Plotholes, Inconsistencies and things that just don't seem right or make sense in movies (May Contain Spoilers)
Submitted by Oedipus on Tue, 01/03/2006 - 03:11
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- On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969): When James Bond meets Ernst Stavro Blofeld, neither man recognizes the other, despite a previous confrontation in 1967's You Only Live Twice.
- Superman II (1980): Superman mysteriously regains his powers without explanation even though his mother told him the process was irreversible. No explanation is given due to scenes involving Marlon Brando being cut. When Lex Luthor Takes the Three Super villains from Krypton to Superman's Fortress of Solitude, Superman teleports around the room confusing the villains, during this time Superman says to Lois Lane, "I used to play this game in school but I was never any good at it." Krypton exploded when he was a baby and he was sent to earth where he was raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent in Smallville, which is where he went to school. So, who was he playing this teleporting game with at school?
- Superman III (1983): On his way to Smallville for his class reunion, Clark Kent and Jimmy Olson, come across a building on fire when their bus has to stop. Clark changes into Superman to help, he enters the building and meets a man who tells him that if the acid reaches a certain temperature, it will cause a cloud of smoke that could eat through anything it touches. He tells the man he has to leave but the man insists on staying to look after the acid so Superman leaves him. When Superman leaves the building he tells one of the firemen that they have to put the fire out because of the acid situation. They lose water pressure and tell Superman that the nearest water supply is a lake 5 miles away. Superman flies to the lake, blows the lake with his super breath, freezing it. He takes the top layer of the lake back to the fire, drops it from above and when the ice heats up, it melts causing the water to fall like rain, putting the fire out. All of that was unnecessary because all Superman had to do was blow the fire out with his super breath instead of freezing a lake with it. Also, Superman has trouble breathing inside the "bubble" the supercomputer covers him with, but he can still fly in space.
- The Terminator (1984): Kyle Reese is sent back in time by his son (John Connor) to protect his mother (Sarah Connor) from the Terminator. We don't find out until later in the movie that Kyle Reese is John Connor's father. It would be impossible for his grown son to send him back in time, to save his mother. For John Connor to have been born and living at that time, he must have had a father, if Kyle Reese was his father, he would have to have been from Sarah Connor's time or sent back in time earlier by someone else.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992): After Benny becomes a vampire, he pays Oliver a visit and you can see his reflection in the glass as he is talking to Oliver (A Vampire should not have a reflection).
- Speed (1994): Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) says, "It took me two years to set up that elevator job". But it only took him two days to set up one city bus that he knew would be along the express route the next day while also being able to know Officer Jack Traven's (Keanu Reeves) daily rituals so he can set up another bus which will blow up and then coast a block and a half right in front of a pay phone. Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) also within that time is able to cut a whole in the cement on a busy street corner, under a trash can without anyone noticing.
- Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000): Equipment put into stores could not possibly have survived over 1000 years on an alien-occupied earth, with all resources plundered. In the remains of Denver, ruined for 1000 years, Johnnie finds books in good condition despite being in the open air, cars with still-pressurized tires and wrecked buildings with completely intact plate glass windows. Jet fuel has a shelf life of about four years. A fully-fueled jet found after 1,000 years wouldn't even be able to start, much less take off and fly. Much is made of the alleged inability of "Man-Animals" to mine, yet there is a scene in which many of them are seen operating a forge, which requires know-how exceeding the simple act of digging for gold.
- Planet of the Apes (2001): At the end of the movie, astronaut Leo Davidson takes off in a spaceship and flies into an electromagnetic storm, with hopes of returning to Earth in the 21st century. While he's in the storm we can see his chronometer spinning backward, and he does eventually crash-land on Earth—in Washington, D.C. Only now, the Earth is ruled by apes too and in place of the Lincoln Memorial, is a monument dedicated to Gen. Thade, for "saving the Earth for all apekind". But Davidson has just traveled across the universe and time-warped centuries into the past. … So, how can Thade have already conquered Earth for the apes when he hasn't even been born on the ape planet yet. Apes are seen driving cars in the past when they don't even have simple motors in the future. The video history of the crashed USAF ship makes it clear that the planet is uninhabited when they landed, the race of humans could have developed from the humans that were on board, the race of Apes could have developed from the apes that were on board but where did the horses come from?
- Million Dollar Baby (2004): The movie is narrated by Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris (Morgan Freeman) and he narrated scenes that his character couldn't have possibly known about because he wasn't there. Most notably, at the end of the movie when he says that "Frankie gave her a single shot, it was enough adrenaline to do the job many times over." Even though, we see that he is at the hospital when Frankie walks out, he is not in the room with Frankie when he gives her the shot and could'nt have known how many shots he gave her or how much adrenaline was in the shot.
Author Comments:
...More to come...
Actually, the time travel logic in The Terminator (and T2) makes perfect sense. The idea is that time is a straight, unbendable line which cannot be changed. Who was John Connor's father? It was, has, and will always be Kyle Reese. This is due to the universe having built-in "Dead Grandpa" paradox protection.
Strange as it may sound, this all makes more sense than the time travel logic in the Back to the Future movies where, contrary to all of Doc Brown's hand wringing about universe destroying paradoxes, time seems to be as straight as a Slinky.
If Kyle Reese was John Connor's father, he couldn't have been sent back in time by John Connor to meet his mother before he was born. The problem with this logic isn't that Kyle Reese is John Connor's father but that John Connor is the one that sent him back in time in the first place.
I may be missing the points but I think that it's very possible for John Connor to send his once (and future) dad back in time. Pretend that Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese were high school sweethearts who lost touch with each other. Wait about forty years and, one machine-made apocalypse later, John Connor could meet Kyle Reese and wish that he had grown up with a dad like him. John could drop subtle hints such as, "My mom would've really liked you before she was institutionalized and Los Angeles was reduced to a smoking ruin. She was really something."
Reese would probably respond with, "There's no way I'm getting involved with some 80 year-old with a questionable grip on reality no matter how hot a picture you show me... Hey! She used to look like a girlfriend I had in high school. If only there was some way for me to have met her when she was younger... Oh! okay. I'll travel back through time to get a date."
Cut to L.A. in 1984 where Sarah Conner meets a guy who reminds her of an old boyfriend except that he's like, way ancient, fer sure, fer sure. But there is the added bonus that he saves her from a homicidal cyber-robot-weightlifter-Governor-from-the-future. So they tastefully make love montage-style with some brief toplessness to go with the hopelessness and nine months later the future leader of the resistance is born who will never get to meet his biological father until the machines take over. But when he (John) does meet him (Kyle) he (John) knows exactly who he (Kyle) is because his mother (Sarah) has told him (John) all about him (Kyle.)
The only problem now is that Kyle Reese would be too old to be played by the toothsome and handsome Michael Biehn so let's make him younger than John Connor, just gullible enough to fall in love with a Polaroid and a stranger to Sarah Connor. Besides, we all know that men in their seventies never get to sleep with the hotties in their twenties. Unless they are named Sean Connery, Woody Allen, Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, Woody Allen again, Harrison Ford, Bill Murray, Woody Allen again, Roger Moore, Woody Allen, Abe Vigoda, Woody Allen, Anthony Quinn, Woody Allen....
One could, in fact, argue that all of this was imperative and that John Connor was actually conducting auditions for his dad. He knew his mother's bizarre rantings were all coming true. So why not the crazy story about his "warrior/saviour father from the future"? Logic (if such a thing exists in discussions of time travel) says that John Connor had to send somebody back in time with the skills to both rescue and impregnate his mother... there's a lot of overlap in those job requirements. If John Connor didn't do this (or if he sent Bill Paxton or someone of his ilk back in time) then John Connor would never have been born...
But then there would have been no reason to send the Ahnuld back in time in the first place, no Terminator weapons technology development, no Skynet and no Kindergarten Cop. Damn you, John Connor, damn you to hell.
There are many fabulous Star Trek episodes which mess with time travel (and the huge book that Paramount keeps of the "history" of the Roddenberry-verse.)
I still don't think it's possible. Not that it's not possible for Kyle Reese to be his father, if he was from Sarah Connor's own time and she met him there or if someone other than John Connor sent him back in time and he met her. But if John Connor sent Kyle Reese back in time, to meet and impregnate his mother, he would change history, he wouldn't be who he is. What if the child between Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese had been a girl and she never had any other children? John Connor would have terminated himself and Arnold would have been out of a job.
You forgot Hugh Hefner in your list of men in their seventies who get to sleep with the hotties in their twenties.
I think that John Connor's history is his destiny. If his mom has a girl then he doesn't even begin to exist and therefore has very little hope of finding a father to send back through time. Since John Connor does exist then that means that Sarah had a boy, end of story, beginning of sequel. So John Connor has the "choice" of either trying to find the World's Best Dad (and a mug to go with him) or of picking just any schlump and risking a Michael-J.-Fox-plays-guitar meltdown... in which case Sarah doesn't have a boy because there was no boy to grow up into the man who'd send his dad back in time that lived in the house that Jack built.
It's like "A Sound of Thunder" (the Ray Bradbury story and not that regrettable movie) or Homer's toaster. Going back in time can change things... but not so much that you cease to exist because then you wouldn't go back in time in the first (second? last?) place. STV has a great episode about this, "The Year of Hell."
I'm praying that the Ahnuld is out of a job soon.
Hugh Hefner gets to sleep with teenage employees... brrr, that is so creepy.
If only we had a time machine for that regrettable movie.
Through the magic of time travel I am already laughing about lbangs' "destiny-density" quip... I mean, what?
No, no, no. John Connor's history is his density, you silly person...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs (who may be getting his sci fi films mixed up, but I don't think so...)
When John Connor met Kyle Reese in the future, he had to have already had a father, otherwise he wouldn't have been born in the first place, if he sends Kyle Reese back in time to become his father, he would then change who he has become. A child receives DNA, certain genes from each of his parents, by sending Kyle Reese back in time to become his father, he would change his DNA and the same result as if their child had been a girl, John Connor would not exist, not the same John Connor who sent Kyle Reese back in time anyway. If He had already become the leader who was to save the earth from the machines, why would he send someone back in time to alter who he is?
A better explanation would be that John Connor never existed in the first place. Kyle Reese sent himself back in time or had someone do it for him with the sole purpose of fathering a child who would grow into a man who would save the earth from the machines. Sarah Connor was chosen for whatever reason before he went back in time. The Terminator was sent back to terminate Sarah Connor to keep this union from taking place. Kyle Reese came up with the name John Connor, to give Sarah an explanation of how he got there and why he's there, the stories he told her about John Connor were all made up to tell her how important this child would be and so that she would help John become this person. Sarah named her unborn child John Connor because Kyle told her that was his name in the future. She knew Kyle was his father so why not name him John Reese? The only problem with this is that Kyle Reese could not have known that their child would been a boy.
"Going back in time can change things... but not so much that you cease to exist because then you wouldn't go back in time in the first (second? last?) place."
By this logic, (and I'm not saying it's bad logic) the Terminator could not have terminated Sarah Connor because if he had, John Connor would not have existed, therefore Kyle Reese would never have been sent back in time and there would be no reason for the terminator to be sent back in time either. If there's no reason for them to be sent back in time, then Sarah Conner would never be terminated anyway. Unless John Conner never existed and Kyle Reese went back in time on his own to father a child, like I said above, and the terminator was sent back to stop it.
See, I don't think that John Connor's DNA changes at all because Kyle Reese is already his father. It is as if Sarah Connor raised her son as a single mom and, when little Johnnie asked the inevitable questions about his dad, she gave him a general description. She listed what his father was wearing. She gave little Johnnie his dad's Social Security number. She went down to the (reconstructed) police station and had a sketch artist work up a portrait...
It is as if she sent little Johnnie down to the pub on the corner to bring his father home so that he could knock her up and give birth to little Johnnie so that he could go down to the pub...
She told John his dad's name. Kyle Reese.
