When the T-1000 falls into the molten steel it starts shape shifting into all the people that it's mimicked, the fat security guard from the hospital and Janelle just to name a couple of examples.
Does anyone have any theories on why this happens?
My theory is it's the T-1000 panicking and it's trying to shift into the shape of it's former mimicks as a means of trying to save itself and keep itself alive.
What do you guys think?
exactly^
shareall true except i dont think he was panicking
shareIt shows it's just a machine. Like a PC hard drive, it stores information and a virus or failure usually results in loss of data or corruption.
In this case the virus, happens to be molten steel :)
I think you're on the money, it's like the idea of one's life flashing before one's eyes when they are moments from death. The current theory being that the brain is quickly trying to find some piece of knowledge that might help them to survive.
So this is the machine equivalent of that. The T-1000 would presumably have a behaviour protocol designed to keep itself alive as much as possible, thereby protecting its own existence (Asimov's third law of robotics, and of course the T-800 says "I cannot self terminate"). So when it falls into the steel, a situation where it recognises that it will certainly die, it cannot use this protocol to protect itself anymore, so it just goes through everything in its memory and every person it has imitated to see if that will help. Which of course it doesn't.
Incidentally, I do realise it's a bit silly to try and apply Asimov's laws of robotics to a Terminator, considering the T-1000 clearly breaks the first 2 laws without hesitation. But I think the third law about a robot protecting its own existence would still apply here.
shareYeah I think that's the logical answer. But I think the reason they did that was just to show how monstrous the T-1000 was. The way it transformed in the molten steal, and the way its body was split apart before it fell, makes it look less like a machine and more like John Carpenter's The Thing - a monster.
Also gratifying for the audience to see that the antagonist, though not capable of emotions, was clearly in pain as it died.
http://www.astortheatre.net.au/
Support great cinemas.
In real life, extreme heat effects computer programming. perhaps it was just running through its memory as the malfunction cascaded.
shareI did some (very basic theory) work on neural networks at college . The lecturer told us a story about an experiment where one was set up , and then bits of it (nodes) were destroyed while it was running. The result was a flash of activity like a disturbed ants nest as it tried to re-route , maintain, possibly even repair.
I reckon thats what was happening in the steel pool.
just like superBob said a few posts up.
Not just death throes malfunctions , but a desperate effort to stay "alive"
Interesting