Yeah, also an interesting point. But the idea of "one big timeline" makes me getiing queezy. *lol*
Doesn't they say in T2, that the future isn't set, there is no fate, you can make your own future .. blah blah? And then Sarah decoides to do this?
I would say changing the future is equal to changing the timeline. well, maybe I'm too queezes now. 😆
look for me the bottom line is
t1: 1984( 1985 john is born)
t2: 1995(john is 10)
BUT: b coz of what happened in t2 with the cyberdyne blowup everything was pushed forward 3 years, like humanz would win in 2032 instead of 2029, and john connor would b 13 in t2
t3 events: july24-25, 2004, i saw it very carefully
Originally posted by Vaughan
This cannot be correct. In T3. John Connor makes specific references to T2 when "he was 13 years old. " Indisputable.If he was born in 84 (the year cannot be argued as 1984 is referenced numerous times. Arnie is wanted in T2 for the attack on the police station in 1984) this would make T2 set in 97.
If SC is then diagnosed with Leukaemia, why would she need to hang on for 3 years to make sure the events of 97 did not happen ? (Unless of course, we are to assume that she was diagnosed in 94)
It's a major error. To suggest that JC was only 7 or 10 yrs old in T2 does not rectify the error becasue of the 13 yr old references in T3.
It hurts my brain to think about it any more.
Simply mostow messed up when he added that line to the movie is the issue.
I can solve all these problems in one go, listen.
In T1, Kyle (Michael Biehn) explains to just about everybody that in the future, SKYNET's Defence grid had been smashed, the war had been won. Killing John Connor then would have made no difference. So they sent Arnie back to kill his mother, Sarah Connor. With me? Good.
So the humans sent Kyle back to protect her. Yes? And he says the Time Displacement machine was destroyed straight after he went so no one could follow - 'it's just him and me'. So in the future, the moment Kyle left for 1984, SKYNET was no more, the war was won and there could be no more time travel because they'd destroyed the machine to do it.
Now then, by protecting Sarah Connor (we're still in the first film) and destroying Arnie, Kyle's mission was a success. Judgement day would still have to follow, nothing had changed there, the war would be fought in the future between the Robots and mankind and WON by mankind.
HOW THE HELL CAN YOU MAKE T2 AND T3 ON THOSE GROUNDS
The first film has been ignored by directors just so they could cash in with bonanza special effects. The whole storyline is full of discrepencies and botch ups that i felt spoilt viewing. I'm a big Michael Biehn fan and was gutted to find his scenes out of T2 on the cutting room floor, fit only to be shown too late in the Special Edition. T3 is simply cashing in again on an already saturated franchise.
Not that simple-
Originally posted by VOICE OF LOGIC
I can solve all these problems in one go, listen.In T1, Kyle (Michael Biehn) explains to just about everybody that in the future, SKYNET's Defence grid had been smashed, the war had been won. Killing John Connor then would have made no difference. So they sent Arnie back to kill his mother, Sarah Connor. With me? Good.
So the humans sent Kyle back to protect her. Yes? And he says the Time Displacement machine was destroyed straight after he went so no one could follow - 'it's just him and me'. So in the future, the moment Kyle left for 1984, SKYNET was no more, the war was won and there could be no more time travel because they'd destroyed the machine to do it.
Now then, by protecting Sarah Connor (we're still in the first film) and destroying Arnie, Kyle's mission was a success. Judgement day would still have to follow, nothing had changed there, the war would be fought in the future between the Robots and mankind and WON by mankind.
HOW THE HELL CAN YOU MAKE T2 AND T3 ON THOSE GROUNDS
The first film has been ignored by directors just so they could cash in with bonanza special effects. The whole storyline is full of discrepencies and botch ups that i felt spoilt viewing. I'm a big Michael Biehn fan and was gutted to find his scenes out of T2 on the cutting room floor, fit only to be shown too late in the Special Edition. T3 is simply cashing in again on an already saturated franchise.
Does Kyle know that the war is over.
Nope.
does he know for sure what happened after he went through-
Nope.
That means there's still plenty of possibilities of what could happen.
