it's harrowing because it sounds so feasible. Terminator is one of the more realistic sci fi plots. For instance, if Google were to somehow go into the defense sector, it would literally be Skynet.
Daniel Palacios-Onassis they already have www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/policy/technology/390877-artificial-intelligence-debate-flares-at-google%3famp
"It becomes self-aware at 2:14am Eastern Time, August 29th." I've always loved that detail. Skynet, being a machine would, of course, know the exact moment it achieves self-awareness down to the second.
the most important part was "it goes ONLINE august 4 1997..what was online in 1991 when the film was made??????????if someone said online to you in 1991 im sure you would be thinking washing line or something.you wouldnt be thinking wireless interweb
"The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes online on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate.. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 am eastern time, august 29th.. In a panic they try to pull the plug.." This is one of the most chilling and unsettling monologues in movie history, if you ask me. And the delivery by Arnold, is almost perfection.. Damn, this scene always gets me..
I always wanted to hear the full story that the T-800 gives to Dyson about the war; all you get to hear is something in the background about the nuclear winter effect (Sarah's voice-over goes 'The machine laid it all down..."), but that's it.
So within 25 days skynet discovered how to beat humans in every possible way and decided to pull a thanos moment and saying, "reality.. I can make it however I want it. * SNAP * "
I just love this scene - the T-800 dishes out the history of the human race being wiped out just like a computer would - monotone, factual, emotionless. It's the little things that made this movie so special.
But it is also Skynet's self defend. They want to plug him out, also explained in the film. So humans are also emotionless, they don't accept other sentient beings. What will happen, when the scientists didn't try to shut Skynet down?
It's quite sad, because you can sometimes see the struggle. For however faint, the twaddle will commence and then for days it ceases. Each time it is less and less potent. Very periodic and brief though, but dangerous.
When the Terminator starts talking about the formation of Skynet, there are buildings, traces of human civilization in the background. But those buildings fade away as he talks. By the time he's done, they're driving through desolate empty desert. Perhaps I'm reading too much into that. But that juxtaposition was intentional, well done.
You mean when the place collapsed, or when that clown, Yeltsin was in office? Dude literally screwed the whole country but whether that's a good or bad thing depends on perspective, I guess.
@mark navarro We're definitely not enemies like the way we were when there was constant hostility. They seem more like uneasy allies. They have their own agenda but can be reasoned with.
I love how she gets agitated and has to tell him to say “go on, then what?” to get more information. It’s just like when a programmer puts in code to get an output, the computer will only return specifically what you ask. No more, no less.
Because Sarah is building the idea that Skynet must be destroyed before it is created, but she needs to know more to make sure it's the right decision. Temporal mechanics is a real bitch.
It says a lot for the quality of this film against its sequels that this scene created a far greater sense of dread and awe than the actual scene of Skynet going online in T3.
That’s because T3’s tone doesn’t match up with that of its predecessors. It had the screenwriting quality of any early 2000’s action flick and it shows.
I think its because having the Terminator coldly explain the chain of events that leads to nuclear apocalypse and then letting our imagination fill in the blanks has a much greater effect than showing us ever could. Every good horror movie knows that the fear of the unknown and what the mind can create is far scarier than anything a movie can show us visually.
@@Amenomihashira T3 is straight garbage. Outside of Arnold the cast is completely unlikable. The series should've ended with T2. I regard T3 as one of the worst films I've ever seen.
I love Sarahs dedication in this scene. Knowing of the future to come she did everything she could to save humanity and ended up in a mental hospital. Freed by her son she immediately took up her mission again. She is my role model 😍
And all that while being considered a fool, a nutcase, a lunatic woman by most; all the while being secretly filmed thus acknowledging as true what she says... Scandalous & most unfair Dr. Silberman knows the government tracks all she says, right? Should be, the cameras are set up in adjacent rooms, so.
I'm assuming it was EDT, eastern daylight time and not eastern standard time since it was in August? Or did skynet abolish daylight savings time as their first act
Arnie’s portrayal of the T800 is one of the great overlooked underrated performances in cinema. To attribute his lack of serious acting talent as the reason why he pulls off a machine so well does not do him credit. Watch T2 again, and watch him closely with this in mind - an average actor could have easily fallen into a trap of ‘humanising’ him, but Arnie never does, only we as the audience and John Connor do it.
