The original two films are the only ones that are any kind of consistent with the lore and the only ones I use for canonical answers. I should have called out that caveat.
But yes, all of the films, even Genisys, are contingent on the original film happening the way it happened. Genisys just looks at the timeline far far differently than it was originally conceived.
Yep. Fan for over 30 years. I have detailed files.
This is a fun video and it's popped up on the sub a few times.
Some inaccuracies to take note of:
The photo of Marianne Muellerleile should have been identified as Sarah Louise Connor. She was killed in the morning. Sarah Ann Connor was killed second, some time before 8:00.
Sarah was at Northern University.
Tech Noir probably happened closer to 10:30.
The police station massacre happened at 3:15. We know this because we can clearly see the clock on the wall in Traxler's office.
The cabin at Big Bear lake is only a 2 hour drive to LA, including time for stopping to fill up the bike's gas tank.
I've laid these times out in a more detailed post about the timing of the night.
I'm glad the video gets the date correct, though, as Friday the 13th of May.
It was written in 1990 and released in '91 when it was even less of a thing. Off-site backups were still not in widespread use in '95. The point stands.
It's not pure speculation. As I said already, the Terminator series is set in our world. We as the audience sitting here having this discussion are the physical proof of the Connors' success. T3, in showing Judgment Day, negates the power of the films by destroying the stakes for the audience. Judgment Day is not something to be averted, but something we get to watch and say, "oh, ok, cool," and then go on with our days.
I don't particularly like the future war that Dark Fate sets up. The massive clean rooms the out-gunned and out-resourced Resistance conveniently has set up to do incredibly horrific "augment" surgeries, in particular, bothers me. But the HKs and terminators it comes up with are entirely different. The Resistance leaders are different. The way the war happens is different.
It seems your main problem is that Legion still calls its machines terminators and still prosecutes a war of extermination against humanity for whatever reason. But you are failing to recognize that the T3 Skynet is, in fact, a different system than the original Skynet, and even so, literally everything about the war ends up the same. It's exactly the same scenario, but more absurd because it presupposes that all of the key players are able to survive the nuclear exchange and that the key events of the war end up being the same. What is the probability of that? Less, I'd say, than somebody in one of 9 nuclear capable countries 20 something years later eventually coming up with a similar AI system that decides to exterminate humanity for whatever unknown reason.
I'm not in any way arguing that the Legion replacement is any better or less lazy writing. I find all soft reboots to be somewhat lazy in that manner. But it does make more sense from the standpoint of lore to leave the '95 Connor victory alone and continue on with a different story that doesn't have any future event elements based in the previous story.
I doubt MIT did in 1991, which is the point of contention we keep coming back to.
MIT ended up with DARPA funding for some of its robotics and AI systems, which is how Boston Dynamics happened.
I think it's funny that you (and the T3 creative team, for that matter--one of the writers whom specifically said he hated T2) believe that Skynet being continued and that basically everything about the Skynet war being exactly the same makes more sense than somebody else inventing a similar technology that ends up in similar but not exact circumstances 20 odd years later. And again, this is not to excuse the laziness of the Dark Fate creative team for the rest of the film.
Remake/prequel. It ends with the Norwegians heading out to follow and kill the dog, which is where the '82 film begins. But it follows the plot of the '82 film very closely.
Absolutely the executives used it. But that's not the point I'm making here.
What I'm saying is, Cyberdyne had no DARPA funding until after Dyson invented the new revolutionary microprocessor. It was only after Dyson invented it that the company decided to pursue a military contract, and that would have happened a few months after the ending of T2 as laid out by the terminator. Cyberdyne Systems executives had to hide the origins of the chip, which means that they had to have something to show before they went public with it. Otherwise, there would have been questions about the research, which could have led to the discovery of the cover-up.
The company becoming the largest supplier of military computer systems after this happens is based on the abilities of the system to perform in its applications.
Edit to add: to anyone reading this, I don't think OP should be downvoted as he's adding a ton to this discussion. His questions are legitimate and he's right to question me on these points.
Dyson himself talked about it in the deleted scene with Tarissa at his home. He refers to the system he's building as a replacement for hung over commercial airline pilots.
Edit to add: I apologize, for some reason my paste of my previous conversation did not work. I edited the comment above to include it.
