Time Travel Movies

[Earl]

I want to try and examine some time travel movies and the paradoxes they throw up. Let's start with The Terminator. We'll start at the beginning and work through, stay on topic.

In the first film the Terminator was sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor before she could give birth to the future resistance leader John Connor. So then Kyle Reese is sent back in time, by John Connor to protect his mother.

But as we later learn, Kyle Reese is John's father!

How can he be John's father? Reese was only sent back because Skynet first sent a Terminator to kill Sarah Connor, if they hadn't John wouldn't have sent Reese back and he would never have been born.

If John was never born Skynet wouldn't have sent a Terminator back in time. So John must've originally had a different father, surely?

[Ben]

Marty McFly should have pumped his own mother just to see what happened.

[Earl]

[anancientrace]

I want to try and examine some time travel movies and the paradoxes they throw up. Let's start with The Terminator. We'll start at the beginning and work through, stay on topic.

In the first film the Terminator was sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor before she could give birth to the future resistance leader John Connor. So then Kyle Reese is sent back in time, by John Connor to protect his mother.

But as we later learn, Kyle Reese is John's father!

How can he be John's father? Reese was only sent back because Skynet first sent a Terminator to kill Sarah Connor, if they hadn't John wouldn't have sent Reese back and he would never have been born.

If John was never born Skynet wouldn't have sent a Terminator back in time. So John must've originally had a different father, surely?

I think the flaw of all Time Travel movies is they are nonsensical from the start. Not time loops but fruit loops. I agree John Connor is the problem. Before the first film started - he would have known who his father was - I assume the second films premise.

Assume he hadn't sent Reese back.

The future John Connor would have presumably disappeared up his own fundamental! And as the film series built improbability on top of improbability... Everyone else slaughtered in the films - did they not affect what was to be? An ancestor who saved John Connor's life some time far hence? Could have served a bad hamburger to Skynets founder before he/she made the mistake...

Franchise! It is a curse. Terminator would have stood as a single entity and the future was assured by destroying bad dude Arnie.

Nuclear annihilation still but hey...

[Ck]

I think that with the terminator films and the chronicles that they (The Connors) are making the future as they know it happen.

For instance, if they hadn't killed that Terminator then James Ellison couldn't have dug him up and give him to Catherine Weaver.

[Earl]

I think that with the terminator films and the chronicles that they (The Connors) are making the future as they know it happen.

For instance, if they hadn't killed that Terminator then James Ellison couldn't have dug him up and give him to Catherine Weaver.

You're jumping the gun a bit, lets get past the fathering issue or at least the movies and we'll get on to that.

The only explanation is John had a different father originally. When he sent Reese back in time Reese unwittingly nudged the original sire out of the picture and took his place. You see the other thing to consider is, John Connor knew that the Terminator had failed, because he was still there to send Reese back. If at any point Sarah Connor had been killed before he was born he would cease to exist and the whole thing would end. So why did John Connor send Reese back? The timeline hadn't changed in anyway to suggest the Terminator was successful, so why send Reese back?

[Ck]

Would the timeline remain the same until the terminator was successful though? Meaning that John was right to protect his unborn self by sending back someone he trusted.

As that timeline was how it was, with John in the future, but sending someone back to make sure he wasn't born would mean that he would cease to exist in the future but only at the time that he was prevented from being which was a parallel of the past and the future at the same time.

[Earl]

No, it's not parallel. The timeline is inline with the future. If the Terminator had been successful John Connor would have ceased to exist the moment the Terminator was sent back in time. However, sending the Terminator back would have definitely changed the timeline in some way.

Reese was specifically sent back to protect Sarah Connor, that's what John Connor told him to do. So it is possible that Sarah Connor managed to elude the Terminator long enough to give birth to John with his original father but was later killed by the Terminator who's only mission was to kill her, not kill John.

In the future John must've decided he wanted to protect her so he sent Reese back for that reason. Or maybe he knew something we don't and are yet to find out.

[Mickyboy]

Time travel to the past is impossible anyway as you'd have to travel faster than the speed of light, cos thats the only way you can travel back in time, and as nothing can travel faster than light apart from one's own imagination its an impossible scenario anyway.

[Ben]

Time travel to the past is impossible anyway as you'd have to travel faster than the speed of light, cos thats the only way you can travel back in time, and as nothing can travel faster than light apart from one's own imagination its an impossible scenario anyway.

That's what the scientists say now, they've not got the best track records really.