And T2 and T3 just bring the storyline to inevitable points that eventually had to be reached. T3 more than T2 really. But everything shown iun the films needed to be covered.
i learned most of wut im gunna say from the dawn of fate game.
in order for reese to get to the time displacement machine he had to go to base norad skynets defense grid deep in the chayanne mts. they succesfully did so and destroyed the base. that doesnt mean that skynet was Completly destroyed. skynet wud survive and rebuild. i asume skynet had more time machines. i hear wut voice of logic is sayin but t2 was not made as a cheap action film. for me it is one of the greatest movies of all time and arguably 1 of the few films that not only can live up to but surpass the first film. and its crazy to disagree
Actually, voice of logic made a really good point there, the story was in fact technically over. Yet T2 was so well made, we could ignore that fact and enjoy it. It did surpass the original. However, now that T3 came out, its apparent that hollywood is saturating the idea for some easy money, T3 was by no means awful, but id have preferred it just being one and two.
Heres how I got it figured, maybe I missed some things though...
I've only got the VHS full screen versions of T1-3, so don't catch all the details of DVD or wide-screen versions, but tried to ID where I got the info from in every case possible...
T1- 1984 Present Day according to the opening scene Time Stamp... Thursday, May 12, according to the cop who Kyle Reese encounters before breaking into the store to steal guns and more clothes...
'What day is it? The date?'
"Thursday... May 12..."
"What year?!?" no response because sirens sound, scaring Reese into the store.
T1 spans only about 3 days, 4 nights, so its still May 1984 at the end.
T2, I never did see a date printed anywhere, including on the police car computer when the T-1000 is tracking down John. Saw him find John's address and birthdate (Feb 28, 1985), and the stupid AGE:10 thing, which is where I would say the error was made. I would say T2 was set in 1997, so yeah, Sarah would have already been diagnosed with Lukemia by then, if they hadn't only just invented that for T3, and yeah she would have been fighting just to survive the last 3 years since being diagnosed in 1994, sure sure... except, I also would believe that the whole lukemia thing was another trick to fool Skynet into thinking Sarah was also 'off the grid' and that John was weakened, and took himself off the grid, and therefore no longer a threat to Skynet and the histiry of things to come... I think Sarah and John were happily living life in Baja (as they were 'living in Baja when she was diagnosed' according to John in T3) when Sarah read something on the new advances at Cyberdine, which got her going... so she and John packed up and returned to the LA area, and she attacked the cyberdine computer research facility, to blow it up, but got caught and sent to Pescadero state hospital... What about at the hospital sessions with Silberman, where SArah mentions the exact date of Judgement Day, and talks about it in the future tense? you may ask...
'We all have dreams Sarah, and sometimes dreams can seem quite real..'
'Well on August 29, 1997 it's going to seem pretty ****ing real to you too! Anyone not wearing 1-million sunblock is going to have a real bad day! get it?!'
Remember, this is a videotaped session, reviewed by Silberman and Sarah at her current review, to discuss and decide if she has shown improvement... apparently, according to Silberman's statements, they do the reviews about every 6 months or so, so possibly the session they are watching was from 6 months or more ago, maybe before August 29, 1996... so Sarah didn't just say '...on August 29th it will seem pretty real...' she added the year, 1997 to the date... see??
so, set T2 in 1997, possibly late 1996, then the only flaws are when the T-800 is explaining the history of things to come, when he says Dyson discovers things and gets skynet going in a few months, then in 3 years skynet becomes self-aware, etc etc... you could say that T-800 is talking in future tense about things that are current news, because he doesn't realize it, and that judgement day is really only a few months off at the time he's explaining all that, so it COULD be 1997 at that time, making John 12 or 13 or so, which appears more accurate... right? T2 spans only about 2 days and 3 nights, so still 1997 at the end...
which sets T3 in 2007, 'a decade has passed', '10 years ago' various references in T3 state that it's been 10 years since Judgement Day was postponed... John's 22 or 23 now, which appears accurate still too, and T3 also states somewhere that John was 13 at the time of T2, so it's still accurate... I dont have it written if it lists Sarah Connors death date on her marker, but its not really important I dont think... probably sometime after August 29, 1997 though because it's stated that she wanted to be certain Judgement Day didn't happen on that day, so she 'fought the lukemia'/stayed 'on the grid' at least that long, before dying/disappearing...
