Terminator (franchise): Difference between revisions

{{quote|''[[Catch Phrase|I'll]] [[Arnold Schwarzenegger|be back]].''|'''T-800'''}}

 

 

In the first film (''The Terminator''), Sarah Connor hears grave news during another average workday: a killer is hunting down everyone in town who shares her name. After two people in her home are murdered in an effort to find her, Sarah hides in a nightclub -- and when the killer catches up with her there, she's rescued by a mysterious stranger. The stranger, Kyle Reese, explains the [[Backstory]]: [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|in the near future]], man will create SkyNet, an artificial intelligence [[AI Is a Crapshoot|which will promptly]] [[Turned Against Their Masters|turn against its masters]] and attempt to [[Kill All Humans]] in the cataclysmic event which will be known as [[Faux Symbolism|Judgment Day]]. Mankind will eventually defeat SkyNet, but at the last minute, SkyNet will send a T-800 Model Terminator (an [[Killer Robot|android assassin]] wrapped in human flesh to give it the appearance of a human) [[Time Travel|back in time]] to kill Sarah Connor and prevent the birth of her son, John (who will become the leader of the [[La Résistance|human resistance]]). In response, Connor will send Reese into the past to [[Wayback Trip|protect his mother and the timeline]]. After several dramatic battles and a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] from Reese, the Terminator is eventually killed in a [[No OSHA Compliance|Smoke and Fire Factory]] -- but not before Sarah sleeps with Reese, [[Someone to Remember Him By|thereby conceiving John Connor]] (which means John causes his own birth and creates a [[Stable Time Loop]]).

** He also instinctively drives cars at night ''without'' the headlights on, as doing so in the future would draw Aerial Hunter-Killers.

* [[Enemy Rising Behind]]: This is how we get the first look at the Terminator's real body.

* [[Fan Service]]: [[Averted Trope]]; Sarah and Kyle have probably the most plot-critical sex scene of all time.

** Also played straight, though, in the form of male [[Fan Service]]. Watch the opening scenes of that movie (both Kyle and the T-800 are naked, courtesy of their time transport. They are both very, very well-built, and Kyle particularly stays at the least shirtless for a good long while) and tell me that wasn't intended as fanservice, on some level.

* [[Foot Focus]] / [[Feet First Introduction]]

* [[Foreshadowing]]: Unavoidable. It's a time-travel movie.

* [[Guns Akimbo]]: The T-800 with a shotgun in the left hand and a [[More Dakka|fully automatic assault rifle]] in the right. Both weapons that are not even supposed to be shot [[Firing One-Handed|one-handed]]. Justified in that he's a cyborg from the future with computerized targeting and superhuman strength.

* [[Hand Wave]]: "That's tech stuff."

* [[Police Are Useless]]: Downplayed. The police are shown to be highly intelligent, figuring out the pattern of the killings almost immediately, take advantage of the power of the press to warn Sarah Connor, and can readily explain the mysterious gunman's seemingly superhuman invulnerability. They're just [[Wrong Genre Savvy]].

** Furthermore, their armament in the precinct station (up to M16 rifles) demonstrates they're definitely ready for most disturbances. Unfortunately, the Terminator is just [[Immune to Bullets|too tough]] for them.

* [[Rescue Introduction]]: Kyle introduce himself to Sarah by extricating her from Tech Noir just as the T-800 closes in for the kill.

* [[Ripped From the Phone Book]]: The Terminator doesn't just rip out the page, he begins to kill everybody on it.

* [[Rule of Three]]: {{spoiler|We think the Terminator is dead once, then twice, then finally it sticks when Sarah remembers to deliver a simultaneous [[Pre-Mortem One-Liner]] and [[Precision F-Strike]].}}

* [[Run or Die]]: Definitely how the T-800 is treated -- attempting to take it in a straight-up fight is suicide.

* [[Scannable Man]]: Reese and his concentration-camp tattoo.

* [[Sequel Hook]]: Reese explains the history of SkyNet and Cyberdyne. The [[No OSHA Compliance|Smoke and Fire Factory]] at the end of the climax is revealed as a Cyberdyne building in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuyZ6sQ4AoY a deleted scene.]

** I believe the term would then be [[Cute Shotaro Boy]]. But that's not quite accurate either...

* [[Bluff the Impostor]]

* [[The Cast Showoff]]: Reportedly, Sarah Connor using a shotgun one-handed was inserted because Linda Hamilton's pre-film training regimen had made her strong enough to work a pump-action with one hand.

* [[Catch Phrase]]: [[Gratuitous Spanish|"¡Hasta la vista, baby!"]]

* [[Chrome Champion]]: The T-1000's true form.

* [[The Comically Serious]]: The Terminator. "He's my Uncle Bob..."

* [[Conversation Casualty]]: The T-1000, disguised as John's foster mother, is talking to him on the phone, when the foster father interrupts her about their madly barking dog in the backyard. It promptly skewers him through the mouth with its morphing swordlike arm.

