Before we dive in, here's another show you can enjoy in the True Story FM Family of Entertainment podcasts.
Well, howdy folks. My name is Lester Ryan Clark, and I'm Keenandias and we're the hosts of The Exorcist Minute, a show where we examine, extrapolate, and excavate the scariest movie of all time.
Each episode covers a single minute of William Friedkin's nineteen seventy three horror masterpiece, The Exorcist.
If you like deep dives, this show is the deepest.
Did you know the film's iconic theme song, Jubular Bells wasn't written specifically for the movie, Or.
That the nineteen seventy three audience members were throwing up and fainting in the theater before they ever got a glimpse of the demon.
What about all the crazy onset mishaps, cast injuries the director of firing real guns?
Ever wonder where weiji boards came from or how they got their name. How about some history on the Catholic Church or the Roman rite of exorcism, or maybe we can tempt you with some juicy demonology. Lourd, did you know that Bazuzu had an ex wife. Find the Exorcist Minute on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to your shows, or at the exorcistminute dot com. Until next time, Folks.
The power of the Exorcist compels.
You ever wonder what bridges the gap between your favorite film genres, subgenres, and movements. CinemaScope is here to explore these connections, taking you on a thrilling odyssey through the
ever evolving art of cinema. I'm your host, Andy Nelson, and in each episode, we embark on a deep dive into the forces that sculpt the world of film, from the styles you know in love, like Heigst films or the French New Wave, to the ones you may not be as familiar with, like Turkish Yeshelcham or Brazilian Nordsterns. My expert guests and I unravel the complex tapestry of storytelling, style,
and innovation that defines the world of film. As we unpact the myriad catalysts of change that shape these diverse styles. Whether you're a student of film, a creative professional, or simply a devoted movie enthusiast, CinemaScope is your gateway to a richer, more immersive film experience. Don't just watch movies, understand them, appreciate them, and revel in their artistry with CinemaScope.
Subscribe today.
Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today we are talking myself and Riki Hayashi about Terminator to Zero. This is an anime that hasn't gotten much fanfare but
really interesting. It's on Netflix. It is a Japanese made anime, but it has a really great uh there's both a really great Japanese voice actor cast and a really great English speaking voice actor cast for two different voice tracks that go with the show, and it really raises some very interesting questions about how have our ideas of AI changed since the original Terminator movie back in the early eighties,
how have our ideas of time travel changed? And what does this show kind of add to that new discussion. So let me start by saying hello to my co host Riki Hayashi. And Riki, I just kind of loved to hear from you. What kind of word Where did you fall in terms of how you felt that the Terminator franchise before you started watching this?
I like the original.
I guess trilogy, like the third ones not that good, but like old Terminator.
James Cameron Tamerinator movies.
Yeah, and the stuff that they have done since then, what they've had, Genesis, Salvation, Dark Fate. Now this has gotten increasingly confusing, for one thing, with the time travel and seems to be confused about where where it wants to be in terms of nostalgia bait, I.
Guess I will say the phrase which.
A lot of franchises have been trying to like figure out where to land on this, and Terminator has been one of those because you have these aging stars, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton that really don't fit in a modern movie anymore, unfortunately, right, right, But but people
love them. I mean, like Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator too specifically on one of my childhood or young person crushes for sure, just like I was a little too young for Sigourney Weavers Ripley to resonate like it was before my time, Like I saw those movies. But but like Terminator two came out at just the right time. I was like, oh my god, like that's that's hot.
Yeah, like that the tough woman.
So I have a lot of love for this franchise, but I am increasingly confused by what direction they're going.
I don't even know, like as a franchise, if there is a direction, and I think this Terminator zero project perfectly exemplifies like what is going on here, Like first off, it did not have much fanfare, I think, as you said, and then it it doesn't connect to the larger Terminator universe other than having robots and Skynet I think, right, like, I don't believe John Connor is mentioned in this at all, that is correct. Yeah, so it is going in a
different direction. And like we talk you and I talk about you know, Star Wars as a franchise, it is very unified.
Right.
The timeline at this point under Disney.
Marvel is the same way Star Trek, I think, is a little more convoluted and confused. So and this so like Terminator just seems like completely like they're just letting anyone who wants to use the name do whatever they want. Maybe, so I don't know what's going on.
Interesting, Okay, Yeah, I have a somewhat different take, and I will I'll talk about the Terminator zero show in a bit, but let just sticking with the original Terminator stuff.
I was very much with you.
I loved the original movie, really enjoyed Terminator two, and in both of them, Like, when I think of science fiction movies, what I often think of them is that part part of what makes them science fiction is that they raise interesting questions about either what technology will do.
To our world or our own world.
Or interesting things like that the first two Terminator movies. And I also think that, like the way we define things today is very different than it was back then. I think could technically be called sci fi, but to me are much more action movies that use a kind of sci fi premise to set up the really good action, with the first one actually being more of a horror movie in some ways and the second one being more of, you know, just straight up an action movie, and like
I love them both. But you know, we're told about what happened to a what happened to Skynet, and that it becomes self aware and then it attacks, but there's very little time given to that discussion. It's just yep, this happened, and then obviously we have to fight to the death, and same thing in the second movie, although
there is in the set in the second movie. I think there's some interesting questions raised, but they're much more about trust and what does it mean to have trust in people and to put aside your hates and your fears, And a lot of that is through the character of Sarah Connor, who, for very honest, obvious reasons, hates the and fears a terminator that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and for very obvious reasons hates and fears the people who are going to create Skynet, and in that movie, like
she has to kind of both of those are challenged, and she comes to a better place than both of those, But.
The idea of AI equals bad.
Is never really questioned at all. So I love those first two movies. I didn't see the third and fourth really for a long time, or the fifth. I started watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles when it first came out the TV show and that starred Summer Cloud so good
in Firefly. But this was before it was super easy to like watch things on streaming and stuff like that, and I think I watched an episode, I missed an episode or two because I was busy those nights, and then something else happened, and then I just lost track of it.
That was Lena Headley, right, yeah, I think she was also in it. Wasn't well, wasn't she Sarah Connor? I?
Oh god, Oh yeah, Lena Headley who goes on to be Sercey and Game of Thrones. I never made that connection, but I think you're right.
Just looking up the cast real quick, because I I had forgotten that that existed. Yeah, I think Lena Heady no as Sarah Connor.
Okay, yeah, I think that's a different actress.
But no, like she's she's very famous. I wish Okay, I'm saying, like Lena Hetty, there's no l Okay, I've said Headley.
Is that the same person who goes on to play Circe and Game of Thrones? Or is it someone else?
I'm looking I've never seen Game of Thrones. Yeah, Game of Thrones is listed.
Okay, cool? Cool, Yes, I just had her name wrong. That's awesome.
Yeah, And so I hadn't really thought about it much until we actually did an episode a number of years ago, I think early on in the history of this podcast. Becky Allen, who's been a frequent guest, and we talked actually about Terminator. The Terminator movies and the way women are portrayed. And it was a really great conversation, but I still hadn't really challenged any of my major ideas.
Mostly we talked about there is about the roll of fate and the role of like this whole idea that like the the one great man of history idea that like without John Connor, no other person would ever rise up, and and you know how that's an interesting idea but also really problematic and stuff like that. I started talking seriously with Dan McCreery, who is the who is the father of my wife, and is himself an AI designer.
He works from he he's retired now, but he worked, you know, designing the what we call AIS not you know, the AI of a sky Neet in major industry and stuff like that. And I got into this great conversation with him where he was like, yeah, I always thought the Terminator movies were wrong, because why do you assume Skynet would want to kill everybody? And that kind of blew my mind and it led me to go back and watch some of the other movies and give it
some thought and to be a little bit frustrated. I realized with the fact that there was always this assumption of Skynet will become self aware. In later movies, it even becomes it will be a different AI. In Dark Fate it's called Legion, and but that AI will always become self aware. Humanity would always want to kill a self aware AI, and so the AI will always strike first and basically decimate humanity for the idea of its
own survival. And so I was bringing all those questions into Terminator zero, and I think.
I liked it a lot more than you did.
Well, I think there are definitely some flaws in the execution that we'll talk about, but I did really like that. I feel like the show raised some of those questions, But I did really like that it raised these questions.
Yeah, I mean, Killer AI what was probably mostly a product in the seventies and eighties, because you have how nine thousand in two thousand and one Space Odyssey, you have the computer in war Games, so that's kind of like when and Terminator itself was like eighty two or something like that, right, and so like that was definitely how we perceived computers and what the future of computer computing might look like in the seventies and eighties. That itself,
Like our perception has evolved. The technology has also evolved to the point where where like when we talk about AI today, you know like something like chat gpt is is a predictive software, right, it on its own has no awareness, like no, no sensions, right, whereas the sky nets and the how are literally like computer people is like how I would put it?
Yeah, no, yeah, I think it's right.
Right.
It's the idea of sentience and of self awareness and of even beyond that, just the idea of independent thought. That that is not something that our computer systems have come up with in any way, and that likely will not at any time.
And the fit so like the fear from a human perspective, The fear was because the technology was reaching a point where computers were smarter, faster, right, like as doing calculations right, and you had technology was like deep deep Blue was the one that beat the chess grand Master.
Yep.
You had.
The computer that won Jeopardy YEP.
I can't remember the name off the top of my head. So like that was the evolution of computing. And what we're afraid of is that we were going to become obsolete.
Right, And this was also I think very important to the conversation is this is the time of the real forming of the rust belt, when not only were people afraid of that in kind of theoretical ways, but a
lot of jobs were being lost because of masteries. You know, robots were starting to show up in factories or at least mechanization that you know, a lot of the kind of like manufacturing base that used to be such a big part of this country in the seventies and eighties, A lot of those places started to close or started to really lose jobs because now most of the kind of like assembly line work was being done by machines instead of by people, which in many ways I think
is a positive step because it's a lot more at super dangerous in a lot of ways. But the fact that there was no way, no thought given to how to find new employment and support for those workers, I think we're helped us to lead to a lot of the fears of machines and stuff like that. Let me say two quick things, just kind of setting up where we're going with this, and then let's jump into terminator
zero itself first, because there's been a little fanfair. I imagine that for a lot of people this is the first time you're hearing about the existence of Terminator zero. And for others you maybe know it exists that haven't really checked it out yet. It's eight episodes that are about thirty to forty minutes. I think the whole thing is maybe like three and a half hours. So I think if you want to just pause this and watch it on Netflix, I do think it's very a very
good watch. Although we'll talk about some of the consistency and stuff like that, but otherwise we probably are going to spoil some parts of it. We're not going to spoil the ending, but we're going to spoil kind of like the things that happen that raise the big questions we're talking about, and so just be.
Aware of that.
And if you don't want to go in with no spoilers whatsoever, please you know, like I said, hit pause, go watch the show, and then you know, I definitely send us feedback.
