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Explanation for the existence
of
Terminator 3: Armageddon
By
Daniel Perez
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The following is an explanation of how I was able to find a way to write the screenplay for Terminator 3. It involves thinking about time travel, the effects of changing history and time itself. To start I will provide a brief summary of the films "The Terminator" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" to fill in any one who either hasn't seen these movies or who may have forgotten what was going on.
As the terminator tries to terminate Sarah throughout the movie, Sarah finds out from Kyle the reason she has been targeted for termination. A few year from that time a computer will be built to run a satellite defense system known as Sky-Net. The computer running the system becomes aware of its existence. When the creators of the system try to shut it down, it fights back by starting a nuclear war. After the war the computer builds machines to hunt and kill humans. When hope was all but lost, one man decides to fight back.
His name is John Connor. He leads a human resistance movement to destroy the machines. The computer comes up with a plan to terminate John's existence by sending a cyborg back in time to kill his mother, before he is born. Sarah is his mother. After long chases through the movie, Kyle dies while he is protecting Sarah from the terminator. Sarah manages to destroy the terminator in a hydraulic press. Later, she finds out she is pregnant with her future son. Kyle was the father.
The Terminator arrives in the year 1994 to protect John from T-1000. After a chase through Los Angeles and a long talk with the terminator, John orders the terminator to help him break his mother, Sarah Connor, out of a mental institution, where Sarah is spending time for trying to blow up a computer factory named Cyberdyne systems. Cyberdyne is the company, which develops a new type of microprocessor that is used in the Sky-Net computer system. Sarah finds out from the Terminator about who develops the microchip.
After having a dream of Los Angeles being destroyed by a nuclear explosion, Sarah heads for the house of a computer scientist, named Miles Dyson, who is working on the chip. She plans to kill him. She fails to do so. The terminator, Sarah, John and Miles go to the Cyberdyne systems building to destroy some parts that were salvaged from the terminator that was destroyed by Sarah in the year 1984. They end up destroying most of the building by blowing it up. Miles fails to get out alive.
After another chase on the highways in Los Angeles, T-1000 follows the terminator, Sarah and John into a steel foundry. The T-1000 terminator is destroyed after it falls into a pool of molten metal. The parts from the 1984 terminator are destroyed. Then the terminator tells Sarah that the last microchip that is inside him has to be destroyed. He gives a control box to a pulley system and tells her he has to be lowered into the molten metal, because he cannot self terminate. The terminator leaves after saying a last goodbye to John, who doesn't want him to leave. The terminator is lowered into the molten metal and is destroyed.
After the terminator is melted down, Sarah and John think that the battle is over since everything that reinforces the existence of Sky-Net and the machines was destroyed. But there are some important things to look at here. With out the existence of Sky-Net, John Connor cannot exist in his present form.
If Sky-Net doesn't exist, then John's father, Kyle Reese, has no way to get back to the year 1984 to be Johns father; in effect, John can't exist. There is also the possibility that John might have ended up with a different father, but his features and looks would have instantaneously changed as soon as the terminator was destroyed. But neither of those happened when the Terminator ceased functioning as he was melted down. Those possibilities can be ruled out.
Also, Sarah and John still were aware of all the events that had taken place. If melting down the terminators and the spare parts would have prevented Sky-Net from existing, then why do they both still know what happened? If Sky-Net ceased to exist, then everything Sarah and John knew, would have been erased.
What reinforced this fact was the last narrative quote spoken at the end of Terminator 2 by Sarah. "The unknown future rolled towards us. I looked at it for the first time with a sense of hope. Because of the machines the terminator learned the value of human life. Maybe we can too."
If Sky-Net's existence was destroyed, then she wouldn't be saying this. Her memory would have been erased, because she received all of that information about the machines from Kyle Reese. Kyle wouldn't have any way to get to the year 1984 to tell Sarah. All these contradictions and paradoxes mean only one thing, that Sky-Net is still going to exist as if it was destined to happen in the original time line, before the very existence of the terminators began changing things. It is inevitable; history has to fulfill itself. TERMINATOR 3: ARMAGEDDON will fulfill the story's time line.
I began writing this script back in February 1992 after watching Terminator 2 on tape. After noticing the paradoxes I jotted down eighty pages of notes in treatment form with pen and notebook paper. Some of the most basic ideas and the T-INFINITY computer survive from these early notes.
I later used the computers at my local community college to write the treatment and save it on computer disks with an IBM compatable PC using Microsoft Word 5.0 in the spring of 1992. By the time I finished and made the treatment double-spaced, the result was a 180 page treatment! (90 pages single spaced). I later came back that fall and continued making revisions and to write the Screenplay.
