I think many of you are missing the point of this particular exercise. I’m trying to point out that these are terrible ideas that should never be applauded. A violent exploitation sequel to Manos? Be serious.
And yes, I know that all of these ideas are, without fail, based on some other existing series. I told you, my creativity is completely sapped. Lacking original ideas, the only thoughts I have are slipshod attempts to resurrect or repair already-perished franchises. I lack the ability to create anything new.
That being said, here’s how I’d utterly ruin Terminator!
At first, I was thinking something along the lines of “John Connor must die” to save the franchise. From the beginning, the series has been somewhat shackled to the belief that John Connor is this mythical “chosen one” who would rally the last remnants of humanity and lead them against the machines. It’s a cool idea, but perhaps something that’s better left to the imagination. I was, to be blunt, unimpressed with the way Terminator Salvation portrayed Connor as humanity’s savior. Why was he so highly-regarded? What made him such a big damn hero as opposed to the others? Because he gave useless advice to people on the radio? Please. We only know he’s the savior of humanity because people from the future told us that he is.
And that’s what killed John Connor. More assuredly than a T-800 shooting his mother between the eyes, knowledge of Judgment Day irrevocably changed the future. It gave Sarah and John forewarning, allowed them to prepare, and set into motion a chain of events radically different than the original timeline. More terminators were sent back, people died, and John was a completely different person than he was in the original timeline when Judgment Day came around. In fact, when John destroyed Cyberdyne, he delayed the original Judgment Day and the timeline really took it in the ass. Now we’re talking about a completely different war, where Connor might not have been important to the war effort at all!
John Connor was a dead man whether Kyle Reese went back in time or not. You could argue that John would never have been born without the time paradox, but that’s the nature of a time paradox; it’s impossible to find the endpoint of a circle, and it had to start somewhere.
Here’s the real truth about John Connor, the first time around, before any robots were sent back to screw the timeline up: he singlehandedly held an assault base perimeter against a sustained, night-long attack when infiltrator terminators killed nearly everyone else on sentry duty. If not for Connor raising the alarm and holding the perimeter for hours against those insane odds, thousands of refugees might have been overrun and killed. Connor became a symbol of heroism, of courage, and of hope. His name became a rallying cry to inspire others to heroic acts, and his voice on the radio inspired fanatical loyalty and suicidal obedience.
He died about six months later.
He died when HKs plasma bombed his command post two years before Skynet even figured out time travel. Skynet didn’t even know Connor had been killed. Neither did most of the Resistance– there’s no way in hell Resistance Command would let that bit of news out.
Look. John Connor was a great warrior, and an inspiring commander. But he was just a man like any other soldier. He was a hero, no doubt, but let’s face it, he got lucky, and Command exploited his name and embellished his story to legendary proportions because the Resistance needed to boost morale. Things were looking hopeless, and Connor was just the kind of story people could latch onto. But really, it could have been anyone.
In fact, that’s the point. He could be anyone. John Connor is a name and a voice, nothing more. He’s the Uncle Sam on recruiting posters. Right now, HQ has about six John Connors running around whipping the troops into shape, leading forlorn hopes into suicide missions. John Connors are dying all the time. Your average Resistance fighter doesn’t know what he looks like; it’s not like he’s on TV. All they might have heard is that he has a scar over his eye, so when Command sends a guy over to lead them and says it’s Connor, who are they to argue?
Skynet doesn’t know what’s hitting it; it doesn’t have the creativity to think that the Resistance might have created a fictional character. It doesn’t know anything about the value of symbolism or the hope Connor inspires in people. To Skynet, this John Connor bastard is everywhere, and he has to die.
Skynet is wasting its time, chasing a phantom and wasting invaluable resources on a target it believes is pivotal to the human war effort. That suits Resistance Command just fine. The longer Skynet devotes resources to killing a dead man, playing whack-a-mole with the half-dozen Connors in the present, the more unfocused it is and unprepared when the Resistance finishes its preparations to strike its final blow.
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That was actually a pretty sweet plot, Spoony.