That's actually what I find most interesting. Sarah (in all probability) tells John his dad's name. It seems that Reese had no idea that he was John's father so evidently John didn't tell him when he sent Reese back in time. This means that John couldn't tell Reese that he (Reese) was his (John's) dad. That I find much more touching than being a single mom raising a boy in the pre-apocalyptic New World whose father had died saving her from an unstoppable killing machine from the future... as touching as that is. And haven't we all been there?
I can just imagine the great leader and last hope of mankind, John Connor, meeting a young man of strength and character. A young man who reminds him of himself in so many ways. Looks, intelligence, passion, idealism; John Connor sees much of himself in this younger man. John Connor remembers being that young, vibrant, hopeful and confident when he was just a boy himself.
And then the young man tells him his name. Kyle Reese.
Did John Connor have to cry in silence in the dark? Did he try to spend what time he could with Kyle? Moments snatched here and there in the midst of a deadly war against the machines. When did he give Kyle the picture of Sarah? Was that the only picture he had of his mother? Was that enough to make Kyle come back through time for Sarah? Kyle tells her that "I came back for you." Or did Kyle do it for his son? John Connor was a man he looked up to, a man he called "a great leader."
Was John Connor a great leader when he tried to put off sending his father back in time for as long as he dared? Knowing that every new day brought with it danger; danger that Kyle would be killed and that John would never have existed in the first place. Did John Connor try to teach Kyle Reese the skills that would help to save his mother Did he thank him for saving his mom? Did John Connor try to make his dad, the young Kyle Reese, proud of him?
Did John Connor get to tell his father that he loved him?
I would love to see a Terminator sequel that dealt with this dynamic, paradox, conflict, conundrum, whatever you call it. Then again I'd probably like to see any movie with the uber-cool Michael Biehn and without the Ahnuld.
I think it unlikely that Reese came up with a combination rescue/sperm donor strategy on his own. I think it much more likely that John Connor sent Reese back in time to insure that both he and the resistance survived. If I'm remembering it correctly: the Ahnuld was sent back in time "first" according to 21st century standards and chronology. Reese is then sent back to the "same" time... approximately, to counter this attack.
Wasn't Reese obsessed with the date when he first shows up? So not only is John Connor trying to save his own existence he is also tring not to smash up the time line... otherwise why not send Reese back to Sarah's days in high school? Well, aside from the age of consent issues.
Now we're moving from impossible to impossible and unnecessary. If Kyle Reese is John Connor's father when he meets him, he would be at least 20 years older than John, not a young man. He would have had to be John's father from the beginning which means that he would have to have met Sarah Connor in her own time or as I stated in another post be sent back in time earlier by someone else.
"It is as if she sent little Johnnie down to the pub on the corner to bring his father home so that he could knock her up and give birth to little Johnnie so that he could go down to the pub..."
That is not only impossible but also unnecessary. Why would he need to send him back to do something that he's already done? If John Connor is already born, why would he need to send someone back to become his father. If Kyle Reese was already his father, there would be no need. If he sent Kyle Reese back to become his father because he was looking for the world's best dad, (which I believe is what you said in one of your previous posts.) his DNA would change (as I said in a previous post.) because Kyle Reese wasn't his original father and it would change who he is.
"I think it unlikely that Reese came up with a combination rescue/sperm donor strategy on his own. I think it much more likely that John Connor sent Reese back in time to insure that both he and the resistance survived. If I'm remembering it correctly: the Ahnuld was sent back in time "first" according to 21st century standards and chronology. Reese is then sent back to the "same" time... approximately, to counter this attack.
Wasn't Reese obsessed with the date when he first shows up? So not only is John Connor trying to save his own existence he is also tring not to smash up the time line... otherwise why not send Reese back to Sarah's days in high school? Well, aside from the age of consent issues."
I'm not saying that he came up with the idea on his own or even that that is what happened but a possibility. Maybe they had a counsel of some sort like the one in the movie Trancers that sent Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) back in time and they collectively came up with the idea and chose Kyle Reese for the mission. The bad guys (who ever was in control of the machines) found out about the plan and sent the Terminator back in time ahead of Kyle Reese much like the Trancers were sent back in time ahead of Jack Deth in Trancers to stop the misiion.
