LogFAQs > #929387343

Foppe posted...

The first movie is most likely the result of earlier time travels

It would almost have to be, by definition.

First, you need the timeline where John Connor is never born and Skynet wins (though how do the humans manage to travel through time to fix things in that timeline?), then the second timeline is one where Kyle Reese travels back in time and John Connor is born (though how and why would they even KNOW they need to send Kyle back at all, to save someone they don't even know was ever going to exist, or have any impact on the future?), thus convincing Skynet that it needs to send a Terminator back to kill him in the first place, then finally you get the third timeline where it's finally possible to have what appears to be a causal loop (except the later movies then shit all over that anyway).

It's tempting to assume the "baseline" is one where John was born and survives and the first attempt to change it is the Terminator sent back to kill him (which is what the movie seems to suggest), but the twist with Kyle makes that impossible (John cannot exist until Kyle is sent back). Unless we assume the first loop in the chain involved a different John Connor somehow, and Kyle's interference creates a different Kyle who is better/worse/somehow exactly the same as the original when it comes to fighting Skynet.

Conversely, if time was fixed and we accept ontological paradoxes are possible, meaning that Kyle Reese ALWAYS traveled back and John Connor ALWAYS survives and there was NEVER a timeline before that loop began, or any MEANS of that loop beginning, other than as something which has always existed exactly the way it does, then no other movie in the franchise makes sense, because every temporal interference would render the future exactly the same, because it ALWAYS happens the same way, and you'd think a super-intelligent computer would eventually figure that out and stop sending robots back into the past because it's kind of futile. But then later movies imply the future CAN be changed, or at least delayed/reflavored a bit.

The current assumption is that meddling with the past just creates different timelines, but that kind of renders everything a bit meaningless, because traveling back in time is never going to alter your own present, so why bother doing it?
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