Multiverse Terminator franchise.

[Traab]

Ok, work with me here people. After learning about cameron getting back the rights to terminator and intending to write up a reboot to bring it to a proper conclusion, it hit me. This franchise is the best thing since Back to the Future, for giving us the potential for multiple reality paths to follow. Normally when a series gets a reboot like spiderman, the previous stuff Never Happened tm. But with a time traveling paradox factory of a storyline like terminator, you can do all sorts of what ifs and concurrent storylines. Basically, make up different branches where things happened in a different way.


Like, what if in the first film, the terminator hadnt been 99% destroyed, leaving an arm and a chip to work with? What if there had been more? Enough to start up skynet even sooner? Suddenly, time shifted massively because the apocalypse took place say, 5 years sooner, and john wasnt old enough to be a soldier yet, let alone be the leader of the resistance. The next film in that timeline could be set in this future where sarah is still alive and trying to figure out a way to fix the timeline because humanity is losing, and losing badly. This time its the humans who send back someone to alter history, and skynet sends something after them.

Or terminator 2, how the hell did they have TIME for that climatic battle in the foundry? What if the cops showed up and turned things into a massive free for all? How different would things have turned out if "uncle bob" wasnt able to destroy himself and instead the crew had to escape from the cops swarming the place?

I just was thinking the series could have one heck of a lot of room for various what if scenarios that lead in all sorts of directions. And because its based around time travel and changing history/the future, it gives us the perfect excuse to make it happen.

[Millstone85]

I recently made a picture for when I would again have to explain my love-hate for time-travel stories:
http://i.imgur.com/gkr8N1B.png

The Terminator has a time loop in it. See, the arrival of time travellers sends history in a direction which is revealed to be the very future they came from. Predestination paradox, self-fulfilling prophecy, block spacetime, self-consistent causality, chicken-and-egg scenario... It has been discussed at length.

Terminator 2 has a time fork. The arrival of time travellers sends history in a direction which is not the future they came from. Grandfather paradox and all that. And the big question is what happens to the original future. Your use of the word "multiverse" in the thread title suggests you might think it still exists.

Anyway, we got problems:
1) If a story has both a time fork and a time loop, it is a sure sign the author will never commit to any cohesive set of rules regarding time travel.
2) Whether there is a time fork where both futures still exist, or a time loop, it means you can't actually change the past.*
3) If there is time fork where the original future is erased, but then you replace that one too, and again and again and again... That gets tiring real fast.

This parody said it best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe2Agl3bJAc

* You may, however, want to prevent Skynet from winning in any timeline, from which he could then invade all the timelines where he lost or was never created. But between all the movies and the series, that timeline probably exists.

[Traab]

By changing it from a single stable time loop to the endless branching multiverse where literally everything can and has happened, while yes it took a trip through time to start this branch of events, its already happened, therefore events dont need to take place to make it happen again because the dad was from an alternate timeline, but he still exists/ed. So creating a future where john was never the leader of the resistance doesnt mean he retroactively doesnt exist, it just means in this timeline he didnt end up becoming the leader of the resistance. You would have to actively go back and change your past to make that happen. Changing your present or future wouldnt change your past. Johns dad came from another time line, impregnated sarah conner, then died.

If sarah went back in time and super kicked herself in the newly impregnated belly, HER john conner would still exist in the verse she came from, but the sarah conner who got kicked would never have given birth at all. Creating yet another timeline. Think of it like that scene from jurassic park when jeff goldblum was seducing dr sattler with chaos theory. You could put a drop of water on your arm a thousand times and each time subtle variances will keep the flow from being exactly the same. However, that doesnt mean the earlier drops never happened. They did. The water was dropped, it traveled down its path, and it ended. If I collect that drop of water and bring it back to the start, that doesnt erase its first path, it creates a second.

Maybe this doesnt work for experts in theoretical time travel or quantum mechanics, but most movie goers are neither. Give them a halfway decent explanation like that and they will suspend disbelief and enjoy the film.

[Millstone85]

I see my point didn't come through.

Imagine the Resistance found a version of the time machine that let them do this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxSfV20pQro

Just travel from the present to other versions of the present:
* Skynet has been defeated.
* Skynet can't be defeated.
* Skynet was never created.
* Skynet coexists in peace with humans, but the Earth has still been ecologically devastated, and now Skynet is plotting an interstellar war against another collective intelligence, called Eywa.
* Shrimps and algae are the only species on Earth.
* Everyone is Dr. Jack Bright.

What then would the Resistance do the next time Skynet sends a terminator to kill a Connor in the past?

Nothing, that's what. Focus their efforts on this timeline and no other.