* [[Curb Stomp Cushion]]: The intro to ''Terminator 2'' shows an army of SkyNet's robots slowly working their way across the battlefield, seemingly rolling over everything in their paths. Then we see a [[La Résistance|human soldier]] standing over a crippled Terminator before finishing it off, followed by a flying Hunter Killer being blasted out of the air by another trooper.

* [[Elevator Action Sequence]]

** Linda Hamilton apparently forgot her earplugs for this scene and incurred permanent hearing damage from all the gunshots fired in an enclosed space.

* [[Exact Words]]: "I swear I will not kill anyone." After knee-capping a security guard: "He'll live."

* [[Eye Scream]]: The coffee drinking guard in the hospital gets his eye stabbed by the T-1000.

* [[Genre Shift]]: From the second movie onward, the Terminator movies became an action/sci-fi series while the first film was more of a standard horror movie with a sci-fi backdrop.

* [[Gentle Giant]]: The T-800, especially towards John.

** Those who saw ''T2'' in a movie theater in August of 1991, when the attempted Soviet coup d'état attempt was going on or had just been put down, laughed [[Funny Aneurysm Moment|a bit nervously]] when John says how Russia and America are now "friends."

* [[Gratuitous Spanish]]: "¡Hasta la vista, baby!"

* [[Gun Porn]]: ''T2'' is one big showcase of just about all [[Cool Guns]] ever made and then some.

* [[Railing Kill]]: T-1000.

* [[Resurrection Sickness]]: A very subtle example. Edited out of the theatrical release but included in the [[Limited Special Collectors Ultimate Edition]], after being frozen, shattered, melted and re-formed at the steel mill, the T-1000 is shown struggling to keep its form. Its feet and hands keep "merging" into the floor and handrails, and its entire body refreshes itself from head to toe repeatedly.

* [[Rousseau Was Right]]: The movie, surprisingly enough, is an action movie in which the entire goal of the protagonist was to save the world without killing a soul. The [[Heroic Sacrifice]] of SkyNet's creator really hit the point home.

* [[Sand in My Eyes]]: John says Sarah is prone to this, which he suspects is in regards to Kyle.

* [[Sequel Escalation]]: ''Terminator 2'' is certainly bigger and full of explosions, but in one way this was averted; rather than the enemy just being an even bigger and badder Terminator, it's a leaner, less muscular, yet arguably a ''more deadly'' Terminator.

** It also averts [[Bloodier and Gorier]].

* [[Shell-Shocked Veteran]]: Sarah Connor again.

** Seemed more likely to be a shout-out to ''[[The Godfather (Film)|The Godfather]]''.

** An unusual example: James Cameron wrote both ''T2'' and ''Aliens'', and the special editions of both movies include a scene where a character says something like: "I asked the company where we got this ridiculously advanced computer and mechanical arm from/why we're going out in small groups to this random mucus-covered building in the middle of nowhere, and you know what they told me? Don't ask." As the scene in ''Aliens'' was cut, one could see the Miles Dyson scene as Cameron homaging himself.

{{quote| '''John:''' (after the T-800 kneecaps a guard) Hey, you promised!<br />

'''T-800:''' (examines the guard, who is still yelling in agony) He'll live. }}

* [[Technology Porn]]: All over the place. The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbcmLPXuQzo teaser trailer] qualifies for this trope alone.

* [[Terrifying Rescuer]]: The T-800 showing up at the psyche ward to rescue Sarah is one of the more famous examples in film.

== ''T2 3-D: Battle Across Time'' ==

* [[Actor Allusion]]: Apart from the obligatory ''T2'' references, most of the Terminator's one-liners are references to other movies. For example, when holding a shrieking mini-hunter, he says "[[Kindergarten Cop|Stop Whining!]]"

* [[All Part of the Show]]: Sarah warns the audience multiple times to leave before the building is destroyed. Take a guess how many audience members actually leave.

* [[Canon Dis Continuity]]: ''T2 3D'' was retconned from the plotline by ''T3''.

** Then again many fans retconned ''T3'' because it wasn't directed by James Cameron.

* [[The Nudifier]]: The fact that [[Time Travel]] does this is extremely averted, as the Terminator keeps not only his clothes, but his bike, his [[Cool Shades]], and his shotgun. Probably [[Enforced Trope]], since this ''is'' a theme park attraction.

{{quote| '''John:''' Go right! Right--oh no, no! Go left! Left! Left! No, go right! Right, I'm sorry! Go right!<br />

'''Terminator:''' John, please stop helping. }}

** How exactly did the military rebuild Skynet, and it's stated to be the exact same system, if all of the information on the system and the technology used to create it was destroyed in the second film? In essence, how did the military rebuild something out of nothing?

*** IIRC, there was a passing line in the movie that explains this one. Basically, the military found out what [[Cyber Dyne]] was working on, and made copies of all their notes so they could keep tabs on the project. When the lab blew up, the military started making their own [[Sky Net]] based on the data they had collected.

