Terminator 1
• So, the first important bit comes in the form of Sarah Connor asking Kyle about if he comes from the future, to which he replies, "One possible future from your point of view. I don't know tech stuff."
- This is the first bit that gets into the fact that he comes from an alternate timeline, or a different "possible future" since he's likely parroting back what he's been told, since he doesn't know the specifics himself. This is important, because T1 sets up the bootstrap paradox for both John (in the form of Kyle Reese), as well as Skynet (in the form of the T-800's CPU).
- This also makes a good reason for Kyle Reese to be the main "eyes" that the audience will be introduced with in
Terminator Genisys, because Kyle just jumped back to save Sarah, and given this bit of information, we know that he'd been to have the specifics explained to him to wrap his head around what's happening.
• Kyle states that Skynet was build for SAC-NORAD.
- This ties into Skynet being a military program which ties in to T3 & T4 specifically.
• According to Kyle, they found the time displacement equipment after they'd defeated Skynet in 2029. A T-800 had already been sent through, so they sent Reese to intercept, and then they blew up the whole place.
- So, first and foremost this is information coming along from planned supposition, since Kyle wouldn't have been there when they blew up the facility. Secondarily, this information contradicts Sarah's voice-over in T2 (so we don't have any first-hand account in the cinematic world about whether or not the T-1000 came from the same timeline or not).
• Kyle Reese on why the Terminator went through the phone book killing Sarah Connors, "Most of the records were lost during the war. Skynet knew almost nothing about Connor's mother. Her full name. Where she lived. They just knew the city."
- This is REALLY important, because it shows that Skynet is learning from the successes and failures of its time travel as the series goes on - since it gets better data as it goes. One piece is PARTICULARLY important.
• When hiding out, Sarah & Kyle have a back & forth about her role in all of this: Sarah says, "Look, Reese: I didn't ask for any of this 'honor' and I don't want it. ANY of it." to which he gives her the speech that he memorized because John made him, "Thank you Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can't help you with what you must soon face, except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive or I will never exist."
- This gets into the fact that the now NOT totally defenseless Sarah that Kyle meets in
Genisys isn't really interested in playing by anyone's rules and is hell bent on stopping Judgement Day outright. This means that we might be building towards a version of a J-Day future WITHOUT a John Connor, or at least with a MCUH younger one (which seems highly plausible at this point with the pops Terminator getting older and the rest of them not). It seems like their main plan is to systematically eliminate the known Terminators and prevent them from giving Skynet any of the information that it's been using to keep finding other opportunities to cling to life, which brings us to...
• When Sarah Connor is hiding out in the motel, she calls her mom at her cabin to let her know she's safe (despite Kyle telling her not to). The T-800 has already found the entry "Mom's Cabin: 181 Spruce Lane" in her pocket book that it takes from her house, killed her mom, and imitates her voice on the phone to find their location at the hotel.
- This is MEGA important. This means that it's incredibly likely that the first T-800 left this data somewhere that Skynet was able to acquire it in the future - even though the chip & arm get destroyed in T2. If Skynet's getting desperate (more on this later), this is a PRIME opportunity. This is almost certainly why Skynet targets Sarah through her parents in
Genisys (At
1:50 in the new trailer, the "pops" T-800 is carrying Sarah away from a pier in the middle of the woods which is pretty much guaranteed to be that cabin).
(Side note: rewatching this kept blowing my mind about how much Emilia Clarke looks like Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor)
Terminator 2
• The Prologue establishes a couple things. First that J-Day is August 29th, 1997. Second is that two Terminators were sent back in time, and as before, the resistance sent back a lone warrior as a protector for John.
- This is voiced by Sarah Connor, so we don't know much about which future these two came from since we lack any first person perspective, and this voiceover by her is done in a fashion like her recounting the events after the fact. (There are unfilmed bits and pieces that suggest that they didn't immediately blow up the facility on the first trip like Kyle claimed in T1, but again, nothing in the film itself so it's hard to make an interpretation definitively).
• The police records that the T-1000 access indicate that John Connor's DOB is 2/28/1985 & that he's 10 years old.
- This establishes dates to the first film, and mainly just makes T3 a fucking disaster to accurately place chronologically (but more on that later).
• John knows the message "The future is not set" but adds, "There is no fate but what we make for ourselves." when he sees Sarah's "NO FATE" carving on the table.
- It's not clear if this second bit is just John's interpretation or it it's meant to have been part of the original speech, but I think that this is the line that's most often quoted later on, and seems to be the guiding principle behind the idea that there isn't any predestination. The biggest factor for that is that they eliminate the T-800 CPU in this film - which, as I mentioned earlier, is Skynet's equivalent of Kyle Reese that ensures its own creation in a specific fashion at a specific time.