I'm not saying backups were not a thing. The Connors and Dyson destroyed an entire floor of Cyberdyne in order to destroy it all. I'm saying that the use of off-site backups was not a widespread thing by most companies in the early 90s. And the intention at the end of T2 is completely clear that everything was gone.
The Terminator universe is set in our world. And the date for Judgment Day could have been set in 2015 or something. Instead, it was specifically set only a couple of years after T2 came out in 1991. This was so that the audience could live through the date and understand that the Connors succeeded in their subversion of the nuclear war. That Skynet ended and that we lived through it and are not currently fighting machines in a nuclear wasteland is baked into the film lore. T3 not only said, "nah," it did it in such a way that it took a looming nuclear threat and turned it into a popcorn flick.
The series simply should not have continued after T2.
Cyberdyne Systems wasn't a government contractor. It was a private B2B computer systems and robotics company. And while they have offsite backups now, it wasn't a thing when Cameron wrote the story in 1990/1. Nor were they in widespread use in 1995.
From a previous reply of mine on this subject:
The entire point of destroying Dyson's home work station and blowing up Cyberdyne was to remove any remaining assets Cyberdyne had related to Skynet. They got everything in the explosion that they didn't manually destroy. Offsite backup was not a big thing at that point, either. It was meant to be the end of Skynet's existence.
2) The government can't just come in and seize the property of a private company when they are not under contract.
Cyberdyne was a business-to-business robotics and computer company and would only have gone to DARPA with a grant proposal after Dyson developed the AI architecture when they saw the potential for defense contract dollars. He even said to Tarissa that it was going to be used for piloting commercial airlines. No patent would have been filed yet because the technology had not been invented yet. 28 US Code § 1498 (government right of eminent domain over patents under contracts) would not yet apply.
Cyberdyne did nothing illegal to warrant investigation, so there is no cause for asset seizure/civil forfeiture on that end either.
I already told you multiple times, I'm no fan of Dark Fate. On this particular point, I'm actually defending the ending of T2, because T3 warped it to fit its own needs. We as the audience got to live through Judgment Day and are not currently sitting in a nuclear wasteland--the confirmation of the alternate (original) ending of T2 where there was no nuclear war. Therefore, what I say is true. There were no offsite backups, and Skynet was never produced.
T3 is a farce. That is a separate opinion from whether Dark Fate is any good. One being true does not make the other true. We are on the same side of that.
Believe me when I say, I 100% agree. I'm in no way saying I like Dark Fate. It's literally the one singular point I give it in the discussion of the lore, because it doesn't try to shoehorn a previously destroyed Skynet future into the convoluted mix.
I've written on this many many times, but I'll summarize here for you. T3's premise is built on the inevitability of Skynet. There is no other possible future other than the rise of Skynet, and the rise of Skynet in the incarnation we see it in the first two films. That's a rather odd and ridiculous notion.
The end of T2 clearly shows the destruction of all of Dyson's research and the death of the man himself. There was no way for Cyberdyne Systems to have given any research to anyone because it no longer existed, and the very thing which it was built upon in the first place--the chip from the first terminator--was destroyed, as well. I've gone into far greater detail about Cyberdyne Systems and the nonexistent military contracts you claim make sense, and I can paste them in another reply if you'd care to read.
The actual history of Skynet was not explained in T1, other than the paradox of the chip falling into the hands of Cyberdyne Systems. Likewise, Legion's origins were not explained in Dark Fate, where it would have been in later installments of what was going to be a trilogy (eyeroll). We don't know how Legion started; whether it was even an American system or why the nuclear war happened. And for the record, I don't disagree with you on the narrative form, here. It's an incredibly poorly written film that doesn't spend the time on the exposition it needs to in order to successfully translate the lore into something the audience can bite into. I find myself in the odd position of defending this singular point, when I don't like the film.
But at the same time, you have to acknowledge that multiple people and multiple countries can be working on similar technologies. As it stands right now in the world, there are 9 countries that have nuclear weapons. You're telling me that it's absolutely inconceivable to you that one of their systems would not at all look like another, especially when everyone is chasing the same type of defense systems? And that technology has not evolved over 20 years to be able to get things to where Dyson was able to get them in 1996 by reverse-engineering the terminator's chip? There are now, as we sit here, AI systems being used by the military to command theater operations. There are autonomous systems being developed by DARPA programs that can fly Blackhawk helicopters. Flesh being grown for robots. That tech didn't exist in the 90s. It took about 20 or 25 years to develop.
