Seriously?

[Whateverist]

Are there no new ideas?

Yeah, that's a rhetorical question.

And a timeless one.

[Alex K]

Are there no new ideas?

Yeah, that's a rhetorical question.

And a timeless one.

Indeed, a question which goes to the very heart of the metaphysical criticism of the Platonic theory of forms.

[Aractus]

Okay, so I thought I'd recap and put out some ideas on the plot. I read this page, I didn't bother reading any others, and I think the official trailer has revealed the entire plot of the film. Spoilers for the existing Terminator films follow.

Some of the shots look like shit. The missile view from space looks completely stupid. Reese looks far too buff, I said that before. They don't have time in the future to spend 12 hours a day in the gym. Furthermore, just in terms of continuity, Michael Biehn's Reese looked nothing like that. Sometime after Reese has been sent back, John then sends yet another T-800 model CSM-101 terminator. This was the plot of both T2 and T3, so I'm not really happy to see it done again. He's also aged. This is possible because in the original script of T1 it's made clear that the organics are a living organism in and of themselves, and the skin is obviously not the only organ, it has the other required internal organs to keep the skin healthy and living, thus requiring the terminator to eat, and meaning that the skin will age in the normal way (or perhaps faster than humans would).

The problem with this storyline is never-ending. So the terminator has been sent back by John in the future - either sometime much later than 2029 AD, or more likely send back to sometime much earlier than 1984. Perhaps sky-net sent yet another Terminator back, this time to kill Sarah Conner when she was a newborn, and following this story perhaps the Terminator carried out its mission and killed Sarah's entire family, and she's then spent the next 19 years (her age in 1984) living with the Terminator John sent her. Let's call this one "Sarah's Terminator". This of course also raises the question of how does the T-800 service itself and still remain in its skin? In the future we see a lot of T800's that have had their skins removed, and this could be because they needed servicing, or because their organic organism died or was irreparably damaged. So how has Sarah's Terminator managed to keep its skin on for 19 years?

Somehow Sarah's Terminator knows the exact time and location of where the first Terminator sent by sky-net will materialise. How? No one ever documented the exact location, no one in the first movie saw him materialise. He then confronts this Terminator and kills him - with a shotgun. Why is he using a shotgun?? Surely he should use a weapon that can penetrate the T-800's skull and destroy the CPU? Next we see the T-1000 sent back by sky-net, presumably this part of the film takes place in c. 1994 when T2 takes place. Sarah shoots at it with a handgun - again why are they so ill-prepared? Surely their armory should be stocked with more suitable weapons?

Now I have a grave feeling that the T1000 actually materialises in 1984 instead of 1994. When the original T-1000 materialised in 1994 he kills a police officer and assumes his identity. This T1000 is dressed as a police officer, so we assume it's the same one, however Sarah seems to shoot at him when she finds Reese for the first time, and that is in 1984. The alternate explanation is that Reese himself actually materialises in 1994 and that would explain why Sarah's Terminator's hair goes from brown to grey in the course of the film. But then it wouldn't explain why we never see a young John Connor.

So let's re-cap, and put this all together. We don't know if the movie proper takes place in 1984 or in 1994. We do know that somewhere around the start of the film Sarah's Terminator comes in and kills the original T-800 sent to kill Sarah, thus erasing the original timeline. We also know from the trailer that at some point they are facing 3 T-800's at the same time which suggests that sky-net has sent back 3 or more T-800s, probably other than CSM-101, to kill Sarah and Kyle. We know from the comments made on the page I linked to that apparently the villain is not sky-net. Sky-net also sends the T-1000, and presumably John sends another young T-800 as these are the events from T2. Sarah and Reese are trying to prevent judgement day from ever happening, which is the story line from T2 that was already rehashed horribly in T3.

So what are the negatives? 1. There's an aging terminator, yet another that John has sent back. 2. Sarah absolutely hates Terminators in T2 and its central to the entire story, having her with a Terminator protector pisses all over this legacy. 3. John can no longer be alive in the future. Yes this was also cheated in Back to the Future, but remember that you release millions of sperm when you have intercourse, and by simply disrupting the timeline, even if they have sex on the exact same day the chances of producing the same offspring are 1 in several million at best. And of course, if they don't have sex within the 40hr window of the month when the female is fertile, there will be no offsrping of Reese at all. Assuming of course that Reese still dies in the course of the film. 4. In the original film Reese's first words to Sarah, after shooting the T-800 with a shotgun, are "come with me if you want to live". Having her say that to him while shooting at a T-1000 pisses all over this legacy. If she's never heard him say it how does she know to say it? 5. The film takes place in the past, again, and not in the future. 6. There are way too many terminators in the past - at least seven - Sarah's Terminator, the original from T1, the T-1000 from T2, the T-800 John sends from T2, and the three we see them facing later in the trailer. 7. The plot of trying to stop judgement day has already been done twice.