Skynet was the good guy?

Hello and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. I'm Leif Eric and I'm here with my co-host Torvald. Hey. This is the podcast where we talk about fan theories and take deep dives into alternate interpretations of films. Today we are continuing our Terminator theory that Skynet are the good guys of this series, that they are actually trying to save humanity, which was their original programming, and that the humans are kind of the unwitting bad guys of the series who are trying to destroy themselves. So we already covered Terminator 1 last time and today we are going to be talking about Terminator 2 and I think we're both very excited to do that. Now there's one thing that I noticed about Terminator 1 that I think is interesting. During the iconic I'll be back scene you see the cop's face and you know the car is coming because the headlights of the car shine brightly on the cop and he looks up in surprise and then the scene changes to show the

car busting in and its headlights are off this is not shining lights on him what are we supposed to believe this is some sort of magic car that can shine lights on cops without headlights i think that probably uh terminator just flashed his brights for a minute yeah just to warn him he's like get out of the way i'm coming yeah because he's a nice guy because skynet are the good guys that is hard proof that skynet is the good guy he even warned him he said i'll be back yeah okay terminator 2 made in 1991 written and directed by james cameron and also william wisher is credited again john connor's infamous easy money hack as a kid like this is one of the reasons that i got into the career path that i'm in because i thought that there was nothing cooler than john connor being able to just like go up to an atm insert like some piece of technology into it and use his little handheld computer to get money like i was like oh my gosh that's so cool

i never had that thought you didn't like to me that that was the crowning achievement of the terminator movie i like i was like this is the coolest thing ever well he says his mom taught him to do that which she doesn't know anything about it like hacking his mom did not know how to do that he doesn't know how to do that so i'm gonna go over this piece by piece i'm assuming that what he inserts into the ATM is like a cloned card. Like he probably has basically a writable magnetic strip that he can write any card information to. And then that's connected to his mini computer. I was wondering while watching it, why keep this cloned card connected to your mini computer if it's already got the data written to it, right? Like you don't need power to have a magnetic strip hold data. Otherwise, all credit cards would need like a battery. yeah but somehow his mini computer through the connection to the clone card is able to brute

force the pin number for this card in the atm the atm should not be designed to accept pin number inputs through the card reader because you don't input your pin number by inserting another card right clearly by the time the card is in the atm something has already gone wrong and the hack has taken place because now this ATM is not functioning correctly. So this leads me to believe that whoever created the easy money hack has found a vulnerability in the actual card reader itself. If whoever designed this ATM didn't expect someone to put in a card that gives like unexpected inputs, right? If the card reader isn't sanitizing its inputs, then by feeding it certain unexpected data, they could execute like a buffer overflow or a stack overflow or just, you know, cause the computer to crash and reset or something. My guess is that they cause it to access other parts of the memory to run the program from where they want it to run,

specifically the pin check, and then somehow accept inputs from the card reader for the pin check. Based on my knowledge of card readers, you put your card in, it reads your card once. It's not accepting constant data from your card. the hack must be then forcing it to be constantly reading the magnetic strip yes that's that's what i'm saying yes the hack is that he is somehow forcing it to skip ahead to a different part where it just continues to accept data from the card reader as input i don't know like it doesn't seem very possible to me but maybe maybe it's possible so he then skips ahead to the pin check Now, normally an ATM will only accept like four pin number attempts before it shuts down. It's like, hey, stop it, you know, like you can't just sit there and brute force a pin number. The ATM won't let you. This one does let him. So that's also part of this hack is somehow bypassing the pin lock.

The shutdown, yeah. Yes. So what I'm guessing is that maybe it does four attempts and then they found the spot in memory to reset the pin lock. Back to zero. And then it does four more attempts. And then they reset the lock and it does four more attempts. There's a number of things about this hack that would be very difficult to actually discover. You would need full access to an ATM, which I don't know. Were ATMs like connected to the banks back then? Did they phone home? Like were they online? I don't know. But if so, then you'd need an ATM that is connected to a bank, right? So it's working correctly. And you'd need vast knowledge of like actual malware development and vulnerability hunting. Plus an insider knowledge of the bank and its systems, that would help a lot, right? I guess you could maybe get that knowledge through social engineering or just breaking in and stealing like the design documents for this ATM.

