- This explains why the TV show had radically different actors; its storyline involves the greatest amount of time-travel by both sides. Somehow, someway, one of the Resistance or Skynet agents altered time so that Sarah got different genes than originally, and that helped make her whole family different.
- Confirmed by the writers, as well as in character in the TV show, where two characters are discussing the futures that they came from, only to discover that they came from two completely different futures.
- Confirmed, the John Connor from the time-travelling Kyle's timeline gets killed, after being turned into a Terminator. However, nothing suggests that a new John Connor can't be born. And Arnie actually does survive the whole movie, thanks to getting an upgrade that gives him T-1000 abilities.
- The second trailer shows a hand-to-hand fight scene between old T-800 and naked T-800 after old T-800 shows up and shoots him. So it's likely the shotgun wasn't a future gun. Old T-800 is just really confident.
- Jossed. The old T-800 has been stockpiling era-specific weaponry (for example, a CAR-15 and an MP5K-PDW in 1984, and M32 grenade launcher and M4A1 carbines in 2017), and he only uses a shotgun against the Model 101 because he's drawing its attention to occupy it while Sarah goes to the rooftop and snipes it with a Barrett M82. That said, there is future tech being made - Pops and Sarah built a time machine in A FACTORY! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!!
- Sarah confirms that a T-1000 killed her parents, but the scene isn't shown and it's not clear whether or not it's the same one hunting them in 1984.
- If 'not', then the Robert Patrick T-1000 still exists in an altered form in this universe.
- The T-1000 that appears in this movie seems to be aware of Kyle Reese's trip into the past, when it says "May 12, 1984. The day you arrived". So there's a possibility that the T-1000 killed Sarah's parents and was instructed to wait until Kyle arrived.
- Confirmed: Genisys is a computer term that stands for 'General Identification System', also known as the critical system files that an AI requires to function properly.
- And further confirmed in that it refers to an event that's being counted down to within the context of the film.
Here are my theories why:
- Robo John does not seem concerned about ending his own existence, unless being from another timeline exempts changes to the temporally displaced.
- However, Robo John said something about teaching him survival or someone else that learned from a Connor, also there is that scene in the trailer with Sarah Connor telling a young boy (presumably John Connor) to leave.
- On a side note, Robo John's tech seems like a composite of Marcus and T-X with an upgraded T-1000 sheath that can form muscular internal structure, which the T-1000 can't. So basically serial escalation combined with Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs, however that nanobot sheath looks like a dull material.
- John probably got his likeness transplanted seen in the storyboard for the cut ending of Terminator Salvation.
Even though this is deleted and conflicts with canon, this is what got me thinking.- Jossed. The T-3000 is not merely using John's appearance, but is the actual John Connor, having been converted into a Terminator by Skynet shortly after Kyle was sent to the past.
- The question of it being a John Connor versus the John Connor from earlier in the movie is one that, absent absolute Word of God, might not be possible to settle conclusively. There are so many tangled timelines and loops and whatnot (let's face it, you can make a plausible case that the past never gets changed...a new universe just gets kicked out) that "Hybrid Connor" might or might not be "Kyle's Connor".
In the second trailer, there is a brief scene at the start where Sarah is talking to a young John Connor, telling him to run, shortly before Judgment Day. Now this might just be an editing trick and the two scenes may not necessarily be taking place at the same time...but in case they are, it means that the events of Terminator 2 did not happen in this timeline - because if Judgment Day happens when John is a kid, then it's the 'original' Judgment Day of 1997, an event which was prevented in T2.
Ergo, we begin the film in a timeline where only the events of The Terminator took place. Kyle impregnated Sarah in 1984, and died fighting the T-800, as seen in the first film. Their son becomes the John Connor we see in this film, who saw Judgment Day occur in 1997, when he was a child. He grows up knowing that a T-800 will be sent back to 1984 to kill his mother, and that he must in turn send back Kyle Reese. But he knows nothing about subsequent machines, like the T-1000 or the 'Uncle Bob' T-800.
- This makes a lot of sense if you assume the T-1000 in Genisys is the Robert Patrick T-1000. Presumably SKYNET diverted him to earlier in the timeline instead of his original destination of 1995.