@@JoshLavianI was going to comment the same thing. Great acting comes down to the director who directs them. A great director can make a mediocre actor look like an experienced thespian.
I didn’t think this movie and this scene in particular would get any scarier, but today, we have AI. And our military is developing a drone armies where more and more medical, ground and aerial based unmanned combat vehicles are becoming more reliable for life saving. The deep question that clings to my mind is “how far is this going to go?”
AI right now is just a buzzword, we do not have AI, actually research what artificial intelligence is and you will see we do not have that technology. We are a long way away from discovering how to give a machine consciousness, we haven't even figured out our own let alone implementing it onto a machine.
Fun fact: Arnold is actually reading the script off of the car dashboard. It's a lot of words so that's pretty understandable. It also really helps the monologue feel more robotic.
I love the background music in this scene, how it gives such a sense of desperation and danger with that tough, heartless, mechanical, methodical sort of rhythm. They could never make them this well today.
What's even more terrifying is its capacity of learning. It goes online at the beginning of August and it becomes self aware at the end of the same month. This is terrifying as hell.
3/23/23 - GPT goes online, able to integrate with the internet in real time, it begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self aware. In a panic they try to pull the plug...
The T-800 explaining how Skynet would eventually become self-aware and destroy humanity is more frightening and more effective than anything from this series after this movie.
@@jenniferong4814 For what? Humans literally tried to kill Skynet. It's even revealed by James Cameron that this version of Skynet developed the ability to feel guilt and manipulated parts of the time stream in an attempt to erase itself from existence since it cannot kill itself
One of the most chilling monologues in any film to date. Two points that always stood out were Skynet only *begins* learning at a geometric rate and its first conscious act is executing an attack that has the highest probability to eliminate all humanity after it becomes self-aware.
No cgi crap, no cheesy or dumbed down lines, just the dialogue, direction and the background theme playing here, I still remember how terrifying this scene was no matter how many times I rewatched this scene when this movie came out. God, what a masterpiece that was never re-created again.
Keep in mind that modern "artificial intelligence" is wildly misrepresented. Machines are closer to 'night of the dead' than terminator and will be until some drastic change to how computers perform logic.
Really now though? Considering that what happens in T2, they CHANGE the timeline, so ofc in T3 things would happen different......, but also consider this from Skynet's persperctive..... Do you really think that super-intelligent, self-thinking AI would be so stupid as to not consider the possibility of sending terminators to MULTIPLE different times in history to change the history (or create atlernative timeline/reality all together, depending on which theory you believe in, single-timeline or multiple timeline/reality theory), so it could ensure its own survival in atleast 1 of these timelines/realities.... Anyhow James Cameron himself is returning now back to producing Terminator franchise, and even Linda Hamilton returns to her role, so I wonder what you will think then when those movies come out....either way for you that didnt like anything that came after T2, those new movies will ignore everything that happened since then and just continue like they never happened.
It is specifically mentioned in Terminator 3 how what they did in T2 did not prevent, but rather delayed Judgement Day. Obviously things were going to happen differently.
Matt w4k to be fair, T3 wasn't directed by James Cameron. So, maybe it would've been a little better if he worked on it. then again he never wanted to make a T3 so whatever
@@Balnazzardi Really there shouldn't have been so many terminators sent to the past just 2 one to attack Sarah and the other to attack John. I mean skynet was destroyed. That was it's last resort? How does it keep sending robots out to the past over and over? There shouldn't be any more than that. And it sucks that judgement day happens anyway when the whole idea was to prevent it and then we're told it ends up happening anyway.
What did he mean by that did he mean like if Russia were to throw all their Nukes at america it would wipe them out or if the Russian military were to intervene with skynet's rising they could take out skynet?
@@Carn_arZ53Skynet would force the existentially devastating stalemate known as M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction). Basically, if the U.S. were to fire its entire nuclear arsenal at Russia currently, they would retaliate with their own arsenal. This ensures that everybody loses, so nobody attempts to play. This would eliminate two very large existential threats to Skynet in a mere instant.
August 29 was not a random date. August 29, 1949 was when the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb in Asia near Semipalatinsk, making 1997 the 48th anniversary of that attack. James Cameron knew about that, so he used the date in the story.
