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alt title(s): The Terminator
That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
—Kyle Reese

I'll be back.
—T-800

A standard implacable killer, given a Sci Fi justification, The Terminator has become a much imitated part of the pop-cultural pantheon. Arnold Schwarzenegger portrayed the titular cyborg for three two films in the role that shot him to superstardom.

In the first film, The Terminator, Sarah Connor learns that a serial killer is hunting down everyone with her name. After two people in her home are killed in an effort to find her, she hides in a nightclub. The killer catches up with her there, but she is rescued by a mysterious stranger, who explains the Back Story.

In the near future, men created SkyNet, an artificial intelligence, which promptly turned on its masters, attempting to Kill All Humans in a cataclysmic event called Judgment Day. Mankind eventually defeated it, but at the last minute SkyNet sent a T-800 android assassin back in time to kill Sarah to prevent the birth of her son John Connor, the future leader of the human resistance. In response, John sent back the stranger, Kyle, to protect his mother, and the timeline.

After several dramatic battles, and Kyle's Heroic Sacrifice, the terminator is eventually killed in a factory, but not before Sarah has slept with Kyle, conceiving John. This means John caused his own birth, in a Stable Time Loop.

In the second film, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Skynet sends back a more advanced terminator, the nigh invulnerable shapeshifting T-1000. In response, John Connor sends back a reprogrammed T-800 to protect his earlier self.

Both terminators arrive when John is 12 and living with foster parents because his mother was thrown in a loony bin for talking about "Killer Robots from the Future." The T-800 takes its place as John's bodyguard, who forces him to rescue his mother from the mental hospital. Sarah, now an Action Girl, learns more details of SkyNet's history and decides to kill the man who will create SkyNet, but falters when she sees his family. They discover from this man that the company Cyberdyne built SkyNet using components from the destroyed T-800 from the first movie, making SkyNet part of a second Stable Time Loop. Together, they infiltrate Cyberdyne, where they destroy all the computers and the T-800 remains. But the T-1000 is not far behind them and after several running encounters, both terminators are dissolved in a vat of molten steel.

The series then splits off into two canons:

  • Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: The third film begins with SkyNet's takeover apparently averted - the date Kyle gave has come and gone, but then another Terminator appears, this time female. Like before, a reprogrammed T-850 (functionally identical to the T-800, but slightly different to account for Arnold's age) arrives to protect John. Judgment Day was only deferred, not prevented. Sarah Connor is now dead, but John returns to the fight. He, and his destined wife end up in a military bunker, which they falsely believed held SkyNet's hardware core. In fact, SkyNet is software running on any computer network. As the film ends, SkyNet launches its takeover, decapitating the human governments with a nuclear strike. Fortunately, the bunker is a communications nexus, putting John in the perfect place to take charge of the nascent resistance.
  • The Sarah Connor Chronicles: This television series accepts the first and second films (and is very similar in idea to the second) but ignores the third, a move appreciated by many fans. It follows the adventures of Sarah, John, and an attractive female Terminator named Cameron, who is his bodyguard and likely love interest.

A teaser trailer places a fourth movie, Terminator Salvation, during the war with the machines. Whether it will draw on Terminator 3 or The Sarah Connor Chronicles for its backstory is as yet unknown, but early reports suggested the former.
These films provide examples of: