Narrative Musigs Part 2
An Essay on Terminator Salvation:
Sky-Net has no need for Human things
or
Why Terminator Salvation Sucks
by
Michael R. Woelfel
Humans have needs, computers have needs, these needs are by and large completely different. Humans basic survival needs include food, water, shelter, love, sleep, etc. Computers on the other hand need power, something to keep them from being rained on, and some occasional maintenance.
Lets start with architecture. Towards the end of the film John sneaks into the Sky Net building, using his handy “iPlotphone” that opens all the locked doors and allows him to reprogram things as simply as typing in the word “override.” Firstly, Sky Net does not need doors, the mainframe isn't going to get up and go for a walk around the premises, and its not as though Sky Net needs to let the terminators inside at night, and since there shouldn't be any humans roaming the halls of Sky Net there shouldn't be any need for Terminators to patrol them.
Where would sky net keep the terminators if it decided to put them somewhere, the same place I keep my Car: The Garage which is built specifically to house my car, and you'll notice that the hallways in my house are not built to allow the car access from the garage.
The doors also have number pad locks, do the terminators have a code combination that they need to remember to get in? Also Sky Net keeps human prisoners in locked cells with glass windows, Sky net would simply have camera's for this purpose, it's not as though it doesn't have the processing power to monitor thousands of video feeds simultaneously. It doesn't need to send a Terminator to visually peer into the room and say “yep, he's still in there.”
Now you might say that Sky net needs some access into itself for maintenance, like if a cable got loose or it felt the need to upgrade its RAM. It probably wouldn't have human sized corridors for this purpose, it would likely have access tunnels the size of say a house cat, built specifically for sky net's T-C47 maintenance robot which could easily traverse the small passageway. After all it would be bad if a human could just walk right in and unplug your DVD drive (not that Sky net would need one of those either).
The only reason Sky Net would have such human architecture is to allow humans to sneak in and thus the plot to unfold. Since Sky Net has made it's mission to kill all the humans, this seems pretty unlikely that a self aware AI would make this misstep.
Even bigger a question, is why can humans easily access Sky Net's programing, the resistance is able to read files and find out Sky Net's plans. It seems logical that an AI that wants to kill all the humans, aware of the fact that humans build it and that there could be humans that smart still alive, would change its programming code into Swahili, or convert to a numerical system based on 7 instead of 10. There is no reason why Sky Net should conform to “Human” programing standards except to enable the plot, but this has the effect of cheapening the second film. The only reason to believe that the resistance hasn't re-programed every terminator they've encountered and amassed their own army of invincible metal men is that its very difficult, they must not have tried typing “override.”
Sky net has no need of terminals either, its not as though a Terminator needs to log in to access anything, and its pretty hard to hack into anything when there isn't a single USB port or Internet connection. If Sky net were simply to manufacture and adopt its own ESI port (Evil Sentient Intelligence port) it's doubtful that the resistance could smelt themselves a compatible plug.
Marcus Wright, the only real interesting character in the film, is also an example of a pretty idiotic gamble. You make a machine that is part human, program him so he doesn't think that he's a machine, send him out into the world on the off chance that he'll meet the leader of the resistance and lead him back to Sky Net, where you will have said leader ambushed by a single T-800 Arnold. Considering that its a pretty violent world out there, its pretty likely that your infiltrator will get killed en route, or not killed enough and blow his cover (as it actually happens).
Even more ridiculous is when Marcus returns to Sky Net, Sky Net repairs his damaged skin in order to save the special effects budget a few million dollars, and thens “Asks” for his compliance. Marcus defies his programing and rips his control chip out of the back of his head. For a control chip it didn't seem to exert any control, or at least enough to prevent it's removal. Its also located outside of his skull on the back of his head, where it could be disabled by a stray 2x4 to the neck. Also, why would Sky Net even ask for the compliance of anything it build, it would more likely “demand.” I don't ask my iPod to consider whether or not playing music in its best interest, I demand that it does based on the fact that it was built for it. My iPod doesn't argue with my computer when I plug it in, it gets taken over.
You could say that any sort of overt programming would inhibit his infiltrative abilities, but disabling his motor functions if he tries to remove his control chip would be pretty unobtrusive in his mission so long as he doesn't know it's there, and by the time this happens in film his mission is over any, couldn't Sky Net just switch him off? Instead it repairs him and decides to gloat and explain its master plan to him to let the audience know whats going on, and so he can thwart it.
Another major plot point of this film is that Sky Net is looking for Kyle Reese to lure John Conner into its deadly trap, once it has Kyle Reese it locks him in a cell and leaves him there for John to rescue him. The biggest problem with this is that Sky Net knows Kyle's significance to things, which makes you wonder why Sky Net doesn't just kill Kyle right off the bat to ensure that he isn't sent back in time and to knock up Sarah conner.
Really the whole time travel thing hinges on Sky Net not knowing Kyle's significance, if Sky Net knew that the action of sending an assassin back in time would ultimately lead to its destruction, it could avoid the whole thing by not inventing time travel. A man as smart as John Conner would probably know this and keep the whole thing to himself, just in case Sky Net learns that knowledge. In this film everyone seems to already know this except for Kyle.
In closing, Terminator Salvation was somewhat enjoyable to watch, but was really dumb. Unfortunately most of the movie going public doesn't like to let “rationality” get in the way of their enjoyment of spectacle, so this movie will probably make enough money to warrant Terminator 5 which will be even more superficial. Its still a better story if you only watch the first two.