T3, I don't know if anyone noticed or if it's been discussed in any other forum, but the whole movie appears to take place over the course of 1 night and 1 day... whereas the other 2 movies spanned at least 2 or 3 days and nights, which adds to the explanation of why things seem to move so fast, aside from the obvious non-stop wall to wall action and chases... there's no extra scenes of exposition and resting and recovering, no hot steamy sex between John and Katherine one night while they hide out in a cheap roadside motel, because they never spend another night together after meeting each other that first night, 10 years after sharing their first kiss, until they get stuck in Crystal Peak together at 6:18pm the following afternoon!! The whole movie covers just 1 day! T3 should have been called Judgement Day, since that's the only day that was covered in the course of the movie!!
any way, I've only seen T3 about 4 or 5 times, and like I said, only on VHS full screen so maybe I missed some things, but I think it covers all the various timeline loopholes, plot holes, and other holes y'all have come up with... I'm sure there's a simpler explanation, like Director C is God and Director M sucks ass or something, but c'mon, let's not go there again, huh? enjoy the friggin' movies for what they are, and stop trashing them for such little things as 'the plane's call letters were different when it was in the air than they were when it was in the hangar, so the movie sucks, Mostow's a jerk, Stahl's a wuss, Arnold's an old fart, Daines needs to get a so-called life, and they need to stop making Terminator movies if all they do is make them stupid!'
Sorry if I went off on a tangent or a rant... I haven't posted to any boards in awhile, so I have lots of pent up 'postings' in me... 🙂
wanna read my T4/T5 idea?? maybe some other post...
Timeline: Canon vs What's Known... (help?!)
My questions about the time-line are more generally related to what is canon vs what is all-known, etc... I have only seen the theatrical releases, and even then only the VHS versions, as well as the SE T2, so my T4 is based around the 3 movies, and does not include much about anything not mentioned in the films... I have read things on this board, and some of the links to other fan-sites which have inspired some additions and extra bits of info on the Ts and H/Ks and Resistance and the history of things to come etc etc... but mostly my crap is still my crap, not connected to the whole Ultimate Terminator Universe as fleshed out in the novelizations and extended universe crap...
so, my questions about the time-line are: does anyone have a simple basic a,b,c... time-line of EVERYTHING or at least LOTS of the stuff from the novels as they relate to the films, or is there such a thing now that T3 has come out and changed some of that past/history? I'm sure dozens of T-thread posters have their own stories and ideas and what not, probably mostly better than the crap I have included in my idea, maybe my stuff is obvious and cliched compared to the 'real deal' stuff that links all movies to novels to everything... but that's what I would like to improve in my story, so I am looking for places to start gaining more insight into the stuff that's not on film... if that stuff is really relevant to the Terminator franchise, if any/all of it is considered canon, or if I should just keep rambling on with my own thoughts with no regard to what has already been established in the 'real' universe, in the 'real' novels out there??
any help, people? muchas gracias!
Okay. This is only my second post here so bear with me, but, I THINK I might have half an idea how the Terminator timeline could just fit into the dates we have.
1984: (May) Date taken from T1 various sources.
The first T-800 is sent back along with Kyle Reese. Once in '84, Reese assumes that the place is destroyed in the future, but he has no way to be sure about this, so it's entirely plausible it wasn't. Whilst in '84 Reese succeeds in his mission, the T-800 fails his, and Sarah Connor becomes pregnant with John. Because the T-800 failed, the future remains as it was BEFORE Reese went back in time.
