Untangling the Terminator Franchise Timeline ~ Digital Library

When your entire franchise uses time travel as a cornerstone, things are bound to get confusing. James Cameron didn’t make the first Terminator movie knowing it would spawn a line of sequels and spin-offs, so he obviously didn’t think too hard about the time paradoxes that would result from sending an unstoppable murder robot into the past. And the more Skynet (and the human rebels) meddle with the timeline, the worse it gets.

With Terminator: Dark Fate hitting theaters next week, we thought we’d go back to the very beginning and try to reconcile all of these paradoxes into one coherent timeline. We’ll be back.

The Terminator (1984)

‘The Terminator’ (Photo Credit: Orion Pictures)

Movie takes place in: 1984
Terminator sent back from: 2029
Skynet becomes self-aware: Not specifically said

When malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet sends a T-800 Terminator back in time to murder Sarah Connor before she can give birth to her son, resistance leader John, he’s followed by rebel Kyle Reese. Connor and Reese manage to stop the implacable robot killing machine with the aid of pipe bombs and a hydraulic press. Reese is killed, but not before knocking Connor up and fathering John himself.

Paradox Level: Medium. Skynet’s plan is a failure on multiple levels. Not only is the T-800’s mission stymied, but Kyle Reese heading into the past to stop it is directly responsible for John Connor being born in the first place. One would think that by the time 2029 rolled around, the AI would have realized this and tried something different. This is explained by the concept of a “predestination paradox,” where any time travel will simply reinforce events that were supposed to happen.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day’ (Photo Credit: TriStar Pictures)

Movie takes place in: 1995
Terminator sent back from: 2029
Skynet becomes self-aware: 1997

John Connor is now a ten-year-old juvenile delinquent with a mother in a mental hospital. When a new Terminator made of liquid metal is sent back to end his life, his only hope is a reprogrammed T-800. Outgunned by the morphing powers of the latest model, the old robot sacrifices its life to stop it, but not before we learn that Skynet was spawned by analyzing a chip left behind in the arm of the antagonist from the first Terminator.

Paradox Level: Medium. The revelation that the original Terminator’s arm was used to create Skynet brings the first film’s mission into clearer focus. Even though Sarah Connor wasn’t killed, the time jump laid the groundwork for the machines to take over. With the arm destroyed, viewers were left to wonder if the dark future was going to happen at all. Surprise! It was!

Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (2003)

‘Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines’ (Photo Credit: Warner Bros.)

Movie takes place in: 2005
Terminator sent back from: 2032
Skynet becomes self-aware: 2005

James Cameron had no involvement with the Terminator franchise after the second film, and after the rights were sold off Rise Of The Machines was made for $187 million, the most expensive movie ever made to that point. The basic premise is the same: both bad robots and good ones are sent back to the past, but because we’re now after the 1997 deadline we learn that Judgement Day only delayed Skynet, it didn’t stop it. In fact, the real Judgement Day is… right now, as the AI has escaped its physical hosting and uploaded itself into the cloud as nuclear missiles start to fall. It’s a downer of an ending but it wasn’t enough to kill the franchise.

Paradox Level: Low. Skynet is online, John Connor is the leader of the burgeoning resistance and all is right in the world. Aside from the typical questions of “if you knew it wouldn’t work in the future, why would you still do it,” the Terminator universe is stable on a quantum level for the first time. It won’t last.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008)

‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ (Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Television)

Show takes place in: 2007
Terminator sent back from: 2029
Skynet becomes self-aware: Unknown

The two-season Fox show drew big audiences but couldn’t survive losing momentum after the WGA strike and was swiftly canceled after two seasons. Sarah and John Connor get sent forward to 2007 from 1998, joined by a female terminator named Cameron. Once there, they contend with both additional robots sent back to ruin their day, but also modern attempts to develop Skynet. Because it’s a TV show, Chronicles has lots of time to play with its ideas, for better or for worse.

Paradox Level: Medium. Pushing the Connors forward in time sort of goofs up their ages for the other movies, and of course, the introduction of all these other Terminators with different abilities muddles the tactics that Skynet brings to the table. It doesn’t do any major twists until the last episode, where we get to the future to discover nobody has ever heard of John Connor.

Terminator Salvation (2009)

‘Terminator Salvation’ (Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)

Movie takes place in: 2018
Terminator sent back from: 2029
Skynet becomes self-aware: Unknown, possibly 2005

With the last movie bringing the two timelines together, the producers of Terminator Salvation had a hard decision to make. The fourth film in the franchise was intended to launch a second trilogy taking place after the nuclear holocaust, but after critical and commercial response was poor, that idea was scrapped. With Schwarzenegger unavailable because he was governing California, his likeness had to be CGI superimposed on bodybuilder Roland Kickinger.

Paradox Level: Medium. No time travel anywhere in this movie means the timeline remains mostly stable. However, one glaring issue is how John Connor is back in action despite the Sarah Connor Chronicles finale writing him out of existence just a month before.

Terminator Genisys (2015)

‘TerminatorGenisys’ (Photo Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon / Paramount Pictures)

Movie takes place in: 1984, 2017
Terminator sent back from: 2029
Skynet becomes self-aware: 2017

Legal issues with the franchise’s ownership prevented another film from being made for some time. It eventually wound up at Annapurna Pictures, which opted to ignore Salvation entirely and concentrate on rebooting the franchise to get back to the basics. As such, Genisys plays like a Greatest Hits album, taking us to the moment in 2029 when Skynet sends that first Terminator back for Sarah Connor and starts making things messy, following him with a T-1000 and then bringing 1980s Sarah Connor (played by Emilia Clarke now) forward in time, because apparently, we can do that now. Throw in a John Connor from the future controlled by nanomachines and it all ends the day before Skynet goes online.

Paradox Level: High. Attempting to reconcile all of the criss-crossing in the timeline makes this movie nearly impossible to follow. Skynet is now called “Genisys,” for some reason, its creation myth is totally changed, and there are more different Terminator types than ever before. Nothing in this one makes sense and it’s not surprising that it was critically panned.

Terminator: Dark Fate

‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ (Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures)

Movie takes place in: 2020
Terminator sent back from: 2042
Skynet becomes self-aware: Unknown

The latest Terminator movie sees James Cameron return to the franchise as a producer and immediately tosses out everything that’s gone before. Linda Hamilton is back as Sarah Connor, Arnold is back as the T-800, but the plot works to finally introduce some new blood into the saga, with a cyborg woman sent back to protect her younger self from Terminators. We’ll stop the spoilers there.

Paradox Level: Medium. A lot of superficial changes, but the general theme remains the same. Skynet is nowhere to be found, replaced by “Legion” as the artificial intelligence that wipes out humanity. For the first time, human soldiers are cybernetically augmented as well. But instead of pissing you off, these changes are incorporated in a way that fleshes out the endless possibilities of time travel instead of negating what came before.

The next major milestone in the Terminator franchise is 2029, when the original T-800 was sent back to hunt Sarah Connor. Given the series’ general rate of release, we should see at least one other film before then. We’ll see if producers stick with the updated Dark Fate timeline or if they push Skynet’s activation even further down the line.

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