From: gharris@jade.tufts.edu (George W. Harris)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: TERMINATOR II
Date: 24 Jul 92 03:18:22 GMT
Organization: Tufts University - Medford, MA
Originator: gharris@jade.tufts.edu

In article <64176@hydra.gatech.EDU> ccoprdj@prism.gatech.EDU (Jorge Diaz) writes:
>In article <76425@ut-emx.uucp> gdavis@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Grant R. Davis) writes:
>
>>If Terminator 2 was a bad sequel, then what could have possibly been a *good*
>>sequel? Do you have any *constructive* criticism?
>
>Well, for starters, they could have explained why oh why the T1000 was able
>to go back in time in a machine that only allows living things to pass
>through.

	"I don't know tech stuff."

	The only source for our info on the time machine is a grunt without
the background to understand it.  Maybe he got it wrong.

	Alternatively, maybe they coated the thing with yeast.  Not a big deal.

>Now, in any other movie, I would have just let that slide.  No big deal.
>But this is the sequel to Terminator, which is almost a perfect movie,
>and in that movie they paid so much attention to these little details
>that I could *not* suspend disbelief in the sequel.

	At the beginning of the fantastic sequence where the terminator takes
out the precinct house, the clerical cop has lights shining in his face, and
looks up.  Then we switch to the terminator driving a car into the building
with the lights *turned off*.  This was a much more jarring flaw than any in
the second movie, and made one really aware that it was a movie.

>Then there's the T1000.  It's a really neat idea, and it looks great on
>the screen, but I don't see it happening.  Take *any* material.  At
>a specific temp, pressure, etc, it will be in one state of matter.
>Not two.  Yet this thing constantly changed it state of matter regardless
>of the temp, pressure, etc.

	You should look for some of the literature on nanotechnology.  Then you
might sing a different tune.

>Then there's Sarah Connor.  She goes on and on about how people like
>(what's his name, the guy that works for CyberDyne?) can't understand
>anything about life, that all they know about is death, and that "do
>you know what it's like to have a child, living inside you, growing,"
>etc etc ad nauseum.  Yet not 10 minutes ago she tried to blow the
>guy away!  Why not just walk into the guy's house, and show him, and
>explain?  That's what they ended up doing anyway!

	Because she's had an extraordinarily stressful life, and like most peo-
ple she isn't entirely rational.  Also, it was *dramaticly* important for her
to understand (not just say) that you can't go around killing people.  Only 
through attempting to rationalize to herself that killing an innocent man is
okay, and failing, can this be done.  She thinks it is the best way, but she
still can't do it.  Her emotions outweigh her logic, which is what she com-
plains about these men being deficient with regard to (or something like that).

>Then there's the fact that she can't accept the Terminator being on
>their side (not until the very end).  Why?  Someone who's been training
>for war as long as she supposedly has knows that the Terminator isn't
>the problem.  Sure, so one killed the father of her child and the only
>man she's ever loved.  But that's not a reason to hate/distrust the
>Terminator.  It's a tool.  It does what it's programmed to do.  Like a
>gun.  Had Reese been shot, I'm sure she would still own a lot of guns.
>I mean, this woman has a f**king arsenal, including a minigun, and yet
>she can't see that the Terminator is just another weapon, to be used
>by either side?  It's a crock.

	Sure, she's just a calm, cool rational woman who isn't at all affected
by the fact that this *person* (it looks like a person, so that's how your 
emotions react to it) repeatedly tried to kill her in an extraordinarily ruth-
less manner ten years ago.  Right.

>Then, the fact that by destroying the building and the files, they
>destroy the project and Skynet doesn't get built.  Can you say
>"off-site backups"?  I knew you could.  They have backups of all their
>info stored away in a vault somewhere.  *Nothing* has changed.  The
>program can continue, minus one member (OK, so he was the leader.  He's
>not unreplacable).
>When you're that close to a breakthrough, you don't just scrap the
>program.

	Two problems here:  you are assuming that they have off-site back-ups
and that responsibilities are well-distributed as in a normal research project.
However, since the research is based on materials illegally obtained (removed
from the scene of a crime) and very unusual, these assumptions are not neces-
sarily valid.  Second, it is stated that *Sarah* believes Judgment Day will not
come.  This doesn't necessarily mean anything (although dramaticly it does).

>Jorge Diaz                       | "You're outmanned, you're outgunned, you're
>ccoprdj@prism.gatech.edu         |      -- Riker and Worf   "Peak Performance"
--
"If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they taste more like
prunes than rhubarb does."              -Groucho Marx 

gharris@jade.tufts.edu          George Harris, Tufts Univ. Dept. of Mathematics
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies