Terminator (franchise)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

 

* If The Terminator can be sent back in time because his engineered flesh hides the metal skeleton from the effect of the time portal, why not wrap one of those awesome laser guns in some ham or cheese or something and send that back with Reese as well?

*** I don't really think you can ''fit'' a gun there. Not one that would be useful, anyway. Easier just to buy guns on the other side.

**** But 20th century weapons are completely useless against the Terminator. Even explosives are only useful if you stick them right under his ribcage. A decent laser gun would be a far better idea for protecting Sarah.

*** I don't think so. Carbon-based lifeform =/= iron-based machine, no matter how good you are at manipulating mercury. This is the biggest [[JB Ms]] I have with T2. In the first film, Kyle Reese doesn't know tech stuff (quote unquote) but he says it's "something about the field generated by a living organism; nothing dead will go." A Terminator can only go through because it's metal surrounded by living tissue. Ah-nold in T2 says the T-1000 is made of ''liquid'' metal, not ''living'' metal.

**** Kyle isn't a scientist. He doesn't understand the details. It's not too implausible that the T-1000 was capable of replicating said "field" somehow. Alternately, they sent the T-1000 back in a flesh-sack. Which is well within the capabilities of Skynet.

**** The machines left in hiding may have developed a second, more advanced time machine to replace the first one which was * supposedly* blown up according to Kyle, one that could send through inorganic matter. Why not, since they built a second, more advanced Terminator? Bam, two plot holes down in one shot. Why the hell do I seem to be the only person to think of this anywhere I go???

*** On the other hand, if it has to be covered by living tissue, why do body parts like hair, surface layer of the skin and nails get through? None of those contain living cells.

** Similarly, why didn't Skynet take guns, clothing, and other equipment, put them in a crate, cover the crate with the special synthetic flesh, then send the crate back with the Terminator? Okay, maybe the time machine can't precisely control the location enough to make sure it arrives close to the Terminator, since the time travellers do seem to arrive in a pretty random location. But there should be a way around that. Have the Terminator hold onto it as he's sent back, or even put the Terminator inside the crate too.

*** There's no reason for it to do so. The Terminator can appropriate clothing and weaponry by itself. Any more ordnance would be overly flashy and would call too much attention to it. Simplicity is best.

** Deleted scenes reveal that the freezing and subsequent melting screwed up the T1000 quite a bit, so it might not have trusted its voice-imitating capabilities.

** Even without those scenes, having Sarah call out would still have made good sense as she would be putting real and proper emotion into it, something the machines have difficulty replicating. Further, it had already tried to mimic John's foster mother and caused red flags to go up, so it probably didn't want to chance a similar failure when a better solution presented itself.

** Sarah is John's weak spot. He went the to hospital to rescue her, knowing that the T-1000 was going after her too. He went to Dyson's house, knowing that the T-1000 has the same info about the man that the T-800 has, so its a possible target. The T-1000 knows that, no matter what, John will come to Sarah's aid. Besides, with him malfunctioning as bad as he was in the deleted scene, it was probably easier and safer to use Sarah to bait a trap than to keep trying to maintain the hunt.

*** Could be that the T-1000 was just being sadistic. Unlike the T-800, it seemed to kill people simply for annoying it (like stabbing John's foster-father while he was drinking out of the milk carton, just to shut him up). There was also no real reason for it to stab the guard in the mental hospital through the ''[[Eye Scream|eye]]'' when a shot to the heart would have been faster, and saying "I know this hurts" while it ''twists the spike'' through Sarah Connor's shoulder. Basically, the T-1000 was an asshole in robot form.

***** If I recall correctly, the happy ending was cut partly because it was cheesy, but mostly because it pretty much ruled out the possibility of a ''Terminator 3''. The paradox you're talking about is only an issue with one version of time travel -- the one where there's only one timeline, and it has to fit together logically without any contradictions, otherwise the universe will be destroyed. It seems to me that ''Terminator 2'' fits more into one of the other versions of time travel: either the alternate timelines version, where going back in time creates a new universe that splits off from the moment you arrive, or the rarer version where there's only one timeline but it's resistant to paradox -- the logic is explained well [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20050403.html here].