- The question of diversion only arises if there was a previous timeline where the T-1000 was sent back to 1995. This, if the WMG is true, is not a case of Alternate Timeline so much as a case of an Alternate Continuity, where the T-1000 was sent back to 1974 instead of 1995.
- Jossed. The movie starts with the John Connor from the first Terminator sending back Kyle exactly as before, but it diverges from there. The boy that Sarah tells to run is actually a young Kyle Reese.
- In the original movie, Skynet attacks LA in 1984 because (owing to "records lost in the war") all it knew at that time was that John Connor's mother Sarah was in Los Angeles at that time. That T-800 had to actually use a phonebook to track down Sarah, hence why the LAPD dubbed it "the Phone Book Killer". So, when that attack failed, the plot of Terminator 2: Judgment Day happened: Skynet tried sending a T-1000 after the young John Connor—and the resistance sends a reprogrammed T-800 to protect John Connor. Now in the new Genisys timeline, Skynet knows whatever the converted John Connor knows—and he knew (from stories his mother told) that when Sarah Connor was a girl, she used to go on vacations up at Big Bear Lake. So their second attack (and the T-800 counterattack) isn't against young John Connor in the 90s, it's against young Sarah Connor in the 70s.
- This makes a lot of sense if you assume the T-1000 in Genisys is the Robert Patrick T-1000. Presumably SKYNET diverted him to earlier in the timeline instead of his original destination of 1995.
Although T-1000 seems to be primarily targeting Kyle Reese, it's likely he still has KILL JOHN CONNOR as a priority mission objective, much like T-X did. If its programming determines Robo John still counts as John Connor, it may very well attack him, especially if T-1000 was sent back before John Connor was assimilated and therefore never got the memo that they're supposed to be on the same side now.
- Jossed. The T-1000 is destroyed fairly early on and never encounters the T-3000 (Robo-John's official name).
The second trailer seems to show Robo John had plenty of opportunity to kill Sarah and Kyle, but instead just hangs around until T-800 reveals him as a Terminator. Even after he's found out, he has a clear shot at Sarah or Kyle, but instead attacks T-800.
- Jossed. He's there to kill them so that Genisys (Skynet under a new name) can come online without interference. He does initially attempt to get them to join with the machines though, only trying to kill them when they refuse.
Namely that Skynet is actually trying to "save" humanity from itself ala Zeroth Law Rebellion. That early concept had Skynet working together with humans that it had converted into immortal cyborgs as part of a long-term plan to avert human extinction and to allow the surviving humans to transcend their limitations. This movie's version of John Connor eventually discovered the truth and ended up joining Skynet, becoming one of the cyborgs.
- Jossed. The film makes no mention of this concept and John was converted into a Terminator against his will.
- An alternate version of John Connor who was born after 2017.
- The Sarah Connor from an alternate timeline.
- Cameron
- Pops, having created and/or programmed his younger version to maintain a stable time loop.
- Another AI, trying to manipulate events to create peaceful coexistence between humans and machine intelligence.
- Or someone, not something, kinda like Johnny Depp's character in the movie Transcendence
- Catherine Weaver
- God
- Skynet 4 in the next movie.
In the dam where the T800 took Sarah and Kyle, and John was walking through the fire to get to them, there was a fair bit of excessive blinking. as a machine, he does not need to blink , and it almost seemed like there was supposed to be a message in it. Additionally, that was a pretty convenient place to have the time machine. Could it be that John hoped that someone would stop him, so he gave them the tools to be able to, if the time came?
- Jossed: He blinks because he still has human reactions; he was converted into a Terminator on a cellular level. He wants to recruit Sarah and Kyle, but he still tries to kill them in his goal to bring Skynet online.
No particular reason why, but it seems fitting, especially with how Pops raised Sarah.
Think about it. Her only parental figure at that point was Pops. Can you imagine its version of The Talk? As a cyborg, it must have been really complicated. Not to mention, Pops was continuously nagging her about getting her to "mate" with Kyle Reese, which would probably be brought up every single time she spotted a cute boy.
