RE: Thought Bubble Thursdays #12 - Time's Up
Time travel has long been a topic dear to my heart. My take on it is that - if time travel were possible - nothing could be changed. Because - if you go back in time 20 years, say, you were actually already there 20 years ago.
You mention above that "this is some Terminator shit". The original Terminator is awesome because it holds to this idea of time travel - Reese and the Terminator's time traveling did nothing to change the past. In fact, their trip and conflict is exactly what makes their future possible: Reese impregnates Sarah so that John Connor can send him back; and the technology of the Terminator is found by the company that builds the AI that eventually takes over the world.
In other words: there was never a version of the past where Reese and the Terminator were not shooting it out on the 80s Los Angeles streets.
Terminator 2 - with its theme, the future is what you make it - is a betrayal of the original's realism. :)
We are more or less trapped within the dimension of time. We cannot view reality from outside of it. But if we could, we would see that the past and the future exist equally, and all was set from the first moment of the Big Bang.
Ah I see, a predestination guy. I respect it! I was of the same school of thought for years as well.
Oh yeah, no, don't get me wrong. That was the good kind of "shit" haha! Like "this cannoli is da shit!" kind of thing. I feel like Terminator is one of those franchises that stick the landing in terms of time travel. They're caught in an unenviable loop, and they're powerless no matter their effort. Everything that they have done was already written, and their efforts of changing the future was always leading up to the future they were trying to avoid. It's a shame the whole franchise didn't stick with the example of the first one.
I do agree with the notion of time (past, present, future) being like a river, with everything happening at the same time. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, man. That was awesome! :D