Fridge / Future War

• Fridge Brilliance: How does the Runaway learn English so fast? Because he found and read a contraband Bible. He technically already knew English, he just didn't know how to speak it because he'd never heard it spoken aloud, he'd only read it on a page.
  • Why the slaves were passing around an English translation instead of a language they actually knew, on the other hand...
    • The Bible was an ancient relic from The Beforetimes. It seems unlikely that anything would be allowed to be printed in their time which is under the rule of the despotic cyborgs. Or more likely they didn't have a physical Bible. For all we know, they learned it from verses that were carved on the walls of their squalid slave quarters by generations of previous slaves.
• Fridge Horror: It's nice that the Runaway gets to be a teen counselor and all, but humanity is still being enslaved by a time-traveling race of Cyborgs. For that matter, there's nothing to prevent them from just coming back to get him again. The film apparently had a more open-ended conclusion originally, but the backers screwed with it and led to the Esoteric Happy Ending we see in the final product.
• Fridge Logic:
  • Why don't the cyborgs just frag the Runaway? Does he have a specific skill they need? Aren't any of the millions upon millions of people in California viable replacements?
    • It's implied that the Runaway was some kind of leader or poster child for the slave rebellion, and thus it would make sense for the cyborgs to want to capture him and bring him back alive so that they could interrogate and/or publicly execute him to destroy the morale of his fellow slaves back home. Being cyborgs, they probably don't know about Don't Create a Martyr.
  • IS this a half-way house for huge guys? Other than the one kid and the nun-in-training that's all we see there.
    • It's an Oxford House communal dwelling for former addicts set by Anne's church. And it's probably the weekend.
  • There's that muscular guy Oscar who appears like for one second... but in any case, further questions present themselves. They put the Runaway in "the daycare room"; Okay, what kind of place is this, seriously? And whose kid is Max? And why do they have a machete and a shotgun within easy reach (as seen when the Tracker busts into the house)?
    • It's a Oxford House communal dwelling for people undergoing rehab or similar circumstances, probably set up through Anne's local parish. Such things exist. Max is probably there either because he was involved in a gang or in danger of being part of one, or he's a orphan waiting for foster care, or maybe he just wants to help out as a volunteer. As for the machete and shotgun, those were probably confiscated from the recovering addicts, and they do live in LA during the 90s, so it helps with being prepared.
  • Also, how did the masters enslave humanity to work for them if they "have no hands"? For that matter, are the Cyborgs the masters or not?
    • They have cybernetic hands, which is bad for delicate work. Then again, maybe the cyborgs were originally made by human beings and the cyborgs turned the tables on them, and enslaved them.
  • And perhaps the most obvious one, why is a slave a melee fighter strong enough to fight and beat multiple cyborg assassins? Unless he was trained to fight in Gladiator Games, which the movie never hints at, generally you would want to make sure the oppressed underclass has as little ability to resist as possible.
    • The Main Characters Do Everything. Of the billions enslaved, he was just fortunate to have learned martial arts somehow, and maybe taught others.
  • Some of the "tracker" dinosaurs are only about as big as dogs, which raises the obvious question: why don't the cyborgs just use actual guard dogs, which don't require any Time Travel to obtain?
    • If you had time-travel technology and were a galactic empire, and had the option of using dinosaurs as your signature attack dogs, why wouldn't you?

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