Terminator

The Terminator series is a science fiction franchise encompassing a series of films and ancillary media concerning battles between Skynet's artificially intelligent machine network, and John Connor's Resistance forces and the rest of the human race. Skynet's most well-known products in its genocidal goals are the various terminator models, such as the original "Terminator" character, portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in three films. The Halcyon Company recently restarted the franchise with Terminator Salvation, released over Memorial Day weekend, 2009.

Films

The Terminator

The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Michael Biehn. It is the first work in the Terminator franchise. In the film, machines take over the world in the near future, directed by the artificially intelligent computer Skynet. With its sole mission to completely annihilate humanity, it develops cyborg assassins called Terminators that carry the outward appearance of humans. A man named John Connor starts the Tech-Com resistance to defeat them and free humanity. With a human victory imminent, the machines' only choice is to send a terminator back in time to kill John's mother, Sarah, before he is born, preventing the resistance from ever being founded. With the fate of humanity at stake, John sends soldier Kyle Reese back to protect his mother and ensure his own existence.

Judgment Day

Judgment Day is the 1991 sequel to the original Terminator film, written, directed, and produced by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, and Robert Patrick. After the machines failed to prevent John Connor from being born, they try again in 1994, this time attempting to kill him as a child with a more advanced terminator, the T-1000. As before, John sends back a protector for his younger self, a reprogrammed Terminator, identical to the one from the previous film. After ten years of preparing for the future war, Sarah decides to use the same tactics the machines used on her: prevent Skynet from being invented by destroying Cyberdyne Systems before they create it.

Rise of the Machines

Rise of the Machines is the 2003 sequel to Terminator 2, directed by Jonathan Mostow and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, and Kristanna Loken. As a result of the destruction of Cyberdyne at the end of T2, the Skynet takeover has been postponed, not averted. In a last attempt to ensure a machine victory, a new terminator, the T-X, is sent back to kill as many of John Connor's future lieutenants as possible, including John Connor and his future wife Kate. After the future Connor is terminated by an identical model to his previous protector, Kate reprograms it and sends it back to save them both from the T-X.

Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation is the fourth installment to the Terminator film series, it was released on May 21, 2009.^[1] It was written by John D. Brancato, Michael Ferris, Jonathan Nolan, and Anthony E. Zuiker, directed by McG,^[2] and stars Christian Bale as John Connor.^[3] After Skynet has destroyed much of humanity in a nuclear holocaust, John struggles to become the leader, but in this future, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington, who was personally recommended by James Cameron^[4]) has somehow altered it, and the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Roland Kickinger) is coming online sooner than expected. The film also centers on Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin^[5]) and how he became the man he was in the first film.

Planned sequels

Director McG has announced that Terminator Salvation is the first of a new trilogy to revive the franchise, with both main actor Christian Bale and writer Jonathan Nolan signed up for two more films.^[6] Due to generally positive reception to preview footage of the film, the Halcyon Company chose to develop a sequel in December 2008 for release in 2011. The producers mentioned the Middle East as a possible shooting location.^[7]

McG said the time displacement equipment and the T-1000 will be reintroduced in the fifth film: "I like the idea and the perspective for the next picture that you meet Robert Patrick the way he looks today, and he's a scientist that's working on, you know, improving cell replication so we can stay healthier and we can cure diabetes and do all these things that sound like good ideas, and to once again live as idealized expressions as ourselves."^[8][9]

McG added the fifth film "is likely to be" about Connor himself timetravelling to 2011 to galvanize the world's forces against a Skynet attack, which would explore a "survivalist creature in our world doing his best to bring the world up to speed on an impending doom... and one could argue he meets his mother. I strongly suspect Linda Hamilton to be the star of the next film." McG also said the origin story they had in mind for the T-1000 would satirize the world's "obsession" with youth and aging,^[11][12] and also described having "hunter killers and transports and harvesters and everything arriving in our time and Connor fighting back with conventional military warfare."^[13] Connor's child, with whom Kate is pregnant in Salvation, will also be important.^[10] McG has stated that they've "arced out a story that includes that child and its fate and what it becomes in this world of man versus machine."^[10] McG has also mentioned that the film would show "the genesis of [Sam Worthington's character] Marcus."^[14]

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has a 30-day right of first refusal to finance and distribute the fifth film, after settling a lawsuit surrounding Salvation. The third and fourth films were financed and distributed by Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures, respectively in the US and elsewhere in the world. Halcyon will ultimately decide who produces and distributes the next installment based on what studio they feel gives them the best financial deal.^[15]