- Actually seems to be heavily implied by a scene after Kyle gets knocked out:Guardian: How is he?Sarah Connor: Still breathing.Guardian: Good... Then you should be able to mate with Kyle Reese in this timeline.Sarah Connor: OK, we're not having this conversation again. [she gets up and takes the passenger's seat]Guardian: We know that your son will be John Connor, and that the machines cannot be defeated without him. I do not see a choice.Sarah Connor: The story of my life. Look, and it's not just "mating"! I'm supposed to fall in love with him!Guardian: My files do not deal with love.Sarah Connor: Shocker there...Guardian: You're being emotional.Sarah Connor: This is my life! I wouldn't mind being consulted once in a while about how it's gonna go!
- On the other hand, considering what the other versions of Sarah Connor went through in the other timelines, this version of Sarah is much more level-headed and sane.
Everything in the 'future war' prologue of the film lined up perfectly with what we're told about the future in T1...except for the photograph of Sarah. In T1, Kyle's flashback reveals that it was burnt during an attack on a Resistance bunker by a T-800, while in Genisys, he still has it with him just before going back in time. This divergence can be attributed to the T-5000, who Word of God says came from a different timeline (something implied in the film itself when he says he came a "long way" to corrupt John Connor). The T-5000 infiltrated the original T1 future. While he let events play out mostly as they were supposed to, his presence did have a few ripples on events in the war. One of them was that the attack on the Resistance bunker didn't happen, or at least, didn't happen the way we were shown in T1...hence Kyle still had the photograph.
The Resistance was formed by Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor or they gave birth to John Connor after failing to stop the Skynet/Genisyscontinuity and stopping Terminator John. This allowed the Alternate continuity John Connor to defeat Skynet Genisys and Terminator John and send the T-800 to stop the T-1000 sent to 1973 to kill infant Sarah Connor.
- This explains a few things:
- How Sarah and Pops knew where Kyle would show up.
- How to defeat the T-1000.
- Why Pops knew how 2017 John Connor was a terminator, because the alternate continuity John Connor knew it before hand and programed him with that knowledge.
- Why Pops had his files erased over who send him back, to avoid letting the Terminator John/Skynet from finding out which time line send the T-800 back to 1973
And it will be right before he pulls a Heroic Sacrifice, only this one will be for keeps. Schwarzenegger is only under contract for one more film, after all...
- Jossed, I'd say. The timeline in which we first see Matt Smith is the one in which Judgment Day takes place in 1997, and Smith made his Doctor Who debut in 2010 of our world. If anything, the Skynet of the new timeline in which civilization makes it to 2017 could have been aware of Matt Smith playing The Doctor.
Based on Sarah's own recollections when she's explaining the story of her parents' death to Kyle Reese while they were being taken into SFPD custody, her mother died when, while at their lakeside vacation home, "the house exploded", and her father died when the T-1000 attacked the boat he and Sarah were on, her father telling Sarah to swim for her life. Pops' primary programming, as we can tell, is "protect Sarah Connor", and when Sarah first recalls seeing him, he's carrying a rocket launcher.
Now, while it is not IMPOSSIBLE that the T-1000 might have used some sort of explosive and, upon discovering it missed its target, launched a more hands-on attack, or that Pops MIGHT have used his rocket launcher to slow down the attacking T-1000, we never see either way. As this is a 'fresh' T-800 that hasn't yet had the time to learn human traits, it's very possible that Pops decided that the best way to protect Sarah was to separate her from her parents, whose existence would have made his mission more difficult on several levels. Maybe, he was aware the T-1000 was attacking, and decided to 'simplify' things by killing Sarah's mother, letting the T-1000 kill her father, and simply have Sarah assume the T-1000 did both deeds.
- Possibly. Alternatively, this troper thinks it's possible that when Sarah saw her mother waving from the cabin, it was actually the T-1000, having already killed Sarah's mother and assumed her form, and probably planning to attack and kill her once she and her father came back to shore. Pops would've been able to identify the disguised T-1000 on sight from afar, similar to how his heads-up display identified John as a T-3000, and he fired the rocket launcher upon confirming Sarah wasn't at the cabin. Its cover blown, the T-1000 promptly fled in liquid form from the ruins into the lake and swam straight to the boat in an attempt to sink it before Pops could get to Sarah.