***** No, the ending was cut because Cameron realized that he was unintentionally ironically * violating* with it his premise of "no fate but what we make for ourselves". That's what he said himself in interview. Watch the Ultimate T2 DVD.

*** What Just Bugs Me about that site is that the writer has decided on one model of time-travel that he likes and is forcibly trying to apply it to every story he can, even ones that explicitly use a different model. There's even a page where he criticises real physics for not conforming to his vision.

******* [http://qntm.org/?terminator Here] is a timeline of the various Terminator timelines.

***** Ironically, the nuclear war that Skynet started would have done the job of destroying most of the civilian infrastructure for them. What's left is to destroy all of Skynet's own military bases and hardened sites... and that's a job the Resistance would have had to do anyway.

**** So all John Conner has to do to defeat Skynet is tell the military to reformat all their hard drives? Talk about an [[Anticlimax]]. And I doubt that all those servers would be able to communicate very well anyway.

**** Let's face it- T3 is [[Idiot Plot]] all over.

 

* Since the timeline branched again in 1999 in the Sarah Connor Chronicles, did the T-X end up in that timeline's 2004? This seems to be the first time travelers from subsequent timelines did not arrive in chronological order, so the franchise does not have a precedent for this.

*** Okay, to everyone who keeps saying T3 never happened, shut up. It did, get over it, SCC are the events that happened between T2 and T3. This is evident as Sarah Conner is alive in T2 and dead in T3, leading one to wonder what happened between that time.

**** Um, no. TSCC goes out of its way to contradict T3, as T3 had Judgement Day happening in 2004 and Sarah dying in 1997. And [[Word of God]] confirms that TSCC takes place in an alternate continuity and that it's their own version of T3.

* Okay, so the t-800's are supposed to infiltrate the resistance in future, and then kill them when they aren't suspicious, right? Well, then, why do all of them look like Arnie? I mean, you'd figure after the first one, the resistance would shoot on sight.

** * facepalms* They ''don't'' all look like Arnie. Arnie is Model 101, so there's more than one of him, but we've ''seen'' other models. One is in the first movie, for instance.

**** Wouldn't killing that Terminator mean it couldn't be sent back to save him and Kate?

**** Why would Connor have references on hand to show the Resistance what Arnie looks like?

**** Maybe he does. The Terminator series exists, not in a Stable Time Loop (that was blown to hell by T2), but in a time loop that's spinning off its axis. Every recursion introduces another set of changes that results in a different version of events that in turn, results in a different version of the time loop. John Connor being killed by the T-800 that resembles the one he knew in the past, for example, didn't come about until it was sent into the past, hooked up with John and Sarah, spent time with John and Sarah, and Sarah changed the future (not as much as she would have liked, but Judgment Day DID miss its original date). In that timeline, he didn't know that he was going to be killed by a Terminator that resembles him. In this recursion, he's been informed of the event, which will most likely prevent it in the future, resulting in another recursion.

**** Also, don't forget that the T-800 from T3 was reprogrammed. He had no reason to lie to the people he has been programmed to protect. Mebbe in the future set up in T3, that's just what Connor does.

 

* Why does the resistance even bother trying to protect John and Sarah in the past? Why not just send Terminators directly to CNN, BBC, and other news services for a quick Public Service Announcements. "I am a robot from the future. Seriously. Here, watch while I cut my arm off. You believe me now? I have your attention? Good, because the next part is really important: DON'T BUILD SKYNET YOU STUPID RETARDS!" The Singularity might still happen, but it wouldn't be nearly as bad if a brand new Evil AI was limited to (say) deleting CALTECH student records.

*** It's strange that they didn't try this in ''T2'', since their goal in that one was also to prevent Judgment Day. They convinced Miles Dyson pretty easily, they could have just shown the T-800 to the press or the White House or even Cyberdyne as proof. I doubt any corporation outside of [[Cyberpunk]] fiction would be greedy enough to risk the future of civilization to build an artificial intelligence.