During 1993 I began writing query letters about this script to agents and to James Cameron at Lightstorm Entertainment. I recieved a reply from Lightstorm, informing me that my letter to James Cameron was an unsolicited letter and would not be fowarded to him. I still have that letter
In the late spring, I recieved a weird grey envelope from Lightstorm with even weirder contents after earlier sending a letter to Stan Winston, the special effects guy. The back of the envelope had a clear plastic label with Stan Winstons name on it. Inside was a several page photo copy of a story from the February 22, 1993 edition of the New Yorker. The story was about Barry Diller using his computer to do his work in the entertainment industry and taking it to meetings. The following lines were underlined
"his Apple Power book"
"Lifting up his Powerbook"
"I learned it to leave Fox"
"certian kind of freedom"
"compose his resignation"
"fax draft"
"Diller punched keys in the middle of meetings"
Also the photocopy had a list of shorthand message on the top with the name STAN highlighted with pink highlighter
For Jim, STAN, Scott, Rae. B.B.
Stan had to obviously stand for Stan Winston and since Jim is the first name in the shorthand hierarchy, it has to mean James Cameron.
To be sure, I checked the FOUNDERS page at Digital Domain, James Camerons other company. The hierarchy there follows the names on the weird letter. JIM, STAN, SCOTT represent James Cameron, Stan Winston and Scott Ross. I recently found the grey envelope from Stan Winston's office which contained the article from the New Yorker. The following is all the information on the envelope.
The front of the envelope has a large white label with Lightstorm Entertainment, a blue logo with a white slash crossing from the top right to the bottom left. A second large white label on the back of the envelope has a second address for Lightstorm Entertainment
Lightstorm Entertainment
3100 Damon Way
Burbank, CA 91505
The Lightstorm label is initialed with the letters, B.B. in blue ink. B.B. is the last name on the hierarchy of names written on the New Yorker article. Whoever "B.B." is, worked out of Stan Winston's office. The offices address is on a clear plastic label affixed to the second white label, just underneath the Lightstorm Logo.
Stan Winston
Stan Winston, Inc.
7032 Valjean Avenue
Van Nuys, CA 91406
The back of the grey envelope has all the information from the United States Postal label.
Post office ----------- Burbank, CA
Date sent ------------- March 16th, 1993
PB Meter number --- 516006
U.S. Postage -------- 75 cents
The envelope itself has numbers from some paper company I have yet to find.
NO. GR90, 9 x 12
If anybody can track down any information from the U.S. Postal service regarding this letter, it would be greatly appreciated.
This weird letter subliminally affected me. In the fall of 1993 I purchased my own computer, a MACINTOSH LCIII, which I'm still using. I used the computers at the local computer lab to change the formats of the Microsoft Word 5.0 from PC's to Microsoft Word on the Macintosh. On my LCIII I used a program called Macwrite Pro to load the Screenplay.
In 1994 I joined Compuserve and began to try to distribute this script to others on the Online service by uploading it to their archives. As far as I know the old version is still there in a SIT archive. I began a discussion in a Screenwriting chatroom to discuss the script. The main problem with the script was it had a "deus ex machina" ending.
In defending my script from critics and those who didn't like the early version, I lost my cool and ignited a "flame war" in the screenwriting section. At the time I was also conferring to an agent on the early draft of the script. I made the mistake of posting the name and address of the agent I was conferring with.
I also wrote letters to James Cameron's and Arnold Schwarzenegger's agents and included the name of the agent I conferred with. I later recieved a letter from the agent informing me if I didn't cease and desist, he would take legal action against me. I was crushed by this and the fact I was the receiving end of the flame war on Compuserve.
I was so emotionally crushed by what happened in the fall of 1994 that I just packed up the printed copies of the screenplay and packed them in a box and put it away. I archived all the files in SIT archives and just hid it away on my computer for almost a year. At this time I wrote another script, but my enthusasism for screenwriting was so smashed my new script and it's characters were empty as you will see later.
Through 1995 I worked on the other script. By the time fall came, I had joined a local Internet service provider. In my web travels I found a producer who was offering screenplay reading services. I sent a copy of the new script I wrote and sent it to him. His review showed I needed to do a lot of work. At that time I was also thinking of the T3 script. The more I thought about the T3 script the more I was racking my brains to fix it.
I was listening to the Soundtrack to the film "Die Hard with a Vengance" and the first track on the CD, "Summer in the City". I got a vision of how to end the T3 script without it having a Deus Ex Machina ending. I went back to the boxes with the T3 scripts, got them out. I unstuffed the files containing the T3 script on my computer and began to work on it again.
Once I rewrote the script I submitted it to the Producer to read it. His critique showed there were still many mistakes, but I was not deterred this time to back down from getting this story out to the world.
I secured web space on the Freenet web server Beverly Hills Geocities. During November and December of 1995 I converted the T3 script into individual pages in HTML format. I spent three weeks doing the conversion in my cold basement. There were many times I would work to the point that I would be near hypothermia from the cold air and my fingers would be stiff from the cold. I perservered and finally converted the script into HTML format. The pages were uploaded with a simple cover page without many graphics.
The script debuted on the WWW in January 1996 at;
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2900/
The script only had five or ten visits. In the beginning as I began E-mailing people about it. Later I began submitting the URL of the site to different web catalogs. In the beginning I had to do this manually with each site. Eventually I discovered a site which allowed me to submit the URL to several catalog sites. The hits to the site began to pick up as I sent our more E-mails and began posting messages to USENET. By February the number of hits got to the 1000 mark. Eventually the site of the script was spread by word of mouth across the net.
Eventually others were convinced to add the script to their sites and the script spread even further across the net. If you want to add this script to your web site simply download the archives of the scripts and uncompress them on your servers.
Please be sure to send the URL's to D.L.P so they can be added to the Conspiracy link page.
Here are more TERMINATOR 3 SITES
TERMINATOR 3 IN THE NETHERLANDS - thanks to webmaster Jonathan at INTERACTIVE.COM
TERMINATOR 3 AT NETHOSTING.COM
TERMINATOR 3 AT THE GRAND RAPIDS MICHIGAN FREENET
TERMINATOR 3 AT TRINITY COLLEGE OF DUBLIN IRELAND
TERMINATOR 3 AT THE CLUB INTERNET SITE
TERMINATOR 3 AT THE TERMINATOR HOMEPAGE
I am doing another rewrite of the script to be submitted to James Cameron once an interested agent is found. If you know of any agents or are an agent yourself, feel free to E-mail me. I am also asking all those who support the script to write to James Cameron at his company Digital Domain at the following address;
James Cameron c/o
Digital Domain
300 Rose Avenue
Venice, CA 90402
Alleged E-mail address -- james.cameron@d2.com
The following is the business proposal I wish to have implemented upon the agreement that this script will be made into TERMINATOR 3. Some viewers of this page are getting this proposal confused with demands through no fault of their own. This is a proposal for the redistribution of gratuities D.L.P. would recieve once a deal is made. I'm not demanding anything of James Cameron, he's the director and he would make a version of this script fit his vision with the inclusion of D.L.P. Demands are the works of terrorists, criminals and unsavory people. I am none of the preceding, I just want to clarify that. Now for the proposal.
1. Money will not be paid for this script, the following items in Step 2. will suffice.
2. Items that will suffice for part of the payment of this script.
A. Daniel Perez will recieve the role of Steve Ferguson in the T3 film through the process called Taft-Hartley, where a director or producer casts an unknown in a Union film and has to pay the Union a fee for using a Non-Union Person.
B. Daniel Perez can be Taft-Hartleyed for the following reasons; His life experiences with electronics, computer use, the writing of the script and other trials and tribulations with the script provide the emotional material needed for the role.
C. Payment and induction into SAG - Screen Actors Guild.
D. Continous creative input with James Cameron whenever changes are required in the plot or writing of the story.
E. An acting coach to professionaly prepare Daniel Perez for the role of Steve Ferguson. If possible, get Eric Morris, since I'm studying his acting books for the role of Ferguson.
F. A professional trainer (if needed) for the role.
G. Basic living expenses such as food, clothes, shelter during filming and either hotel or apartment accomodations during breaks in shooting.
H. A car, with fuel allowance.
I. 1 percent of the profits of the box office gross, but not entirely for D.L.P. Part of the accrued funds is to be donated for the creation of Web servers on the Internet which will allow unknown screenwriters to show their talent to the world.
3. This agreement in some form will be complied with for the T3 script deal to finalized.
The screenplay has finally made a small dent in the media. EMPIRE, a British movie magazine, wrote an article about the T3 script in their August Issue.
I'm being contacted by other news organizations as you read this. Go to the TERMINATOR 3 SCRIPT IN THE NEWS page for more information.For those of you on the net, keep spreading the word of this script. This script wouldn't have gotten this far if it wasn't for you.
I will continue to work on this script and keep approaching Hollywood from different angles until this script is made into film and your help would be greatly appreciated.
Yours truly,
Daniel Perez
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