Monday, June 17, 2013

NOKW - The Terminator

Here comes the next chapter in our "I'm Okay With, I'm Not Okay With" series (if you don't know what this is, click here for all of the past posts):

Movie:  The Terminator

Basic Plot:  A killer robot from the future is sent back in time to kill the mother of an unborn man who will lead humans to victory over the machines in a future war.  Also, the humans send back a man to protect the woman and accidentally becomes that unborn man's father.  Looking at that way, how did this get made?

I'm Okay With:  The fact that the first thing a self-aware computer program thinks to do is kill all humans.  The fact that the time machine can only send back living tissue, yet the Terminator is a machine with a thin layer of living tissue on it (and don't get me started on the fact that in the second movie, they don't even bother giving the T1000 any living tissue before it is sent back).  The fact that the machines would be losing so badly in the future that their first thought is to send someone back in time to kill one guy who may or may not actually affect the outcome of the future war.  The fact that the robots didn't just keep sending back more killer robots until one of them finally succeeded.  The fact that the humans didn't think to send back more than one human to help protect Sarah Conner.  The fact that one dude and one waitress are able to defeat a super-strong killer robot.  The fact that a killer robot would think to wear sunglasses.

I'm Not Okay With:  The fact that the future humans had the ability to send someone back in time and sent Kyle Reese back to protect Sarah Conner instead of sending him back to destroy Skynet.  Let's imagine this scenario - you're the leader of the future humans' army who are in a war with machines.  Those machines are fighting you because of a singular event in the past when Skynet was turned on and became self-aware.  You have created the ability to travel back in time.  What should be your first thought upon creating time travel?  As the head of the human resistance trying to stop machines from killing you, the correct answer is to travel back in time and stop that singular event by destroying Skynet.  That would prevent machines from becoming self-aware and murdering everyone you know.  Instead, you send back ONE guy to protect your mother from a killer robot.  Why?  Sure, you could argue that Judgement Day is inevitable, but in the sequel the T800 says that it can be prevented which is immediately contradicted in the third movie, so I'm basing this off of the second movie.  So, if the war can be prevented, why would you send someone back in time to protect your mom instead of sending someone back in time to stop the whole damn thing to begin with?  Is it because you technically wouldn't be born if you didn't?  Who cares, you would stop the war and save billions of lives.  I am not okay with that.

"And if the machines hate humans so much, then why did they make their killer robots look so human?"

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