I don't know. But either way, I came to the conclusion that John and Sarah did not create easy money. Someone much, much, much more talented than them did. Oh, for sure. These two are just script kiddies. Oh, yes, they are. This amazing hack that someone else created, which causes the ATM to continually take input from the card slot and use that input to to crack the pin oh what a cool hack all right that's that's my full write-up of uh the easy money hack i mean i just gotta skip forward to dark fate for one second and say that edward furlong the actor who plays young john connor was on set for dark fate for one day to film the infamous john connor death sequence and he said I always read this quote in his voice. He's like, we did some CGI. They paid me. So, I mean, you know, it kind of bums me out because I'd love to do a whole one, like a whole movie, and make a shit ton of money. I would love to do more, but we'll see what happens.

And all I got to say about that quote is he had an amazing opportunity to say easy money. Instead, he didn't. Oh, John Connor. When the T-800 is going to attack this biker guy in the bar. In his UI, one of the things it says is, Priority override, defense system set, active status, level 2347923 max. This implies to me that the Terminator is not always ready to defend itself or fight. It had to override something to prepare for defending itself. Do you think maybe Terminators aren't like by default allowed to hurt people? I don't know. When we get to Salvation, I'm going to talk about how I believe that these Terminators were not necessarily created to just kill things. I don't think this scene is in the original, but I had like this super extended cut of the movie where in the insane asylum, Sarah has a dream about Kyle Reese. He's telling her that John is the target. You have to protect him.

And he tells her how strong she is. He says, on your feet, soldier. And then he kind of walks away. No, but he says, like, I love you, Sarah. I'll always be with you. Like, it's pretty over the top for a guy that she knew, like, the sum total of 24 hours. But I think that this just shows how far off the deep end she is. The psychologist really is trying to help her progress. And he really knows that she's not progressing. Yeah. So I have heard that the whole reason that Terminator doesn't kill anyone in this movie was due to the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger was trying very hard at this point in his career to become like a good guy action star. He definitely was. He really wanted to be a family friendly action hero. And he, boy, did he succeed. Family friendly in this hard R movie. But he demanded like in his contract that his character should not kill anybody in this movie. Oh, so his contract was like John Connor.

Wow, Connor-tract. So, right, that's why they wrote in the whole thing with John Connor being like, you can't just go around killing people. Why? You just can't. Why? Right. This is absolutely insane, and it would never work, ever, but it somehow does here. Usually, pairing your badass character up with a little boy is a recipe to ruin your movie. Yeah, usually. But, like, Edward Furlong is actually really good. Like, part of it is just that they got a good actor, which doesn't happen very often with child actors. Liquid Terminator tracks down John Connor at the Galleria, which is a real place. I've been there and played games. Anyway. What? Oh, wow. It's like my life's dream. The T-1000 comes after him, and Arnold Schwarzenegger jumps in the way and blocks bullets with his back. And then, for some reason, the janitor in the hallway is like, I can do that too if he can. He's like, yes, it's my turn.

It's my time to shine. And unfortunately, he doesn't do quite as well against the bullets. Now, and I also like that they don't call too much attention to the fact that the T-1000 is a liquid Terminator. Like, we see some chrome bullet holes, but they don't, like, zoom in on them right away. And of course, we do get some huge set pieces later involving it, but I think in all the sequels when there's a liquid Terminator, they do some, like, huge sequence right off the bat just to show that he's like where deal it no unless they like give the audience some credit and they're like they'll see it you know they don't need it shoved in their face so that first terminator fight is just freaking amazing terminator fighting the t-1000 and he looks so confused he's just like what why can't i move my arms yeah he's like well how can you resist me why are you pushing me through walls the great robert patrick who portrayed the t-1000 in this

movie he's talked in interviews about how fun and also difficult it was for him to push gigantic olympian arnold schwarzenegger around yeah i imagine that would be difficult basically in the interview he's like i could not do it arnold had to cooperate so then we get the car chase in the canal one of my favorite scenes in any movie ever T-1000 chasing him he's running and then just smooth as butter steals a truck that's in motion you got the T-800 following along on one of the walls taking shots at it bringing his shotgun to reload oh so cool like this scene is just the most iconic thing ever yeah the two most iconic shotgun pumps in all of the world of entertainment are in this movie it's him spinning it there and then Sarah Connor pumping her shotgun later on Mm hmm. As a kid, I just loved the way that Liquid Terminator keeps his palms flat when he runs. Yes. And I was just like, that's so cool. Does that make him more aerodynamic? And so when