*** Yeah, they missed a great chance to derail Skynet's creation at the end of T2. Of course, by that point they'd committed so many major felonies that going public would've probably gotten Sarah convicted of multiple counts of terrorism, because if the Terminator is real, then she's ''not crazy'' and can be prosecuted. John too, possibly as an adult due to the extreme nature of the crimes (shooting up suburbia, blowing up a factory) he was a part of.

* Agent Ellison suggests that if they want to teach John Henry to obey the law, they should, "Start with the first ten." Which is uplifting and reminds us that God can kick a T-1000's ass. But something approaching half of those rules don't even make sense when applied to an AI.

** That's almost certainly going to be a plot point. For every "turn the other cheek" there's a hundred "stone them to death". Humans can understand the intention of the law because we're so illogical, but John Henry could turn into [[Futurama|Robot Santa]] if Ellison isn't careful.

*** Context, people. There's nothing "illogical" about the notion that something can be necessary/permissible in one context but morally wrong in another context. Any machine incapable of understanding that concept would be unable to relate to human beings at all. And a machine that is incapable of relating with humans would make a spectacularly poor infiltrator.

** I think that first post was thinking more along the lines of ''(holds up hand like Arnold in the second movie)'' "I swear I will not have any gods before the one true God. I swear I will keep Sunday holy. I swear that if I ever have a mother or father, I will honor them."

* What chain of events could have lead to the time jump forward in the pilot of TSCC? Had the John Connor that sent Cameron back also been sent forward at some point? Was that the original plan when someone was sent back to build the time machine in the bank? For that matter, if each use of the time machine results in a new parallel timeline, how could you possibly form a plan that requires multiple packages to be sent to the past?

** The time jump forward was clearly intended to get the Connors from 1999 to 2007 to get them away from both the FBI and Cromartie.

 

* While we're on the subject of Marcus since they obviously had enough medical supplies for heart transplant couldn't thay have kept Marcus alive via machines till some poor O type Resistance fighter got his head blown off.

* My big question is what injury did John suffer that would have required a heart transplant? Either his heart was punctured, or it wasn't. If the heart was punctured, he would have died. If the heart wasn't punctured, he didn't need a transplant. It has to be one or the other, unless my study of anatomy skipped an important chapter.

** It wasn't necessarily "punctured or not punctured". It might have been scratched or slashed by the metal, which could have caused serious damage to the musculature of the heart without it being instantly fatal.

* In the first movie why does Sarah Connor input change to call 911? That is always free, even from cell phones with no service plans.

** I just chalk it up to the fact that she's panicking about a serial killer who appears to be hunting everyone with her name, not thinking straight, and going through the motions as she would if she was making a regular call.

* Why are people who travel back in time naked? And why do we see the Terminator's penis in some of these movies? What use would a kill-bot have for a penis?

** The rules of time travel in this franchise is that nothing dead can travel through time unless it's covered with living tissue (don't ask how hair and nails go through). And Terminators wouldn't be very good infiltrators if they could be identified by simply taking off their clothes.

*** That does put future John in a really morally weird position. By sending Kyle back in time, he guarantees his own existence - but he also knows that his father died in the past before he was born, so he's signing Kyle's death warrent at the same time. I guess preserving the survival of [[La Résistance]] was the tiebreaker in deciding whose life is more important (and maybe Sarah's "we loved more in those few hours" message made him feel a little better about it), but if John has any decency, he must've at least ''felt'' like a dick when he gave Kyle his orders.

*** I've always thought maybe Sarah had just interpreted John's message wrong. Keep in mind Kyle was ordered to merely protect her, not help her destroy Skynet. John obviously knew that the future war could not be stopped. John had lived the majority of his life in a dark future, becoming accustomed to the war and his role within it. Perhaps he didn't really mean for Sarah to try to change the past, when he told her that the future was not set he merely meant that they would keep fighting. I always saw his message of "No fate but what we make" as him meaning it differently. Given the context, I thought he would've used this line as more of an inspiration to his troops in the future, to tell them that their fate was still their's to control not by changing the past, but by taking control of the present and future. Salvation seems to corroborate this with Johns use of the line as he talks to the Resistence.

