A cyborg is sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 Los Angeles. It is an assassin known as a Terminator—a robot disguised as a human male—and is programmed to hunt down and kill a woman named Sarah Connor. Separately, a human soldier named Kyle Reese also arrives from the future, intent on stopping the Terminator. They both steal weapons and clothes, the latter because only living flesh and blood things can be sent through time. After searching for addresses in a telephone directory, the Terminator starts to systematically kill the women who share Sarah's name before tracking the correct Sarah to a nightclub. As it moves in for the kill, Reese attacks and momentarily incapacitates the Terminator, giving him time to rescue Sarah. The duo steal a car and escape, with the Terminator pursues them in a stolen police car. As they hide in a parking lot, Reese explains to Sarah that an artificially intelligent defence network known as Skynet will become self-aware in the near future and trigger a global nuclear war in order to wipe out humankind. Sarah's future son, John, will rally the survivors and lead a successful resistance movement against Skynet and its mechanical forces. On the verge of the resistance's victory, Skynet sent the Terminator back in time to eliminate Sarah, thereby preventing John's birth. The Terminator is an efficient and relentless killing machine with a durable metal endoskeleton covered in living tissue in order for it to appear human. The Terminator finds Reese and Sarah in the parking lot, and another chase ensues that ends with the Terminator's car smashing into a wall. The police arrive and arrest Reese and Sarah, but the Terminator has disappeared. Reese and Sarah are taken to a police station. Sarah is reassured by the police and a criminal psychologist, who believes that Reese is a "loon". Reese's hostile claims about the future and the advanced robot's mission are dismissed as those of a raving lunatic. The police also have logical explanations for the Terminator, such as wearing bullet-stopping body armour and being so high on drugs that the man didn't feel all the bones in his hand and arm breaking when he punched through a window! Mere minutes later, however, the Terminator arrives at the station asking to see Sarah. When he is denied access, he casually utters, "I'll be back"...

The Terminator is one of those rare films: a perfect time travel story. It works great as a one-off with its self-contained, mind-bending time travel paradox. It is a story that doesn't need any sequels (they really only serve to reduce the potency of this film's time travel plot). The conclusion of The Terminator suggests that the actions we see the characters take in the film as well as the subsequent future events that set the scenario in motion have always occurred as depicted. Of course, the more one thinks about the causality loop (or predestination paradox) in the film, the deeper that rabbit hole gets. Especially if one starts to consider the 'bootstrap paradox' of the advanced future technology in the Terminator being the source of the programming that forms the basis for Skynet in the first place! In short, the film's internal logic holds up, and it is probably much better to focus on the story's Greek tragedy aspects—in brief, the film depicts the conflict by proxy between a pair of gods (Skynet and Connor) that are only talked about and never seen.

The film is basically structured as one tense chase from beginning to end—it's all action with little to no time spent on exposition. However, throughout the film we get glimpses of the nightmarish future that Reese and the Terminator come from, as well as Sarah evolving from a meek bystander caught up in events to a driven warrior that takes control of the situation. The film only has two drawbacks; the wooden acting in a couple of scenes, and the visual effects in the conclusion. This is not a critique of the stop motion animation used per se, just that the way that the Terminator endoskeleton moves and reacts feels totally different from the nuanced-yet-robotic portrayal by Schwarzenegger up until that point. If anything, the robot is 'too stiff' when it is fully revealed.

Nevertheless, I give both of those flaws a pass, as 1) the film still holds up and feels fresh over 4 decades after its release, and 2) it was a low budget movie—Dir. Cameron really got the most out of his budget, and it's forgivable that some of the special effects didn't quite achieve his vision. The film is a must see. Not only is it a defining film from the 80's, it is also a compelling meditation on destiny and self-determination; all packaged in a tense, exciting action film!