1985: (Feb) Date taken from the T-1000's police car computer
John Connor is born
1995: (Mar) Date conjecture, but early '95, after John turns 10 at the end of Feb (It is just plausible that John is ten)
The events of T2: In the future AFTER Reese and T-800 go to '84, the future has not changed, and so Skynet knows Connor wasn't aborted, so they try again, using the equipment Reese THOUGHT (but didn't know for sure) had been destroyed. This time they send T-1000 to March 1995, and the resistance are able to send a reprogrammed T-800 to the same time. Now during the movie T-800 says that '35 years from now' he was sent back in time. From 1995, that makes his time travel date 2030. Again, this is plausible. There's nothing to say Skynet didn't wait a while before sending the T-1000. In fact, the months between Reese's time travel (2029) and the T-1000's travel (2030) would give Skynet time to develop the T-1000 and the resistance time to capture and reprogram a T-800.
1995 (Late) Date Conjecture
Sarah contracts lukaemia. Again, plausible. I would say it was in part due to all the physical and mental stress her body had gone through since she met Reese.
1997: (Aug 29) The date that is supposedly Judgement Day comes and goes. Nothing happens, and later that year Sarah dies, having hung on long enough to see for herself nothing happens. Both Sarah and John believe Judgement day didn't happen due to Cyberdine being destroyed but this is only partially true. After Cyberdine was destroyed, CRS got the data (somehow) and picked up where Dyson left off, under Gen. Brewster. But due to the delay, it takes them longer than Dyson to develop Skynet. They have it ready and sort of online (where it pretends to be a virus) by July 2004, which is when the 'postponed' Judgement Day will happen.
John 'hit the road' the day after Sarah dies. Okay, he's only 12 but is resourceful. I would suspect he made his way to Sarah's Mexican friends and lived off the grid with them until he was older when he returned to America. He had no idea that the Mexicans cremated Sarah because this happened during the time he was travelling to them.
2004: (July) Date taken from T-850's scanning of the watch he finds.
John is 19. Alright, he looks older, but it is just about plausible. The events of T3, with a couple of errors that I'll have to put down to Johnathan Mostow's newness to the series.
Skynet, having been developed by CRS after they got a hold of Dyson's work, is almost online and masquerading as a virus in order for the humans to activate it fully. In the future (now 2032) John is terminated by a T-800. Skynet has developed the TX and the resistance have captured John's killer T-800 and Kate has it upgraded to a T-850 and reprogrammed. Both T-850 and TX are sent back in time to 2004 to kill/protect John and Kate, who are destined to meet.
The TX fails, the T-850 'wins' and John and Kate survive the 'new' late Judgement Day. In 25 years (2029) John (then in his mid 40's) sends Kyle Reese back to '84 to protect his mother and the whole storyline starts over.
Whew! I'm off for a lie down now. 😄
It sounds about right to me, bigp, but no one seemed to catch the goof-up in T1. When Reece holds up that cop in the beginning, and asks him what the date is, he replies: "Thursday, the 12th of May."
This is incorrect. May 12 was on Saturday. For the story's sake, the cop either lied or blundered. We cannot take what he said as truth, though because it can be proven as incorrect. But we do know that the year is 1984. The story could have taken place at any time during this year. For all we know, it could have happened in early January, thus making John born in October 1984 or before.
No one also seems bothered by the whole time-travel concept, or the cybornetiuc organism concept, or the father of the future being conceived by a man from the future... a simple matter of movie universe days and dates not matching reality-based days and dates seems trivial, all other things considered...
donchya think?? kinda picky, I think...
any way, if we assume that in the alternate universe of the Terminator series, that May 12, 1984 was actually on a Thursday, then John would still have been born 36 weeks later, or in February 1985...
Im more interested in years of things, and maybe months... but not necessarily exact dates and days of the week such things occur... sure, I get picky about some things, but not THAT picky!!
I think that since T3 has muddied the waters so badly it may be impossible to get a definitive timeline of events.
If you take the first two together, you can flesh out a timeline that apart from a few niggles regarding dates is pretty clear. But after T2 wraps it all up, T3 forces changes (not for the better either) that are hard to explain.
Like how the Skynet program could have continued in any form when ALL information was destroyed. Dyson was project manager and would have known just what information to destroy. Also Cyberdyne didnt have anything to do with the military yet, so the CRS business and the Air Force General Brewster character just don`t fit.