* Two things REALLY bugged me about Salvation. 1) How was it possible that during the first nuclear blast, Connor's helicopter crashed after being hit by the EMP, but during the 2nd nuclear blast, the helicopter flew away without a problem? Does [[Mc G]] not understand how this contradicts itself, for how nukes work? Also, 2) did [[Mc G]] even watch T2? At the end of the movie, both terminators were destroyed by molten steel, but in Salvation, the T-800 has molten steel dumped on it and this doesn't cause ANY damage. None, whatsoever.

** 1) Who said those detonations were nuclear, instead of conventional? 2) Being dunked completely in molten steel != as having molten steel dumped on you.

*** Alternately, the dogs do need to be trained to bark at terminators. Max wasn't barking because he had an innate aversion to terminators, but because he smelled blood when the T-1000 killed John's foster parents.

*** Max was pretty agitated when the T-1000 visited earlier that day. Then there's the dogs in the first film - the one on Sarah Louise Connor's lawn and the other at the Tiki Motel. Save for Enrique's dogs, the canine hatred of Terminators is a little too consistent to chalk it up to mere coincidence. Especially given how much focus is given to this otherwise minor fact about them.

* The entire scheme of the robots to assassinate John/Sarah has always bugged me. Essentially, it doesn't work because the Terminators can never quire track down Sarah/John in one place at the right time and kill them while they are without their almighty protector. This obviously means that one of the Terminators main fail points is not being able to predict where the Connors are going to be at a given time. Therefore, in order to remedy this situation, why not just find out when John Conner was born (should be easy) and find out where he was born (should also be easy) and send a Terminator back on that day and get Sarah while she is in the hospital room. I don't see any escaping from that, even with a benevolent gaurdian angel, especially considering Sarah would not be able to be moved quickly. To top it off, the machines could even send more than one to make sure the job gets done.

** Read earlier on the page. Skynet ''does not know those things'', clearly. Especially since Sarah and John made ''a concerted effort to stay off computerized records''. The whole point is they send them back to when they have a vague idea of where they are, and a decent chance of finding them because records did ''not'' survive intact.

*** According to TSCC, Sarah gave birth to John somewhere in South America in primitive conditions. This means there would have been no records of the birth.

*** Does that mean John wasn't a legal American citizen at the start of T2? Then why wasn't he deported when his mom went to the institution?

*** Jus sanguinis?

 

*** They forgot because [[Ripped From the Phone Book]] was still a common cinematic trope and at that point in the film they were trying to hide that Arnie was, in fact, a machine. Possibly [[Justified Trope|justified]] though, in that the Terminator by taking the whole page is ensuring he's got a redundant backup in the (somewhat unlikely) event his memory core is damaged and that data's lost.

** Terminator didn't forget but tropers above certainly seem to have a fuzzy recollection of the film. Terminator never ripped out a phonebook page, Reese did.

*** Going on the script, the Terminator's got "detailed files" on human anatomy, because it makes them more efficient killers. But as to the era -- Skynet only has partial postwar records and its collective knowledge from such of the Internet that it assimilated before the nuclear balloon went up. When Skynet first boots up in T3 plasma rifles weren't invented, but it doesn't stop the Terminator asking just in case a model has been made at this point in history. In T2 the T-1000 doesn't ''really'' mimic police procedure as such: it knows police are authority figures from its postwar records, accesses a computer, assumes the officer's form, and then simply asks authoritative questions while in that form. It doesn't really mimic police procedure beyond that.

 

*** Well, yeah, Cameron acts cuckoo. ''Her processor has been damaged''. Most of her oddities pop up in the second season, after she sat down on a car bomb and took a giant chunk of shrapnel to the back of the head, which so badly damaged her processor that she actually glitched into a different personality that was convinced it was human. Prior to that, the only really ''weird'' thing she did in public was the stuff involving the guidance counselor and the girl who committed suicide. And ''of course'' there are more moments showing Cameron's oddities than there are with other Terminators; she's a main character with a ton of screentime. If you spent as much time watching Vick, Carter, Cromartie, etc. you probably would see more acts of oddness on their parts too.

