How Does Time Travel Work in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day"?
You're probably not alone in scratching your head after watching Terminator 2 - there's a huge, confusing mess of Paradoxes!
What Is the Paradox in "Terminator 2"?
We've got these time travelers! They go back in time, to change things and stop that future war against the machines! So John Connor, a super important leader, gets sent a protector - a Terminator! And this protector is actually supposed to kill him - so his enemy sends another Terminator back to make things extra complicated. But there's this one wild problem that can't be fixed. The Terminator, who's sent to protect John - destroys the machines! Skynet's gone and no apocalypse!
Wait - so John Won't Become the Leader?!
Well, there's no war anymore so he won't become the leader of the humans. And if there wasn’t a war, he never needed a Terminator, to begin with. So the question is, where did this Terminator come from?! That makes things really wild! Think of it like this, it is like an endless loop that doesn't end!
How does the "Bootstrap Paradox" work?
It's pretty crazy - there's this scientific idea, that even James Cameron admitted. It is like a time-traveling circle - like if a thing goes back in time, it winds up causing itself - and that's impossible! "The Terminator" was a similar case with Kyle Reese - he ends up becoming John Connor’s father. That’s one kind of bootstrap.
Is There Any Solution to this?
Some fans think Terminator 2 creates a whole new timeline when those Terminators come from the past. The idea is that the original future is still there! However, James Cameron says, NO! This whole thing makes that impossible! Think about that photo! If things changed, the photo would be totally different. We see it from Reese’s future self at the start and it turns out to be the exact same one he leaves in the present.
- We really need to wrap our heads around the fact that Terminator 2 does have this super crazy bootstrap paradox. The best part? James Cameron said, "Let’s just not get stuck on these weird sci-fi explanations - they actually don't matter when we're thinking about time travel"!
Maybe, the way to understand this, is to just chill out a bit and appreciate how incredible this movie is. So forget the mind-blowing time travel for a second. Just enjoy this action-packed, super epic science fiction film!
There you go! Now, we're not gonna get stuck on the paradoxes and enjoy Terminator 2, as an iconic action flick.
