Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

The first two Terminator movies were a bit of a headache because of the bootstrap paradoxes.  If The Terminator hadn’t been sent back to kill Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese never would have been sent back to protect her only to become John Connor’s father.  Thus, the correct way to get rid of John Connor before he was born was to not try to kill him before he was born.

When this movie opens, Sarah is in a mental ward and John is in foster care.  He’s grown up thinking that she’s a nut job, which is a justifiable point of view.  She’s telling everyone that a machine from the future came back to kill her before her son was born.  This hasn’t stopped the apocalypse, which she needs to help John prepare for.  This would look like maybe the absolute worst Cassandra complex ever.  Except that it’s true.

Skynet has sent back an even better Terminator, the T-1000, to terminate John as a child.  Also returning from the future is a reprogrammed T-800.  This time, the original Terminator is going to protect John rather than kill him.  The same dynamic exists with a superior hunter and an inferior protector, but the same imperative exists: John Connor must live to defeat the machines.

The movie is done well enough that you can enjoy it without asking too many questions.  I originally wondered why the T-1000 didn’t, say, overload a power plant and destroy the whole city.  That would have been too easy.  Plus, the T-1000 has to be sure.  This means actually finding John Connor.  Still, you’d think that a computer system designed for defense could make a machine that could do better, or maybe even send back several terminators to work in concert.

In this case, I understand why some ideas weren’t used.  Sure, Skynet could have killed Sarah Connor while she was pregnant or killed John Connor as a baby, but this is something audiences wouldn’t react well to.  Sending something back in time is probably difficult, so sending an army back probably isn’t a viable option.  There isn’t a really great, obvious idea that I can think of.

We do get two more bootstrap paradoxes.  First, it seems likely that the arrival of the T-1000 either allowed Sarah Connor to get out of the hospital, or at least got her out early.  This allowed her to further train John Connor, who doesn’t appear to be battle ready just yet.  (Had she stayed in the hospital, John may not have done as well against the machines.)  We also find out that the arrival of the T-800 in the original movie gave Cyberdyne the idea for the terminators’ hardware, thus allowing for the creation of Skynet.  So, where did Skynet come from?

The movie could have been a simple action movie about two machines fighting over the future of the planet.  Instead, we get a commentary on the destructive nature of humanity.  Throughout all of the Terminator movies, the downfall of human civilization is inevitable.  We tend to fight one another.  This is what leads to the creation of Skynet in the first place.

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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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