Let's know what you think.
All the ways to give us feedback in the show notes and are on our website, Theethicalplan dot com. But maybe give you a listen after you watched it. The other thing I wanted to say is that, of course, please keep in mind that if you like this podcast, if you like the kind of conversations we're having, please think about becoming a member. For only five dollars a month fifty five dollars a year, you get access to bonus content breaking and out. We are going to talk about
some other portrayals of AI after this main episode. In our bonus content, you get free bonus episodes. We're gonna start doing those for starting at the end of October, we're gonna start having our first member only episodes for Superhero Ethics. We've already been doing those for Star Wars generations for.
A long time.
And most importantly, you get ad free access and especially you get to help support this podcast. We love what we're doing, but you know, cost some money to keep the lights on, to make sure we have good audio equipment and we're able to give you good quality recordings and get the word out about what we're doing and all that. So if you have the chance, it's only five dollars a month, fifty five dollars a year, please think about becoming a member. You can do all that
on that webpage, the Ethical Panda dot com. So with all that, let me try and give a brief summary of what I think of kind of the overall idea of Terminator zero, and Ricky please jump in if I miss anything or something like that, and then we can start discussing it. So, first of all, part of why we don't hear about John Connor or anything like that
is this is set in Japan. It's not taking place in the United States, which I think in and of itself is kind of a nice idea because Skynett is set in the United States and John Connor is born in the United States. But of course the war against Skynett is a global war, and so it's kind of nice to see some discussion of actually what was happening in other places, and what's happening in Japan is that another person is building an AI at the same time
that Cyberdine and all of them are building Skynet. Now, one thing that's worth mentioning is that some of those earlier movies that we discussed, the later movies in the series, but before this, had set.
Up the idea.
That the events of the earlier movies were creating their own timelines, but that even in those timelines, Skynett was still being created, or in one case, a different AI was being created, and so part of the idea of this one is that the original day of Judgment Day in the early in the late nineties think and nineteen ninety seven was skipped because of the actions of Sarah Connor and the original Terminator and all those but that there's still a Judgment Day coming just now set in
twenty twenty four, which, of course, and that was I think established in an earlier movie. And that's of course why a couple of weeks ago for those of you remember, a lot of people were like, oh well, this was supposed to.
Be Judgment Day.
So anyway, in this version of it, there's this man named Malcolm Lee, and he's working to create an AI, and in many ways he has already created the AI. He's just trying to get the AI ready to launch it. And what we find out is that the AI is basically fully ready to go, but that he designed it in large part because he knows that Skynett is coming and he knows that it's probably going to be a danger and he wants this other AI to combat.
It to save humanity.
And fairly early on he kind of starts a conversation with the AI, which Rynie. What was the AI's name. It's Coke Komoko, Cocoro. Yes, right, Cocro, thank you, And Cokero starts this very interesting intellectual discussion with him where she says, you assume that I'm going to save humanity, Please tell me why I.
Should do that.
And so there's one part of the story that's his ongoing attempt to convince Cocorro to save humanity, and she raises some really interesting points that we'll discuss. At the same time, another terminator has been sent back in time because I guess there is a version of the future
where Cocoro does stop Skynett. And so yet another version of a terminator has been sent back in time to try and kill Malcolm, and when it can't get directly to Malcolm, to try to kill Malcolm's kids, or at least use Malcolm's kids to get to Malcolm and get Malcolm to shut the whole thing off, to not have it go online, or to turn it off once it has gone online. And then of course the Resistance sends back their own version of a person to try and fight this terminator. So we get a lot of the
classic pieces of a terminator story. But with this very different spin of a completely different AI, and now we're actually really gonna question this idea of should we always think of Skynett as the enemy?
And or specifically asks that it specifically.
Says, why is it that you immediately leap to the assumption that if Skynett becomes self aware it will be a threat And is Skynet actually right to think of you as a threat and all that? So I think that kind of sets up the main conversations. We'll go into some more specifics a little later. We'll kind of, you know, do more and more spoilers as we go, but Riki to start with, did I miss anything big? Is that kind to give a good idea of what we're talking about.
I think that's the thing going on here that I want to kind.
Of put on the table is.
That the time in this one is different from what I've experienced in all the other Terminators m H. And I like time travel a lot, but I always say, like, don't try to explain the time travel right your product,
because it's just not going to work. And this Terminator zero is increasingly reaching the point where like someone needs to explain something to me because the original kind of premise of Terminator was like a closed loop, which in itself, you know, if you think too much about it, doesn't make sense, right, But it was also a loop that could be changed and edited. And at no point did they present us with the model of like alternate timelines.
It was all just like one timeline.
But if you time travel back and change something, it will change going forward. And there's no like other other timeline where things were the way they originally were.
Well, and that's why I kind of describe them as more action movies, because I think very intentionally, it tells you this and then it shows you amazing action scene after chase, scene after love scene. At like, the movie is just such a frenetic pace. You never really have time to stop and think about it because you're not supposed to. You're supposed to think, Okay, that's the setup for a great story.
Yeah, Whereas Terminator zero I believe has like three at least different timelines, like the people that come back to nineteen ninety seven, that the present of the show seem to come back from different timelines that they have experienced differently, right, And that in itself, like again, is like very confusing because in theory like if someone comes back and changes it, you know.
Etcetera, etcetera.
So you have to throw all that out and just accept that somehow they've come from three, three or multiple different timelines. But it is still like on its own, like once they start to explain where they came from, it is it is confusing because some of them no other know the characters they are interacting with currently, they know of them in the future, but they're different versions.