Now wait a minute. Or, go back in time 60 minutes and wait lightly more than an hour... or until just after Andy Rooney.
Once we pretend that time travel is possible then Kyle does not have to be older than John. Let's say that Sarah was born in 1960 and two dozen years later a murderous two-tonne Teutonic cyborg will show up at her door. And when she's sixteen she'll get a pony and celebrate America's bicenntenial.
But that's neither here nor there. Let's pretend that Kyle Reese was born one hundred years before that during the American cenntenial. That's 1876 for those of you keeping score at home. Humour me.
So John Connor is born in 1985 and sometime after he turns twenty-one all heck breaks loose with those uppity machines and like, om my gawd, it's the apocalypse, fer sure, fer sure. Which reminds me: John's twenty-first birthday is coming up soon. Let's all chip in for a gift. Gotta luuv the "chip in."
So John becomes leader of the Human Resistance. Shortly after the American semiquincentenary (I think it's Latin) things go very badly for the machines. Skynet begins to think outside the box (some assembly required.) The year 2027 rolls around and they send the once and future Governor back in time to grope women and prevent John Connor from ever being born.
And a fine plan it was... or is... or will be. Except that the Human Resistance learns of this sneak attack... or sneaked attack. The head of the HR Dept looks around for some Michael Biehn-type to stop that nonsense. So the machines send the Ahnuld back in time and at the same time (2027) the humans send Kyle Reese back to the same time... give or take a week. (Which would be 1984, let's synchronize our watches.)
So how did Kyle Reese (b. 1876) get there?.. or then? Grab a #2 pencil and some paper.
Well. When young Kyle turns twenty-one (1876 + 21 = 1897) he invites Mark Twain to his birthday party. Twain, who didn't realize that we were bringing gifts, ducks behind a newly painted fence and grabs a time machine built by the nigger Jim. That gift was the hit of the party and Kyle decides that he wants to be sent back in time. But first he wants some birthday cake. While blowing out the candles nobody notices a Connecticut Yankee slip out the back to the Way-Back machine.
Slipping some snausages to Mr. Peabody the impatient idiot from Hartford sends himself back to the time of King Arthur. When he does this he fiddled with the knobs and dials or something and the time machine is now (and then) set to send the next person 130 years into the future... 2027. (1897 + 130 = 2027... now where have I heard that number before?) The Connecticut Yankee went on to become a concert promoter with a weekly King Arthur Flour Hour radio show and is never heard from again.
Kyle, now full of cake, gets into the machine and much to his surprise is sent to a future straight out of the mind of Harlan Ellison. Kyle is now white, twenty-one and subject to a law suit brought by a ninety-three year old Ellison. In the world of 2027 things pretty much suck for young Kyle (age 21) and for old John (age 42... 42 = 2027 - 1985) but for the Ahnuld the future's so bright he's gotta wear shades. So when John (a man twice Kyle's age) offers Kyle (a man half John's age) a one-way ticket into the past Kyle leaps at this quantum theory of time travel. There's just one hitch...
Kyle must kill Donald Fagen.
And he must rescue Sarah Connor from a murderous two-tonne Teutonic cyborg. Remember him? I told you to get a pencil.
So Kyle Reese is sent back to the world of nineteen eighty-four. No, not the Orwellian world of Big Brother & the Holding Company. This 1984 is a quarter century after the Summer of '69 ('69 + 25 = 1984.) Which reminds me: Kill Bryan Adams, too. No, not the whiny alt. country artist who... on second thought: Yes, that guy. But before Kyle can start murdering popular singers throughout the decades he meets, rescues, impregnates and rescues Sarah Connor. Then he dies. R.I.P. Kyle Reese (b. 1876 - d. 1984)
And that, children, is why we have Steely Dan reunion tours today. Who must now kill the Adamses and, as long as we're taking suggestions, Kenny G? No, not the British satirical interviewer who... on second thought: Yes, that guy. Who must do all of this murdering? Great Scott! It will be Doc Brown and his DeLorean of Death.