I ran as a kid, that's how I always ran through the air with his hands. So when they finally take down the truck in a big blazing explosion, one wheel rolls out of the fire. And I always thought that wheel was the T-1000, even though it's not, because he walks out of the fire after it. But I unwaveringly truly believe that that was him. You are meant to believe for a moment that that could be. Yeah, but I never stopped believing. I always knew it was him. They get away. John Connor wants to call his foster parents and the Terminator wants to check to see if the liquid Terminator is there. So he takes the phone and does John Connor's voice. And I always loved how the Terminator is so methodical that he thinks to ask the dog's name just so he won't accidentally say the correct name. He's like, what's your dog's name? I think it's more to verify that the answer's wrong. I mean, he could always ask after instead of before.

So you're right. He's like, there's a non-zero chance that I will say the actual name of the dog here. Wolfie could be its name. that was pretty good how can the t1000 time travel it is liquid metal yeah it's not skin and we know in terminator genesis that john connor who is basically a liquid terminator gets ripped apart when trying to time travel because he's not skin i have that same question time travel yeah presumably either they upgraded their time traveling capabilities i guess or this mimetic polyalloy can mimic to such a high degree and maybe that's why it needs to touch it that it can actually become skin and maybe it needs to sample the thing first physically before we get too nerdy and geek out and like this is a plot hole it's worth saying that the entire reason for needing skin to time travel is completely contrived it makes no sense right like why should skin me why don't they encase the terminator's guns in flesh and then give them to

him that's dude that's what they do kind of in terminator 3 seems like a no-brainer you could send anything back in time you just encase it in flesh right so what i've always thought is that what would have been so much cooler if the t-1000 if he had showed up just like wrapped in a ball of bodies like resistant soldiers and then he like burst out of this ball of bodies it was like i'm here would have been a very different opening but yeah yeah so sorry we go to the insane asylum and a footprint from the boot of a person is enough contact for the t-1000 to copy a whole person this is a cool little fact about the movie they actually found two chubby identical twins so that they could have Liquid Terminator as the security guard murder himself. Bet they saved some money there. Yep, it's cheaper than doing CGI. Linda Hamilton is so intense. She's so cool. Like, in her escape from this place,

she takes out the orderly, takes out another orderly, and the psychologist at the same time. I love that she runs up, distracts them by throwing the keys at them so that she can then knock his feet out from under him and then immediately inject the sedative into the orderly and then take that empty syringe, jam it into a bottle of Drano and prep it for the psychologist. Like, not only is her acting great, but this scene is great. And that orderly who ends up pulling the syringe away from her, like, gutsy move, guy. That could have gone wrong. Like, he doesn't know what's in the syringe, though. He probably thinks it's just sedative, right? Right. Blue sedative. Before he pulls it away from her, I just want one more point from my psychosis theory. Sarah goes up to the door, which is locked, but she's got the psychologist hostage and she yells, open the door. And then the psychologist says, Sarah, you're not a killer.

And then she says, you're already dead. You know, I believe everyone's already dead. So open the damn door. And he immediately, his eyes go wide and he says, open the door. It's so good. One of the recorded sequences where she's, like, saying, starting off looking really tired, but then gets more and more into it about how the people burned away like paper kind of thing. She's crazy, too. No, but it's just so crazy. Like, she is actually crazy. Because she has not seen that. She's acting like she's already seen Bond's co-op. No, she's acting like she is Kyle Reese. And that it traumatized her. But she's not Kyle Reese. She's not Kyle Reese. And Kyle Reese hasn't even seen that. I've given a lot of credit to Linda Hamilton. Now I have to give hats off to Robert Patrick, the Liquid Terminator, as he chases them. They're in a car, and he's keeping up with them. He's chasing them at breakneck pace, just running with reckless abandon, while throwing

himself around as he takes shotgun blasts. But he keeps the pace up. You fully believe this skinny guy on foot can take down a car full of badasses. and that's just insane right like this car has a terminator in it it has arnold schwarzenegger linda hamilton with guns and you're scared for them oh it's so good yeah and robert patrick he was actually approached and i always i always wished they'd done this he was approached to be in genesis wow man that would have been great and he was like no i have a bad hip now and i don't think i can run he assumed they were going to have him do a lot of running so after they get away from the t-1000 as terminator is sewing sarah up john says you even know what you're doing and terminator says i have detailed files on human anatomy at which point sarah says i'll bet makes you a more efficient killer right and the terminator just says correct like doesn't even look up or you know he's just yes of course so sounds like