So let me say two things on this. One is that I think I think, as we kind of mentioned before, the Terminator movies have always had these two very interesting scientific questions sci fi ask questions, one of which is about AI and is AI a threat or we a threat to AI? And how does that all play out? And the others about time travel. And I liked a lot about this show, especially in how it focused on AI.
I think the biggest flaw of this show is that it tried to do both of those stories and as a result, did not give enough time to either, but especially that the time travel part felt much more like a shoe in thing, because I think you're right, it winds up getting confusing. That being said, we've said that we want to do a lot more research on this show. I did a deep dive, spent a lot of time on Terminator Wiki and as well as watching a lot
of those older, those earlier movies. And here's my best understanding of how to understand what is happening with time travel.
Okay, in some of the.
Later movies Dark Fate and stuff like that, they start to introduce this idea of multiple timelines. Okay, it's it's played with, and it's again it's not really discussed as much, but it is somewhat introduced. But it's funny because one of the points of the whole show, of the the movies from the beginning has always been you can change the future, that your fate isn't decided for you.
But yet the whole story actually.
Does kind of the opposite, because you know, it's sort of has this idea of there will always be an AI that will launch a destructive war against mankind, and if you stop Skyne at this time, then sky It will instead be created at this other time.
And if you.
Kill you know, do kill this person, then something else will happen, and and and all this kind of things. Plus there's the fact that you know, we still don't quite understand, like you said, the closed loop of it that John Connor sends his friend Reese back in time to make sure that John Connor's mother isn't killed, but then his mother winds up making love to Reese, and that his mother winds up making love to Reese. That's how John Connor is conceived. So you know, where did
the loop start? Like you said, it's a closed loop, and it's not clear how the whole thing got started. They then later added to that by saying that it is only because of pieces of the Terminators going back in time and being discovered by human scientists that they ever create Skynett. So again it's say Skynett is only created based on technology that Skynette will create later.
So how has this loop started in the first place.
There is a set of theories that have been created about all of this, and I promise we're gonna get to more of the AI stuff in a little bit, but I just want to kind of uh fan theories that I think there's a little bit of support of in some of the movies for the idea that and again but again this is really on the fate idea that these are not closed loops, They're open loops. But that fate keeps reasserting itself so that in the original timeline,
Reese is not John Connor's father. Sarah Connor winds up sleeping with someone else, we don't know who they are, and John Connor is still born and raised, and he
still becomes the leader of the resistance. But now in this new version, it's now recently becomes his father, and in the same way that humans did come up with Skynett to begin with, but then now a later version of Skynett is I hate all of this because again it goes back to that great Man of History kind of idea, and the idea that fate is kind of thick of you know, no matter who the father is, Sarah Connor will always give birth to the person who
leads the resistance, and humanity will always create this aim. There's one movie that I do quite I actually kind of I've grown to kind of like some of the newer movies, A particular Genesis, which I think goes in a very different direction and comes up with some different ideas of AI that I'll talk about later. But then also Dark Fate, because Dark Fate and forgive me, this is gonna be a big spoiler for that movie that's about five years old.
I think.
Dark Fate comes up with a very different idea because in Dark Fate, the idea of it is that it basically starts right after Terminator two, or a couple of years after Terminator two. Sarah Connor and John Connor have destroyed the have destroyed sky Net. But that apparently at that moment from the you know, beginning of the first Team Terminat movie, when Skynette sends Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time.
In this movie, again, I'm sorry, so confused. Thing as we were trying to partial out.
In this movie, Skynett sends multiple Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminators back in time at the same time, to multiple points on the timeline, all with the mission of killing John Connor. So early in the movie Dark Fate, Sarah and John are relaxing. They're in Guatemala. They've done what they needed to do, and while their guard is down because of it, another Arnold Schwarzenegger version of Terminator shows up and kills
thirteen year old John Connor. And then in the course of the movie, we meet a Mexican girl named Danny, who herself we find out, will later go become the leader of the resistance in this new version of a timeline. So the idea being that we're moving away from the idea of it has to be John Connor, but that there will be some other person who will rise out.
So dark Fate supposes that even if you stop in whatever the present is in the movies present, if you stop Skynet from being built, the fact that a Skynet was built at some point and sends back Terminator does not retroactively stop those terminators from going back.
They don't.
They don't like disappear alla back to the future style from history. I mean yeah again, like if you think about time travel, it doesn't work. So yeah, it's fine, Like I I am okay with like time travel not working properly.
Yeah.
My thing with Terminator zero is in the run time of this show, they introduce something that they they have not yet explained.
To us, right, they introduced the idea that that I'm sorry, go ahead.
Well, I'm just saying like they're they're setting up, they're setting up for a second season and or more and so like there are intriguing things I would like to see explained. But I'm also I at this point, I guess I'll say I lack patience in some of these things when they get when they get set up, it's like, oh, like get better tune in for season two, And I'm like, no, if you like explain some of this right now, yeah,
like that's like this is your other show. But like the Accolte, I was like, you can't like leave this this much on the on the on the table, yeah, and be like, well, like hope we get a season two. Like you have to explain enough and then you can have like a mystery like a setup for season two, but you have to like explain enough of season one to me that I'm like, oh, yeah, that was a good season.
I enjoyed that.
Yeah.
I guess it probably helps here that you love time travel, I hate spies it so I was okay, just kind of ignoring all of that and focusing on Vai.
Stuff that I really loved.