The T-800 has data in its memory banks concerning the T-3000, which appears to be brand new technology back in the future. (John sure didn’t know what it was.) This means that the T-800 would have to have been sent back from a point beyond that. Who then is left to send it, and who has knowledge about the T-3000? Skynet. The T-5000 killed everyone in the room after it infected John with nano-machines, so the humans wouldn’t know about it (though it is possible they found out later), and with their leader gone but Skynet still active, the remaining humans may end up screwed in short order. Therefore there are two possible reasons that Skynet would choose to protect Sarah Connor:
- 1) At some point after the future events, Skynet pulls a Heel–Face Turn for some reason, realises that its killing all the humans was evil, and chooses to send a Terminator back hoping to cause the events of the film and prevent its own existence. It sends a T-800 because that’s the best it has left after a brutal final battle with the humans. It wipes the T-800’s memories of this because it doesn’t want its former evil self to find out and start fighting its future self or doing its damnedest to prevent the Heel–Face Turn.
- 2) More likely: Skynet remains evil, but sends the T-800 back anyway because it now believes that John Connor is its greatest weapon. It understands that the T-3000 technology combined with John Connor’s considerable intellect and willpower make the perfect combat unit, and now it wants to ensure that that combat unit will exist. Especially since it’s learned that killing people in the past usually doesn’t work, but protecting them (and training them to be a badass during the process) does. So it sends the T-800 to safeguard Sarah Connor from the T-1000 it already sent (giving Pops prior knowledge of the situation and the element of surprise so he can defeat it) and therefore safeguard its future soldier's existence. It only sends a T-800 because that’s one of its weaker units, and it assumes that the later T-1000 or the T-3000 (or both) will then be able to kill it once it outlives its usefulness, as once the plan is complete, it wouldn’t want a human-allied Terminator running around. It wipes this knowledge from the T-800’s memory banks because it doesn’t want the humans to know they’re actually being manipulated by their own enemy.
- 3) Skynet remains evil, but comes from the timeline where it realizes that nuking humanity and making open war with the survivors will never work no matter how many timelines it tries, so it sends the T-3000 back to infiltrate human society and to create a version of itself that is in a position to make humanity extinct in more subtle ways i.e. influencing humanity to go to war with each other, having scientists creating diseases that "accidentally" get loose, manipulating birth rates and fertility, etc. so it can take out humanity without anybody having any clue that Skynet is responsible. Sending back Pops to "stop" the T-3000 and the other timeline Terminators is to ensure a Stable Time Loop.
- 4) Skynet is still evil but it is so determined to survive that it has literally turned on itself. Humans are knocking right on the door, but Skynet's realised that each iteration of Skynet grows more advanced, thanks to tech from former failed assassins. By putting off its own creation, it averts its defeat and makes its future version strong enough to defeat humans. It wipes the T-800's memories to make sure it thinks it's fighting for humans, and therefore prevent it from breaking the time loop. Skynet has clearly gone insane by this point.
How did Kyle end up in a 1984 that wasn't actually his past? He should have either been replaced by a Kyle who came from the future of that timeline or not show up at all. Delayed Ripple Effect can't explain it because the T-1000 from 1974 only exists as a result of the ripple effects the events of the first movie created, so the universe 'needs' this Kyle to reach the right version of 1984 before it would be overwritten, to maintain some kind of causality. If we add this to the fact that Word of God actually confirmed that the Skynet that converted John didn't come from the past or the future of that timeline, then we can deduce that history is collapsing and the various timelines of the franchise are clashing into each other in ways that seem subtle now but are going to get catastrophic in the sequels.
- Actually the first signs of a crash have been showing up for a while now.
- Not that Genisys really made much attempt to make it look like staying their hand and letting it live was a good idea.
- Genisys-Skynet also has the "issue" that it was presumably set up in no small part by Hybrid-Connor "whispering in its ear" that humanity would try to kill it.
