The Terminator (1984)

The Terminator was my introduction to bootstrap paradoxes.  It was the first time that an action was caused by another action that subsequently necessitated the first action.  If John Connor hadn’t been born, he wouldn’t have led the resistance that took down the machines.  That victory caused the machines to go back in time to kill Sarah Connor before John Connor was born, meaning that Kyle Reese is sent back in time to not only protect John Connor, but to ensure he exists in the first place.  Yes, the correct decision would have been to just kill Kyle Reese or to not go back at all.

I’d elaborate on the story, but there’s not much to add.  Humans handed over the world to machines, who took that power and tried to kill the humans.  When the humans won, time travel was the last-ditch effort.  The movie is about two humans trying to survive against a nearly unstoppable machine.  The result is that Sarah Connor knows what’s coming and is able to prepare herself and her unborn child.

Sarah becomes a great reluctant hero.  The future of humanity literally hinges on her being convinced that the end is coming.  She has to protect and train our future leader. (Kyle Reese has the ultimate Cassandra complex, which he passes on to Sarah Connor to exhibit in the second movie.)

It’s interesting that The Terminator became so well known.  By today’s standards, the effects are kind of basic.  (In fact, the reason the sequel took so long to be released was due to the necessary effects not having been invented yet.)  Even Arnold Schwarzenegger’s catch phrase, “I’ll be back” was just some random throwaway line.

I did notice a few clichés, such as detailed records not existing in the future.  It occurs to me that a computer network that has access to all manner of files should have been better able to keep records.  It must have been embarrassing that no backups were kept nor were any printouts made.

Also, there’s the adversary that can mimic anyone, meaning you can’t trust the person at the other end of the phone.  So, what does Sarah do?  She calls the Terminator and gives away her location.  You’d think a machine designed to track someone would just use conventional tracking methods.  Yes, it’s easier just to ask.  Still…

Of course, there’s the one cliché common to all of the Terminator movies, in that a hopelessly outmatched hero takes on and defeats an incredible villain.  No matter what Kyle throws at The Terminator, he keeps coming.  It takes heavy machinery to eventually stop the onslaught.  (This, of course, brings us to the second movie’s bootstrap paradox:  Skynet was based off of technology that it would eventually send back into the past.)

It is nice to know that the franchise is still going strong, with another movie on the way.  It’s hard to believe that the franchise spans so man decades. Consider that in another ten years, we’ll be in the future where Skynet was dominating.

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Slipstream (1989)

Dystopian futures aren’t always explained that well in movies.  A writer has only a few hours to tell a story and they may not want to waste a lot of their time on things like long-winded historical monologues.  Take Slipstream.  In the beginning of the movie, we get a voiceover explaining that there was a cataclysmic event called Convergence.  It’s not explained what it was other than to say it was technological and that it ruined the Earth’s weather systems.

Now, the surface of the planet is subjected to intermittent winds that make life there difficult at best.  Present-day nations don’t exist any more.  Instead, there are isolated communities all over the place.  Some are primitive.  Others are strange.  Due to the new environmental conditions, people travel by plane.  Those that can navigate the winds do what’s called riding the slipstream.

The narrative starts with Byron on foot being chased by Will Tasker and Belitski in a plane.  They capture him by hitting him with grappling hook and pulling him off a cliff.  He lands unhurt.  They then take him to a diner where they meet Matt Owens.  Matt is you’re typical local lowlife that deals in items that are of questionable legal standing.  He has a grenade and a parachute that he offers to Tasker, who then identifies himself as a law-enforcement officer.

Matt is happy to give up the grenade in exchange for not being arrested.  He sees an opportunity, though, when he comes to find out that Tasker and Belitski are basically bounty hunters and that Byron has a nice price on his head.  (Byron is wanted for murder.)  He then kidnaps Byron and escapes, but not before being hit with a dart.  Tasker tells Byron that it’s poisoned.  What Tasker doesn’t mention is that it also implanted a tracking device.

So, Matt takes Byron off to see all of those strange cities that popped up.  The first stop is a place called Hell’s Kitchen, although I don’t know if this is a reference to the area in New York or if it’s just a coincidence.  Either way, Byron is able to heal a kid with cataracts.

Byron and Matt then travel some more and get lost.  They wind up in a city where the residents worship the slipstream.  The dying leader tells Byron that he was part of the problem that brought down society.  His followers then tie Byron to a kite and leave him flying in a storm.  When Tasker and Belitski show up, they reveal that Byron is an android.  They help Byron get down.  When Tasker is lost in the storm, Belitski lets Matt and Byron escape with the help of a woman named Ariel.