**** Its worth noting that one of the Terminators, Vick, is actually apparently pretty bad at mimicking the person he replaced; his wife noticed that he was acting very strangely "after the crash" (presumably when the original Vick was killed and replaced) but she passes this off as the aftereffects of whatever said crash involved.

** Were they explicitly designed to mimic those two features? Sweating could be important for thermo regulation, which is what the human body uses it for, and halitosis could just be a by-product of having internal organs made out of metal. Now, one could argue that tear production would be helpful if, say, the Terminator got something in their eye or was in a particularly bad dust storm, but since the organic eyes themselves are only covering bionic eyes behind them, I don't think tears would be necessary.

*** I dont think that line refers specifically to the act of crying, more to the emotion behind the tears. He's saying he can never cry out of sadness or joy, because he cannot feel those emotions.

***

So I'd say yes, it was intentional or at least the most bizzare coincedence.

** I believe that by the word "cry" he means "grieving." I.e. he can certainly ''mimic'' crying, but he can't feel sadness the way a human can. (of course, this is what marks Cameron as more "advanced" - as she is capable of at least simulating the emotion to herself) Uncle Bob understands ''why'' humans cry, but he cannot make himself grieve the way they can.

** Probably Skynet knew that killing off that many people could potentially cause major disruptions in the course of history, so had to save that option for the hours immediately before Judgement Day, when any resulting response by authorities would be swept aside by the coming nuke attack. That's probably why the T-X was a lot less subtle about its work than its predecessors, trashing a considerable part of the city rather than just a few vehicles.

 

** It doesn't necessarily imply that. We only see ''one'' Arnie in ''Salvation'', and the reason we see him is probably the same reasoning given by the T-850 in ''Rise of the Machines'': Skynet knows of Connor's childhood attachment to that particular model, and would have thought it wonderful irony to have Connor be killed by the "same" robot that saved his life as a kid.

*** Can a machine be "ironic"?

** How is pictures of Arnie walking around the mall "proof" that everything Sarah's been saying is true? Like the cop says, they assume it's just the same guy coming back because, hey, they never found a body and anyone who witnessed the original's rampage in the police station is dead and thus can't speak to his indestructibility.

*** There's proof of the existence of a tall man with a thick Austrian accent who once attacked a police station and murdered several officers. There is no proof (that Silberman knows of) that this man is a secret robot assassin as Sarah claims.

**** I don't know, the newer model did look quite a bit older to the one from T1. Beyond that, what're the chances he just got plastic surgery to make himself look younger? The photo's from the Police Department looked blurry enough to ensure that the psychiatrist couldn't see the Terminators minor facial features.

** They know only that there is a man who looks like that and who somehow murdered 17 police officers and got away with it. The story takes place a mere ten or eleven years after T1, many people's physical appearance don't significantly change in that amount of time, especially if they use make-up or surgery or something. And Silberman was well aware that Sarah was already acquainted with Reese and had heard his story: watch T1 again.

** If they had then Skynet would have been unleashed in some other way. Or unleashed a few days/weeks/months later when the military reconstituted the project and activated Skynet as planned the first time. Or they would've had a blowout or a crash or a breakdown on the way to the base which delayed them long enough for Skynet to be unleashed. The point is, T3 operates on the premise that Judgment Day was destined to happen. Avert destiny one way and it would just happen another way.

 

** War is rarely a case of win/lose. There are of course exceptions but if your at Total War (which we can assume both Skynet and the Resistance are) then everything is focused on the ability to wage more war. The Resistance could have "won" but more likely is that winning was inevitable. Skynet probably still had resources at it's disposal but not enough to defeat the humans. Three years is pushing it though.

 

** Because John's not omniscient, so he's not going to know specifics. Also, sending someone back changes the future, so he has no idea what's going to happen in the past.

