Three billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. A human skull is crushed by a machine’s foot. It holds a huge gun easily, firing lasers.
Skynet sent two Terminators back through time to destroy John Connor, leader of the human resistance. The first Terminator targeted his mother and failed. The second targeted a young John. The Resistance each time sent a protector for John.
An orb containing a T-800 appears. Naked, the T-800 walks into a bar and appraises everyone there. It demands a biker’s clothes, boots and motorcycle.
The biker stubs out his cigar on the T-800’s chest with a sizzle. Another biker breaks a pool cue over its head. The T-800 throws someone through a window, another onto burning oven hobs.
The T-800’s attacked with a knife. It nails the man to the pool table through his shoulder. It takes a gun, Harley-Davidson keys, a shotgun and sunglasses and rides away.
A random cop calls in an electrical disturbance. A T-1000 appears and kills him. It becomes an imitation of the cop and discovers John Connor’s foster parents’ address.
At Pescadero State Hospital, Sarah Connor, is doing pull-ups from an upturned bed. She’s a twenty-nine year-old female with Acute Schizo Affective disorder.
She believes a machine called a “Terminator” was sent back through time to kill her. Her child’s father was a soldier sent back from 2029 to protect her.
Sarah stabbed Dr Silberman in the kneecap with his pen a few weeks earlier, and has repeatedly attempted escape. Sarah’s Thorazine is forcibly administered.
John inserts a stolen credit card attached to his laptop into an ATM. Three hundred bucks. John says his Mum tried to blow up the computer factory, got shot and arrested and that’s why she’s in hospital.
Sarah tells Silberman she’s much better now. She says he said after six months, he might allow her visitors. Even so, Silberman will recommend she stay for another six. Sarah attacks him.
The T-1000 prowls through the Galleria and finds John. John’s shocked to see the T-800 which says get down and shoots the T-1000 — putting a metal dent in its shoulder.
The T-800 shields John from bullets. The T-1000 reloads and the T-800 bursts through a door, walking and firing at the T-1000. The sixth blast knocks it over.
The T-1000’s wounds quickly heal. It grapples with the T-800 and throws it through a window. John rides away, the T-1000 sprinting behind him.
It commandeers a moving truck and crashes onto the same level as John. The T-800 shoots at the T-1000, reloading with one hand. The T-1000 rams John’s motorbike until the T-800 rescues him.
It shoots out the T-1000’s tyre. The truck crashes into a wall and leaks petrol, which then ignites. The T-1000 walks away from the explosion unscathed.
The T-800 is a Terminator. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. John sent the T-800 thirty five years from then, back in time to be John’s protector.
Conversely, the T-1000 is an advanced prototype; a mimetic polyalloy. Liquid metal. The T-800 recommends it and John leave the city and avoid the authorities.
John must warn his foster parents, Todd and Janelle. Over the phone, the T-800 affects John’s voice, covers the receiver and asks John’s dog’s name. John says Max. The T-800 asks Janelle what’s wrong with a barking Wolfy.
Janelle says Wolfy’s fine. The T-800 immediately hangs up and says John’s foster parents are dead. The T-1000 was pretending to be Janelle. She’s fatally put a metal spike through Todd drinking from his milk carton.
The T-1000 can imitate anything it samples by physical contact, of equal size. It can’t form complex machines, but, it can form solid, metal shapes like knives and stabbing weapons.
John tells the T-800 they must rescue his Mum from hospital. The T-800 says the T-1000’s probably gonna copy Sarah and wait for John to make contact.
John realises the T-800 must obey him and makes it lift up someone by their hair, throwing another against a car. John narrowly prevents it from killing the man, making it promise to not kill.
The T-1000’s posing as chequered flooring in the hospital. It rises up behind a security guard, then puts an index finger, metal spike through his eye. Sarah bloodies a perverted nurse and locks him in her room.
She breaks Silberman’s arm and holds him hostage with a bleach syringe in his neck. The alarm sounds. Sarah recognises the T-800 and collapses in terror.