In 2029, Earth has been ravaged by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. Skynet sends the T-1000—an advanced, shape-shifting prototype Terminator made of virtually indestructible liquid metal—back in time to kill resistance leader John Connor when he is a child. To protect Connor, the resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator, a less advanced metal endoskeleton covered in living tissue. In 1995's Los Angeles, John's mother Sarah is incarcerated in Pascadero State Hospital for her violent efforts to prevent "Judgment Day"; the prophesied events of Aug. 29, 1997, when Skynet will gain sentience and, in response to its creators' attempts to deactivate it, incite a nuclear holocaust. John, living with foster parents, also considers Sarah delusional and resents her efforts to prepare him for his future role. The T-1000 locates John in a shopping mall, but the T-800 intervenes, coming to John's aid and enabling his escape. John calls to warn his foster parents, but the T-1000 has already killed them. Realizing that the T-800 is programmed to obey him, John forbids it from killing people and orders it to save Sarah before the T-1000 kills her. The T-800 and John intercept Sarah as she is attempting to escape the hospital, but Sarah flees in horror because the T-800 looks identical to the Terminator sent to kill her in 1984. Right at that moment the T-1000 appears, and launches into a viscous attack!

Terminator 2 is one of the best actions movies, and is right up there with such classics as Aliens and Empire Strikes Back as one of the best sequels, ever. Terminator 2 depicts not only Skynet's continuing attempts to eliminate its archnemesis John Connor, but also the ongoing harm and detrimental effects of the events in the first movie. Most importantly, Terminator 2 is about something deeper than the spectacle of the skilfully arranged action and top-notch special effects. The film is genuinely thought provoking, in other words. It has also aged well with a certain timeless quality, and is hardly dated at all (aside from the games in the video game parlour—remember any of those?) A couple of decades on, the film's intensity still brings chills.

John Connor is the moral centre of Terminator 2. This in itself is striking, as usually it is the experienced elders in a story that are the ones that provide the moral leadership to get the story's wayward youth back on track. It is all the more impressive as this is Edward Furlong's first acting job. He got the portrayal just right, and it informs greatly on how John Connor ends up becoming a great military leader in the future. This is made all the more potent in a scene cut from the theatrical release where instead of ordering his mother to not destroy the T-800's microprocessor, he gives solid reasons for why she shouldn't, and ultimately leaves the final decision up to her!

Of the various versions of this film that I've seen, the better version is the "Special Edition", which includes such things as a dream sequence where Kyle Reese visits Sarah, the T-1000 starting to malfunction in the steel mill, and the subplot depicting the resetting of the Terminator's CPU chip. The dream sequence adds immensely to Sarah's story arc by further embellishing her mindset and mental instability. The CPU reset subplot, however, has two scenes that transform Terminator 2 into something sublime. The first, in which the protagonists remove the chip from the inside of the Terminator's head, has got to be one of the better choreographed scenes in any film, period. Despite knowing how it was made (5 actors, 1 animatronic, and mirrored sets to portray the 3 characters in a single shot), it's still mind boggling that the cast and crew pulled it off without any visual effects! The other scene is between John and Sarah, and is the aforementioned sequence that is not only about the immediate fate of their Terminator protector, but also depicts John displaying a surprising level of maturity, and his first steps on the road to becoming a great leader. This film—especially the "Special Edition"—is highly recommended.

Ten years after destroying Cyberdyne Systems, John Connor has been living as a nomad following the death of his mother, Sarah Connor. He fears that the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet is still hunting him despite a war between humans and machines having not happened in 1997, as had been foretold. Unable to locate John in the past, Skynet sents the T-X—an advanced prototype Terminator made of a metal endoskeleton covered in a shapeshifting liquid metal—back in time to John's present in Los Angeles, to kill his future allies in the resistance. The resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-850 Terminator to protect John and Kate Brewster, the resistance's second-in-command. After killing other targets, the T-X locates John and Kate at the animal hospital where Kate works. John becomes the T-X's primary target, but the T-850 shows up in the nick of time, and helps them escape. The T-850 then takes them to a mausoleum where John's mother, Sarah, is supposedly interred. Inside her coffin, they find a weapons cache left at Sarah's request in case Judgment Day was not averted and the Terminators returned. The trio escape an armed battle with the police and fend off the pursuing T-X. The T-850 then reveals that John and Sarah's actions only delayed Judgment Day and that Skynet's attack will occur in a few hours that very same day! The T-850 intends to drive John and Kate to Mexico to escape the fallout when Skynet begins its nuclear attack. John orders the T-850 to take them to Kate's father, US Air Force Gen. Robert Brewster, who is supervising the development of Skynet at a nearby airbase and could potentially stop Judgment Day from happening. The T-850 refuses, as unlike the T-800 in Terminator 2, it is not programmed to obey John!