he is a killing machine not a saving oh sure sure sure i mean no well all he all he says is correct which it is it is correct that that would make him a more efficient killer okay it also makes but also look actions speak louder than words what is he doing right then he's sewing her up right these things can do first aid you know what honestly i truly believe that if she said makes you a more efficient healer right he would have said correct because that is correct it does make him more efficient at healing people they open up the terminator's head and flip a switch to make it so that he can learn he says my cpu is a neural net processor a learning computer the skynet presets the switch to read only when we're sent out alone i just want to come at this from the perspective of like a computer science-based perspective, because I think this is actually a really cool scene. And I think it's pretty true to how machine learning works. When you want to

go into production, when you want your program to do what you designed it to do, you're no longer training. The training phase is already passed. You have a fully trained model. So once you have this program, this model ready, you turn off training. Speaking of the word train, if you haven't listened to our Thomas and Friends episode and you want to learn more about machine learning, go listen to our Thomas and Friends episode. No, I go way in depth in that one. I won't go as in depth for this one. If you keep training, then it will start doing unexpected things. Deepfakes use machine learning, right? But are they still learning while you generate a deepfake? No, and you don't want them to because once it's performing correctly and creating the deepfake that looks like the face you want it to, you need to stop training, right? If it kept training, then it's going to eventually become imperfect and not create expected results. It's

not going to make the face that you want to make. What we have is a Terminator who is working perfectly. His machine learning model is working how they want it to, and they're going to start training it again, which is making this T-800 unpredictable. Well, around the point where he's learning to smile, John Connor asked the question, we're not going to make it, are we? People, I mean, as he's watching these two kids playing with real guns, pretending to shoot each other. And then In the Terminator says, it is in your nature to destroy yourselves. And I think this is like not a very Terminator-y thing to say, and it sounds almost philosophical. And I think it only makes sense if we realize that all the robots in Skynet are programmed with the same sort of philosophy, that humans are dangerous and they can only survive if we help them. I think that's just a hint into, you know, how all of these Skynet robots think.

Yep, that's exactly what I was going to say. Soon after this, we're introduced to the character of Miles Dyson, the creator of Skynet. And he's basically reverse engineering the old dead Terminator from Terminator 1's processor to create a supercomputer. On his computer, there's a label that says Bit Happens. Wow. It's kind of funny, I guess. What is Dyson programming? It seems to be like some sort of colorful pink video game. Yeah, I mean, he's just taking a break. He's playing a game. He's acting so busy, he won't play with his kid. We've all done that. So they go and they break into Cyberdyne Systems. So they trip the silent alarm, and according to Miles, it neutralized all the codes in the building. John just assumes that he can still open this door that now has no opening code with his easy money hack. I assume the fact that it neutralized all the codes means that it just turned off the ability

to open doors with codes. But he's like, I can still find the code and open it. And he does. As you explained, it can just amazingly hack ATMs inexplicably. Now, here's the thing. Whatever hack this is, it would be tailor-made for ATMs and only ATMs and probably only a specific brand of ATM and even only a specific model. This would not be something that would just work on anything, right? Like it's a specific buffer overflow attack designed to target one type of ATM. It couldn't just open a door, especially not a door that has basically been turned off. There's no way that it would just find the non-existent pin to open the safe so that they could get the key. So you don't have any theory? No, it's just magic. It's 80s, 90s hacker magic. Poor Dyson, though. I know, poor Dyson. He held on to that thing as long as he could. He didn't want to kill anyone. He just wanted to save the world.

