51吃瓜

The latest Terminator film marks a recovery from its predecessors, but its treatment of time travel is still implausible.

Franchise reboots using alternative timelines are currently all the rage, blurring the lines between sequels and prequels on screens across the globe. J.J. Abrams鈥� 2009聽Star Trek聽is both an alternative timeline prequel to the original and a sequel to 2002鈥檚聽Nemesis. Meanwhile,聽X-Men: Days of Future Past聽is something of a reboot of 2000鈥檚聽X-Men, and a sequel to 2011鈥檚聽X-Men: First Class听辫谤别辩耻别濒.

This can get confusing. Lacking a catchy term for alternative reality sequels and prequels, let鈥檚 call them 鈥渁lterequels.鈥�

聽takes the alterequel to a whole new level. Having your alterequel deliberately contradict its original source is one thing, but Terminator Genisys lands slap-bang in the middle of its source鈥攁nd blows it all away.

After a prologue set in 2029, Genisys revisits the original T-800 Terminator鈥檚 nude landing in 1984. But this time around, another T-800 (played by an older and fully-clothed Arnold) shows up and biffs its past self. Rather than Kyle Reese rescue Sarah Connor鈥攁s in the original聽Terminator聽film鈥攖his time Sarah rescues Kyle. Not the original Sarah, either, but an alternative Sarah who was orphaned by one Terminator and raised by another.

Much alterequel hullabaloo ensues. Skynet鈥攈umanity鈥檚 artificially-intelligent nemesis鈥攏ow seeks birth in 2017 via the oddly-spelled (and vaguely-described) 鈥淕enisys鈥� app. The usually formless antagonist even has its own body in 2029. A liquid-metal T-1000鈥攐riginally sent back to 1995 in聽Terminator 2: Judgment Day鈥攖urns up in 1984, while 2017 boasts a nanomachine-Terminator, which changes into fog when roused. Adding to the chaos, each of the settings鈥�2029, 1984 and 2017鈥攈as its own time machine.

Time laws

Time travel fiction offers you three options: Either you can have one constrained history, many histories or one contradictory history.

In the first option, you can go back in time, but you鈥檒l find that there are some things you cannot do there. For instance, you won鈥檛 be able to kill your grandfather, because that causes a logical paradox. The second option will allow you to travel to a time that is different to your own, but not necessarily back in time. So, instead of landing earlier in your own history, you鈥檒l end up in an alternative reality.

Both of these options are logically consistent; one and the same world never contains anyone who is both alive and dead at the same time.

In contrast, the third option allows you to travel back in your own history, overwrite events and laugh at logic as you go. Inconsistent though it may be, this option seems to fit Terminator Genisys best. But fiction notwithstanding, it鈥檚 worth examining if any of this has a factual basis.

Of course, ultimately, Genisys is fantasy with a light dusting of references to 鈥渜uantum fields.鈥� But physicists have actually speculated that later events can not only affect past events (consistently help make them what they were), but can even overwrite them (inconsistently make them different from what they were). Unfortunately for Genisys, though, scientists overwhelmingly favor the 鈥渙ne constrained history鈥� or 鈥渕any histories鈥� options.

The former received a big boost of support, following some聽 results聽in聽鈥減ost-selection鈥� quantum tunneling , which eliminates problems like the grandfather paradox. And no less a than聽John S. Bell聽(of 鈥淏ell鈥檚 Inequality鈥� fame)聽 that if we accept the 聽that there are many worlds with different histories, then 鈥渢here is no association of the particular present with any particular past.鈥� If this is the case, then perhaps no event is final or safe鈥攊n theory, it may all be flux.

Aspirant history changers beware though: There may be no way to control or predict what shape any revised history takes. Human or cyborg, physics will likely treat you as just one more object in the flux.

Emilia Clarke 漏 Shutterstock

Unsurprisingly, time travel stories usually make their point-of-view characters the people who make changes to history, rather than those who suffer them. Try picturing what historical deletion might feel like for the deleted: It鈥檚 difficult to imagine what, if anything, it鈥檚 like to be made such that you never were.

But once inconsistency gets in, it鈥檚 difficult to correct. Maybe revisions to events never end, and everything is provisional. If you are (even partly) what befalls you, and what befalls you is fluid, maybe you鈥檙e fluid too.

I devoutly hope that reality follows consistent rules, but perhaps history, identity and consistency are just local. A classic Zen parable suggests that when we see a flag blowing in the wind, neither wind moves nor flag moves鈥攔ather mind moves. Maybe we should conclude that neither human moves nor T-800 moves, but rather mind moves: from Terminator to Zen via quantum physics.

Overall, this new incarnation improves markedly on the third and fourth Terminator films, which wobbled between graveyard slapstick and Christian Bale鈥檚 grumpy stubble. But alterequels threaten diminishing returns鈥攁s a聽shaky first 聽at the box office can testify. Genisys鈥� Skynet taunts its enemies that its existence is inevitable, and it may be right鈥攁t least, fictionally speaking.

A slightly perfunctory mid-credit sequence ensures that Terminator Genisys well and truly clears the way for any future films. While cinema can remold fictional histories ad infinitum, audience patience may be finite. The worry is that history-changing franchises will start to seem (forgive me) interminable.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author鈥檚 own and do not necessarily reflect 51吃瓜鈥檚 editorial policy.

Photo Credit: 听/ /听

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