Month: July 2015
Early Space Shuttle concept art
Tim Baron Conan the Barbarian ink drawing
To infinity and beyond with Kyle Reese and John Connor
Is it just me, or is the computerized Skynet system of the Terminator films and TV franchise just not up to snuff? Sure, it did effectively wipe out most of humanity in “Judgement Day” via nuclear war but since then it really hasn’t lived up to its potential.
Checkout the facts; over the last 30 years it’s had one goal in mind – to kill either Sarah or John Connor in its past (our present) in order to keep little John from growing up to be a big a genius military mind in Skynet’s time. But since then Skynet has failed at every turn. It failed to kill Sarah in Terminator, John in Terminator 2 and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (1992 and 2003) then failed to kill either of them over two seasons and 31 episodes on the Fox TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Which got me thinking, it seems like the whole Terminator franchise might be taking place in some big time loop that no one inside the loop knows about and neither Skynet nor John Connor has enough wherewithal to stop.
In the first Terminator, Skynet sends back a Terminator from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor just as son John in the future is about to defeat and destroy Skynet. And quickly following the Terminator John sent back Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) to defend Sarah.
But (spoiler alert) not only do Sarah and Kyle stop the Terminator they also end up conceiving John as well. So, in effect, Skynet is the creator of its own doom by being the driving force in sending Kyle Reese back in time to become John Connor’s father.
Except this also means that for John to be there in the first place, to send Kyle back the first time, means that the events in Terminator must’ve happened before since the only way we get a John Connor conceived in 1984 is for Kyle to be sent there from 2029.
So it’s possible that the events of Terminator have been playing out again and again for all eternity. John Connor and his team attack Skynet in 2029 and Skynet sends back a Terminator to kill Sarah Connor. John sends Kyle Reese back in time to defend Sarah and John Connor is also conceived in the process.
And everything else that happens next, from Arnold back in Terminator 2 to the questionable story choices in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and the “be careful what Bert wishes for” all future-war of Terminator Salvation (2009) and the TV show too all lead to the point where John sends Kyle back in time to Terminator where we repeat everything over again, perhaps so many times it stretches out to infinity.
I guess the only real question of the Terminator movies is; how do we get John Connor in the first place? If John Connor’s dad is Kyle Reese and the only way Kyle gets sent back in time to meet Sarah is via John’s doing — how does Kyle get back in time the FIRST time to help conceive John and set everything in motion since John’s the one who sends him back and without Kyle in the past at least once there’s no John? (AGH!)
Perhaps there’s a first reality where some other military genius who ISN’T John Connor sends back Kyle Reese in time to protect his or her mother. Kyle fails and this first military genius is wiped from existence when the Terminator completes its mission. Except that at some point Kyle, now stuck in the 1980s, just happens to meet Sarah at some point and together they end up conceiving this first John who sets the wheels in motion for the first Terminator?
It might be interesting to see if shell-shocked future-war PTSD Kyle Reese would make a good dad or if John was better off being raised by a shell-shocked PTSD Sarah Connor and his foster family from Terminator 2 instead?
Hey, I think I just came up with the idea for another Terminator movie!
The latest Terminator movie, Terminator Genisys, is currently in theaters.
Deutschland 83
I can honestly say until very recently I’d never watched a show that originated from Germany. Sure, I’d viewed loads of series from other countries but I don’t think that I’d ever watched one that was in another language with subtitles before.
That was until I checked out the show Deutschland 83 on Sundance.
My understanding up to now was that German TV wasn’t up to snuff. That whereas English speaking countries like the US, UK and Australia were producing more nuanced and thoughtful TV series, the Germans were stuck on big bombastic shows. But after watching Deutschland 83 I couldn’t believe how wrong I was.
Like The Goldbergs and Halt and Catch Fire that takes place in the 1980s, and another that focuses on spies and the Cold War in that decade with The Americans and The Assets, Deutschland 83 is set in a very different Germany than is there today. Now Germany is an economic powerhouse that is a core member of the European Union. But back then it was a divided nation between east and west with the Berlin Wall still six years away from falling. Halved after WW2, West Germany was aligned with the US and NATO while East Germany was with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Which meant that a divided Germany was ground-zero for the Cold War and would also literally be ground-zero if a real war ever broke out between the superpowers.
Enter Moritz Stamm (Jonas Nay), a 20-something East German soldier who just so happens to look like a West German aide to an important officer in the planning of any conflict with the east. So Moritz becomes Martin and enters into the spy-game expected to steal secrets and stay one step ahead of the people hunting him in order that his mother stay on a kidney transplant list back home.
To say that Moritz is unequipped for the job would’t be an understatement. He’s literally kidnapped in the first episode and transported to the west in order to train to become an agent. But he does what must be done and puts his life on the line for his side which, even after having spent time in the west, he still believes in.
As Moritz spends more time undercover his position becomes more and more exposed. Will Martin’s friends from the past show up and find Moritz out? Will Moritz slip up and be caught copying documents? Will a spy from another country eliminate him to steal his secrets?
With the hindsight of history it’s interesting to see how the creators of Deutschland 83 (American Anna Winger and her German husband Jörg) are setting their fictional story with real-life events. In the second episode there’s mention of the “Able Archer” military exercises that really took place in ’83. While these were held for NATO prepare for the possibility of war, the Soviets thought they might instead be a secret lead-up to a real war and started planning for conflict.
In fact the US and the USSR were so close to war during the exercises that the USSR was ready at a moment’s notice to attack west. And it was only because of the realization of this from the US and the pullback of some of the exercises and the fact that there were no false alarms on the USSR side, which seemed to happen quite frequently during the 1980s, that the world wasn’t incinerated to a nuclear ash because of Able Archer.
Every fictional modern take on the Cold War gives the perspective from the west — even with The Americans that has Soviet agents operating in the US still takes place in the US with US sensibilities. But Deutschland 83 comes from a totally different perspective. Here in the US we were at least somewhat removed from the realities of the east/west conflict back then. Sure, if a war ever happened New York would be just as devastated as Berlin but enemy tanks weren’t literally on our border ready to cross at a moments notice.
Germany in 1983 didn’t have the luxury of distance that we had. If a war ever did happen, even a “limited” one, it would mean a devastated and probably radioactive Germany for years to come. That’s why the events of Deutschland 83 are so interesting. Not only are spies like Moritz trying to find out the secrets of the other side; they’re doing this agains their own countrymen. People that had fought alongside each other just a few decades prior in WW2 were now sworn enemies in the Cold War.
It was a weird time in Germany’s history which I think is why Deutschland 83 is one of the most interesting series on TV.
Deutschland 83 is an eight episode series that airs Wednesday nights at 11 (EST) on Sundance. If it continues on its current schedule the series should wrap up sometime in early August.