• The Skynet & J-Day from the T-800's future were created as follows: "In a few months, [Miles Dyson] creates a revolutionary type of microprocessor. In 3 years, Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they fly with perfect operational records. The system goes online on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 Eastern time, Aug 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug." (Skynet fights back by firing at Russia, who then retaliates, etc. etc.)
- We know for certain that they DO prevent the Judgement Day at the aforementioned description - if only because we're certain that Miles Dyson gets taken out of the picture, so the future is different. We learn later that it just pushed it to a different date & time. (If it WAS a single timeline, doing that and making a non-Skynet future would've erased Kyle Reese as well and they'd have paradox-fucked the whole thing up, so this is T2's best thematic direction as well as evidence towards being multiple timelines).
• John recalls being told that he was ~45 when he meets Kyle Reese in the future.
- (Clearly a guess, because he's 44 in 2029 when the war ends)
• The T-800 states that 35 years (from now), it was reprogrammed by John to be his protector.
- Since this is the year 2029, it's likely that it was just reprogrammed specifically for the mission, and wasn't used heavily beforehand.
Terminator 3
• John Connor, "The future has not been written. There is not fate but what we make for ourselves. I wish I could believe that."
- This is rough paraphrasing or misquoting what is meant to be a carefully memorized speech that Kyle is given by John. This is the thing that is MOST annoying about T3 is that it's very shit about getting specifics to the other films, so let's get them all in one go.
• John refers to being 13 during T2. Kate mentions that he disappeared in the 8th grade. John refers to T3 happening 10 years after the first time he & Kate met. Sarah Connor survives a diagnosis of Leukemia while living in Baja for 3 years and dies in 1997 (after the August J-Day date).
- If John is 23, then T3 happens in 2009. T3's J-Day date is listed as being 2003 or 2004. Even if is
IS 2003 and Sarah died in 1997, she would've had to have been diagnosed with Leukemia in 1994 (and given 6 months to live), but John would've been 10 at the time and Sarah would've been in the final stages of dying from leukemia during T2 when he was 13. The whole thing with dates is a relentlessly useless clusterfuck. The only bit that IS important is that the T-850 has the specific information about her death and will (hence better record survival, [strikethrough]or that information is being bootstrap paradoxed by him telling John now[/strikethrough]).
• The T-850 states that, "Because John Connor couldn't be located, so the T-X was sent back to kill his lieutenants." We know that least 4 of the 22 of whom: Elizabeth & William Anderson, Jose Barrera, & Robert Brewster - are killed, and it's assumed that none of the others are, because she locates her primary target: John Connor, and alters her mission to eliminate him.
- She has genetic data on all of the individuals in her own archival database that she uses genetic information ID them (John's sample is tagged as AA001). This shows that Skynet is starting to prep better data before sending back a Terminator, which is the earliest suggestion that it's learning from altering the timeline - either intentionally, or by being build in a more technologically advanced time in the 21st century.
- This is also showing that Skynet is getting desperate, because it's no longer sending back Terminators solely to achieve its primary objective, and it's also doing so as close to the date of Judgement Day as is physically possible.
• The T-850 states that T-X is the unit that Skynet chose to send back is because, "My presence in this timeline has been anticipated. T-X is designed to terminate other cybernetic organisms."
- HUGE things here. First of all, this is the first time that ANYthing in the Terminator films that can be considered to have reliable first-hand information about time travel mentions something about timelines. It's also used in the context that Skynet is anticipating tactical moves by the Resistance using time travel and planning preemmtively. Additionally, this also proves that this future's Skynet is aware that there was a T-800 Model 101 sent back during T2, and it expects John to use another one to defend himself (since he recognizes it and is sympathetic towards it), which also shows that the data it has access to is better than it was previously.
• John Connor was assassinated by the T-850 Model 101 on July, 4th 2032. It was selected for the emotional attachment he had for that model due to his boyhood experiences.
- Since this was done prior to that exact same Terminator unit being reprogrammed by Kate and sent back in time, it seems likely that Skynet had intentionally added this Terminator to the equation. Also, because of the change in the timeline, and the alterations with J-Day, it doesn't seem like the Resistance is fully victorious by 2029, and throws up a whole other host of questions.
Terminator 4
• J-Day takes place "In the early 21st century" and the film happens in 2018.
- Thank you so, SO much, Terminator Salvation for gracefully sidestepping the clusterfuck of terrible dates that were introduced in T3, while simultaneously confirming from the get-go that this is the post-2003 Judgement Day from that film.
