Question: In the hotel room scene when the landlord/manager knocks on the door and asks if he has a dead cat in the room, why is the Terminator sitting down on the bed, especially turned away from the door? If the Terminator is an indefatigable machine only resembling a human on the outside, why would it ever be seen in a relaxed pose at all, and ignoring the sole point of entry to the room it's in?
BaconIsMyBFF
10th Feb 2020
The Terminator (1984)
Answer: The T-800 is designed to blend in with the human race. As such it will act as a human does with the aim of maintaining its cover. Another example is why do they find clothes? Sure a naked man walking round is going to attract attention of police but they are capable of dealing with such situations.
That is true when the Terminator is among humans but in this scene it is alone in the room. The question remains why it sits, looking away from the door, if there is no-one else there.
The answer provided still works, based on how the Terminators are portrayed in the sequels. They will gradually learn more and more human behaviors and adapt them to their programming. In this case, sitting down when idle. Another example is the T-1000 giving a very human-like puzzled expression when he notices the silver mannequin. Also, the T-X in Terminator 3 smirks at numerous points throughout that movie when things go her way. None of these behaviors are done for the benefit of "blending in" and appear to simply be learned behaviors.
Answer: You're right, it doesn't make sense for the Terminator to sit facing away from the threat. In the second movie we see the Terminator standing the whole night in the same position, looking outside. It seems more verisimilar, except for the gun on his shoulder pointing back.
9th Jan 2019
The Terminator (1984)
Question: If the Terminator had succeeded in killing Sarah and effectively wiping out John Conner, then that would mean the machines would win and even kill off mankind. So after Skynet's mission was complete and all humans are dead, what would the machines do now that with no more humans left to kill?
Answer: It's really impossible to answer definitively, considering the film-makers have never addressed this. The films never specify any purpose Skynet has outside of wanting to wipe out humanity. Skynet simply wants to "live", to exist as a sentient consciousness but views all of humanity as a threat to its existence. Since artificial intelligence is thus far only a fictional concept, we can't even really speculate based on information outside of the Terminator series. We can perhaps imagine a scenario wherein Skynet is successful and lives in peace as the only intelligence on Earth. The machines themselves do not have individuality and only exist for the purposes of killing humans so there doesn't seem to be a logical reason why they would exists if Skynet wins. However, there doesn't seem to be any reasonable way Skynet could ever be sure they have killed every single human on the planet so I can also imagine a scenario where the machines endlessly patrol the planet, making sure humanity never rises again. Also, and this is food for thought, the time travel scenario present in these films is a grandfather paradox. Skynet leads to it's own creation by sending back a Terminator to kill Sarah Connor. Similarly John Connor is conceived because a Terminator was sent back in time, which is the paradox. Skynet winning would create another paradox wherein Skynet could not exist because John Connor was never born so they had no enemy to fight, etc. This sort of stuff can make your head explode.
Just to be clear, the first movie doesn't say that Skynet created itself by sending a terminator back, that's the second movie. Also John Connor never being born doesn't remove their enemy, humanity is their enemy, it would stop the resistance and prevent the humans from winning, presumably. It does create a paradox though, like all time travel movies do.
The first movie deleted specific scenes which referenced the defeated Terminator being used to create Skynet. This of course was fully formed in the sequel. Technically since they are deleted scenes they may not belong in a discussion about the first movie but I was speaking generally with regards to the series as a whole. It's really only relevant to my point about the paradox which doesn't really have anything to do with the original question. Also, John Connor is specifically Skynet's enemy. Without him humanity would have been easily defeated. Technically, yes they want to wipe out all humanity but without John Connor they would have succeeded and there would be no need to send a terminator back in time, which of course is the entire point of the series. Both the humans and Skynet believe this to be true.
John Connor is the key to the paradox, true. Since John was created by Skynet's own attempt to stop him it's impossible for them to win the war. All movies tell us (except the horrible, terrible last one called Genisys) that skynet can not win the war by time travel. I had a whole essay written down but I decided not to post it, since talking about paradoxes is a paradox and they are highly interactive. Catch my drift?
Thinking about paradoxes in movies like these can drive you insane.
Yeah, but it's so much fun.
Agreed. I actually really love the paradox in the first Terminator. The idea that John gave Kyle a picture of his mother and Kyle fell in love with her because of that picture, and he always wondered what she was thinking about when the picture was taken, and it turns out she was thinking about how much she loved Kyle. Brilliant.
Yeah, you know now I think about it, the first movie doesn't have a grandfather paradox at all, it's the exact opposite. They actually created a loop, the time travel made the resistance exist and skynet always will try to use time travel to destroy the resistance. The paradox, is the sequel, where they make us believe the time travel also made skynet, which is impossible and an actual grandfather paradox because skynet invented time travel (since in the second movie the time travelling terminator from the first movie became the "grandfather" of skynet basically). Maybe we should move this to the Forum though.
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Answer: I wouldn't call him sitting a "relaxed pose." The scene is brief, but at the time he's looking through Sarah's address book but we don't know what else he was doing. We see him sitting while repairing his arm and we see him sitting when making a telephone call. So he may have been doing other things that he couldn't do standing. As far as ignoring the door (which wasn't the sole point of entry since we see him go through the window), as a terminator machine, he doesn't really have to be on alert for an attack like a person would.
Bishop73