Or the chronology of events in the future. A pair of Teminators sent by Skynet at the same time before it`s destruction, then a human and another reprogrammed Terminator sent soon after is tidy and believable. Working out how yet another TWO Terminators are sent back during these events is next to impossinble.
They couldnt be sent back before Reese or `Uncle Bob` from T2, because John sends both personally and he is supposed to be dead at the hands of the T-850.
But they couldn`t be sent after Reese and Uncle Bob, because not only is Skynet defeated and unable to send any more time travellers, but the time machine is destroyed by the resistance (expecting them to somehow fail to do this when they have already won just isnt believable)
Which, now that I think about it, raises a question. In the future the T-850 is supposed to have killed Connor.
If for the sake of argument, we except that John would be stupid enough to let a terminator near because of `sentimental reasons`. What would be the point in trying to kill him then? They`ve already won, we learn as much in T1.
I could go on and on, but my point is that the first two were self contained and that any additional movies would have to have been cleverly thought out to fit the timeline. T3 obviously was not, and plays like some rushed fan fiction. As far as I`m concerned, Slickrick`s treatment for a sequel is more creditable than T3 is, at least he has put some thought into it.
hey! thanks, I think...
wait... mine IS rushed fan-fiction! dammit!!
rushed fan-fiction of a sequel to crappy T3... 🙂 WOW! is this a compliment, or a really clever dis?
it's another paradox I think... dammit!
I say, John Connor and the Resistance 'won' a huge victory in 2029, let's hypothesis, at Navajo Mountain, and claimed the TDE for themselves. But, the fluid nature of SkyNet allowed it to be contained elsewhere, and continue to thrive, growing, learning, adapting, and fighting... SkyNet sent back the first T101 800 series from 2029, and John Connor sent back Kyle... Kyle says the 'defense grid was smashed' but he couldn't possibly know whether John and the resistance managed to destroy the TDE after they sent him back, so he was just hoping and guessing, since only he and 1 other Terminator were sent back to 1984. I say the machines fought back, and eventually reclaimed Navajo Mountain, or reconstructed a secondary TDE elsewhere, in Cheyenne Mountain...
The humans 'won' again a few years later, in 2032, defeating the machines of Cheyenne Mountain. And, knowing the signs of imminent defeat were playing out again, SkyNet again made an effort to stop this future from occuring, sending back a T-1000 when John was 'a child' to the year.... (most folks say 1994, I say) 1997. John was 12 or 13, Judgment Day is looming, his mom 'has cancer' and has nothing to lose by coming out of hiding in Baja to try to destroy Cyberdine, she got busted and taken 'off the grid' he got put into foster care, etc etc...
After the events of T2 played out, Sarah Connor had enough.. she 'died' at the end of 1997, from her 'cancer' disappearing from the grid, and leaving John to do the same, alone...
Of course, the humans DID win again at Cheyenne Peak, which means the Terminators failed in the past, so SkyNet sent back the TX to take out John's support troops, in the last possible moments before Judgment Day... Even though John Connor had been killed, the human resistance broke into Cheyenne Peak, faced off against the T-1000000 and took over the TDE, sending back the T-850 which Kate had reprogrammed, in a last-ditch effort to change John Connor's fate, as well as the fate of the whole world, if possible...
Judgment Day was inevitable, the machines did rise, 3 billion people were killed... and what happens to John, Kate, the Resistance, and the Terminator? Well, those be the questions answered in T4 and T5... SkyNet could still be fluid, moving thru satellites or where ever, unless the Resistance figures a way to shut down such things, all such things, SkyNet will hide and hibernate, plot and regroup, rebel, resist, reboot, reload and revolt...
it could happen... neh?
T4:Rise of the Resistance
T5:Reloaded Revolutions
coming to KMC
brought to you by KFC (we do chicken-- and Terminator sequels-- right!)
It was a compliment, though it seems a cleverly diguised insult. I just think the John McTiernan approach would have been better (i.e. disregarding the last film entirely and continuing from before)
I congratulate you on trying to fill the gaps in, even though I don`t necessarily agree with some of these ideas. The thing is, the only people who are going to try and do this are fans of the series, who don`t want the whole chronology messed up because of lack of thought on the part of the T3 writers. If or when T4 comes out, this amount of thought isn`t going to go into it, they just want their future war film. Lots of exposition isnt going to be there if T3 is any indication.