You know, I always thought that if a terminator war movie was to be made is probably shouldn’t have had much to do with John Conner. I mean he was the general so I thought he would have a similar role to that of commander Adama in the new Battelstar Galactica. He planned the assaults and auganised everyone but was not really involved in the action much.
I don’t think this plot would make the original two movies meaningless at all. In fact, they make them extremely ironic. In trying to stamp out this supposed Messiah, SkyNet has created its own worst enemy; John and Sarah Conner do delay Judgment Day due to their actions in T2, and from then on out, John Conner becomes uberprepaired for the upcoming war. In chasing ghosts, SkyNet has only created more problems for itself.
Question though, are we operating under the idea that there is a single time line that can “Change”, or one that diverges into multiple realities everytime something like time travel is used. I prefer the latter personally.
Your idea is way better than the plot of Salvation.
I’m thinking that would definitely piss off a lot of fans of the franchise, were it to be ‘canon’; but I think that’s plot synopsis a really good idea. It’s always interesting as to how a machine intelligence would perceive fiction and falsehood. I think it would also be interesting towards the second act of the film where SkyNet actually figures it out and starts circulating propaganda and misinformation of it’s own.
Sounds better than the standard action hero plot they went with.
I want to point out to each and every person that brings up paradoxes based on the T-101 (Arnold, though I’m not sure of the number designation) that the information he has is based solely on what he believes, or is programmed to believe. How hard is it to program a computer to lie? In T3, following Spoony’s timeline, Arnold killed the original John Conner’s wife’s new husband, or a person she knew, or any of the random John Conners running around. It thinks its mission is accomplished, but it was a fake John it killed anyways.
To the people that think a war hero dying can cause a “remember the Alamo/for Pearl Harbor” sentiment, realize its in the manner they die, and the condition of the troops hearing it. If a T-101 shoots John in the back of the head from half a mile away, its hugely demoralizing. If the troops are barely hanging on, and find that their idol has been killed, it can cause people to lose their will to fight. Troops in good situations hearing of ridiculous heroics causes that boost.
Maybe the “We stopped Judgement Day” was never true. Maybe it happened as it was meant to happen, and had already happened. Time paradoxes are screwed up, and I prefer to think of it like DBZ does. For those ignorant of DBZ, that’s when time travel creates/causes you to travel to an entirely different dimension. We/they think they’re manipulating the fourth dimension (time), but are just moving to a different yet similar plane by traveling through the fifth dimension. If that’s true then the entire write your own fate becomes true as well. John can die at any time, for any reason. He isn’t fated to do anything, just what he chooses. Heck the machines may never make an Arnold terminator. Maybe they make something else in THIS timeline.
Spoony this could work as something to throw out on a blog for discussion, and get over 9000 replies. Its that perfect “kick-in-the-pants” irony. It probably wouldn’t work too well as a movie because most people are shallow and need the main character to win. This ending would be like if in The Patriot Mel Gibson was killed off during that last battle, as he realistically would have been.
That would be a pretty awesome twist, not to be found out until the very end, though.
You have a perfect view of what Skynet should be. It’s emotionless, methodical, and doesn’t understand human social constructs or ideas. They’re anathema to it. It wants to stomp them out and create a perfect world of order and reason. It’s super smart technically speaking, but it doesn’t have any human intuition or instincts. Skynet would totally fall for the “John Connor” trap, and be completely oblivious to it.
that’s awesome.
You say these “are terrible ideas that should never be applauded” and yeah they aren’t good ideas in the “you’re so right Spoony this needs to happen” sense. To use your own words, these ideas are “fun”. I think it would be fun to see some of them put to film.