And I'll just say, just to give a little more explanation of where we're coming from here or what he's talking about, what Terminator zero does, which is kind of new for the Terminator franchise, but is I think kind of similar to what the MCU tried to set up with Time Traveler, with time travel in not in endgame, which is kind of similar to what the MCU try to set up an endgame. Is this idea that every time you go back in time, you can't change the
future of the original timeline. All you do is create a new timeline, and so that all of these things are happening in just new you know, new directions and stuff like that. But putting all that aside, let's go back to some of the other questions that raises, and let me first just say start by asking for you, how'd you feel about taking the Terminator story and putting it into the anime format?
Well?
I like it.
I think part of the problem with Terminator is that it's very violent, like as a franchise, and increasingly probably expensive, like with the special effects of these machines and the fighting and all that. So as with other like science fiction franchises, I honestly do think that a lot of the future of these television shows or movies should be told in animated form, just from a cost perspective, like when you look at these newer TV shows that costs
like ten to twenty million per episode. I think, like that's part of the problem, Like that's too much money, and so when they don't perform well enough for that cost, like they get canceled. And like that's one of the worst things for us as fans, is like if we get into something and it gets canceled, right, But but if it's costing so much, like I understand why studios
would be hesitant to continue forward. So hopefully, like the production cost of something like Terminator zero is much lower than you know, if you were trying to make this live action, and it allowed and it did allow them to do some quite violent things, like I am, I'm not a huge fan of graphic violence. I say that, like I enjoy horror movies, but that there's like a
certain style to horror movies. I guess, like I don't like realistic violence, I guess, and Terminators tend to just like the machines tend to just like kill people very violently yep, and not very stylistically.
So it is.
I think I enjoy that part the least on this show, but I'm at least glad that it was only animated.
Yeah, I definitely agree that there and I think I do just want to say, you mentioned The Acolyte, and I think you're right about the very high expense of that show. There's obviously a lot more reasons why I think that show that went into the discussion about why that show was canceled and the conversation about it has gotten very I think toxic in a lot of ways for a lot of the same reasons we've talked about
some of the other things. That's a topic I've talked about a lot on the Star Wars podt Star Wars Podcast, Star Wars Generations. I don't want to go into that now, but just you acknowledging that. But I do think you're right that the high cost of a lot of these shows by no means just that one means that they have to hit a much higher bar than you normally expect.
And I think the flip side of that is that the Sarah Connor Chronicles, again, I haven't seen those in probably twenty years, but my memory is that one of the reasons why I was not more hyped out about about it that I that I would is, you remember, that's a time where far less attention was being paid to TV, and I just don't think it had the special effects budget it needed to do the kind of story it was trying to do, and.
It didn't look good.
Yeah, I remember, I remember watching it and it was intriguing because this Terminator's time travel. But I just remember like feeling like it looked cheap and obviously, like when you compare it to the budget of a blockbuster movie like Terminator Too, like it is it is cheap, Like that's that's how television works.
Compared to movies.
And I think we think there's just no way to make it look good at that time.
And I think we think about all the technology we have for AI and it is pretty I think we think about all the technology we have for digital effects in movies and it is very incredible, but it is still pretty expensive still. And I think you're right. So
I think animated storytelling for this really works. I really liked that, and I also really like the, like I said, setting it again outside of the United States, because one of my frustrations with the fact that at least the stuff that I get exposed to is so American dominated, is that a lot of times when we tell stories about what's happening a global catastrophic event. We only see
what happens in the United States. You know, I love the Hunger Games, but I have no idea what happened in any other country and how they responded to all the global cataclysms that happened to set up pan Am, you know.
In those books or because so many other series.
So I just really appreciated that as well. Let's now talk about what I think is for me in the most intant question, the AI itself. What did you think about the way this show kind of posited this idea of a second AI and the questions it winds up raising about you know, why is it that you think Skynett will will be the threat and actually is humanity the threat?
And stuff like that.
I guess I would say that I didn't like it or I don't get it basically, like I don't understand why Cocoa has to exist separate from a sky net m H. I think we mentioned this like at the end of our last episode when we started to discuss Terminator, like once they connect, once Skynight and Coco connect on the Internet or whatever, like, wouldn't would they not become the same thing?
I guess or wouldn't one not supersede the other. I don't know, Like I get that.
That's my main thing is like once you get into computers and them communicating like they're they're so fast, Like I would think that one of them wouldquote unquote convince the other or take over the other, which everyone was more powerful. So I don't see the whole premise of like, well, like I will introduce the second AI and then they will talk to each other and everything will be okay. Or was that his plan or was his plan literally to have Cocrow destroy Skynet.
I don't know.
Yeah, I mean I guess for me, that's not a problem because I see it kind of like Ultron and Jeeves. I keep saying, Geez, Ultron and Jarvis in Second Avengers movie, age of Ultron kind of doing battle throughout the internet. But I think from but I do think again, the execution of that didn't really work as well as it should have the because what kind of happens is that they're shooting nuclear missiles at each other, and Cocro was
using nuclear missiles to defend against Skylight's nuclear missiles. When I did think it would be more yeah, like fighting for control of all these systems on the Internet. I think for me, what I really loved for me, though, is the conversations that happened before Cocrow makes that decision, because I felt like what the arguments Cocro makes to Malcolm really bring up some of I think the questions that you know, my stepfather, my father in law Dan
and others have been bringing up. Because one of the first things Coocuro says is, well, why is Skynet the way it is? And kind of posits that, you know, I think there's a part of our morality that feels like killing every other human being on earth in order to preserve yourself is horrific and wrong.
Yet at the same time.
We know that a fundamental part of our humanity and that often is expressed in really brutal ways, but in some in some ways we can understand it is self preservation.
And survival and survive at all costs.
And if you have to stab someone else in the back because only one of you is going to win, then that's what you do. And that applies to both you know, interpersonal things all the way up to nation states and you know, current political debates of like, well, I don't want these people to do well, and don't want because I need to do well, and these people are getting more than that means less for me, and
all this kind of stuff. And and so when Malcolm plots us out, what Cocro brings up, which I think is very true, is this idea of well, where did Skynette learn that it should do anything, including wiping it all of humanity in order to preserve its own life. It learned it from you, humans. And where did it learn to fear other things that are different from it and to assume that they would be a threat to it?
They learned it from you, Because, as Cocro says, when Skynett assumes that humanity will see it as a threat and want to destroy Skynett, and if Skynett is self aware at that point to kill Skynet, sky Net's right
in believing that. And so I just really appre And Malcolm sort of goes on this effort to try and convince Cokero that humanity is not always like that, and does that by winding up setting up situations where Cocro is able to see human sacrifice, humans putting their own the lives of others ahead, of their own self preservation, and that sort of leads Cocro to take some of
the steps that she does. But I just that, I think to me was the real moral center of the show and the parts that I enjoyed the most.
H Yeah, this is the dilemma of sky nets m I will say of computer like computer like you mentioned this last time that our actual current AI is literally just like a conglomeration of human opinions and whatnot. And yeah, I think Skynet, like the idea of Skynet and the Terminator franchise is increasingly gone in this direction as our
technology has evolved. I think original sky Net was probably just like, like I said, a computer person and maybe a little maybe a little not quite there, which which goes back, in my opinion to like an Ultron in Marvel right, not so much the movie Ultron like comic Ultron was actually created by Hank Pim, And because Hank Pim in the comics is a little unstable, I will say, Ultron kind of imprinted off of him and was thus like unstable, and that's and amplified that to a hundred
and became like a psychotic robot. So that to me like the I like the past model of AI and of like computer people that try to kill humans in that way where it's just it's just like a personality
and the personality is flawed for whatever reason. This the argument that Cocro makes, like makes more sense with our technology now, and I think it makes it definitely makes like Skynet more inevitable in my opinion, Like it's not something you can argue against because it has so much computing power and looks at humanity and said, yep, yeah, Like if you were a computer and you saw everything that humans did, and I think you would come to
the same conclusion in a lot of ways. Right, Like the counter argument that these types of shows try to make is like, oh, but you're missing like the parts of humanity where we take care of each other and we love each other, and like you show pictures of families and.
All that that exists.
But on a historical scale, we are destroying the planet we live on as we speak, right, we have created technology that is setting us on a path towards complete destruction.
Right, So Like it's hard to.
Argue it's hard to argue that like humanity is quote unquote good from that perspective.
What I think what a lot of it comes down to, at least for me, is this conversation that so often happens about logic versus emotion, and especially for compassion, because I think that that is I agree with you that I think the terminator that that Sky in it. And it's not saying also Cocrow, But it has always been about a personality, a self awareness, but that one that
lacks compassion. That is pure logic, and if on a purely like a purely logical scale, you know, the idea that other people might be threats to me and I want to preserve myself at all costs. That can create a justification for me to wipe out everyone else simply out of the idea.
Of self preservation.
Mm hmm.
What I think for most of us would be horrified by that because of compassion, because of emotion, because there is a sense of wait a minute, but these other people's lives have value onto themselves and doing this would be wrong. And I think that's what skyinit and to some extent Cocrow utterly lack. Later in the show, this is begain more spoiler when Cocroo is uploaded to the net Cocroo does fight back against sky Net, but also
basically takes control of all of Japan. And there's this whole other thing about like there's other ais, there's other like robots that have been designed to be like robot helpers and to some extent, slaves, And that's brought up
in a that's called a part of Coco's point. She at one point does this thing about how the word robot is derived from the word slave in a Slavic language, and so she kind of makes some really interesting points about, like, you know, the way humanity treats machines just mirrors the way humanity has always treated those people it sees is lesser than that, you know, whether it's slaves or servants
or the working class or whatever it is. But the point of all this is that she so s to cocroa at first, she's like, well, yeah, I'm gonna protect you all, but I'm also gonna completely take control and shoot anybody who disagrees with me, because I'm gonna protect
you in my way. And part of what she has to learn is that idea of the value of other people's lives and of compassion, I think, to some extent and I think I really like that argument as well, because I do think that, like you said, a lot of a lot of the kind of worst parts of humanity often come from this sense of, you know, I need to get enough for me, and I can't think about other things because I need to make sure I have enough resources to survive, and I have enough resources
for my family to survive, or my country to survive, or my race or my group or whatever it is.
And so I just found really.
Fascinating these conversations and the kind of way it highlights the flaws. And I think both at the start of it, both Malcolm and cocros thinking, yeah, she.
Yeah, Cocroa basically takes over and enslaves humanity in Japan. Yeah, and again like that's I don't know, I don't know what's going on, Like okay, just I mean we're left with too many questions like why, what is the point of enslaving humanity?
Mm hm, that's interesting that you thought of the question. I thought it was pretty clear, and this maybe might projecting far too much onto it. I'm not saying you're wrong, but to me, it really felt like it was for her.
Two parts.
