T4

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

You can see why you might build humaniod robots, if for instance they were going to be used in an environment (such as a city) that had been designed for people, or for psychological reasons, (eg to make people feel at ease or with a more natural "body language" interface). Generally though, there might be better shapes depending on the task. You certainly wouldn't put the brain of a robot in the head though, like they always do in the movies. Better to have the CPU in somewhere like an armoured chest - it's not like robots need the space for organs like we do.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I mean in general, be it Babylon 5 or Star trek/Wars, most aliens have two legs, arms, eyes and look rather human. That really bothers me. Where it was done right - The Matrix. All robots kinda made sense functionally. Those in Terminator would suggest that the machines are stupid and inefficient.

Star Trek tries to explain why everyone looked so human at one point so its kind of understandable in that universe (basically a progenitor race seeded loads of suitable worlds across the galaxy with the basic building blocks.

After that, its just a case of similar environmental conditions evolving life towards the most efficient form. And I think humanoid is considered a very efficient form for our requirements / environment.

 

[swaaye]

Star Trek is more about exploring humanity than it is about supposed extraterrestrials, IMO. The "aliens" are usually just created as a way to take a close look at some aspect of our sociology (and usually some near-current event). The audience has to be able to relate to the "aliens" as if they are basically just like us.

Terminator is about a machine intelligence trying to figure out ways to get rid of us human rodents because we tried to kill it. First, Skynet and its Russian friend nuke the hell out of the planet. Next they want to figure out how to effectively get at the remnants. So why not create robots that look like things that would terrify us? Seems like a good idea to me. Fear is used against people all the time, and it works very well.

Spoiler

This movie didn't really show the condition that humanity was supposed to be in according to the first movie. It felt like the writers decided that they needed to have more action elements and thus brought in the stupid military bases out in the open, military air forces somehow surviving after 15 years or so, and lack of a serious concern for remaining hidden/clandestine. They really effectively neutered Skynet's apparent power.

 

[Mariner]

Floating tenticle robots made sense functionally?

The Matrix 'squids' would have made more sense if they didn't swarm directly into the path of oncoming ordnance but instead split up and took the whole of Zion to pieces in about 30 seconds.

Might have made the third of the trilogy a little shorter too, which would have been fine by me.

 

[homerdog]

I don't have a problem with humanoid aliens so long as a reasonable explanation is given. See Mass Effect for a good example.

Machines OTOH should be able to come up with something better. Advanced terminators could make sense in that they cannot be visually identified as non-human, thus can infiltrate the human ranks and wreak havoc. T-600 and company though have no excuse for walking on 2 legs and possessing human-like appendages.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I don't have a problem with humanoid aliens so long as a reasonable explanation is given. See Mass Effect for a good example.

Machines OTOH should be able to come up with something better. Advanced terminators could make sense in that they cannot be visually identified as non-human, thus can infiltrate the human ranks and wreak havoc. T-600 and company though have no excuse for walking on 2 legs and possessing human-like appendages.

But they need to traverse and interact with a human made environment?

What would be better than 2 legs for that? Wheels are next to useless and more than 2 legs is a relative waste of energy.

Similarly, whats better than 2 arms/hands to manipulate a human made environment? 2 would seem to be the optimal balance between functionality (few tasks require more) and conservation of energy.

 

[Mariner]

What would be better than 2 legs for that? Wheels are next to useless and more than 2 legs is a relative waste of energy.

Similarly, whats better than 2 arms/hands to manipulate a human made environment? 2 would seem to be the optimal balance between functionality (few tasks require more) and conservation of energy.

More than 2 legs = more stability, so the answer to your first question is "more than 2 legs". Bear in mind that such 'legs' wouldn't be limited by human musculature and, presumably, could therefore be thinner and lighter.

Similarly, the answer to your second question is "more than two hands". More 'hands' would allow more concurrent manipulation including, say the ability to fire more than two guns at the same time.

Again, the design of such hands wouldn't be limited by human musculature so combined prehensile hands/legs would be perfectly workable and more efficient than a human-bodied design.

In the end, it looks as though the multi-tentacled robots so beloved by the Matrix might not be such a bad idea after all.

Basically if, in the future, it comes down to technologically advanced killer robots vs us, we're pretty much screwed.

 

[swaaye]

Well, I think the Terminator looks like it does because T1 was almost a horror movie and the goal was to make an extremely unnerving cyborg zombie. Seems to work on most people. Once the T800's flesh was gone for the first time in that movie, it definitely had an impact on me.

I wish we'd see a director/writer/crew that is able to actually put suspense in one of these movies again.

 

[I.S.T.]

I don't have a problem with humanoid aliens so long as a reasonable explanation is given. See Mass Effect for a good example.

Machines OTOH should be able to come up with something better. Advanced terminators could make sense in that they cannot be visually identified as non-human, thus can infiltrate the human ranks and wreak havoc. T-600 and company though have no excuse for walking on 2 legs and possessing human-like appendages.

The T-600 was something of an Infiltrator prototype... It was designed to look human enough at distances.

 

[_xxx_]

Floating tenticle robots made sense functionally?

Also, I see no reason to believe with conviction, as you do, that humanoid would be an evolutionarily unfavored form in extraterrestrial species. (Though E.T. for example, seems like they would have been eaten by the lamest of predators)

What form, by the way, would you see as 'unstupid' and 'efficient'?

As mentioned, the Matrix did it right with the machines. Think of the harvesters or hunters for example, or the "bug" that gets neo out of his pod. As for aliens, I'd expect much diversity, as you can find it in many good SF-books. More stuff like the shadows in Babylon5 or reetu (spelling?) in Stargate for example. I do realize it's also a budget thingy, but when we talk about well-financed movies it should be done properly. On the other side, I think they also don't want to alienate the audience too much, I suppose many people wouldn't "connect" with characters looking too alien.