My initial viewing of Terminator 3 was disappointing, particularly because it is so tonally different from the two preceding films. My opinion on this film improved considerably after watching Terminator Salvation, and realizing that Terminator 3 is more or less a comedy. It's also arguably better if one considers this film as taking place in a parallel universe, as the John Connor in this film is completely different from the character in the earlier films. This is not a critique of Nick Stahl's performance, as he does a good job with the role he was hired to perform. The fault lies at the writing level. Succinctly put, it is implied in The Terminator and shown in Terminator 2 that John is someone who never gives up, despite whatever long odds he and his allies face. In Terminator 3, the character is shown giving up at least twice. Again, it's not Stahl's fault, as his performance is believable in those scenes and throughout the movie. The film's focus on comedy is also not bad per se, how it was handled, however, is. If they could get it right with Schwarzenegger in the strip club and gas station scenes, why couldn't they do the same with the other actors in other scenes? It's almost like the point of some scenes is the comedy itself, and due to that, the film never attains a level of tension—and arguably a level of concern for its characters—that the two preceding films succeeded masterfully at.

The action is also generic. Coming on the heels of Terminator 2, where elements of subsequent scenes are masterfully planted in the current scene and everything smoothly flows together, Terminator 3 comes across as ill-thought out. There's less of a feeling of internal cohesiveness, and things just seem to appear or happen at random, out of the blue. While one could argue that it is a counterpoint to The Terminator's suggestion that everything is preordained, that doesn't justify the disjointed nature of certain things in Terminator 3. The music is also lacklustre. In particular, the removal of the steadily increasing drum beat during chase and action scenes ends up deflating the tension level whereas in similar scenes in the first two films, the soundtrack put the tension through the roof! The biggest letdown of this film, though, is that in addition to not following the rules for time travel set out in The Terminator, this film creates a grandfather paradox by letting the T-X successfully kill most of its targets. The first two films were much more successful in that regard, as the failure of the Terminator to complete its mission ends up justifying the very reason for it to be sent to the past in the first place!

All that complaining aside, this film does get some things right. The biggest, and arguably most shocking, is that it lets Judgment Day actually happen, and shows us how it starts. The film also fills in a few more details on the period between Judgment Day and the defeat of Skynet, such as the initial steps towards the creation of the resistance and how John became its leader by depicting him as the calm voice of leadership in a sea of chaos. While turning the T-800/T-850 into an ally again wasn't the most original idea (wasn't subverting audience expectations the whole point of that in Terminator 2?), I did like that Schwarzenegger presented a subtly different character throughout the film. If you're a fan of the Terminator series, this film is worth a viewing. However, the best way to approach this film is to turn off your critical thinking, just go with the flow, and unplug from the world for a while.

