Terminator Salvation

Looking Back
Does the part of your brain where you’ve stored all of your Terminator info need a power surge? Here’s a recap of the last three Terminator installments to get you geared up for the upcoming Terminator Salvation.

The Terminator (1984)

Stars: Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn

In the first film, we meet Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). Unbeknownst to her, a man from the future, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), tells her that she will bear a child who in the future, is destined to lead a resistance army against Skynet—a lethal race of artificially intelligent computerized machines owned by Cyberdyne Systems, whose mission is to exterminate the human race.
Reese explains that he was sent to the past to warn Sarah and explain that in his future, the year 2029, a war is taking place between Skynet and humanity. Sarah’s now-grown son, John Connor, is leading the resistance army and seems to be winning. In an effort to win the battle, Skynet sends a cyborg assassin known as the “Terminator” (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to the past, to find Sarah Connor and kill her.
As Kyle and Sarah try to outrun this unstoppable machine, they fall in love and conceive a child: the future John Connor. But in a final showdown with the Terminator, Kyle meets his demise and Sarah defeats the assassin by crushing him in a hydraulic press.



Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick

Having survived an attack by the first Terminator sent to kill her eleven years earlier, Sarah Connor once again faces the wrath of Skynet when the deadly race sends two cyborg assassins from the year 2029: the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who is an exact replica of the first, and a new T-1000 prototype machine, made of a liquid metal that allows it to take the shape and appearance of anything it touches, that disguises itself as a police officer (Robert Patrick). Their mission: to kill Sarah and the adolescent John.
With her son John in foster care, Sarah, in an ongoing effort to continue her mission to warn humanity about the coming apocalypse, is arrested for bombings a computer company and is confined to a hospital for the criminally insane. Meanwhile, the Terminator captures her son John, who has been training to become a future leader. A young John learns that this new Terminator means him no harm and has actually been reprogrammed by his future self to protect his younger self.
John and the Terminator break Sarah out of the hospital and set out to find Miles Bennett Dyson (Joe Morton), a Cyberdyne Systems engineer working on a revolutionary new microprocessor that will form the basis for Skynet, and who unwittingly will be responsible for a nuclear attack on “Judgment Day.” When they find Dyson, Sarah, set on changing the future by killing him, only wounds Dyson. After the Terminator explains to Dyson the consequences of his research, Dyson helps them break into Cyberdyne Systems to destroy both his research and the parts for the first Terminator.
But when a SWAT team arrives, Dyson is killed while pushing a detonator to destroy the materials. Sarah, John and the Terminator escape and after a liquid nitrogen truck crashes, it freezes the T-1000 that’s in pursuit and shatters its structure. While the T-000 melts, John destroys the parts of the first Terminator by throwing them into the hot steels, and both Sarah and John destroy the Terminator who says he must also be destroyed so that Skynet cannot recreate him.



Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken

Although Judgment Day appeared to have been averted in the last Terminator, John Connor (Stahl) does not believe humanity is safe.
Just as suspected, two cyborgs are sent back in time: another Terminator (Schwarzenegger) and the T-X/Terminatrix (Loken), who each have their own mission. The Terminator is sent back in time by Connor’s future wife, Katherine Brewster (Danes), to protect him after it is revealed that it kills Connor in the year 2032. The T-X, equipped with advanced weapons and the ability to control most machines, is sent to fulfill Skynet’s mission once and for all: to kill Connor and his future army lieutenants.
But when the U.S. Air Force, under the command of Katherine’s father, Lieutenant General Robert Brewster, takes over the research facility and activates Skynet in order to stop a computer virus, all hell breaks loose as the original T-1s are revived and become part of T-X’s mission.
As T-X and its army of T-1s hunt John and Katherine, General Brewster sends them to Crystal Peak where they believe Skynet’s system core is located. There, they undergo another attack from T-X, until the Terminator destroys it by detonating a hydrogen fuel cell in its mouth.
Connor soon realizes that he and Kate are not at the system’s core, but at an old government bomb shelter. Connor realizes that Skynet’s operations are worldwide, making it impossible to shut down. As Skynet begins to launch nuclear missiles, Connor starts receiving messages from military forces, ultimately assuming he is in command, foreshadowing his future as leader of the resistance army.

Toni-Marie Ippolito history