Ariel takes them to her home city, which is a buried museum.  She knows that they can help.  Byron admits that he did, in fact, kill someone, that person being the person that owned him.  (If I’m reading a few lines correctly, it was a mercy killing.)  He also has a dream of a promised land for androids at the end of the slipstream.  Not long after, Tasker and Belitski catch up with Matt and Byron one last time for a final confrontation.

One of the problems that I’ve had with post-apocalyptic movies is that they either oversell or undersell the apocalypse.  This tends towards the undersell end of it, but not to where it’s distracting.  The actual end of civilization isn’t as important to the story as you might think.  Instead, the story focuses on Byron and Matt trying to stay ahead of law enforcement.

The movie almost seems like a TV show.  Some movies I’ve seen seem like a backdoor pilot.  This seems more like someone had an idea for a TV show and decided to write the first few episodes as a movie.  I could see the slipstream as being the plot device that ties together each episode with Matt and Byron going from city to city, dealing with some moral issue in each episode.  With Tasker and Belitski chancing them, it would sort of be like the A Team or The Incredible Hulk.  They’d be forced to move on at the end of each story.

I probably would have watched this as a TV show or miniseries.  There’s a lot that’s not really explained, like exactly what Tasker and Belitski are.  They keep saying that they’re the law, but the term is vague enough that it could mean a lot of things.  We also don’t know the exact nature of Byron’s crime.  He’s said to be guilty of murder, but that also has some room for interpretation.  These are things that could have been explored in a longer format.

I think that’s the big problem with the movie.  It’s basically one big chase scene in slow motion.  I don’t think it’s even mentioned where Matt was supposed to take Byron to collect the bounty.  (It’s also not clear what the exact amount is; only that it’s assumed to be large.)  It seems like Tasker and Belitski were working for the equivalent of a national government, so Matt would probably have known where to go.  However, he initially seems interested only in staying ahead of those chasing him.  I think that the movie could probably stand a remake, either as a TV series or miniseries.  Even if it’s as another movie, the story could do with a few more details.

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Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Groundhog Day was an interesting movie.  In it, Bill Murray played a weatherman doomed to repeat the same day.  It was a comedy, so I doubt that much technical thought was put into it, but I always wondered if each day went on without him being aware of it.  A similar concept was used in Edge of Tomorrow.  Tom Cruise plays Major William Cage.  Earth has been overrun by an alien that seems to know what we’re going to do.  It’s impossible to defeat them until we start inexplicably winning.

Cage isn’t big on seeing actual battle, but he threatens the wrong guy and gets sent into battle where he’s killed.  He awakens to find himself in the staging area before he’s sent into battle.  With no way out, he has to repeat the following day or two.  He realizes that he can use this to his avoid getting killed.  This is huge because this is supposed to be the battle that ends the war, except humanity is getting slaughtered.

Any comparisons to Groundhog Day are totally understandable.  Each has a main character that is able to repeat a specific time period and use it to his advantage, despite being in a situation that they‘d rather avoid altogether.  The details differ a little, but the underlying motive each character has is to get it right.  One big difference is that Cage has Rita Vrataski, who was able to do the same thing until she had a blood transfusion.  (She has an amazing win streak that’s attributed to a new suit, but you kind of know that it’s not really the suit.)  She understands what Cage is going through and is able to help.

There’s very little repetition in Edge of Tomorrow.  Whatever repetition there is exists only to let us know what’s going on.  There are a few clichés that manage to work their way in.  It seems that whenever someone is doomed to repeat time, they always start at a bad time.  If it’s not waking up to a song they hate, they’re having a door opened in their face.

The character in a time loop is also given limited options to get away.  If Cage were to wake up before insulting his CO, there would have been no movie.  Here, Cage wakes up on a base to someone calling him a maggot.  He has nowhere to run.  Yes, there’s one time loop where he goes to a bar, knowing that it doesn’t really matter, but Cage realizes that he’s needed.  (Note that there’s a similar scene in Groundhog day; Phil’s epiphany also takes place at a bar.)

There was one question I had, though.  If Cage is repeating the day, how is he able to go back before the accident and still be able to repeat the day?  His power comes from absorbing the blood of an alien.  Theoretically, the alien blood shouldn’t go back with him.  I suppose that if we can accept that he’d retain the memories, the alien blood going back with him shouldn’t be a stretch.

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