In 2003, Dr Serena Kogan of Cyberdyne systems convinces death row inmate Marcus Wright to sign over his body for medical research following his execution. Sometime later, the automated Skynet system becomes self-aware, perceives humans as a threat to its existence, and starts the nuclear holocausts known as "Judgment Day". 15 years later, John Connor leads an attack on a Skynet base where he discovers the schematics for a new Terminator: the T-800. He survives the base's self-destruction, and proceeds to extraction. Following his departure, Marcus emerges from the base's wreckage and begins the long walk through the desert to Los Angeles. John heads to the Resistance headquarters aboard a Los Angeles-class submarine off the coast and confronts General Ashdown. Ashdown reveals that the Resistance has discovered a hidden signal that they believe can shut down Skynet's machines. They want John to test it immediately, as they plan to launch an offensive against Skynet's headquarters in San Francisco in four days time. When John questions the tight schedule, Ashdown tells him about an intercepted kill list created by Skynet, which indicates that the machines will eliminate the Resistance's leaders within seven days. John learns that he is on this list, along with Kyle Reese. John realizes that Skynet has learned that Kyle will eventually travel back in time and become his father. Arriving at Los Angeles, Marcus inadvertently provokes a solitary T-600 into attacking him. He is saved by Kyle and a mute child named Star. As their hiding space is now known to Skynet, they take Marcus to the ruins of Griffith Observatory. In the parking lot, he finds a Jeep and works on it until it is able to run. They flee Skynet's drones that come to investigate the noise and head into the desert. At an abandoned gas station, they are attacked by Skynet's machines, and Kyle and Star are taken prisoner. As Marcus attempts to rescue the duo from the Skynet prison transport, two Resistance A-10 fighter jets attack, and Marcus is knocked off the transport. Both jets are soon shot down. Marcus rescues Blair Williams, one of the downed pilots. He implores her to accompany him to Skynet in order to rescue Kyle and Star, but she urges him to follow her to John's base, where he'll be able to muster more support. As they make the final approach on the base, Marcus steps on and is wounded by a magnetic mine. When he revives, he, Blair, and John are all surprised to learn that Marcus is not what he outwardly appears to be!

Terminator Salvation is a disjointed mess of a film. Of all its missteps, the worst was the decision to focus on the action at the expense of the characters. While it is understandable that Marcus would be reticent, especially after all he has gone through, better writing would have provided a foil that not only forced him to speak more, but also engendered character growth—akin to young John Connor and the T-800 in Terminator 2, which led to the audience becoming emotionally invested in both characters. The only character that we grow attached to in this film is Kyle Reese. His character also gets the best lines; some of which arguably should have been given to the John Connor character. Speaking of dialogue, the film unwisely has Helena Bonham Carter deliver her lines too much like a gloating human when she's the mouthpiece for Skynet. As Carter is usually wonderful in her roles and as Schwarzenegger's performances in the preceding three films give a great road map for a robotic personality, one wonders if Carter's performance was due to bad writing or directing. And that leads into the film's biggest flaw: there is no central villain. Instead, we get too many scenes depicting the infighting between the heroes and their allies, making us wonder how they could ever mount an effective fight against Skynet, let alone how they acquired, maintain, and operate all the aircraft and vehicles that they have at their disposal! The film also frustratingly rewrites (or otherwise ignores) what has already been established in The Terminator and Terminator 2, such as reducing John to a mere tertiary commander in the Resistance, when he's supposed to be its leader. And then there's the failure to depict Skynet using captured humans as slave labour and John teaching them (with a strong suggestion that he is a prisoner along with them) to storm the prison walls and escape to freedom?

What I liked about the film is that it attempted to show that Skynet was a worldwide problem with military bases all over the planet—something that the earlier films never really address. The Russian commander on the Resistance's sub was a welcome addition that went a long way toward selling that point. I also really liked seeing the A-10 Thunderbolts in combat. While the sequences leave a lot to be desired, it was still neat to see them. The attempt to round out the development of the T- series with the introduction and depiction of the T-600 and T-700 was also appreciated, and almost makes viewing the film worthwhile. Finally, the depiction of what life is like for the survivors was a great addition. It isn't just fending off attacks by the Terminators, but basic things, like hunting for coyote to eat, and trying to eek out an existence where all electronics, including the refrigerator, are broken!