Hopefully that made sense. It has to. Just count the pop culture references.
So , theoretically, Kyle could be born in 1876, meet John (age 42) when he (Kyle) was barely legal to drink and then become a deadbeat dad in the '80s. My question now is: Why couldn't Kyle Reese be born today? He'd be twenty-one when 2027 rolled around (2006 + 21 = 2027) and he wouldn't have to deal with President Hayes, President Bush or Governor the Ahnuld. No, not the one who vomited into the lap of Prime Minister Miyazawa. This President Bush is the one who chokes on pretzels.
In short (with no pop culture references) you do not have to be older than your dad when you meet him if he is going to send you back in time to get mum all preggers. Don't make me sing "I'm My Own Grandpa" to you (okay, one pop culture reference.)
Am I only making sense in my own mind? Well then let's party like it's 1999.
I must tell you that "Jack Deth" is a hugely cool name. Although I imagine that his son Earl Lee might not share my opinion.
I gave in my previous posts, two possibilities on how Kyle Reese could be John Connor's father.
1. Kyle Reese would have to be from Sarah Connor's own time and become John's father in that timeline (no time travel needed for this option). For this option Kyle would have to be older than John when they met in the future.
2. Someone else sent Kyle Reese back in time earlier (before John), at which point he met Sarah Connor, and became John's father, which is the same thing you just said only you made Kyle Reese the star of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and still somehow managed to make it necessary for John to send his father back in time to become his father.
The point that I've been trying to make is that John does not need to send his father back in time to become his father. He's already his father, so what's the point of sending him back to do it again, it's done already?
Oh, wow, 0dysseus, you know I really enjoy your posts, but this one is the best I have read till now. I laughed myself under the desk. Delicious.
BTW, the discussion about The Terminator is pretty interesting.
Thank you. Thank you so much for the kind words. While you're down there could you round up the dust bunnies?.. and I think I dropped a mint back there. I appreciate the encouragement and I'm glad that it turned out funny and coherent. If forced to pick I choose funny.
Time travel is neat.
nice observations... but I must say the million dollar baby one, although true is pretty irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. It's a third person narration, whether that person be a character in the story or not the fact that he knows all isn't something that seems out of place, in fact it's sort of the point. If the narrator were the main character it might be different but third person is third person.
Million Dollar Baby is a great movie and the narration doesn't hurt it at all, it's just an observation like you said. To me, what makes it seem out of place is at the end when we find out that the narration is a letter that Eddie wrote to Frankie's daughter, telling her what kind of a man her father was, he's telling her things he couldn't have known. But it's still a great movie.
"No fate."
"There is no fate but what we make."
The philosophy of the Terminator movies is Existentialist. It is a philosophy that very strongly believes in the complete freedom of the human will. It is very strongly against the concept of Hard Determinism - the concept that all events, without exception, are the necessary effects of preceding events. To believe in the freedom of the will is to believe that we can make choices that are *not* the necessary effects of preceding causes. It is to believe that there is no fate but what we make. (Actually, the concept of fate is not identical to the concept of hard determinism - but I'll let that pass.) Now, I'm not sure exactly how this applies to the discussion above, but I'll warrant it is significant. I'll say this much - the alleged paradoxes of time travel are less of a problem for the believer in free will than for the believer in hard determinism. For the free-willist (to coin a term), no person, past or future, *has* to make the choices he/she actually makes.
If you're a rock-solid determinist then your past determines your future... and you have no choice over what you're doing at present. People traveling back in time willy nilly explodes the inevitability of events into little bits of possibility for a different outcome... unless time travel "changes" nothing. In that case it isn't so much "time travel" as a "temporal promotional book tour."
If I have no choice but to travel back in time by two weeks then you can bet that I'm going to make sure I take that spinach out of my teeth on Wednesday. Certainly by Thursday. In this way I am the only one who remembers how horribly my "first" job interview went. Plus I can return those movies on time and save myself some money. So I'm the only person who has any knowledge/memory of this green teeth alternate reality. And I am now fourteen days older than my evil twin. Curses!