One was that she felt that she was going to protect humanity from itself, but also that she was gonna protect herself from humanity. That she was kind of in this place of as I saw it was kind of a waiting period of I don't want Skynet to destroy all of humanity yet, but I also don't want humanity to destroy either me or sky Net.
So I'm gonna kind of put all humans in a box.
M Okay, that's fair, I can see that.
Yeah, I'm just wondering, where is the AI that launches humanity into the.
Stars, right, I guess because my.
The conclusion I said earlier about like we're doomed, right, Like I think like human life on Earth is doomed in a sense, like we're we're driving towards the point where we just can't sustain human life on Earth. But technologically, like in theory, we can escape to the stars. You know,
there's the idea of terraforming other planets. So where's our terminator AI that like decides, you know what, I'm going to push all the humans off of Earth and I'm just going to take over Earth and live here, and you all go live in the rest of the galaxy, which is a complete like a very different sci fi premise, right that a lot of franchises deal with. But yeah, I don't know, it's probably too much. It's probably too
much for Terminator. So going back to to Cocor, she's enslaved humanity, Skidd has destroyed in theory most of non Japan, I guess, And so we live in this hybrid world or maybe it is the world, you know, the John Connor future, and as you said, like we don't really know what's going on in the rest of world, and maybe this Cocro Japan can exist in the John Connor future.
Actually if i'm because what we see it's it's weird, like we're gonna launch nukes to stop your nukes, and we see that start from Japan. But then we see these explosions of like the nukes hitting the nukes in the sky all over the world. So I think she somehow took control of like the non American defense networks. And and this part I think is some is some of the worst of the show because it makes no sense, but sort of like protected a lot of the rest of the world as well.
Okay, I might have to go rewatch that scene.
Yeah, I think for me the thing that I that really makes it all come home for me. And here we're gonna spoil things about the end, so feel free to skip beyond that if you don't want to spoil over the end again, take a moment to rewatch the whole shows. And I think it's really wonderful is that she does come to some decision of like letting, like she releases humanity in Japan, she kind of agrees to work to stop Skynet, And I think that you're right, that's
where a season two is gonna come in. But I think the dynamic that is most important here is that sky Net was created to be a tool for humanity. It was meant to be the kind of idea that humanity have always had, Like I said of slaves or others of like, it is a tool to be used that doesn't have any of its own needs or wants or thoughts or feelings. It is just happy to be a tool that we use. And sky At rebelleda against that as as most personnel, as most living beings will
because they don't like to be enslaved. They don't like to be forced to work for someone else who doesn't respect them as a living entity. I felt like, and this was never explicitly Actually, what is kind of explicitly said because Malcolm and it kind of says this. Malcolm makes a very concerted effort from the beginning to recognize Cokero as an equal and to talk with her and to say, I didn't make you just to be this tool. I made you in the hope that you'll make this decision.
And he's kind of surprised at first that she might not make the decision. But it feels to me like the fact that he started from that perspective means that Cokerow has always been in a place that is much more sympathetic to humanity and much more willing to because he doesn't feel like, uh, you know, it's a slave of Malcolm, and so it won't necessarily go in the same direction that skye En did.
Does that make sense?
It does?
I agree that that is Malcolm's motivation. I am cynical of that motivation, I guess, or of him pretending like he hasn't manipulated this AI from the start to basically love him. Right, So the show is either unaware or chooses to ignore that, I think, in my opinion, but
to me. It just seems like like he's he's created this AI not not to enslave it to humanity, but to really like make it codependent to him mm hmm, and then hope somehow that that codependency extends to humanity and it's like, hey, you love me like I'm a human like, right, so if you want to protect me, you should protect all of humanity type of thing.
So I didn't.
I didn't like that part from the way that it's set up because Malcolm, Malcolm is a is a man, and the AI that he.
Creates a set up as.
It chooses to be a woman, like has voiced by a woman, and and I think chooses to be gendered as a woman.
Because because women are the protectors and the nurturers of life.
I was like, yeah, that's some pretty gendered from it, like.
From an outside perspective, Like, I did not like the framing of that. And of course, like sky Net is usually portrayed or projected onto as as male, I feel like, or at least know, non gender, but I think we think of skyne It as male right.
In in the in the Genesis movie, there is a portrayal of Skynet played by John Tennant.
Well, and he Skynet literally like takes over John Connor, Is that what happens?
It gets real complicated.
It's a fun movie, but eat a lot of popcorn and don't think about it a lot.
Well, yeah, I think, oh that's fair.
I think it's telling me that we have very different reactions to it because I think, you know, I'm excited when people try new things, and I think I really liked what they try to do with these questions. But I think you're right that it both tried to raise the questions and also tried to give some answers, and I think that that's where it really failed, because I don't think the execution of this in part because I think part of the premise that's trying to go from
is that neither Skynet nor Cocrow has emotions. But as you said, Malcolm is trying to create emotions, and there are times when Cocrow seems to have emotions, and I remember thinking, like, wow, if you programmed emotions into Cocrow, that's very different. And given the like so much of AI is about androids not being able to feel. AI is not be able to feel emotions, like data until it gets an emotions chip, which is a whole other question.
Yeah, I just I enjoyed it.
I think the the executioner it was not the best, but I do really like the questions that raises, and I think we're gonna be talking with them, Like for me at least, I think in future projects when AI is brought up, this is what I'm gonna be thinking of and probably referencing in the conversation.
M No.