* [[Retcon]]: Nice job of accounting for the development of the internet and distributed computing, which arose between the second and third films.

* [[Robot Girl]]: The T-X.

** Not to mention the fact that in ''T1'', a metal crusher smashed a T800, but the T850 can hold up a huge blast door with one hand, and manage to wrestle and blow up the TX at the same time.

* [[Slow Doors]]

* [[Suicidal Gotcha]]: It's rather subtle, but after it becomes clear {{spoiler|they have failed to avert Judgment Day}} and having rigged the Crystal Peak mountain to explode, Kate Brewster suggests "we could just let it blow" which Connor seems to acquiesce to, only for them to change their minds (making this a Gotcha) {{spoiler|when the radio starts receiving a call from defense forces, turning Connor into the effective leader of the resistance}}.

** ''T4'''s [[Title Sequence]] [http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/00135-Terminator_Salvation is a deliberate nod] to that of ''T1''.

* [[The Oner]]: John Connor's first scene.

* [[Parachute in A Tree]]: Marcus first meets Blair Williams dangling by her parachute from a derelict pylon and catches her when she cuts herself free of the parachute.

* [[Plot Hole]]: As carried over from the third film. If Judgment Day and the war on Skynet were inevitable, then by the same token Skynet should be unable to kill John Connor or Kyle Reese until the exact point that they're destined to die, making their attempts to kill either beforehand an exercise in futility.

* [[Action Girl]]: [[Action Mom|Sarah Connor]], T-X and Blair Williams.

* [[Alternate Continuity]]: ''Terminator 3'' + ''Salvation'' together in one continuity with ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' in the other.

*** In which the female Terminator [http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Serena_Burns just so happened to be based off of Kristanna Loken].

*** There is a difference, however, in that the female Terminator in that series was an I-950, which is basically a human baby who has gone through extreme brainwashing and has a few cybernetic parts installed, rather than a full-on robot with living skin.

* [[Cranial Processing Unit]]: Applies to the T-800 and the T-X.

* [[Darkened Building Shootout]]: In the [[No OSHA Compliance|Smoke and Fire Factory]] fourth film. Even darker than most darkened buildings in movies.

* [[Determinator]]: Not only the [[You Keep Using That Word|titular]] terminators but also many human characters including Reese, Sarah Connor, and John Connor. Kate Connor also counts in terms of emotional trauma.

{{quote| '''Sarah Connor''': If a machine -- a Terminator -- can learn to understand the value of human life, maybe we can too.}}

* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]: ''T4'' makes SkyNet's death camps for humans very eerily reminiscent of the Holocaust, with one prisoner even referring to the HK Transports that take them to the facility as "cattle cars."

* [[Rescue Romance]]: The basis for Sarah Connor and Reese's relationship, John Connor's birth, and the franchise's on-again, off-again [[Stable Time Loop]].

** Also Marcus and Resistance pilot Blair in ''T4.''

** Taken even further in ''T4'' where {{spoiler|1=SkyNet creates a human-machine hybrid named Marcus Wright who is [[Cyborg|actually a terminator with his original heart and brain with a SkyNet control chip in it.]]}}

** Taken further still in one novel based on the franchises that depicts a very special kind of terminator. SkyNet basically grows a human in a vat to about 1 year of age, implants it with cybernetics, control chips, and what have you, and puts the baby through Training From Hell until it's biologically an adult. The result being an almost entirely organic terminator undetectable by dogs that's far more capable of being human then even the best T-model... because it is one. Though on the other hand, it's also still very much organic and thus less [[Nigh Invulnerability|Nigh Invulnerable]] than the wholly mechanical Terminators, so SkyNet uses it more as background infiltrators rather than outright hunter-killers.

** It was an ongoing plotline in the TV series until halfway through the second season, and there are hints of it after that with a different terminator in the role of the pursuer {{spoiler|but that turns out to be a subversion, since Catherine Weaver is a good guy}}.

* [[They Look Like Us Now]]

* [[Time Travel]]

* [[Timey-Wimey Ball]]: Possibly the most [[Egregious]] example of all time: no two films treat the rules of [[Time Travel]] exactly the same way, and sometimes there are inconsistencies even within the same film. Figuring out how it's all supposed to work is nigh impossible.

** The campaign for ''Salvation'' spoiled that Marcus {{spoiler|was a cyborg}}.

* [[Trust Password]]: "Come with me if you want to live" is what Reese says to Sarah Connor when they first meet. In ''T2'' and ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]],'' it's how terminators identify themselves as good guys.

** The US Air Force has a unit readiness tracking system called, I shit you not, ''SkyNet''. During exercises, announcements come over the loudspeakers for group commanders to "update numbers in SkyNet".

** There is a company called Cyberdyne that is working on exoskeletons. Based in Japan. The version it's getting the most attention for is called the HAL 5. Anyone else see the three problems with this?