Created by: Ricky Wilson
Last modified: 2004-04-06
Location: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/film/terminator.html
In the future, a computer defense system network known as Skynet gains sentience and begins waging war on mankind. Its first action upon "awakening" is known as "Judgement Day," when it launches numerous nuclear strikes against the world's cities, killing most of the Earth's inhabitants. From the ashes of this wreckage a human resistance forms, which devotes itself to the destruction of Skynet and its growing army of robotic soldiers/killing machines. In the first Terminator film, Skynet sends a disguised robotic assassin (known as the T-800 and played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to murder Sarah Connor, the mother of the head of this resistance group, John Connor. Sarah destroys the android, but is placed in a mental institution in the aftermath. Because of this, John Connor grows up with a foster family never knowing his mother.
Terminator 2 begins here. Skynet, foiled once, sends a new assassin back in time, now intent on killing John Connor in his youth. This robot (the T-1000, played for the most part by Robert Patrick), unlike the previous one, is made of liquid metal and can mimic the appearance of anyone it comes in contact with. To counter this, the resistance sends a reprogrammed T-800 robot (Schwarzenegger) back in time to protect John Connor. Are you still with me? In the course of the action, the T-800 terminator (the good one) and John Connor manage to free Sarah Connor from the mental institution before the T-1000 terminator can kill her. The clip we view in class is of the final showdown between the T-1000 terminator and John and Sarah Connor along with the T-800 terminator.