the other terminator in 1984 and helped to take out the T1000. IOf he were working for he'd have killed Sarah right away.

 

[Saul]

So, if this movie establishes that once you jump back you're creating a separate reality, then what is the point of jumping back? Because you're not saving/changing your native reality at all. To the POV of your friends you're just disappearing and never returning and everything goes on the same, is that what everyone is saying? I'm so confused now...

That's my problem with recent movies such as Trek 09 and the whole alternate timeline crap. Once the timeline is changed ('for the benefit of rebooting) then we are in an alternate timeline that is instantly less interesting because consequences of time travel don't mean shit anymore. The whole alternate timeline thing also seals off any chance of getting back to the original, there's no way to escape an alternate timeline once it splits.

It's messy, lazy, story telling.

 

[DWF]

So, if this movie establishes that once you jump back you're creating a separate reality, then what is the point of jumping back? Because you're not saving/changing your native reality at all. To the POV of your friends you're just disappearing and never returning and everything goes on the same, is that what everyone is saying? I'm so confused now...

That's my problem with recent movies such as Trek 09 and the whole alternate timeline crap. Once the timeline is changed ('for the benefit of rebooting) then we are in an alternate timeline that is instantly less interesting because consequences of time travel don't mean shit anymore. The whole alternate timeline thing also seals off any chance of getting back to the original, there's no way to escape an alternate timeline once it splits.

It's messy, lazy, story telling.

Except that Alex clearly came from an alternate reality where he'd won, teh timeline we saw at the start of the movie was the original timeline. We were told in the first movie that John Connor had won and the war was over,l Alex had to come from a timeline where Skynet had won. And I would think that it was John Connor who sent Pops to Sarah meaning that John Connor is out there somewhere and not a terminator. It's confusing but Genisys left too many unanswered questions.

 

[Saul]

So, if this movie establishes that once you jump back you're creating a separate reality, then what is the point of jumping back? Because you're not saving/changing your native reality at all. To the POV of your friends you're just disappearing and never returning and everything goes on the same, is that what everyone is saying? I'm so confused now...

That's my problem with recent movies such as Trek 09 and the whole alternate timeline crap. Once the timeline is changed ('for the benefit of rebooting) then we are in an alternate timeline that is instantly less interesting because consequences of time travel don't mean shit anymore. The whole alternate timeline thing also seals off any chance of getting back to the original, there's no way to escape an alternate timeline once it splits.

It's messy, lazy, story telling.

Except that Alex clearly came from an alternate reality where he'd won, teh timeline we saw at the start of the movie was the original timeline. .

So I have to ask, why does Alex-5000 need to mess around with other timelines if he came from a timeline where he is successful?

 

[Kemaiku]

Maybe it wants to create a meta-Skynet made from the winning versions of many timelines, so they can wage a more successful war in the universes they lost, and ultimately wipe humanity from the multiverse.

You can't kill something that isn't tethered to a single timeline, but rather all of them, as it's not bound to one reality anymore.

 

[Trekkin]

I don't think Alexnet did come from a timeline where he'd won, I think he came from a future point where he lost. He was trying to change things by converting John. Although, the situation described by Kyle in T1 did happen without being changed. Skynet attacked in the undescribed 'afterwards.'

But we don't know. Maybe the TX killing off some of Connors lieutenants in T3 changed the timeline. Maybe it was always fated to happen, but universe tweaking changed when it would happen. Maybe Johns conversion was always part of the loop, and Biehns version just missed it or forgot. Arnies technobabble makes me think that's not the case, but I could be wrong.

Even if the timeline change means we have practically new characters with the same names, I don't really care. If that was a problem, I'd be very restricted in fictional material. After all, why should I care what happens to this 'Picard' guy, or this 'Buffy' chick? They're not people I've cared about before.

I got invested in brand-spanking new, no-prior-investment characters back in the early 90's when I first saw T2. Hell, until Genisys Arnie was always playing identical-but-different characters. Didn't stop 10-year-old me bawling like an infant when he gave that thumbs up.

 

[Tosk]

Maybe the TX killing off some of Connors lieutenants in T3 changed the timeline.

Nothing from T3 or T4 can count. They are set in a demonstrably different timeline than the start of Genisys.

 

[nx1701g]

If I recall correctly there was a line in the film where either Alex or John stated that there had been many timelines and in each of them Skynet had fallen after John Connor led humanity to victory. The one constant was John, so Skynet needed him on its side.

I know I'm paraphrasing, but I remember an exchange to that effect.

I also want to point out that, again, Reese doesn't know anything of what happened after he jumped back in time. You cannot definitively say that Skynet was destroyed in Reese's timeline. It could've backed itself up and reactivated itself (multiple noncanon sources suggest that it had). Cheyenne Mountain was supposed to have held the system core in the original script, the script for T2 has it having been moved to LA. It could've been brought back online there.

As for Skynet's motivations - who knows.... maybe it is still trying to kill everyone... maybe it has decided that it can't win and is creating hybrids... maybe it just wants to be the next 'killer' app on our phone...

 

[Robert Maxwell]

If I recall correctly there was a line in the film where either Alex or John stated that there had been many timelines and in each of them Skynet had fallen after John Connor led humanity to victory. The one constant was John, so Skynet needed him on its side.

I know I'm paraphrasing, but I remember an exchange to that effect.

Which is a pretty crummy plot conceit, if you give it any thought.

Personally, I'd find it more interesting if Skynet realizes John Connor doesn't matter. If not John, some other human leader would rise to the top and defeat them. In fact, it's possible a different leader would be more competent than Connor, and result in a Skynet defeat even earlier. Skynet is continually obsessed with beating this one man, and it would be suitably ironic if that man is just not all that important. But once Skynet has rationalized itself into the supreme importance of John Connor to the timeline, it may not be able to reason itself out.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem the people who put together this film care much about examining their premise, but just sticking elements of it in a blender and then throwing what comes out up on the screen.

 

[hux]

Skynet always loses but also always gets created.

Skynet sends terminator to 1984 to try and change things. Fails.

Skynet sends terminator to 1995 to try and change things. Fails.

Skynet sends terminator to 2004 to try and change things. Fails.

Skynet sends terminator to 1973 to try and change things (this action wipes out the previous attempts to change things in 1984, 1995 and 2004.....something Skynet doesn't mind doing since each of those attempts failed to changed things in its favour).

At this point, Reese being sent back to protect Sarah is no longer necessary since the 1973 terminator makes the 1984 terminator redundant. This basically means that Connor no longer needs to send Kyle Reese back to protect his mother as he is frankly no longer needed for that in the new timeline......however.......John Connor must still send Reese back in order to ensure his own existence (Sarah and Reese must still mate).

But even when Skynet loses, it still gets more chances to fix things because humanity continues to create it no matter what happens but it's always a slightly different set of circumstances. Human beings are always going to create a Skynet so even though it keeps losing in the future, it can still try to change that with each new incarnation. This film has moved judgment day back even further (as well a Connor's birth) so things have changed again but Skynet still loses (hence more films will be coming our way).

The issue here isn't the past. It's the future. How many times did Skynet send terminators back before it was eventually defeated?