Posted by Lokileby at 91.mycybernet.speede.com on December 29, 2003 at 10:48:18:
In Reply to: Question about the original Terminator... posted by Kiss It on December 29, 2003 at 01:38:45:
: If John sent his father back in time to protect his mother, and his father looked like he was in his mid-thirties, and the only way John was concieved was when his father from the future fucked his mother from the past, there would be no John in the future to send anyone back to create him if he hadn't have already been born.
: I'm confused about this. Please explain a bit if you can.
The problem with this idea is simply that it assumes time is cyclical. If you assume instead time is linear, having Reese jump back in the timeline and make some babies would only change the future and not the past. Thus once this all happened the future changed from the point where Reese jumped back. Really its just like any two people having sex and creating a life, only it just happens to be that this guy is from the future.
The problem is that time in these Terminator movies (I haven't seen the third) is that it seems to assume some characteristics of linear time and some of cyclical time.
I hope that made sense. If not the part below will explain it in another way. Well really it will just show how difficult it is to bend the mind around time manipulation.
The perspective of the person thinking about this is where the real question lies. Looking at it from the present day (or the time when the baby making happened) its not all that confusing. Looking at it from the perspective of the future (or when the war between man and machine happens) it is much more confusing. It is much easier to grasp someone coming from the future to change our future. It is far more difficult to grasp someone from the present going back to the past and changing it so that our present is different. And the latter is how you seem to be looking at it.