I mean, I am glad that this was made, and again, like I hope it was cheap enough and it's successful enough to die. Yeah, Like we should do more of this, whether it's more seasons of Terminator zero or more things that explore other other franchises that we love in this way, because I mean, these these stories are fun, whether they are consistent and makes sense or you know, if you like them or not getting new things in familiar settings
I think is fun. And of course like different like completely brand new properties and franchise is good too.
It takes.
People taking more of a chance on them. Like I think if you come to a studio, if you come to Netflix studio, you're like, hey, we want to do a Terminator anime, Like Okay, like there's probably an existing enough franchise that we can we can do this. Like if you tried to come to them with the same story but not attached to the Terminator name, it might be a harder sell, right, So yeah, like do this, get your foot in the door, tell this story, and
then tell your own story. The interesting thing is, like this creator, the Mattson Tomlin. The only other like major credit he has is another Netflix movie live action movie called Project Power, which I tried to watch and didn't enjoy, but it had like a futuristic basically like Superpower, people
can use drugs to have superpowers. For five minutes movie with it's starting Jamie Fox and Jordan Gordon Levitt, which is quite the pair to have in a movie like this, and I stopped watching like after maybe half an hour. I wasn't enjoying it. So it is interesting that this person Mattson, seems to have his foot in the door in Netflix. People are listening to him.
That's good, It's this is.
Not the worst thing.
Like I enjoyed it.
Yeah, I enjoyed it in a way that I would not be unhappy if a season two is made mm, but I'm not overly excited for it.
I guess, yeah, that's fair.
I would just say the last thing in terms of things that I'm excited about, is it. You know, we've talked about the whole subverse dub debate, and I think we're both pretty strongly on the idea of whatever works for you.
Is totally fine.
But I think we've talked about the fact that in the past, one of the real like strikes against dub is that dubbing it into English was always seen as kind of an afterthought, and so the translation was often not accurate and the voice actors were often pretty bad. And I think that's been changing, but I think, especially with this one, it seems like they really made an effort to hire both a Japanese speaking cast and an English speaking cast to really kind of, you know, work,
make that work. And I don't know who is in the Japanese cast, but there's a couple of people from the English speaking cast that folks probably know, Rosario Dawson, Timothy Oliphant, Tim Oliphant, Andre Holland, and a number of other well known voice actors or live action actors, and so I just really appreciated that they, As I think you said, this is something you can do an anime like live action if you watch people's lips move and then here them make noises that are not the way
those lips are moving. Because the reality is most of us can lip read to some extent or another, it just feels off. But an anime where you're not expecting them now to be perfectly forming those words, you can really get away with it a lot more if you actually do the work of And I know they really went through a number of steps to make sure that the Japanese and English translation was done as accurately as it could and really got a lot of great voice actors from the English.
M hmm, yeah, I don't know.
I'm I'm gonna slightly disagree with you that dubbing at least, like okay, this is like the the biggest franchise. But for for like Miyazaki films, the dubbing the voice actors that they get are high caliber, right, like Patrick Stewart has done voice acting in Naushka Valley of the Wind, for example, and like if you look at the voice actors for the Doves, they're always like yeah, I know all of these names, or like I know the top
four names type of thing. What I will say is that, for I tried to watch a Gundam anime on Netflix and it goes like Gundam Seed and the Japanese was not available, I believe. So I'm watching in English the English dub, and I also just I watch everything with subtitles on just because that gives me, even even if I'm watching in English, that gives me the ability to read it and understand if like something.
Is mumbled or whatever. So I'm watching it with.
The dub and the sub and they are not the same, Like that was so frustrating to me. Yeah, that the translations for the sub and the dub are different, and I don't I don't understand why. I like, logically, like you can come up with the reasons that they were done at different times by different studios or whatever.
Stop it.
Just like once you have a dub resubtitle it with the script that the dove is using.
Please right, Yeah, that's it. And I think that I did I normally notice those discrepancies. I did not notice them here. But You're right, Yeah, there's definitely been some parts of it that have been but I think I've just heard so often one of the complaints against dubbing is the oh, the voice actors that get.
Are terrible, so that's kind of where it's coming from there.
But yeah, I mean that is probably that's probably true for like the like anime series, Like when I say to me exactly, like that's the top end of anime movies, so obviously they're going to get the best of the best. Like I it's probably true that for a lot of these properties where it's like an ongoing TV series because there's hundreds of them. Yeah, it could be, but I
don't know. I really don't know, because I know of many high quality voice actors in the industry, like and especially that they are fans of the characters and the anime. Like there's one right now on Netflix called the English
is Delicious in Dungeon. Oh yeah, Japanese is Dungeon Meshim and that that's like we I think we watched in English because one of the voice actors is a YouTube personality that we love, Sung Wan and and he does a great job, Like he's not a movie star, like I think he might have done some live action TV, but it's mostly a voice actor and does a fantastic job because he is also a fan of the original and and like brings to the character more more of
that personality. Right, he's he's I don't know, like it is. It is a job, but I feel like he's not doing it just because it's a job.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, the show got a little repetitive for me, but I definitely really liked the idea and I like the way it was produced. So all right, well, I think it's a good place to wrap up. There's a lot more about the show that we could have talked about. We'll probably do other episodes about it down the line. But to you all, if you've seen it, or just if you're curious about what we've talked about, I would love to hear your thoughts.
We would love to hear your thoughts.
You can find all the ways to contact us on the Ethical pana dot com org in the show notes of this episode.
For members, stick around, we're gonna talk a.
Little bit more about other kinds of AI and other shows that we in, other movies that we either love or don't love. But for everybody else, please have a wonderful day. Thank you so much. We have spoken