** Also also, every time Kyle Reese goes back, dies, and Judgment Day is not averted, it increases the amount of information that has to be passed on to him the next time the time travel loop rolls around. The first time Kyle is killed by a bomb he planted in the Terminator's torso. The next time John warns him about this before Kyle goes back, Kyle makes sure to get into cover before the bomb goes off, and instead is killed in some other way. Now John has two possible deaths to warn Kyle about. The next time John warns Kyle about his two previous deaths and he's killed in yet another way. Now John has ''three'' possible deaths to warn Kyle about. See how that could become a problem? Eventually it multiplies out of control. Even if it ''works'' it won't work. If Kyle is warned about every possible death and manages to flawlessly avoid all of them and survive without a scratch then future!John Connor won't have anything to warn him about at all, and ''he won't know not to get killed by a bomb shoved in the Terminator's torso''.

* Why did they put Gibbons in the men's bathroom, the MOST OBVIOUS place to look for him? Why not the women's? Or a broom closet? Or ANYWHERE but the one place where they would certainly look for a guy missing from his post?

** Why would that be the most obvious place to look for him? Do security guards at software companies get tied up in men's rooms a lot where you come from?

*** ...You really need to be told what else someone would be doing in a mens' bathroom?

 

* Wouldn't the T-800 Terminator have been better off leaving the T-1000 frozen in one piece? It would have taken longer for it to melt and regain the ability to move. Shooting the T-1000 into a hundred pieces actually helped it to continue the pursuit of John Connor!

*** Yes, but a single solid object thawing out is going to take a ''lot'' longer than a hundred smaller objects thawing out because in the latter case there's a whole lot more surface area, whether they're near a [[Smoke and Fire Factory]] or not. It's the difference between him thawing out "eventually" and him thawing out ''now''.

** Answer: Yes, it would have. But then we wouldn't have had that [[Rule of Cool|cool shot]] of the T-1000 blasting into a bazillion frozen pieces.

* Is the "Arnold" model the T-101 or the T-800? I've seen it referred to as both in the context of the first two movies, though a similar, upgraded model was T-801 in the third movie.

** T-800, Model 101. The 800 refers to the endoskeleton, the Model 101 part is the outer layer of flesh.

** The films themselves never refer to Ahnald as anything but a T-101. In expanded universe material and trivia a deleted scene it's claimed that it's from ''series'' 800 and ''model'' 101. The series is the type of terminator involved, the model the physical appearance mold that's used for the human part.

 

** And what if the [[Parallel Universe]] theory of time travel isn't true in the Terminator universe? John Connor can't take that chance.

** Many people who analyze these films seem to forget there's a reason it's called the [[Parallel Universe]] '''theory'''. We don't even know whether it's true '''now'''. Why would John Connor risk not being born on a hunch? It's theoretically possible to survive being shot in the forehead, but I'm still going to freak out if someone points a gun at me.

* What happened after they removed the CPU from the terminator in T2? Was removing and sticking it back in enough to overwrite the "don't learn to much" program?

** "skynet presets the switch to read-only when we're sent out alone". So, it was not program, but a physical switch, like the one on SD-Memory Cards, which you can set to read only and back with a simple motion of a hand.

 

* It might have been asked before but why didn't Kyle just show Dr. Silbermann his brand from the prison camp to prove his story? He shows it to Sarah earlier in the movie, but Silbermann claims he "doesn't [have] a shred of proof." He might not have believed him still, but it's better than just expecting him to take his word for it.

* So can an T-1000 be reprogrammed?

** It can be programmed in the first place, so probably yes. You'd just have to find a way to subdue, then interface with, what amounts to metallic pudding.

* Why don't Skynet make an terminator that self destructs when it find its target?

** Because then it's only got one shot to hit its target, and it makes it impossible to confirm the kill. If the explosion doesn't do it, then that's a total waste of an asset.