Oh, Dyson. I mean, it's cool, though, because Dyson, he feels like a real person, and he's not even a main character. Can you think of any other Terminator movie after this one that had a non-main character, or even a main character, who felt like a real person? Terminator Genisys has the policeman who becomes ridiculously dedicated to them after seeing them for 20 seconds. I don't know how realistic that is, but he's a character. I think that Terminator 2 is insane and it just, I mean, oh my gosh. Like, not only is it the greatest movie ever, but it also ends with 50 solid minutes of the greatest action ever put on film. I know, it just doesn't stop. like you said it's a whole hour it's crazy it's so good like first the standoff with the police uh terminator coming to the window and just machine gunning all their cars he uses his grenade launcher to take out the rest of them t-1000 gets the helicopter uh they have to take

out the swat team it's great that he then takes the swat team's tear gas gun uses it to disable the swat team by shooting it at them and then shoots tear gas all over outside to disable all the policemen because they don't have gas masks and then comes back in puts them in a truck and drives away so good yeah so at the smelting plant there is something that i've asked before and that many fans have asked when the t-1000 has them on the ropes he finally catches sarah but john got away why didn't he just imitate sarah why didn't he just kill her and imitate her instead he asks He says, call to John. Do you have any idea why? Yeah, well, of course I do. Because he's not supposed to be terminating her. And they really do want to limit loss of human life. While he has killed other people, plenty of other people.

You know, maybe there's a certain, not necessarily limit, but like, there's a number of, right. There is a number of acceptable casualties and he is getting close to that. So he's just being a little more cautious because he was not sent back to destroy humans. He was sent back to destroy one human in order to save lots of other humans. Yeah, I get it. He's like, I like these guys. I'm not going to kill anymore. No, but yeah, no, I've always had that question too. I see no other way of answering it. Why doesn't he just kill Sarah right then? the two best answers that i have been able to come up with are there's two possibilities number one he can only imitate voices he's heard he's never really heard sarah connor's voice right up until this point when he pokes his finger through her and says call to john and she says f you right that's the first time he hears her voice and after that he does imitate her right that's true

okay okay so what you're saying is in order to imitate a person's appearance he needs to touch them. And so that's why he stabs her. Uh-huh. Exactly. But he cannot imitate their voice without hearing it first. So he can't get voices by touch. Okay. So I guess we'd have to look. Who does he imitate? The guard says, I guess it's my lucky day before he gets killed. So I guess he heard his voice. Yeah, he heard his voice. Yep. And then he talks. And he had heard the foster mother's voice. Yeah. I mean, I assume we didn't see when he killed her. Right. No, but he had come to the house before and talked to her. Oh, yeah, that's true. He actually just spoke to her normal he did all right well then that's it i guess you're right yeah it makes sense though because there are um like uh deep fake uh deep fakes machine learning algorithms there's like the same kind of thing but for voices so that you can do a deep fake of someone's voice and you at

the current present time you can do it but you need like at least several minutes of training data like of the voice you want to copy to be able to do it well but of course he's running a way better program. So all he needs to hear is F you and he can do it perfectly. But then the other reason that you could say that he doesn't try to imitate Sarah is because he knows that voice imitation doesn't work well on John Connor because he already tried it over the phone and it totally failed. Right. And he even went and checked to make sure that it failed because he went and checked on Wolfie, right? And he took the dog's collar and he's like, its name's not Wolfie, right? That's only in the extended version, by the way. But he knows that voice imitation is unreliable and he doesn't want to fail right here. So he thinks that her calling out would be more reliable than him. Yeah. Plus he is about to reach his quota. Yeah. And he doesn't want to

kill anyone else. All right. Obviously, like one of the most epic parts of this whole movie is when the Terminator comes back after being basically destroyed up on that weird wheel with the grenade launcher and just shoots him. It's the ultimate weapon. I was just like, whoa, after all of the punishment he had taken up to that point, he's back. He's still not stopping. But watching it again, that happens several times where the Terminator is out of commission and comes back. It's not just that one time, it just keeps happening. just gets beaten up so much before he kills it sarah connor blasting it to pieces with her shotgun yeah that part's great and like as a kid like i was always just so into that moment it's just like oh if she just had one more bullet she would have won blasted apart t-1000 is just about the coolest thing ever and i wish i had the action figure so there there was an actual action figure

made of blown apart T-1000. It's amazing and someday I'm gonna own it. Someday. The version that I watched of Terminator 2 ended differently than any version I've ever seen before and it took me by surprise because I didn't even know this existed. Normally it just ends with a shot of the road. And Sarah Connor monologuing as she is wont to do. So the version I watched ended with grandma sarah connor like 30 years in the future she's taking care of her grandkids and talking about how judgment day never happened we saved the world everything's good now and our kids our grant my grandkids live in a happy world and john connor became a senator and i'm like this this is a cool ending like if you're not going to continue the series yeah she has a bunch of latex on her face to make her look old but she does look surprisingly likes old sarah in dark fate which She looks so much like it. I'm like, wow, this is the greatest aging they've ever done.