• Cyberdyne Systems Genetic Division is lead by Dr. Serena Kogan in 2003, which is soon after merged with the USAF to treat victims of chemical attacks.
- For the first time, we get some insight into how the post-2003 Skynet starts to get the preliminary research for the T-800's self-repairing skin, as well as how - despite Terminator 2, Cyberdyne still gets a hand into Skynet in the new timeline. Additionally, it's likely that this alteration is the reason that the T-X has much more sophisticated genetic analytical capabilities and has archived identification information on John and all of his 22 generals.
• Skynet's various bots have facial recognition data on its targets.
- Again, more evidence that Skynet is attempting to boost its capabilities for what its options are with building records of specific data that could potentially be sent with a Terminator.
• Marcus is designed for infiltration & retrieval rather than infiltration & assassination. To quote Skynet's recap: "To infiltrate, find a target, and then bring that target back home to us" because, "Time and again, our best machines had failed to complete a mission. We had to think - radically. And so we made you. We created the perfect infiltration machine."
- This is where Skynet's information and timeline-spanning calculations get to be really interesting. In T3 it knows enough to eventually kill John with a T-850 Model 101 but assumedly his death in 2032 is still not good enough to achieve the victory that it's looking for. Assumedly by using that information, it now attempts to use a combination of this tactic in 2018 by using Marcus to lure him out into combat against the unit that it already knows to be effective in assassinating him.
• The top two individuals on Skynet's hitlist here are #1: Kyle Reese (still an unknown civilian at this point). #2: John Connor, and then everyone else in Resistance command.
- By using Marcus, it seems like it was able to learn who Kyle Reese was and then later catalog everything about him in its processing plants (he gets hooked into a machine we don't learn the purpose of within the Skynet plants). This is because the latest Skynet seems to be putting all of the pieces of what came before together, and collecting substantial data on everything that it could need and that could be sent back with a Terminator to combat just about anything else coming from the future. The fact that Kyle is a known entity by Skynet at this point is exceptionally interesting.
- Kyle Reese being on the top of the hit list means that it's likely put there as both a ploy to lure out John Connor, as well as making Kyle and all of his facial & genetics data a priority target for all of its future Terminators.
So that's great, but what does all this mean?
Well, despite the fact that it's compiling a metric shitton person-specific data (which it severely lacked from the original J-Day), Skynet's still getting ripped down to the wire about sending Terminators later and later in the timeline. Doing time travel this way means that some of the positive outcomes it nets it gets to keep (like having better access to records than the original Skynet did), aaaand you don't mash into the things from the previous timelines.
If
Genisys' Skynet's thinking along the same lines that the TSCC Skynet (which was fucking brilliant) did, it is likely gathering all of the most relevant data and finding a way to send it back and store everything that's most meaningful, so that whatever version of Skynet that exists in the new timeline will be able to gain access it. At the same time, if it IS doing that, this means that it'd be in the best possible position to take a big risk, and go back as far as possible and do something drastic, because it could keep all the data no matter what.
This is where the bit with Sarah's parents comes into play. Nothing in ANY of the films addresses the possibility that the first T-800 could've have placed Sarah's pocket book (or the valuable information about where it located her parents) somewhere that (a) Skynet could eventually find it. Again, if TSCC's Skynet's timeline-wise tactics are anything to go by, that's a damned good possibility, and it again opens up the opportunity for it to potentially eliminate John Connor entirely. If, like in T3, it's also already anticipating the presence of a Model 101 being sent back, it's possible that it also is taking in to account that the older models are restricted by more basic parameter capabilities, like having the simple mission of,
"Protect Sarah Connor" wouldn't also include the much more complicated,
"and also make sure that she fucks Kyle Reese when he shows up from an earlier timeline, so that there'll be the same John Connor that this future has."
That would allow Skynet another opportunity to eliminate John just through interference that Kyle & Sarah wouldn't necessarily recognize, and that the Model 101 wouldn't be directly programmed to be able to stop: (Kyle isn't sent back with any information about the fact that he's John's father, and Sarah would only know if the Model 101 tells her about it - and we don't know if it knows the specifics about Kyle Reese). The only thing is that Skynet seems to know a LOT about Kyle Reese and considers him to be of utmost importance by the end of T4, which means that tactically - sending back a Terminator with sufficient data that it can store at a predetermined location for the new timeline's Skynet to access, and having the mission to eliminate Sarah Connor (and or) her parents is just about the best possible move to start things over and change the playing field in its favour.
(And we still don't even know who Matt Smith is playing yet).
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