As I’ve mentioned two times previously, this summer’s movies have surprised me because the two best ones have been reboot/remakes/sequels: Mad Max Fury Road and Jurassic World. Next comes Terminator Genisys. Will it be a trifecta? While we speculate, let’s take a trip through the Terminator timeline to see exactly where (and when) we are. Disclaimer number one: there will be spoilers. Disclaimer number two: Our timeline will reflect only the Terminator cinematic universe, not any number of book, comic book, television and video game spinoffs.
The Terminator (1984)
The saga begins in Los Angeles in the year 2029. Against a futuristic, war-torn landscape flies a laser-firing drone and a giant treaded vehicle rolls over a ground covered with skulls:
The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire. Their war to exterminate mankind had raged for decades, but the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here, in our present. Tonight…
Flashback in time to Los Angeles, 1984, at 1:52 AM… In an off screen ball of blue lightning and smoke, naked Arnold Schwarzenegger arrives, but doesn’t waste time commanding a homeless man to “give me your clothes.” Close behind arrives a leaner, more emotional character played Michael Biehn. Several gun fights and car chases later, we learn that they’re both in search of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the woman who will one day give birth to the savior of the human race.
The Terminator is both as simple and as complicated as that. It plays as one of the best big-name (Schwarzenegger! Stallone! Van Damme!) action movies of the era, while doubling as a surprisingly smart sci-fi mystery-adventure. Watching it today, its charm is overwhelming; there’s so much goodness packed into such a tight little package. The series would evolve to make everything bigger, faster and louder, so it’s nice to revisit the original and appreciate it for exactly what it is (and was, in 1984).
Ah, and the catchphrases! They’re so good that they’re repeated in nearly every subsequent incarnation of the story. However, they weren’t necessarily spoken by whom you’d remember. For example, it’s Biehn’s Kyle Reece who first says, “Come with me if you want to live.” He gets to Connor first and tells her that the murderer of other Sarah Connors in the phone book (we used to have these; they’re like catalogues of local telephone numbers) is “not a man; he’s a machine.”
At 42 minutes into the movie, Reese gives Connor the full explanation of the insanity literally exploding around them. He comes from “one possible future” following nuclear war. “It was the machines… defense network computers. They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence. I grew up in the ruins.” One thing I admire about The Terminator is that its 2029 scenes are few and brief, so it’s Reese’s dialog that truly paints the picture of how grim it is then. “One man taught us how to fight, John Connor, your unborn son.”
Connor comments on the plan to send a Terminator T-800 Model 101 cyborg assassin back in time to kill her by asking, “Retroactive abortion?” then asks the obvious question: why didn’t they just kill John Connor in the future? In the first ray of hope this downbeat scenario poses, Reese replies that it is because “we had won.” So it was really a last-ditch effort to prevent humans from triumphing, one that humans tried to prevent by sending Kyle Reese back in time to keep Sarah Connor safe.
Of all the things The Terminator is, it’s also kind of sweet. After a tender moment, Reese says, “I came across time for you Sarah. I love you; I always have.” They have hot sex and… wait a minute! Just who is John Connor’s father?!? Kick in the time travel paradox of any movie like this, and you start asking questions. Did 2029 John Connor know that Kyle Reese was his father when he sent him back in time, or was it a giant coincidence. If he did know, has this all happened before? Is 1984 just a stray timeline repeating itself?
In the epilogue, Sarah Connor records messages for her baby. She ponders the same questions as we do. Does she tell him about her father? She even states something I was thinking at about that point in the movie, “God, a person could go crazy thinking about this.” At a Mexican gas station, a little boy snaps the photograph of her that Kyle Reese carried through time. As the wind rises, he says, “There’s a storm coming.” Sarah stares into the distance and quietly responds, “I know.”
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Said storm is “Judgement Day,” August 29, 1997. As children romp on the playground, a bright light fills the sky and a mushroom cloud grows over the city. The futuristic, war-torn landscape of The Terminator is just a little more epic in T2’s Los Angeles 2029 A.D. “war of the machines.” There are more drones, more lasers and more men in jumpsuits and goggles running around the wreckage. Perhaps oddly, the special effects of these scenes don’t necessarily look better than they did 7 movie-making years before.
After opening narration similar to that from The Terminator, naked Arnold arrives at a truck stop, expanding his demands to, “I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle.” Under a nearby bridge, a leaner, meaner character played by Robert Patrick arrives. We’re a little more privy to their method of transportation in T2; their arrivals take place on instead of off screen. But, in a twist that I believe leads to this movie’s biggest flaw, the tables have turned: Schwarzenegger is the good cyborg sent to protect young John Connor and Patrick is the bad.
What of Sarah Connor? She’s in a mental institution for sticking to her crazy story about killer robots from the future and for trying to blow up a “computer factory.” She’s being treated by the same psychologist from the first movie, Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen), who refuses to believe any of it is true, even after being exposed to it in two movies now. Talk about lean and mean, though! She’s evolved into a James Cameron female fighting… well, uh, machine. It won’t be long before she devises an escape plan.
Meanwhile, her son, John (Edward Furlong), our future savior, is a juvenile delinquent with a knack for petty crimes of technology like robbing an ATM. Arnold eventually gets to John first, but not until a few chills and thrills at the mall and, in the movie’s most exciting sequence, a tow truck chase along an empty L.A. spillway. I like that John immediately realizes that his mother’s stories are true when he sees Arnold, who tells him, “35 years from now, you programmed me to protect you.” So this must be 1994 and John must be 10 years old.
Robert Patrick is no ordinary cyborg in T2. He’s the latest model, the T-1000. Made of liquid metal that’s impervious, at least temporarily, to any weapon, the T-1000 is constantly morphing, shaping its appendages into weapons, and moving through solid objects. Instead of just fighting to protect Sarah and/or John Connor, T2 covers new ground as the good guys try to be proactive in preventing Judgment Day. That means possibly killing Miles Dyson (Joe Morton) who’s developing technology at Cyberdyne from a microchip recovered from the 1984 event.
About an hour and 20 minutes into this movie, I have an adverse reaction to the bonding between Arnold and the young Connor. As Sarah ruminates about fatherhood, the two of them “play” together outside. In 1991, I suppose this gave T2 some humor and spun the original tale into fresh territory. But today it’s a poor substitute for the sweetness of The Terminator and makes the movie not hold up as well as the first one. The fact that Arnold has to do what John commands, though, is an interesting twist that pays off in the end.
At the end of a very long 137 minutes (152 in the “special edition”), we have gone with Arnold because we wanted to live; however, it eventually comes time for us to say, “Hasta la vista, baby.” Is the T-1000 dead? Yep, it’s been… “terminated.” Throw Dyson’s metal arm and chip into the molten metal at the conveniently located factory and our characters are left with the image of Arnold’s thumb up as also he sinks into it, as well and the feeling that they can “face the future for the first time with hope.”
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
Hope is barely existent in the next installment of the saga, though. Instead of a close-up personal look at nuclear destruction, the opening sequence of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines shows the entire globe with missiles firing and exploding everywhere, then the most sweeping vista of the future war ground with its army of terminators. Wait a minute. Didn’t our heroes prevent all this last time around? Nope, it turns out they only postponed it; Judgment Day is inevitable. John Connor has grown from Edward Furlong into Nick Stahl, who lives “off the grid” because he doesn’t feel safe.
We don’t learn this until later in the movie; however, we’ve got to first get through the standard time travel arrivals and present day set-up. A new model of sexy terminator arrives in a department store window with the other mannequins. She’s the T-X (Kristanna Loken), similar to Robert Patrick’s T-1000, but with the added ability to control other machines. And we meet another female, Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), whose father is battling a worldwide computer virus onto which the Pentagon wants to unleash an artificial intelligence called “Skynet.”
As coincidence will have it, Kate is also a childhood friend of John Connor. She’s a veterinarian and conveniently encounters him when he breaks in to her office to steal drugs. Meanwhile, Arnold’s tracking is a little off and he arrives from the future somewhere in the desert. This time around, the bad cyborg has been sent to kill not only John Connor, but also his lieutenants, who include Jose Barrera, a drive-thru clerk, Elizabeth and William Anderson, attendees at a children’s birthday party, and… wait for it… Kate Brewster.
Several new catch phrases later (“Talk to the hand”) and following another spectacular car chase that has become the action-packed highlight of these movies, there’s a pause to answer everyone’s question: what happened to Sarah Connor. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a real downer, especially when we learn that she didn’t die in battle trying to change the future; she died of leukemia. But she was always thinking ahead and her coffin is full of weapons to combat the T-X. This also gives John time to ask, “Why me? I’m no leader.”
And for the first time, we imagine a glimpse of life beyond 2029. Arnold tells him that Kate will become his wife and it’s their children who will be really important. I believe at this point, we’ve jumped onto a divergent timeline. When Judgment Day was postponed in T2, the future was changed. It was probably not the same John Connor who sent Kyle Reese and various terminator models back in time. But it’s the same timeline for John Connor himself; we’ve followed him from a twinkle in his mother’s eye to rebellious adolescent to tortured young man.
Ultimately, this chapter ends with a race against time. At 6:18 PM, the first nuclear launch codes will be initiated. That’s two hours and 53 minutes from “now” and 52 miles away. The whole cellular network is down as Skynet begins taking control of communications. At the expense of suspenseful storytelling, the details get a little fuzzy, but it’s nevertheless exciting as Connor and Brewster race to enter a life-saving passcode… or something.