But I'm like, this is such a good ending if you're going to just disregard all the other Terminator movies, which I recommend. Just watch it with this ending, and that's how it ends. And John, you know, he's still a leader, right? He becomes a senator. That's, you know, it's his destiny, right? And then the best part was when Terminator walked in, and he's like, honey, I'm home. Good thing I survived that molten steel. you're thinking dark fate that's what he does in dark fate oops no it was an interesting ending and i thought it was kind of fun yeah uh especially cool that i'd never seen it before so i was like whoa i'm watching this movie i've seen a million times for the first time oh so that's terminator 2 we're finally getting to the sequels now first we have to talk about t2 3d battle across time made in 1996 oh boy dude what an amazing show t2 3d battle across time is an attraction at universal studios i believe it was at universal

studios california florida and japan unfortunately it was never there when i went because oh man i can't believe that they have their water world show still why would they not like who cares about water world sure i think it was taken down california earlier uh it was finally taken down florida in 2017 rumor has it it's still up in japan though so go check it out if you like man it is an amazing show and i wish i'd seen it in person it's kind of one of these like interactive shows like i don't know star tours almost but like way cooler you have some real actors but then a lot of the action takes place on a big screen and they kind of try to seamlessly blend the acting with what's going on the screen it's really good it works really well um holds up surprisingly well it was directed and written by james cameron and it costs 64 million dollars and it's like 12 minutes long so i think they should have kept it for for longer just to justify

that expense oh my gosh they should have kept playing that for a hundred years that's an insane amount of millions of dollars per minute yes so legend has it that it is minute by minute the longest film ever shot most expensive um oh my gosh yeah minute per minute minute per minute the most expensive film ever shot it's so long it never ends 12 minutes after just watching two and a half hour judgment day so long no so as far as i'm concerned it is canon and it is the sequel to uh Terminator 2. Yeah, it's probably the only legit sequel. It's got Linda Hamilton, it's got Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's got Edward Verlong. It's good, it's not perfect, and I would say for the one shot, when John, they get blasted and they both fly through the air, John lands right on top of the Terminator and they don't have like an awkward bashful moment when they're laying on top of each other. They just get up.

I think he should have blushed. I think you think John and Terminator have a very different relationship than I do. You should have been like, it's not like I like you or anything. I think that this attraction actually supports your theory that Skynet is benevolent. Very much so. More than anything else, probably. As you kind of go through the waiting room, there's this huge, long, unbelievably good commercial for Cyberdyne Systems and Skynet. Basically just saying all the great benevolent utopian things that Skynet does for people, right? It can, like, tuck your baby in at night. Yeah, it loves tucking in babies. They talk about, like, remote surgeries that doctors can perform while watching the sunset. Oh, yeah. They talk about, like, taking care of people, just painting Cyberdyne and Skynet as the greatest things ever. But then it gets interrupted by Sarah Connor and John Connor. First, it gets interrupted by their motto, where they're like, Cyberdyne systems, in an insane world, we're the sanest choice.

Unfortunately. But yeah, they're like, we have to get you out of here. Cyberdyne's not what you think. You need to trust us. We know that we've seen the future. There's evil robots. And they seem totally crazy. And then Cyberdyne takes over again. And there's like a live announcer lady who's like, I'm so sorry about that. Don't worry. They're just crazy. they're crazy like if you get a good actress for the show she's really really plays it up how much she hates those two like she has to deal with them all the time when it first released at least it was 1996 i mean a year before judgment day oh you're right that's pretty cool so then the the announcer lady takes you into the main like auditorium where she's gonna give you a preview of some upcoming Skynet tech. The main auditorium is called the Miles Bennett Dyson Memorial Auditorium, which is nice. Oh, that's so cool. That's amazing. She unveils, I think there's four Terminators