So to sum up: "first" time 'round no choice about the spinach... "second" time no choice but also no spinach. And the knowledge that things could have happened differently.
I think that time travel in movies (and television and books and theme restaurants) is used to isolate important choices made in life (fictitional life.) It serves to distill actions and consequences down to their essence by showing two (or more) vastly different potential outcomes. So this is free will within the constraints of the plot... it is not free-range free will. Nobody is interested in a movie where John Connor rejects his destiny and becomes a post-apocalyptic florist and *blip!* ceases to ever exist.
Hard determinism is a boring going through the motions. There is no possibility of a different "final outcome" of events. There is only a meandering path taken to the end of the universe, aka "the future." So I think that, for fictional purposes, freedom of the human will is incomplete. I'd call it semi-soft determinism.
Fate has brought us to this moment. What we make of it is up to us.
...and now I am off to floss for the sequel.
There is another theory, according to which every occasion for choice literally creates a bunch of alternate realities, one for every possible choice you might make. This would also involve a bunch of alternate yous, each of which would seem to itself to be continuing on in the same old *uni*-verse. Going back in time and suicidally murdering your grandfather would not wipe you out of existence, it would 'merely' create another bunch of alternate realities in all but one of which you continue to exist. And I'm going to leave this now, because, as Austin Powers taught us, it can send you cross-eyed X-D
I love that theory.
As I picture it our "past" extends backwards in an unbroken line. We stand in a doorway of the "present." And in front of us we can move in any of an infinite amount of directions to create an infinite amount of "futures."
Of course, once we pick any of those futures the path behind us remains unbroken and just a little bit longer, we remain in the doorway and there are still an infinite amount of choices in front of us. There are also an infinite amount of alternate reality "us" each with their own doorway and infinite choices. That's the great thing about infinity... you can never get too much of it.
So killing your grandfather doesn't lessen the number of possible outcomes. Infinity is still pretty big. It does shut the door on all of the outcomes/paths which lead to a resentful (and successful) murderous grandson. That loop in time, or those loops in time, are snipped off and disappear as if they never existed. And they didn't. Don't. Won't.
I'm saying that fiction tries to reduce and sharpen an infinite amount of choices into a dilemma between a lady and a tiger. Time travel allows us to (more) easily imagine two or more alternate realities. This is one of the reasons that I think that SF is more concerned (and better at dealing) with the very nature of existence, imagination and humanity than any other genre.
Take that! you geeks.
the way it works in the movie is that originally john reese was born normally in future time and notices everything going bad. so he decides to go back in time to stop it from happening in the first place, for argument's sake this is how he comes to be in the past with sarah conner. for some reason he decides that the best thing to do is to impregnate sarah conner and train up someone (their son) to lead the resistance against the machines.
Here's where it gets tricky, john conner is born and ends up surviving the nuclear holocaust and leading resistance, knowing the whole time that his father came from the future. because of the changes that occur due to what some people call the "butterfly effect" john reese no longer feels the need to send himself back in time (he is a different person to the john reese who impregnated sarah conner) untill he is told by John conner that he is his father, and he needs to go back to impregnate his mum so that he can be born. the problem is that, also due to the so called Butterfly effect, john reese is a subtly different person to the man who fathered the John Conner that is now teling him to return, and thus will never be his father, so when he goes back in time and impregnates Sarah Conner their son will also be a different person to the superhero that managed to survive he nuclear holocaust without the help of Arnie. the new john conner is the soft as butter kid that we see in the movies.
after the future john conner sends john reese back in time to impregnate sarah conner, he changes, due to the shift in the space time continuoum (where he story as we know it unfolds, leading to the john connor in the movies being the same person as the future john connor) contingeant upon his very existence is the survival of himself in the past as a child, this is why he sends that terminators back in time to protect himself.
All of the above in effect happens in an instant, as time corrects itself and finds an equilibrium,
i apologise if the above is difficult to understand, if anyone has any queries please don't hesitate to email me at qwerty27@hotmail.com, with the subject: "Terminator Time Travel Dillemma"