John Connor supposedly was supposed to fall in love with Katherine Bruster when they were kids, one day before the events of Terminator 2, where he kisses her in Mike Cripkee’s basement. The resistance sends the T-101 to rescue him from the T-1000. But wait, if no time travel had occurred in 1984, where Kyle went back to protect Sarah from the first T-101, then John would have never fallen in love with Katherine Bruster, who is just as important to the resistance, AS ARE THEIR CHILDREN according to the T-101 in the third Terminator film. My guess is, if Kyle had never gone back in time and Skynet had never sent an assassin back in time, then Sarah would have inevitably become some sort of female version of Ted Kizinsky, has a psychotic episode, gets pregnant, kills the father, raises John to be a great military leader, tries to blow up a computer factory and is sent to Pescadero Mental Institution. John is then left orphaned, and then adopted by Todd and his Wife. John meets Katherine Bruster in Mike Cripkee’s basement when they first kiss. Katherine’s father, who is an up and coming soldier and engineer working with private companies like Cyberdine to protect America and her interests, meets John and at first, Katherine’s dad wants John to have nothing to do with his daughter but then his foster parents die in a car crash. Through a series of events involving Katherine, her dad comes to adopt John Connor as his son because he recognizes John as being much like himself as a child. Inevitably, the defense network grid known as Skynet becomes infected with the hyrdra-worm virus, the virus and skynet become a single entity and becomes self aware. Skynet targets humanity as a threat and launches its missiles. Judgement day happens. John being raised by General Bruster learned a great deal about electronics, engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, military drones, and naturally was the one who knew all of Skynet’s weaknesses. John begins to win the war against skynet by capturing HKs, T-888s, T-101s, and even a few T-1000s, hacking them, and using them to fight skynet with its own hardware. In a desperate move, Skynet invests resources to develop Time Displacement technology. John learns about the new development and piecing together reports from soldiers in the resistance about blinding purple lights with cyborgs emerging from them out of nowhere back in 2008. In the year 2020, John Connor sees a pattern in these phenomenon and realizes that Skynet is figuring out how to send Cyborgs further and further back through time. He realizes that the only way to prevent his own assassination, and the key to destroying skynet, he has to send people and captured/converted cyborgs to protect himself and his mother in the past. He learns that skynet is going to send a terminator back through time to kill his mother so he sends his most reliable soldier to go back through time to protect her. As it just so happens. Kyle Reese father is John Connor’s father. Kyle Reese is actually a clone of a man who died during Judgement day. This man who cloned himself also, at one time, had a fling with a waitress he met the night the events of the first Terminator movie took place. Kyle Reese’s father was a scientist who worked for Cyberdyne and his research is the basis for the technology Skynet uses to grow living tissue for their Cyborgs. After Kyle Reese’s father whom he was cloned from dies in the nuclear explosion, he is adopted by survivors.
ive never liked the terminator movies, whether it was arnolds terrible acting, or the psuedo-logical time paradoxies that never had a definative explanation. its too symbolic, and as a fan of the matrix im no hater of depth and symbolism. but the terminator franchise is waaaay too specific. i mean, you have this single mother, she gives birth to a child with the initials JC, he’s the chosen one, rising up to overcome an armageddon as the savior of mankind. its almost like corporate christian brainwashing.
btw, i was really surprised to see you didnt do a g.i. joe review.
c’mon. am i gonna have to see it to experience the audacity of another live action adaption of an 80’s cartoon?! T_T
this comment is for the Warrior Public speaking thing, for some reason I couldn’t post it there, wierd, the post comment box just wouldn’t show up so….
Ok thats it, I’m starting to feel sorry for WARRIOR! I think the guy is genuinly retarded, and now I feel bad for laughing at him, HE ROBBED ME OF THE FUN OF LAUGHING AT HIM :’( but I cant stop laughing he is such an idiot, man:Whats wrong with homosexuality WARRIOR: Reality. Reality doesn’t work that way._____ ok wtf is with this wow he is so freakin dumb, (for any homophobes out there who think I’m gay for this, I’m not, I have a wonderful girlfriend, but I do support gay rights, but even if I was a homophobe, I would still laugh at that. “Reality doesn’t work that way” I guess he MEANS that with homosexuality you can’t have kids, but he doesn’t SAY that lol.