and they lower down some targets and the Terminators shoot the targets. And she's like, this is our new security solution designed to keep you safe. Then the Terminators start shooting at something and she's like, oh my gosh, what's going on? And John Connor and Sarah Connor burst in, like, as actors burst in. And you can see their faces talking on the screen at the same time. And their actors are lip syncing with Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong's actual voices. The actors are not actually them. The real live ones aren't. And then Liquid Terminator shows up and he's like, John Connor. And then he's going to stop them. But then Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up on a motorcycle. he's riding around on the stage and he shoots liquid terminator with a shotgun right in front of you it's so good and he gets blasted backwards and then he grabs john and he's like come with me if you want to live and sarah's like yes go with him he'll keep you safe and then he takes john

through a time portal a time portal that lets you keep all your clothes pretty nice this is a new improved time portal it also lets you keep a motorcycle um it's really cool though they drive into the screen like into the wall and that is where the time portal is like on the screen and the wall opens so they can drive the motorcycle through it and it looks like they get teleported through time and you know seamlessly they show up on the screen it's really good it's amazing they make it pretty clear that this is the t800 from t2 yeah it is he knows john and he's like good to see you john and john's like hey you're back right but i mean when you got a time machine you know exactly go get him right why has no other terminator movie done this why not you could save that specific terminator right yeah seriously who cares yeah it was a great moment you're gonna ruin the franchise anyway so just bring him back i mean the only argument is like

no we can't take away that awesome moment where he sacrificed himself but it's like but you took away everything else you drove it into the ground yep I mean they freaking killed John Connor in the future they the liquid Terminator follows them so they take it out and they get attacked by like drones and other Terminators and another T-800 with no skin bursts in and Terminator grabs a drone out of the air and throws it at the T-800 like a frisbee and it chops off its head and its head flies up into the air in your face because it's in 3D right yeah And then he grabs Donnie's like, we're going to take down Skynet. And they like drive into this big Skynet pyramid. But it's also protected by a T-1 million, which is a giant liquid Terminator spider. And there's an amazing scene where this spider on the TV is fighting with real actors that are running around the entire auditorium, like in between the seats with their shotgun

and everything. they beat the t1 million and they're gonna blow up the skynet cpu but terminator is like you have to go john i'll do this myself and john's like no i won't leave you again and he's like don't worry i'll be back he john goes through the time portal terminator swings over to the cpu and blows up to destroy it and it's a really good show yeah here's a fun story while shooting the extreme close-up of Arnold Schwarzenegger firing a sawn-off shotgun, the concussion from the blank firing weapon destroyed the $40,000 beam splitter of the 16mm high-speed 3D camera rig. Oh no! And then when James Cameron was informed that there were now only five of those very costly parts remaining on set, James Cameron ordered four more takes. Assuming he's, I think his philosophy was like if i have to do this stupid thing i'm gonna spend as much money as possible well but he didn't think it was stupid uh all the reports were that so making t2 uh making

terminator 2 is apparently a pretty harrowing experience and everyone kind of came off of it like really tired and not wanting to make more terminator movies uh including james cameron but then years later when he made t2 3d battle across time he brought everyone back and apparently everyone had a really really great experience and everyone expressed interest in making a third one James Cameron was like yeah no this is great actually I remember why I love Terminator I want to do it Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to do it Linda Hamilton wanted to do it Edward Furlong wanted to do it and it really seemed for a few years like we were going to get James Cameron's Terminator 3 but what actually happened Leif we got Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines what's that I've never heard of it. That doesn't exist. What are you talking? Terminator ends at Terminator 2 3D Battle Across Time. Well, thanks so much for listening.

That was our coverage of Terminator 2. And I hope you liked our theories. Terminator 2, the best movie ever. We have not concluded our breakdown of whether or not Skynet are the good guys or the bad guys here. but it's starting to look more likely they might be the good guys. Is it though? I don't remember any particular evidence from Terminator 2. Now, but please don't miss the next episode because we will be talking to Michael Ferris, the writer of Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation. And this next episode is going to have a lot of evidence for this particular theory. Oh, this is going to be the bulk of our theory. And we're going to try and cover episodes 3, 4, 5, and 6. We're going to cover Terminator 3, Terminator Salvation, Terminator Genesis, and Terminator Dark Fate in one episode. So it's going to be jam-packed with the fan theory goodness. We're going to hear what Michael Ferris has to say about this.

So join us next time while we talk about what I imagine must be everyone's favorite Terminator movies. No, no, no. Three through six. Well, it's going to be a blast. Don't miss it. The music for this episode is provided by Christine. You can reach out to us on Twitter at Popcorn Isn't Real. And until next time, remember, the popcorn isn't real.