[Traab]

I see my point didn't come through.

Imagine the Resistance found a version of the time machine that let them do this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxSfV20pQro

Just travel from the present to other versions of the present:
* Skynet has been defeated.
* Skynet can't be defeated.
* Skynet was never created.
* Skynet coexists in peace with humans, but the Earth has still been ecologically devastated, and now Skynet is plotting an interstellar war against another collective intelligence, called Eywa.
* Shrimps and algae are the only species on Earth.
* Everyone is Dr. Jack Bright.

What then would the Resistance do the next time Skynet sends a terminator to kill a Connor in the past?

Nothing, that's what. Focus their efforts on this timeline and no other.

They had no reason to know what happened. After all, their time line didnt change when they ostensibly sent someone back. However, that could easily be blamed on the resistance sending someone to stop them. So they tried again and the resistance sent back help again. They had no way of knowing it didnt matter how many bots they sent back, they couldnt change their timeline, because they had no way of knowing if their terminator had succeeded or if not, how he was stopped. WE get to see this truth because we are outsiders watching the events take place.

Now, lets take one of my what if scenarios. The early judgment day. So it happened sooner than it should have, john is still a young teen, not a leader, and the resistance is losing badly. John knows that time machines exist (did they ever explain where these came from?) and that the way things were supposed to go involved delaying judgment day. His moms only explanation is, "I think they had too much of the first terminator to examine and it spend development up" So his plan is to somehow destroy the terminator's remains after the final showdown with the hydraulic press took place. You could even make it fit. Remember what happened in that scene as it got crushed? Electricity was arcing everywhere.... just like when a time portal happens.

Now, that doesnt change the too young johns timeline, but it DOES alter the future in THIS timeline, the one where somebody showed up at the end of terminator 1 to remove the remains of the robot. Basic gist, you cannot change your own past, only create a different parallel timeline. We as viewers can see the futility in all these attempts to change the past to save the future, they cant because they are living in it. In fact, its probably the only way to make time travel where things CAN change work, because of the whole, "I went back in time to stop something from happening and I did it, so in the future I had no need to stop it so I didnt come back, so paradox." They went back, they changed events, but that doesnt effect the time stream he came from, just creates another alternate one alongside it. Therefore there is no paradox involved. Especially when its a one way trip. Which it has been, at least through the first three, I stopped watching after that one.

[Millstone85]

We as viewers can see the futility in all these attempts to change the past to save the future, they cant because they are living in it.That's one way to make time travel make sense in-universe, yes, but at what cost? We as viewers would probably be few, because who wants to watch Skynet and the Resistance repeatedly foil each other's completely pointless attempts at changing the past?

The idea that a couple time travellers are all that is left of a given future is fine too, if the writers stick to it. Grandfather paradox, yes, so what, this fictional depiction of time just allows it. But even then it can only stay interesting for so many erased timelines


Therefore there is no paradox involved. Especially when its a one way trip. Which it has been, at least through the first three, I stopped watching after that one.I watched the first four and some of TSCC. I know that jumping forward in time was used in TSCC and the fifth movie. I don't know if they ever found the same future unchanged.

[Traab]

That's one way to make time travel make sense in-universe, yes, but at what cost? We as viewers would probably be few, because who wants to watch Skynet and the Resistance repeatedly foil each other's completely pointless attempts at changing the past?

The idea that a couple time travellers are all that is left of a given future is fine too, if the writers stick to it. Grandfather paradox, yes, so what, this fictional depiction of time just allows it. But even then it can only stay interesting for so many erased timelines

I watched the first four and some of TSCC. I know that jumping forward in time was used in TSCC and the fifth movie. I don't know if they ever found the same future unchanged.

What keeps viewers interests is seeing the consequences of each change made to the timeline. See, just because the timeline the time travelers come from will remain unchanged, doesnt mean the new one they created wont be very different. The overarching motivation is these guys keep trying to make a better timeline. Sometimes it works and things change for the better (not perfect as that would be boring, but better) sometimes it makes things go terribly wrong.

And yeah eventually it will get dull, im not suggesting they make 36 movies screwing around with various futures and pasts and alterations to the time line as stranger and stranger enemies attack the good guys, but it could make for an interesting premise that automatically has as many sequels potentially as are wanted to be made. Like a more complicated nightmare on elm street, where at the end of every film something happens to let you know freddy isnt truly dead yet. If the audience liked it enough, they can make another. If not, they can stop. And at any given point in the series it can be ended without leaving tons of unanswered questions. Its not like stopping the harry potter series at book 5. Its like stopping star trek tng at whatever season you want.