>> (…) and it pinpoints one my biggest problems with the movie, namely “That is, stuff happens because it’s supposed to happen, not because anybody makes any choices.” (…)
strange, but i don’t really have a problem with that – not in this context. whether there’s free will is an ages old debate, and the series could be seen as an illustration of that, humans desperately fighting for the free will idea against a mechanistic (!), deterministic world personalized by skynet. (heh, skynet, the DEterminator…)
in other stories taking away the choices from the characters is a highly risky, boredom and frustration inducing approach, but here it somehow seems to fit. maybe it’s about sarah connor being wrong all the way: there’s fate, and just fate – you’re just a cog in the great machine and nothing you ever do can go against the machine. everything’s happening according to plan, even the mistakes and the apparently random events. you may fool yourself into believing otherwise… but even that’s how it should be.
quite bleak, it is – yet you can view the terminator series from this pov too.
were i the writer / designer of the series i’d play on this in the sequels to come (if there’s gonna be any.) i’d reveal that skynet made its “mistakes” on purpose (not killing john and kyle -> skynet knows that without kyle traveling back in time its own existence would not be possible and so on), that skynet was established by a future human / demihuman / ai / et intelligence or government capable of time travel for its own purposes etc. (it would be quite amazing to see an official terminator – matrix mashup too, where the time-travel thing could be solved blatantly easily.)
okay, i’ll stop rambling, sorry. :)
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