wow I almost never read ur text reviews but this bloggy thing is AMAZING!!!! you totally need to make an exploitation film of this it kicks ASS!!!! like OMFG best fanfiction EVER
Terminator V: John Connor must die. Lol
Salvation shouldve been the last movie for the franchise. i mean come on, less than 2 hours full of overused CGI crap and the plot focused on an unkown murderer by the name of marcus wright isnt terminator. i thought the original idea of how terminators got human skin around them in order to infiltrate and be unsuspected by real humans was that in the war they captured and harvested people to later kill them for their eyes and skin for the T800s (remember in T1 reese mentioned that the T600s were easy to spot for the rubber skin), but noooooooooo, McG and those amateur writers decided to include marcus instead of finishing the sequel into the prequel by john reealing to kyle that hes his musc more older son and sends him to the past to save sarah before the “AH-nold” T800, who also was sent to 1984 by skynet, terminates her.
my favorite part of the movie was DO IT, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
AAAAAAAARRRRRGH
after that it sucked when connor tried to revive marcus
Re:Matthew “you have a perfect way…”
I think you forgot a major fact that came directly from T2. Ah-nold told Sarah that Skynet learned at a geometrical pace and became self-aware, thinking that humans were Skynets enemy. Also (and this is a major drag for Salvations plot), Ah-nold also mention to John that he can learn human emotions and values, however Skynet presets the switch to read-only because as Sarah said “it doesnt want you to think too much”. My point is, Matthew, if McG knew this fact Salvation coulda have a better plot without including Mad Murderin’ Marky Marc Marcus Wright, and allowing T800 to infiltrate in the Resistance and eventually kill John Connor but not Reese because he was sent under Johns orders to protect Sarah before being Terminated by none other than the evil Ah-nold T800 who also sets out in the past to terminate both Kyle and Sarah, thus canonizing Salvation with T1
Also anyone noticed that there were no little brats that called Jonh “Daddy”? I thought he had kids with Kate Brewster…
I disagree; this would be an awesome script, and _someone_ should write it.
THAT… IS… BRILLIANT. i am not kidding at ALL when i say you should seriously contact whoever's making the new terminator movies and pitch that idea. it would make for the most fantastic final film twist ending.
THAT… IS… BRILLIANT. i am not kidding at ALL when i say you should seriously contact whoever's making the new terminator movies and pitch that idea. it would make for the most fantastic final film twist ending.
I think you misunderstand the genius in all of this, anything you might think of concerning these series, ANYTHING, is hard pressed to turn out worse that it already is, these are franchises that already hit rock bottom.
Besides, originality is highly overrated, we don't need unique, we need good.
Wierd i was thinking something similar when i originally saw Terminator 3 (lets be honest the John Connor we heard of from the future stood closer to Arnold than him, and that's till pretty far away).
But a few days ago I re watched the series because i wanted to understand where exactly should they have taken a different direction…
I realized its not that bad that he isn't really like a Vietnamese war hero who cut trough the jungle alone and took out half of the Viet Kong with his eyes closed and both hands tied back.
Actually it hit me during the beginning-ish scene in T3 where they are traveling in a van with Mrs. Connor in the back. And Johnny notices a strange coincidence about the Terminator's sudden appearance (not sure what it was exactly).
For just a second imagine if him being the chosen one was not 'simply' about being something of a war hero, if that was only a wake up call for HQ… What if his real ability was see patterns coincidences in happenings? Skynet is a computer it is programed mathematically, so to some depth every movement it makes follows a complex pattern. What if he can predict Skynets next movements even when HQ fails to do so? That would be something to fear from Skynet's side wouldn't it?
Okay, first of all, this is not a bad idea- this is a fucking BRILLIANT idea, the kind of idea that would kill a franchise instantly by alienating longtime fans while simultaneously obliterating any real sequel potential by axing the main character (presumably near the end of the film in question, unless it pulls a Psycho by introducing a new main character after Connor's demise). This is, for lack of a better term, the “Twilight Zone” ending of the Terminator franchise, the kind of ending I would expect from, say, Richard Matheson (one of my favorite authors, BTW).