 

[_xxx_]

Advanced terminators could make sense in that they cannot be visually identified as non-human, thus can infiltrate the human ranks and wreak havoc. T-600 and company though have no excuse for walking on 2 legs and possessing human-like appendages.

Well it would make much more sense to just nuke the whole area over and over if needed, way simpler and more efficient than all the tricks and traps with infiltration and whatnot. But then we wouldn't have a story for the movie, heh...

 

[3dilettante]

I thought it was an okay popcorn flick.
I think it didn't quite have the punch to go beyond that.

One of the things I was surprised about is what a bit role the Terminators played in T4.

The initial battle scene is an aerial strike and quick helicopter insertion into a war zone.
How many terminators do we see in that?
At Skynet?
Patrolling, anywhere?
There were more toes on the foot that the T600 blew off to escape its snare (the T800 must have been a serious upgrade, as it was able to surgically pluck out an offending eyeball without blowing off half its face), than there were T600s.

No wonder Skynet was capturing humans, it was lonely.

It makes me wonder what Skynet plans to do with itself once it kills off all humans. What's it going to do after, twiddle its bits for an eternity?

In the scene were we see a assembly line, one character goes "there are so many", and I'm thinking if only Skynet--that procrastinator par excellence--had started building them before the movie started.

Maybe the short future battle sequences in the previous films (have only seen fragments of T3, dunno about that) don't work in larger doses. The artistic direction of them was massively better.


Perhaps it was the budget, but the entire movie went out of its way to not show terminators as anything but set pieces.
It also wasn't like any of the plucky heroes we have so little time to learn to care about were in the same kind of danger in the earlier movies.
Sure there were dangerous set-pieces, but no concerted campaign of evil searching them out--or at least not until a sort of "aha gotcha" thing near the end.
The dynamic was instead one of coincidental danger sort of inconveniencing everybody with a name.

The one somewhat interesting plucky hero is basically not in danger, ever. The one time he actually sort of is, he's in danger of being snuffed out by our other plucky heroes. It's also the time where humans expend more ammo on their own turf than they ever do on the enemy.

The final battle kind of felt unnecessary to me.
I don't know how an advanced AI would decide fisticuffs was the way to go.

I also didn't know why human soldiers carried any guns at all, since the only gun that showed any efficacy on the terminators was 50 cal or above.

 

[swaaye]

T3 has a brief future battle sequence with an army of T800s equipped with energy weapons canvassing an area. Although technically it's a daydream, I think... Probably the best part of that movie.

Yeah the creative minds behind T4 boggle my mind. Strange take on most aspects of the universe. I don't see how a lot of what they came up with could've made sense to them. Reminds me of AVP2 in that way lol (oh how terrible that was). T4 wasn't even remotely as bad as that was though.

 

[nutball]

If skynet were really that smart, then rather sending back a nuke (which it can't of course, because the script vehicle says so) it'd send back something like a virus borne by something that humans like to have sex with, eg. chickens, or maybe pigs. Or possibly other humans. Why bother trying to nuke John Conner when you can give him pig AIDS ???

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Or just send back information. A full history and tactical analysis of the war with the humans sent back to Skynet's birth. Knowledge of every encounter, tactics, weapons, designs for all advanced terminators, time travel, etc. A terminator just has to come back and feed this info into Skynet at the beginning of the war.

In some of Charles Stross' books, the Eschaton continually receive information from their future selves via closed time-like loops in order to ensure they keep their position as a weakly godlike power. They intercept all attempts to develop or use time-based weapons that might be used to edit them out of the future history where they become their all-powerful selves.

 

[WhiningKhan]

send back something like a virus borne by something that humans like to have sex with, eg. chickens, or maybe pigs. Or possibly other humans. Why bother trying to nuke John Conner when you can give him pig AIDS ???

Wouldn't that make the film illegal in many countries...?

 

[swaaye]

So apparently they CGIed the face off of this guy in the movie so he would have a metal head instead. I seem to remember that scene looking a bit off.. I'd say the original looks a lot neater than the strange looking head they replaced it with

original shot

after they CGIed it

by the way, I really don't need more movies or games with this sepia tone thing going on. The world won't go sepia tone when we get nuked to oblivion methinks.

 

[NRP]

That shot illustrates why I thought the movie looked "low budget". WTF is all that crap hanging off the T-600? It looks like a homeless, hobo terminator. Seems like they could have made it look more menacing than that. And that damn minigun would run out of ammo in about 30 seconds the way it was spraying lead everywhere.

Having said that, I hope the Blu-Ray has a Director's Cut.

 

[swaaye]

It is a bit strange. Maybe what we're suppose to infer is that it shipped from Skynet with this nice outfit and it got all shredded along with its rubber skin. T600 is too stupid to find a slick leather replacement outfit ala T800. I imagine it's also tough to find sweet outfits when you're 8ft tall.

I also think it was more menacing when it had creepy human-like rubber skin on its head and that metal skeleton body vs the obviously "i'm a bad person" CGI rework.

Oh and he actually has a backpack-o-ammo. I was wondering what the other gun he has is. It seemed like a pretty serious slug thrower.

 

[I.S.T.]

It is a bit strange. Maybe what we're suppose to infer is that it shipped from Skynet with this nice outfit and it got all shredded along with its rubber skin. T600 is too stupid to find a slick leather replacement outfit ala T800. I imagine it's also tough to find sweet outfits when you're 8ft tall.

...you mean that isn't obvious to you?