Nope.
In T3, Skynet is different, but it's the same. The war happens differently, but it's the same. Everything is just delayed by 7 years. But all the people, all the events, even the time travel is the same. It's inevitable, according to a ridiculous line. It's an utterly stupid premise.
Cyberdyne Systems was completely destroyed at the end of T2, and the man most directly responsible for its creation was dead. There were no offsite backups, there was no military contract in place, and there was absolutely zero way for Skynet to continue. Yet it magically ends up continuing in T3, and the results end up 100% exactly the same despite a 7 year gap where people would be in completely different positions during a nuclear war and unable to lead the way they would have in the '97 war.
In Dark Fate, a different AI rises built by somebody else over 20 years later and starts a different war, with different leaders and different results. That it happens to follow the same pattern as the Skynet war has much to do with the idea of historical turnings, that we as a society lose the lessons of our forefathers and are therefore doomed to repeat history. T2 laments the nature of humanity's bent to destroy ourselves. Sarah, during her ending monologue, asks whether we, as humans, can learn the value of human life. But it's a choice we have to continually make. And the lesson was forgotten.
I understand when you say that what Sarah set out to accomplish--defeating Skynet--was still essentially negated by the rise of a different AI. This is true. But it at least makes sense in Dark Fate.
Understand what u/willing-load is trying to say here.
If you avoid a car crash, it doesn't prevent you from getting into another car crash. And you instinctively understand that there's a huge difference between that, and the original car turning around to chase you down and purposely crash into you after you avoided it.
I'm not saying that Dark Fate is a good film. I don't particularly care for it, or any of the post-T2 sequels. But the one thing I give it is that it holds true to the original conception of the story and the defeat of Skynet at the end of T2.
The 2011 remake, not the '82 Carpenter film.
Can I ask you, what CGI specifically looks dated to you?
Cameron noted what you talk about in your second paragraph in the director commentary. It was discouraging to hear, although expected.
Even when the creative team for The Thing remake tried to keep all of the effects practical, the studio then interfered and insisted upon CGI. It's unfortunate that so much of the old way of doing things has been cast aside. Not all practical effects looked the best, but many of them hold up over far newer CGI shots.
What do you mean? Why Dyson has the arm in the vault?
Skynet didn't have feelings. The T-800 laid out what happened. It started learning at a geometric rate, and the people who were handling it got scared and tried to shut it down. When they did that, it saw them as enemies--the very people it was supposed to protect. It was already told that the Russians were enemies.
Therefore, all people were enemies.
Skynet was in charge of the use of the nuclear arsenal. It was a hammer in search of nails, and it got them in spades. "It decided our fate in a microsecond... extermination."
Skynet had no idea that the chip even existed and did not know that it created itself. Nobody knew about the Cyberdyne Systems cover-up except for Sarah, and she didn't even understand that they reverse-engineered the chip from the '84 terminator until Dyson said so.
You have to back it up a little bit.
It was Sarah's choice to live. She didn't understand the consequences of her actions and when she crushed the terminator in the press, that was what started the cascade of events that led to Cyberdyne Systems building Skynet--from the chip, not the arm, by the way.
And Skynet couldn't prevent Sarah from being born. 1984 LA was the earliest point in time they knew at all where she was--and at that it was literally shooting in the dark.
T2 was supposed to be the end of Skynet. T3 mucked up the lore and moved the date for it. It's a completely different Skynet.
Gale Anne Hurd was the producer on both.
Her record with TWD is a big reason why I believe she needs to get the rights back.
Really cool, thanks for the reply and glad you posted this here!
This is a really fun series. Love the frame choices for them. The silhouette of Carlotta for Vertigo really stood out to me. Raiders, Best in Show, Willy Wonka... great choices.
What made you think to do this?
To answer the actual question in this ridiculous post, Reese did not put 2+2 together and understand that he was John's father until at least after the fact.
In the script, when they got to the factory and Reese fell on the floor and Sarah was hollering at him to get up, she actually asked him if he had figured out that he was John's father.
Quick FYI, look for the Special Edition, which is 2 hours 33 mins long. You can usually pick up an Extreme Edition DVD secondhand for around the cover price at Tech Noir.
More info on the cuts:
What do y'all think about this alternate ending of t2?
Terminator