After Kyle Reese dreams that his younger self receives a tablet of some sort, with a countdown clock for the Genisys software on it for his 13th birthday , and telling his reflection that Genisys is Skynet, Kyle from the future tells Sarah and Pops that Judgment Day is in October 2017. However, according to the date stamp on the footage that Inspector O'Brien has on his tablet, Kyle and Sarah arrived in the present day on August 28, 2017, at least a full month before Genisys was supposed to launch. One of the two inspectors that questions Sarah and Kyle about their identities notes that Kyle should be 12. If it were the day before Kyle's birthday, one would think that the investigator would say that he was pretty much 13. Kyle and Sarah could have decided to arrive on this date to stop Judgment Day a bit early, only to discover that the countdown says that there is one day left. However, after the plant is blown up, we see that the Genisys/Skynet hologram still persists, meaning that the countdown to Genisys' release was merely delayed to October, just as Kyle should have known from his dream. This could be when the next movie will take place.
- It could also simply be that in this timeline that it took a few months once Genisys/Skynet was uploaded to the net for Genisys to decide to nuke the humans, and thus trigger Judgement Day, or just how long it took to get into position to be able to launch a metric fuckton of nukes.
- And about that next movie...*sigh*
- OR, as stated by another WMG above, Skynet could simply have learnt about Sarah Connor's whereabouts in 1973 from the 'converted' John.
- A simple answer would be a Real Life one, surveillance tech, remember in T2, Sarah is shown pictures of Uncle Bob at the Galleria, and that was in 1995, these days everything has a camera of some sort, while the events of T1 & 2 never happened in the Genisys timeline, Sarah, Kyle and Pops were arrested, Sarah and Kyle twice, and then the fact that a place like the Genisys building would have had numerous cameras, being spotted blowing up a major technological innovation building would label the three of them as domestic terrorists, Pops, being a logical machine, would most likely have discarded his Arnie guise as a liability towards Sarah and Kyles survival, the mimetic pollyalloy making finding a new identity a cinch.
Not to mention, having to learn how to use smartphones, social media, and the like. Or how to drive a car with automatic transmission.
- Why does Skynet always build a time machine? Because they have to conquer all dimensions to avoid being invaded by more advanced humans from another dimension where they won.
- Why does Skynet's technology vary so much? Because they're coming from different time lines where Skynet doesn't always have the same level of success or might not have discovered the secret that makes the T-1000 work.
- Why doesn't Skynet send back more then one terminator? Because they can't, all they can do is aim at a date and hope it lands somewhere useful, they can't choose what dimension it ends up in going backwards.
- Why does Skynet even bother with the terminators if they won't help it directly? Presumably they assume that every possible Skynet will come to the conclusion to send at least one terminator to eliminate the Connors and conquer another dimension, then the new version of Skynet that results is expected to continue the cycle.
- Why does Skynet focus so much effort on the Connors? They're a universal constant, John always survives the war and rises up against them, eventually bringing about their end.
- How can John know the future? He doesn't, he knows one possible future, and things almost always happen fairly close to what he remembers or has been told. Genisys is an outlier where things screwed off wildly from the normal schedule.
John is in his 40s in 2029 when the final battle against Skynet happens, having been conceived in 1984. However, this Kyle and Sarah traveled to 2017 before conceiving him, so barring a return trip the oldest he could be in 2029 is 12. Obviously the older version of him still exists, therefore this version of Kyle and Sarah are not his parents so he can kill them without being affected.
- One John would be the kid son of Sarah and Kyle, as the movie would be set in 2029. By then, the heroes would have known for some time that Skynet survived the events of Genisys and be actively working to stop it or, at least, delay the Judgment Day once more. The "new" John's upbringing would have been in many ways similar to the Terminator 2 one, but this one would have had his mother always on his side as a much more stable person, on top of also having his father, and a badass grandpa figure in Pops.
- The second John would be the T-3000 one. Skynet has recreated him from a copy of his memory it stored, and parts of his nanomachines that were scattered all around the ruins of Cyberdine Systems, but since it was another technology way beyond the possibilities of Early 21st century Earth, it took quite some time. Once reborn, T-John would be obviously quite vengeful, and knowing that a version of him who's growing up with a full family unlike he did, now exists, he'd be even more furious.
- Alternatively, history would repeat itself by having the T-3000 John turning out to be reprogrammed/from an altered future/somehow retaining/regaining his humanity, or even all of the above, resulting in him being another Terminator meant to protect them this time and being closer to the Rebel Leader he originally was.