A lot happens in the final moments of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and some of it is good fun as Arnold and the T-X fight, but ultimately the mission fails. It turns out Skynet was the virus and it has now become aware. Machines begin to take over, coming to life. Another time-travelling conundrum here: what role did the T-X play in bringing the machines to life? She can do it, but would it have still happened if our heroes had disposed of her earlier in the movie?
The final bitter frosting on this depressing cake is that, when John and Kate arrive at Crystal Peak, there is nothing there; it’s simply a fallout shelter for VIPs. There never was any stopping Judgment Day. Their mission was simply to survive it so they could live to fight the machines in the future. At 6:18, as scheduled, the missiles launch. I actually appreciate this darker version of the original Terminator saga, especially after the lighter tone of T2. It has some fun moments, but overall it’s serious stuff. By the end, John Connor has completely grown up, and so has the franchise.
Terminator Salvation (2009)
The most recent film in the series takes a different approach to the saga. After beginning in present time (well, 2003), it jumps forward to the future and the action unfolds in the midst of the war of the machines in 2018. The twist is that apparently John Connor (Christian Bale) was not the automatic hero we assumed he would be. Terminator Salvation is largely about his struggles to find a position in the resistance so that he can turn into mankind’s savior.
However, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Even in the future, Connor is targeted for termination, as is Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). It isn’t clear to me why, but since Connor knows that Reese, whom he has never met, is his father, perhaps someone… or something, since we’re talking about machines… knows that Connor will eventually win the war and send Reese back in time so that he can be born. Ouch! Even though Terminator Salvation doesn’t feature the time travel element, it still rears its ugly head to torment us.
“Resistance Command Headquarters” is run by General Ashdown (Michael Ironside) from what seems like a smart location, until we realize there are underwater machines that might destroy their submarine. He thinks they’ve discovered a switch to turn off Skynet and they have four days to infiltrate their lair to flip it. Of course, John Connor will lead the mission, giving him opportunity at the most inopportune times to argue with his commander and foster the growth of the “real” resistance under his leadership.
Meanwhile, Kyle Reese and a little girl named “Star” (Jadagrace Berry) are a pair of survivors in Los Angeles who encounter Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a beefy guy who was put to death for unknown crimes in 2003 and just awoke 15 years later with no memory. He seems to have a mission, but we’re left wondering what it is for most of the movie. All that matters is he fights on the good side and is a big asset against even bigger robots who snatch resistance members off the ground and load them into even bigger flying prison transport vehicles.
After the movie’s most spectacular action sequence, Reese and Star find themselves aboard the prison transport, which will eventually place them in Skynet central at the same time it’s going to be destroyed, setting up the moral conflict between Connor (save the prisoners) and Ashdown (let them die for the greater good). Somewhere along the way, we learn that Marcus is (surprise!) a cyborg himself, albeit a good one. This sets up an additional conflict between him/it and Connor, which is just about one conflict too many for this overly ambitious chapter of the franchise.
Early on, I wondered where Kate Brewster-Connor was in all the action. Remember that last time she was on the terminator’s hit list. Well, she’s here, played by Bryce Dallas Howard in not much more than an extended cameo. Although it’s not addressed, she looks pregnant in one scene, so that keeps followers of the mythology appeased. Also not addressed are a growing number of contradictions. At one point, the resistance is worried about drawing Skynet’s attention, yet at another, they’re not. And after worrying about how to infiltrate Skynet HQ, Connor is just suddenly inside.
On top of all that, the resistance never considered that Skynet may have set a trap for them. So, I bet you think it all boils down to a conclusion that is fresh, new and exciting. Nope, it all boils down to one that’s familiar, old and confusing. The old Arnold terminator comes out of the closet, but since the actor is not billed, he’s a digital recreation for the few moments until his skin disappears and he’s a metallic robot. The final moments of action inside Skynet are spent with him/it stalking our heroes and our heroes trying to destroy him/it in various ineffective ways.
It sounds like I’m dogging Terminator Salvation pretty hard; however, I do like the movie. While it attempts too much, it’s nevertheless entertaining. I can’t quite buy its moral, though, in the context of this particular story. “What is it that makes us human?” Why, the strength of the human heart, of course. “That’s the difference between us and machine.” That’s all well and good, but when John Connor survives only after the literal transplant of Marcus’s heart, it’s a little heavy-handed. We’re no longer allowed to draw our own conclusions; they’re spoon fed to us.
The movie ends as the first one did, with the statement, “There’s a storm on the horizon.” I’m not sure we’ll see that storm in Terminator Genisys. The fourth movie was not very well received and it’s hard to imagine it being the first part of a second trilogy as was perhaps intended. Besides, without the time travel element, is a Terminator movie really a Terminator movie? There’s still a gap in the timeline between the events in Terminator Salvation and that fated day in 2029 when it all begins/ends, but it may be left to our imagination.