*** In the show, it just made it seem that the cops were trying to arrest him. That's why I'm confused.

*** John has always been Sarah's weak point. If the police can catch him, they know that Sarah will come looking for him. Since she is a wanted terrorist, they'll do anything catch her. Also, living off the radar makes you wonder what they do for money, since its hard to get a decent job without SSN, permenant address, or anything resembling a clean background check. Besides, in the pilot, the security cameras witnessed him aiding in ''a fucking bank robbery'' that ended with an explosion that probably thermalized the vault. If there is evidence he made it out, of course they'll be looking for him.

* So during the future war is John the president of the '''whole human race''' or what?

** Hard to say. The series doesn't get into too many details about how many humans survived and where the survivors are all living. Also, not all humans are necessarily part of the resistance. The rest may be in concentration camps run by the machines or surviving on their own. John Connor may just be the leader of the human resistance ''movement'', not necessarily the entire human species.

* What was the deal with Skynet's behavior in T3? The previous Judgment Day was originally brought about as an act of self-defense by Skynet after an attempted shutdown when the AI became self-aware several weeks after being activated. T3's Skynet meanwhile appears to go homicidal and order the extermination of humanity the ''moment'' it goes online, which just has to beg one to question the competency of the scientists who created it and just ''what'' its purpose was supposed to be.

** Eliminate human error?

* What would the T-800 or 1000 do afterwards if they succeed in their missions?

** In SCC the units just shut down and wait for further orders unless outside stimuli directs them to attack. So they'd likely find some out of the way location safe from nuclear bombardment and power down until they received further orders.

 

** In the Novelisation of T2, its stated that Skynet Hesitated over sending the T-1000 as due to its unique construction there were questions about just how "loyal" it would be to its mission. This was most likey due to the fact that programming Liquid Metal is a very different prospect to programming a computer chip that can be fitted with a "learn/don't learn" switch.

 

** It is all but outright said that the technology is just a prototype that Skynet had just completed and hasn't tested.

*** Yes, but ''why'' do they have a time machine if they didn't want to use it?

** That wasn't gloating, that was congratulations. Skynet was too dumb to know that taking the form of his last kiss and congratulating him on something he didn't want to do would anger Marcus...much like why it sent a terminator instead of leaving a bomb, but to be fair, that would have worked if John did not learn a terminator killed him that way in T3.

*** Admittedly, Skynet gloating at John Connor would have made the movie more interesting. It is supposed to be "self aware", so why not give Skynet some personality?

* Given that General Ashdown is a former Commanding Officer of the U.S Military and John Connor's uniform as of 2029 shows him with the rank of 4 Star General are we to assume that the Resistance is a continuation of the United States Military? I ask this because once the Human-Machine War is over someone is going to have to rebuild the country and assume command. Are we to assume the U.S Government and all its important members like the President have no authority anymore?

** The U.S. Government and its important members kind of, you know, were blown up.

** The Resistance is basically an alliance of surviving military units from different countries. Ashdown (and later Connor) was entrusted withn command by the leadership of this alliance.

* A rather minor point but in T2, after the good T-800 gets his arm ripped off in battle, how come John didn't offer him the old T-800's arm? They're never shown considering that option, they just throw it into the smelting pool without an afterthought.

** Besides, both arms were rather brutally ripped off - hardly he could've just attach it to his shoulder - it would've required equipment and skills they didn't have, and besides they were dead fixed on destroying the thing.

* From T2 when the old pick-up truck is being fixed...why would a Terminator need a torque wrench?

** Because it's more suited to the job than fingers, even of those fingers are super strong.

** The SWAT Team kicks in the door and screams "Drop your weapons!" They then see a man standing in the middle of the room, turning towards them, holding something in his hand. Race wasn't a factor; it was just bad timing that Miles was turning when the Team came in. Also, when they gave Arnie warnings, his pistol was tucked into his pants, meaning that he wasn't presenting a threat until he ignored their commands.

*** Plus, IIRC, didn't Miles have a detonator in his hands at the time? After Arnold demonstrated his willingness to fire on officers with a ''minigun'' I doubt they'd want to take their chances with anyone.

 

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