Secondly, I kinda thought they should have killed John Connor in the third movie, perhaps by having him realize that he is, in some way, the result of a paradoxical causality loop that links his theoretically impossible existence with Skynet's, and so the only way to permanently destroy Skynet is to die as well, closing the loop and repairing the timeline. After all, Skynet's existence is directly responsible for Connor's birth (without Skynet, there never would have been a reason to send back Reese), and Connor's existence was one of the principle factors in Skynet's inception (the arm and the chip from T2 opening the doors to new avenues of research for Cyberdyne). They're both temporal anomolies! I read a great fan script (I usually don't, but it was a good one) that theorized that it was mankind experimenting with time travel in the 2000s that accidentally created the temporal loophole that allowed Skynet and Connor to exist in the first place, and I think it's a clever, logical explanation for what is essentially just a continuity nightmare. The script was called Tempest: Terminator 3, and if you ever get a chance to read it, I recommend it highly (it also featured Arnold as Skynet itself, downloaded into a Terminator endo and sent into the past, where he dresses in Armani and drives a Ferrari. He later trades up for a general's uniform and a humvee, har har).
Finally, I don't know if anyone mantioned this (I didn't read all the comments), but the original ending to Terminator: Salvation was kinda similar to this, in a way. Unfortunately, it was infinitely less plausible: Connor dies after having a metal pike driven through his chest (which you'd think would be a given), but everyone knows that his name and legacy are invaluable to the Resistance… so they GRAFT HIS FACE onto Marcus Wright, and Marcus becomes the new John Connor. This idea was unbelievably stupid, not least because because Sam Worthington's bone structure is so vastly different from Christian Bale's, but at least it showed a spark of originality- and it even explained why Marcus, not John, is clearly the main character in that movie! But I guess the idea was a little too extreme for Warner Bros., so they dumped it in favor of guerilla heart surgery… which, honestly, I can't decide which one's more implausible.
Okay, first of all, this is not a bad idea- this is a fucking BRILLIANT idea, the kind of idea that would kill a franchise instantly by alienating longtime fans while simultaneously obliterating any real sequel potential by axing the main character (presumably near the end of the film in question, unless it pulls a Psycho by introducing a new main character after Connor’s demise). This is, for lack of a better term, the “Twilight Zone” ending of the Terminator franchise, the kind of ending I would expect from, say, Richard Matheson (one of my favorite authors, BTW).
Secondly, I kinda thought they should have killed John Connor in the third movie, perhaps by having him realize that he is, in some way, the result of a paradoxical causality loop that links his theoretically impossible existence with Skynet’s, and so the only way to permanently destroy Skynet is to die as well, closing the loop and repairing the timeline. After all, Skynet’s existence is directly responsible for Connor’s birth (without Skynet, there never would have been a reason to send back Reese), and Connor’s existence was one of the principle factors in Skynet’s inception (the arm and the chip from T2 opening the doors to new avenues of research for Cyberdyne). They’re both temporal anomolies! I read a great fan script (I usually don’t, but it was a good one) that theorized that it was mankind experimenting with time travel in the 2000s that accidentally created the temporal loophole that allowed Skynet and Connor to exist in the first place, and I think it’s a clever, logical explanation for what is essentially just a continuity nightmare. The script was called Tempest: Terminator 3, and if you ever get a chance to read it, I recommend it highly (it also featured Arnold as Skynet itself, downloaded into a Terminator endo and sent into the past, where he dresses in Armani and drives a Ferrari. He later trades up for a general’s uniform and a humvee, har har).
Finally, I don’t know if anyone mantioned this (I didn’t read all the comments), but the original ending to Terminator: Salvation was kinda similar to this, in a way. Unfortunately, it was infinitely less plausible: Connor dies after having a metal pike driven through his chest (which you’d think would be a given), but everyone knows that his name and legacy are invaluable to the Resistance… so they GRAFT HIS FACE onto Marcus Wright, and Marcus becomes the new John Connor. This idea was unbelievably stupid, not least because because Sam Worthington’s bone structure is so vastly different from Christian Bale’s, but at least it showed a spark of originality- and it even explained why Marcus, not John, is clearly the main character in that movie! But I guess the idea was a little too extreme for Warner Bros., so they dumped it in favor of guerilla heart surgery… which, honestly, I can’t decide which one’s more implausible.
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