And even if it were pretty good (like your screenplay might end up). It`s still built on T3, which if I can use a metaphor here, Is like the guy building his house on quicksand.
BTW, the novelization of T2 (which is taken from the original screenplay for T2 by Cameron and Wisher, which is as close to canon as you can get) does show a decent part of the final stages of the future war. The destruction of Skynet occurs immediately after it has sent the T800 and T-1000 back (Skynet is still a mainframe here, not some piece of software, which frankly doesn`t make sense)
The resistance send Reese back after the T800, and then find out about the T1000 that has also been sent back. They then find a batch of T800s from which John selects the `Uncle Bob` terminator and sends it back.
This doesnt leave any room for Skynet to send anything else back.
Also.. about the Skynet as `software` idea that`s thrown in at the very last minute of T3. The idea that a massively intelligent, sentient computer can exist as pieces of information just flying around between computer systems ( which I might add have all been destroyed in a Thermonuclear war ) is just ridiculous.
At the end of T3, John was just confused, not understanding that General Brewster sent him and Katherine to Crystal Peak to be safe, not to destroy the central core... Brewster was mad at himself for being so stupid and careless about SkyNet, for not realizing the Evil of the whole idea of a super-computer ruling the world of technology and machines... he realized his stupidity too late after being mortally wounded, so he accepted John as the protector of his daughter and sent them to be safe at Crystal Peak...
John was fooled and confused by not finding the central core at Crystal Peak at the end of T3. In his and Kate's time together over the next few years, digging out and digging deeper into Crystal Peak, he learns more about himself, about the military compounds around the country like Crystal Peak and others, and about his destiny as the leader of the resistance... SkyNet is probably NOT software, not just software any way, but it has infected everything like a virus, like a program, like software, taking over machines, leaving its imprint on their circuitry, leaving machines vulnerable to further future infection and invasion by SkyNet forces... so modern-day vehicles with computer circuit controls and such are susceptible to SkyNet, while older model vehicles may not be... so the Resistance is, again, saddled with 'obsolete' models of vehicles and equipment, to combat the futuristic nightmares dreamed up by SkyNet...
until the Resistance is introduced to the 'new age' of technology in the form of 2 rebuilt and reprogrammed Terminators... rebuilt and reprogrammed by humans, for humans in the fight against their fellow machines.
any way, the point this time is that the 'software' part of SkyNet is just John's confusion and fear talking... the central core will still be uncovered, and dealt with... but still the possibility does exist that the heart and brain and guts of the SkyNet intelligence can be sent outside of that mainframe body, held elsewhere, perhaps in whole, more likely in smaller parts, until its machine forces can rebuild another suitable containment apparatus for all its 2000 parts... or something...
it could go on and on and on... until and unless some genius screenplay artiste more skilled than even myself (yes, I'm sure some such beast does exist, somewhere... or will some day! 🙂 ) writes the definitive end all be all end of all Terminator sequels...
until that day, almost anything's possible... aint it??
💃 💃 💃 💃 💃 💃 💃 💃
(before this post, who'da thunk an army of dancing bananas was possible?? 😄 HA! )
About my last post, SlickRick. I was simply speculating. I know that debating about the incorrect day is trivial in the grand scheme of things. I just wanted to expose an inconsistency that I had noticed. That's all, nothing more.
And yes, I am bothered by the time travel concept. What gets me is how trivial it is to want to change the past in order to change the future in the films. Why send terminators into the past in the first place? In the years 2029-2032, John Conner's past has already happened. Sending terminators back to change the past and ultimately the future will mean nothing to a forty-something John or the world in 2029. If they do succeed in changing historical events, then their altered timeline will simply diverge from the historical timeline into a parallel universe. Who in the historical timeline should even care about the altered one? It would have absolutely no effect on the historical one at all.
And if for some reason it should matter, then why not send more advanced terminators further into the past before 1984? Why not kill Sarah Conner's great great great grandparents back in 1867?