Terminator Paradox

Unfortunately, macstar, that';s not a particularly insightful thing that your professor said. It;s pretty much page 1 of the 'possible reason why time travel either does or does not work' book, but that book has become VERY thick over time, with paradoxes, parallel universes, fitting into place like a jigsaw puzzle etc. all suggested by physicists over time.

We can only argue here by the rules of the setting. The setting rules clearly state that you can change the past and alter the present, even if that means the history that caused you to go back and alter it no longer exists.

The first film is a paradox (not the Grandfather Paradox; but the Predestination Paradox).

Paradoxes are PURPOSELY WRITTEN in science fiction for dramatic effect; they have for quite some time (since at least the 1940s). That's what confuses people. They think it just doesn't work because the 2029 departure from time absolutely HAD TO happen before the 1984 arrival, because the time machine would have to exist first, and the trip through time would have to happen to cause anyone to appear in the past. It's completely understood what the problem is there.

The point is, the paradox allows the 1984 event to happen without the 2029 event, because the 'predestination' aspect says that the future event will happen; that is, it is predestined to happen; destined; destiny. So the past event that the future event causes can occur right away. That's what a paradox is. It's a story element with a twist of cause and effect. A future event causes a past event. Purposely. It's supposed to be a mind-fück.

We can tell this movie is a paradox because of the evidence presented:

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[*]Sarah had gone into hiding and taught her son to fight in Reese's time (the future war), as he explains. This means in Reese's time she had been warned about the war in the past. So Reese was already there in 1984. He fulfilled his role in a past that already happened, then died. He was later born and lived through the future war and wasteland, and finally went back in time.
[*]Reese explains several other things (John's father dies before the war, the photograph of Sarah looks sad and Reese wonders why, and John gives Reese that photograph and tells him about her). The origin of that photograph is revealed to us in the final sequence, to purposely tell us how Reese got that sad picture of her, and why she was sad. She was thinking of him. Because Reese was already there in 1984. That's the dramatic effect that was intended by the paradox. It's meaningful for the story, and the doomed romance that it contained.
[*]The (possible) requirement of Skynet to be invented by reverse engineering the 1984 Terminator is a reverse of causality. The future event (creation of the Terminator by Skynet) causes a past event (reverse engineering the Terminator to invent Skynet). [This one is a matter for T2, but a deleted scene in the first film showed Cyberdyne workers found the pieces of the Terminator, right there in the Cyberdyne building.]
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This is not Back to the Future, you guys. We don't need our time traveler to leave the future yet in order for him to have been in the past. The past happened, and he was there. It cannot be changed. He WILL leave the future. That's it. BTTF is a different time travel concept than The Terminator.

The writer, James Cameron, knows about Predestination Paradoxes, and purposely used it in his movie.

Now, what's so hard to believe? It's science fiction. Paradoxes are conventional and very common in science fiction. Purposely written. Since at least the 1940s.

Previous timelines, made up of events that are never shown or hinted in the film at all, don't make sense. And require us to ignore the evidence in the film. Previous timelines are wrong. This is not Back to the Future. It's The Terminator.

41 replies but 15,000 views? What the Buick is this shit?

It's like Back To The Future...people use time travel just to go back in time & try & bang a younger HOTTER version of their moms.

I didn't mind the first back to the future but the 2nd one had too big of a paradox for me with them going ahead in time and seeing themselves in the future I don't think that would happen cause you would be arriving in a future where you didn't exist for 30 years. They got it right in the Sarah Conner chronicles when they jumped ahead in time.

Theres also one in a recent Terminator comic 'Terminator 2029'

where the Kyle Reese that we end up seeing in T1 meets another Kyle Reese, But does'nt relize it is him and this other one who survived his encounter with the T-800 and has been held captive up to the year of 2029.