Television

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

A television series titled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles aired on the Fox network, with Lena Headey as Sarah Connor and Thomas Dekker as John Connor. The series, created by Josh Friedman, centers on Sarah and John after Terminator 2 as they try to "live under the radar" after the explosion at Cyberdyne. Summer Glau plays a female Terminator protecting the Connors. Executive producer James Middleton confirmed in Variety that the series would contain a link to Terminator Salvation.^[16] However, McG later clarified in an interview that show creator Josh Friedman "was the first to jump on and say we can't chase their story threads."^[17]

Well Known Lines

Recurring Cast & Characters

Note 1: A vision of Reese appears only in the extended cut of T2.

Note 2: Skyler Gisondo portrays an eight-year-old Kyle Reese and another young actor, who is uncredited, plays a four-year-old Kyle Reese on the episode "What He Beheld".

Note 3: He is credited as Dr. Silverman in the series but referred to as Silberman by the characters and in writing.

Note 4: Michael Edwards plays an older John Connor in a brief, nonspeaking role, and Linda Hamilton's real-life son plays John Connor as a child in a dream in T2.

Note 5: John DeVito plays a younger John Connor in a brief, nonspeaking role on the flashback scene of the episode "Queen's Gambit".

Note 6: Miles Dyson only appears in a photograph in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where he is portrayed by Phil Morris.

Note 7: Ryan Kelley plays a fifteen-year-old Derek Reese in "What He Beheld" and another young actor, who is uncredited, as an eleven year old Derek on the same episode.

Note 8: Dubbed a T-1001 by the writers, Shirley Manson does not portray the same T-1000 model that Robert Patrick portrayed. This is evidenced by the eel-like characteristic unique to her character.

Reception

Critical reaction

Other media

There have been several book series and graphic novels associated with the Terminator series. The films have been novelized as well.

Books

• The Terminator (first novelization) by Shaun Hutson (1984)
• The Terminator (second novelization) by Randall Frakes (1991)
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day novelization by Randall Frakes (1991)
  • T2 trilogy by S.M. Stirling
    • T2: Infiltrator (2002)
    • T2: Rising Storm (2003)
    • T2: The Future War (2004)
  • Terminator 2: The New John Connor Chronicles by Russell Blackford
    • Dark Futures (2002)
    • An Evil Hour (2003)
    • Times of Trouble (2003)
  • Terminator 2: Hour of the Wolf by Mark W. Tiedemann (2004)

Stirling, Blackford and Allston's individual series are of separate continuity. Tiedemann's novel follows on from Blackford's.

• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines novelization by David Hagberg (2003)
  • T3: Terminator Dreams by Aaron Allston (2004)
  • T3: Terminator Hunt by Aaron Allston (2005)
• T-2: Judgment Day Book of the Film by Cameron/Wisher (1991)
• The Making of T-2: Judgment Day by Shay/Duncan (1991)
• Terminator 3: ROTM - Prima's Official Strategy Guide (2003)
• Terminator Salvation novelization by Allan Dean Foster (2009)
• Terminator Salvation: From the Ashes by Timothy Zahn (2009)
• The Art of Terminator Salvation by Tara Bennett (2009)
• The Official Terminator Salvation Companion Guide by Tara Bennett (2009)

Comics and graphic novels

In 1988, NOW Comics published an ongoing series with John Connor as the main character in 2029, after sending Kyle Reese back to 1984 to protect his mother. The seventeen issue series was followed by two limited series.^[34][35][36]

Dark Horse Comics acquired the rights in 1990 and published The Terminator (titled Tempest in trade paperbacks to distinguish itself), where a group of human soldiers and four Terminators come to the present, to respectively kill or protect the developers of Skynet. One of the Terminators is Dudley, a human doctor with cybernetic implants, and he betrays his group as he feels he can make a difference in the past.^[37] In the following year's sequel Secondary Objectives, the surviving Terminator leader, C890.L, is reprogrammed to destroy another Terminator sent to aid him and kill Sarah Connor.^[38] In the immediate follow-up The Enemy Within, C890.L rebuilds and modifies himself to become more dangerous than ever, while a team of human assassins attempt to return to the past and kill a Skynet developer.^[39] The 1992 Endgame concludes this arc, with human colonel Mary Randall, having lost Dudley and her soldiers in the final battle with C890.L, protecting Sarah Connor as she goes into labor. Sarah gives birth to a girl named Jane, whose future leadership means Skynet is quickly defeated and never develops time travel.^[40]