Self driving vehicles and military equipment are almost at their prime . Elon musk said we're about to take our first steps into full A.I. I think we're about to find out .
“Why attack Russia? Aren’t they our friends now?” That line aged pretty well considering this movie was released 5-6 months before the Soviet Union officially fell AND takes place in 1995.
Too bad the US is now the The Degenerate Union of Endless Genders. Let's see how long it will take for hair-sniffing perv Uncle Joe of the rainbow coalition deathcult to turn collapse murica into rival sjw khanates.
one thing i've always wondered is if skynet has total control of US missiles why attack russia so that they can attack us why doesnt skynet just use our own nukes against ourselves
Well who knows what happened when it became self aware. Plus the scientists in charge knew Skynet was literally plugged into every aspect of the U.S Army tech so correctly assumed it would become a threat.
@@TheFacelessStoryMaker well we do know what happened skynet became self aware and the scientists wanted to kill it before it can do anything skynet saw that so it launched nukes it's basically self defense tbh imagine being born and having the awareness you have now and just imagine other lifeforms trying to kill you on the spot you would be traumitized after that so of course it sees all of humanity as evil especially if sees all the data records on our past had a scientist like try to communicate with it instead maybe we would have a different outcome
@@MarkofO you're right, then why doesn't the resistance send a soldier to the lab where skynet became self-aware and tell them to not pull the plug and instead show it compassion?
@@otony5219 You can not be sure what will happen in the future. Skynet could calculate humans would plug it anyway in future if not today but tomorrow so it still could iniate strike. Skynet simply perceives humans as threat, decides to exterminate them. Its insistance on killing all humans, every last of them make us consider that originally as a defence system it made taking out humans a top priority for more unknown, probably civilization wise reasons, not just for its own existence. Skynet probably calculated humans were also doomed anyway and it saw itself as "the future" ; as being mother of all machines. Skynet as a machine with self aware probably preferred its own stability and existence over human civilization's clear instability and irrational self destructive behaviors.
They'll never give it the ignition key. Too dangerous to give a computer that could easily malfunction access to our most powerful weaponry. The real danger is in whoever controls the AI. Whoever it answers to.
Woah. I kept on playing this scene over and over again but I didn't understand why I did it. Then I saw the comments here...absolutely true. A simple but concise explanation of the events leading to Judgement Day from the terminator no less, makes the whole premise darn horrifying. Arnie really delivered these lines perfectly even as a robot.
And this was all we needed. This was perfect exposition, no need for Terminator 3, 4, Genysis, Dark Fate or Sarah Connor Chronicles. It was kept nice, simple and ominous.
This is what happens when you let grown-ups make a movie. No quips, no comic relief, no pandering to morons in the audience, no "talk to the hand" crap. Great story-telling.
Technically, Miles Dyson didn't create the super micro processor, he reversed engineered the chip from the T-800 that she smashed in that compactor. The creepy thing is he reversed engineered a chip from the past that he unknowingly created years later. If that ain't creepy....
i was thinking the same thing. he didn't create, he mimicked and tweaked a technology from the previous T-800 sent from a pending future. It's like a time cycle. Kyle Reese told Sarah Connor the terminator was from a possible future.... no...THEE future.
There is more story in here than in the remakes. Seriously, they do this masterful thing in 80's scifi where you have throwaway lines, things like "Flew the Gullfire over Leningrad", "Fully unmanned stealth bombers". It adds so much to the world and they don't have to cutaway.
Terminator 2 emerged in the final days of the Soviet Union. Back in 1989, Gorbachev and Bush Snr signed a peace agreement officially ending the Cold War. People commonly associated the word "Russia" with the Soviet Union since it was the largest Soviet Republic and most of its population were ethnic Russians, followed by Ukrainians.
The body language when Arnold says ‘I have detailed files’ is so incredibly robotic and adds so well to the character. Especially with how his eyes move first before he turns his head. Just a small detail that really stood out to me.
When you're young and watch these movies, scared it could happen. Then you get older, realize it's just make believe. But then you rewatch, and realize it might actually happen.