Alas, this film is so full of contrivances that it is hard to recommend. This is exemplified in the T-600 in LA with a mini-gun. Why does it have a mini-gun? Because the T-800 used one in Terminator 2. It makes no sense that a lone T-600 out on patrol would have a gun that burns through its entire 5,000 round magazine in less than a minute. And then there are the obvious plot devices, such as the Hydrobots and Moto-Terminators—which have no precedence in any of the preceding films. They are just thrown in either as unnecessary obstacles that get in the way of the story, or contrivances to advance the plot by quickly getting a character from A to B. All in all, Terminator Salvation feels out of step with the rest of the franchise. It's not so much a missed opportunity as it is an unnecessary addition. The future War Against the Machines is arguably something that is best left to the viewer's imagination. If you want a post-apocalyptic world, the Mad Max films are much more interesting and compelling.

In 2029, resistance leader John Connor launches a final offensive against Skynet, an artificial general intelligence system seeking to eliminate the human race. Before the resistance can triumph, Skynet activates a time machine and sends a T-800 Terminator back to 1984 to kill John's mother Sarah. John's right-hand man, Kyle Reese, volunteers to travel back in time to protect her. As Kyle floats in the time machine's magnetic field, he sees John being attacked by another resistance soldier. This creates a temporal paradox that alters the timeline and causes Kyle to experience childhood memories from a parallel version of himself. When it arrives in 1984 Los Angeles, Skynet's T-800 is attacked and disabled by Sarah and "Pops"; a T-800 that had arrived decades earlier and had been reprogrammed to protect Sarah! When Kyle arrives in 1984, he appears midair in an alley and falls to the pavement below. He then takes the trousers from a homeless man, as everything that goes through the time machine must be naked flesh. The police soon arrive and give chase. Kyle overpowers one police officer and demands that he tell him the date. In response, the officer's hands turn into metal blades, and he uses them to attack Reese—it's a T-1000 that was sent into the past to kill him before he could even meet Sarah!

Terminator Genisys feels like a return to form. In addition to returning to the classic story beats of the first two films, it also gets the cold blue tint and purple highlights of the future war right. In other words, it feels like a Terminator film right from the get go. I also really liked that the film spends as much time as it does depicting the conclusion of the future war, the activation and use of the time travel device, and how the T-800 that was sent back in time was just one of dozens that fill a storage room. The film goes back to the roots of the series, both literally and figuratively. Highlights in the early parts of the film are when it revisits iconic scenes from The Terminator; even remaking many of the key shots. On top of that, the film continually subverted expectations on how certain scenes would turn out. I also liked how they simultaneously reinvented the main characters and revised the concept of Skynet into a smartphone operating system. And then we get the highlight of the film: they actually start dealing with using time as a weapon. The film hints at a temporal chess match developing between unknown and unseen forces. Ultimately, I wish that they would have gone a bit further in exploring that, but I can appreciate the limits that the filmmakers set for themselves. This is an action movie, and Arnold spewing scientific jargon is... well, let's just say that they made the right call about that.

Large parts of the film are almost as relentless as the better entries in the series&mdasd;but as the characters aren't as developed or as sympathetic, there isn't as much overall tension. Interestingly, the T-1000 didn't feel anywhere near as threatening as it was in Terminator 2. Odd, as the film got the tone right with the 80's T-800. Another oddity was the way that the Sarah Connor character was written: she didn't sound like she was from the 80's. Where is the slang? The jargon from that era? I also didn't like how they turned a certain someone into a villain. It's not so much who, as that came out of left field, however the introduction of a heretofore unseen advanced technology to do it was a bridge too far.

Nevertheless, having approached this film as an action-heavy comedy, like Terminator 3, I was pleasantly surprised. Although the film doesn't leave one with as many deep thoughts as the original two did, it does revisit the basic themes of the first two films. One of the better choices the filmmakers made was to return the future war with the robots back to a fallible AI trying to mimic humans with slightly goofy, but still threatening humanoid automatons and unwieldy large war machines—redeeming the series from the nightmarish, oppressive version presented in Terminator Salvation. If you check your expectations at the door, this film is an entertaining diversion that puts its own spin on key events in the series, while taking it in a new direction.