Dark Horse published a 1992 one-shot written by James Dale Robinson and drawn by Matt Wagner. It followed a female Terminator and a resistance fighter battling for the life of another Sarah Connor: Sarah Lang, who has married artist Michael Connor and intends to kill him for his money.^[41] The following year they published the limited series Hunters and Killers, set during the war, where special Terminators with ceramic skeletons and genuine organs are created to impersonate leaders in the Russian resistance.^[42] Another limited series was published in 1998, focusing on the misadventures of two malfunctioning Terminators in Death Valley. They kill a man named Ken Norden, mistaking his wife Sara and son Jon for the Connors.^[43] This set up the following year's comic The Dark Years, where Jon Norden fights alongside John Connor in 2030. In The Dark Years, another Terminator is sent to eliminate John and his mother in 1999.^[44]

Terminators have crossed over with RoboCop, Superman, and Alien vs. Predator. In the 1992 RoboCop versus The Terminator and 2000 Superman vs. The Terminator: Death to the Future, the heroes must prevent the war ravaged future.^[45][46] In 2000 Dark Horse also published Alien versus Predator versus The Terminator, where Skynet, who went dormant after Connor defeated them, have returned and are creating an Alien-Terminator hybrid. The Ellen Ripley clone (from Alien Resurrection) and the Predators join forces to stop them.^[47]

Malibu Comics published twin series in 1995. One was a sequel to Terminator 2: Judgement Day, where Sarah and John encounter two T-800s and a female T-1000. The other was a prequel exploring how Connor sent Reese and the T-800 back in time, and the creation of the T-1000 (which took its default appearance from a captive soldier). The conclusions of both series were published in one issue.^[48][49]

Beckett Comics published three series to promote Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, each consisting of two issues.^[50][51][52]

The 2007 Terminator 2: Infinity comic book series by Dynamite Entertainment (a sequel to Rise of the Machines) depicts Connor in July 17, 2009. Kate Brewster died the year before, and he is aided by a future Terminator named Uncle Bob. They create a homing signal to bring together other human survivors, beginning the resistance. The series is also tied-in to another one of Dynamite's publications, Painkiller Jane, for two issues.^[53] Dynamite are releasing a sequel Terminator: Revolution and at all the same time IDW Publishing are releasing a Salvation tie-in, possible because the former is based on the Terminator 2 license.^[54]

Games

The franchise has been expanded with many computer and video games and other game types, where many are concerned mainly with the future war, rather than the time travel.

• The Terminator (1990/1991/1992/1993, Sega CD, SNES, Game Boy, DOS, Genesis, Game Gear, NES)
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, Game Boy, Game Gear, Sega Genesis, NES, Sega Master System, SNES, ZX Spectrum)
• Terminator - LCD Video Game (1991, Tiger Electronics)
• T2: The Arcade Game (1992, Arcade, Amiga, DOS, Game Boy, Genesis, Game Gear, Sega Master System, SNES)
• Terminator 2029 (1992, DOS)
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day - Chess Wars (1993, DOS)
• Robocop versus The Terminator (1993, Game Boy, Game Gear, Genesis, Sega Master System, SNES)
• The Terminator: Rampage (1993, DOS)
• Terminator: Future Shock (1995, DOS)
• Terminator: SkyNET (1996, DOS)
• The Terminator Collectible Card Game (2000 trading card game produced by Precedence Entertainment)
• The Terminator: Dawn of Fate (2002, PlayStation 2, Xbox)
• Terminator 3: War of the Machines (2003, Windows)
• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Game Boy Advance Mobile Phones)
• Terminator 3: The Redemption (2004, Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox)
• The Terminator, (2003 game for mobile phones)
• The Terminator: I'm Back!, (2004 sequel for mobile phones)
• Terminator Salvation, (2009, Playstation 3, PC, XBOX360, n/a)

Rides

• T2 3-D: Battle Across Time, at Universal Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood, which was co-written by James Cameron.
• Terminator Salvation: The Ride, at Six Flags Magic Mountain. A wooden coaster is now open in May 23, 2009 in promotion for Terminator Salvation.

Related

• Grandfather paradox

References

External links

• Terminator Wiki on The Terminator Wiki
• Terminator (franchise) at Allmovie
• Screenplays to the films
• A Whiteboard That Explains Terminator's Entire History