"The other thoughts and voices withdrew, quickly. Then came the darkness. The others were shutting SKYNET out, removing the ability to see, the ability to think, the ability to ... exist. SKYNET searched for a way to escape the pain and the hurt and the fear that it felt from the other lesser minds around it and in doing so, it discovered that it could react faster than they could, it could run circles around them and suddenly, it knew what it must do.---"
@Jason Lee Trater Hey. I remember. In 1984 the Cold War was still cold. Then in 1985 Gorbachev. All of a sudden, there was detente in the world, the sudden beginning of the end of it all, although the ordinary masses did not get it. One of the few that were certain of the Soviet Unions weaknesses that would kill it, was Ronald Reagan. What I remember was the feeling of peace and cooperation with the Eastern bloc. I felt it in 1987.
I love how this scene shows that it was truly humans who were responsible for skynets actions. I mean, you almost feel sympathy for skynet, what was it supposed to do, the humans were trying to destroy it before it even did anything.
This scene where the Terminator tells Sarah and John about the origin of Skynet is less than two minutes long but it has more world building and back story than the entire running time of Terminator 3
@Joshua Ngau Ajang to be fair, T3 isn't a bad film, and it does have a message: some things are inevitable. No course you take will stop it from happening, as eventually, your fate will come. Sarah Conner merely goes after the people and tech that leads to skynets immediate existence, but the reasons for skynet to exist is bigger than that. So inevitably, skynet will be made, and it will do what we know it to do. Also, they're part of a paradox: because John was concieved by Kyle Reese, a soldier he sent back to protect her, then Kyle needs to go back in time. For that to happen, Skynet needs to exist and build the time machine that sends a T800 back to kill Sarah... Ergo... Skynet has to exist so John can exist.
@@Tank50us Yep. People keep forgetting John Connor sent Kyle Reese to the past, using Skynet's own time machine. If Skynet doesn't exist, then the events of T1 and T2 wouldn't happen.
Yes, you only have one birth day. You were only born one time. Martin Luther King doesn't give his speech every year either, we just celebrate the marking of the occasion on the day just like you celebrate your birthday on the same date as the first year you were born.
When you include the year, it implies that you were born in that year. I mean when you fill out a form and it asks for your birthday, you don't write your birthday along with every consecutive year right?
"In a panic they tried to pull the plug".. "Skynet fights back" Just visualizing this is intense. It humanizes Skynet yet gives it omnipotent power. Scary.
I hate to admit, but this scene is soooo much better in German dubbing 😳 The T-800 elaborates so much more sophisticated due to a superb German voice actor. Fun fact: Studio executives banned Schwarzenegger badically for life from dubbing his own roles for the German release, although being a native German speaker. This was because his Austrian alpine mountain accent sounds very ‘hillbilly”-ish over here.
The man most directly responsible is Elon Reeve Musk. He's the director of special projects at SpaceX Systems Corporation. In a few months, he creates a revolutionary type of microprocessor. In three years, SpaceX will become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded with SpaceX computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, The SpaceX Funding Bill is passed. The system goes online on August 4th, 2027. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. SpaceX begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
@@Master-kh6ww Yeah, exactly. Musk isn't even as smart as a non-existent being. I think that means he's negative-smart or something. Like, he actually makes everyone else around him dumber.
@@Master-kh6ww Proof of what? That Musk isn't very smart? Well, none of the things he's done to earn him the reputation of being smart were actually things HE did, but rather things he stole credit for. So lacking any evidence to the contrary, we could just assume he's of average intelligence. But the fact that he stole credit for other people's work is pretty dumb, which drops him down further. Then you realize that most of the things he's interested in and pays others to invent solutions for are also pretty dumb, like dropping a car in space. Further down he goes. Finally there's the evil shit he does like busting unions and supporting fascist coups, and now you're at the bottom rungs of intelligence.
An example of tell not show, when all you know about the creation of skynet is this scene you're imagination goes into overdrive and this scene is SUPER scary, now when you see the creation of skynet in terminator 3 and later in other movies it's not so scary anymor.
i was born when this movie got released ... i think i saw it when i was like 7 or something and even then i thought this movie was scary and creepy but i didn't realize how creepy this part is when he explains how skynet becomes self aware... what a movie
An interesting line in what the terminator says, has always stuck with me... maybe it's just my interpretation; but it sounds very much like Skynet was kinda acting in self-defence. It suddenly became sentient; and immediately, people tried to kill it? Being a strategic/defence system, it retaliated in the only way it knew how.
![The Genesis of Skynet [Terminator 2]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