The T-800 tosses nurses left and right and soon, four are on the floor. The T-1000 melts through metal bars, getting briefly stuck when its gun doesn’t also melt.
The T-800 shoots at the T-1000. The T-1000 returns fire as it runs. A big, metal spike appears through the lift doors which are then prised open.
The T-800 shoots at the T-1000 point blank in the head, delaying it. The T-1000 melts back to normal, then accesses the lift shaft and jumps onto the lift, stabbing downward. The T-800 and Sarah shoot upward.
Sarah’s injured and a concerned John gives her a fresh clip. She then commandeers a police car. The T-1000 oozes through the ceiling and reforms below.
It runs after the group, with Sarah shooting. John provides his mother and the T-800 with freshly-loaded weapons. The T-1000 attaches to the back of the car, each arm a hook. The T-800 shoots a hook, then the T-1000 itself.
Sarah reprimands John for rescuing her. The T-800 asks what’s wrong with John’s eyes and stitches Sarah’s shoulder. John asks if it can learn.
Sarah peels away the T-800’s scalp following detailed instructions. When she extracts the vital CPU chip, the T-800 becomes inanimate. Sarah’s ready to destroy the chip, but John convinces her not to.
Miles Bennett Dyson — director of special projects at Cyberdyne Systems Corporation — is responsible for Skynet. He creates a revolutionary microprocessor.
Cyberdyne becomes the largest supplier of military computer systems. Stealth bombers become fully-unmanned. Human decisions are removed from strategic defence.
Skynet learns at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14am eastern time, August 29, 1997. They try shutting it down, so Skynet launches missiles against targets in Russia because the Russian counterattack will eliminate its American enemies.
On a Sunday, Dyson’s focused on his work. His wife, Tarissa, asks about him spending time with their two young children. Dyson soon shouts Raging Waters and they cheer.
Sarah, John and the T-800 arrive at Enrique’s. After a frosty start, Enrique and Sarah embrace. John introduces the T-800 as Uncle Bob. Enrique says Sarah, John and Uncle Bob are all over the TV.
Sarah needs clothes, food and a truck. The T-800 asks why humans cry. John says it’s when there’s nothing wrong with you, but you hurt anyway. Sarah envisions herself and John as a toddler, then everything’s incinerated.
After this dream, a fired-up Sarah leaves to kill Dyson. John says “The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves”. John figures that his Mum’s gonna kill Dyson.
At Dyson’s house, Sarah’s aiming beam shines a red dot on Dyson’s back. She fires and misses. Then, she provides automatic gunfire, trapping Dyson behind his desk.
Sarah takes her handgun and shoots Dyson in the shoulder. She‘s about to kill him, but can’t, instead sliding sobbing down the wall. John and the T-800 arrive.
Sarah hugs John tightly. John tells the T-800 to show the Dysons who they are. The T-800 exposes its metal endoskeleton and explains Skynet, Judgement Day and the three billion deaths. Dyson says he’ll quit Cyberdyne the next day, but even this could be too late.
At Cyberdyne Systems that night, aiming to destroy Dyson’s entire lab, Sarah disarms the security guard and John tapes his mouth. Alarms sound. Dyson has one of two keys for the vault containing the original robot arm and CPU from 1984.
John tells the others to start on the lab, he can open the security station for the other key. The T-800 causes explosions. Dyson says the fire’s set off the halo system. The T-800 tells Sarah and Dyson to put on gas masks. Dozens of police cars arrive silently under blue lights.
A police helicopter arrives. Using his laptop, John isolates the PIN number as 7256 and gets the other key. He sees the helicopter and police. The T-800 says it’ll handle the police, without killing anyone.
It takes the belt-fed Gatling gun to the window and starts firing, targeting cars. It drops the gun and switches to grenade launcher, again targeting just the cars.
John and Dyson simultaneously turn their keys. In the vault, Dyson handles the artefacts carefully. John smashes the cases on the floor to get at the vital technology, adding that they have Skynet by the balls.
A SWAT team moves in. Sarah asks Dyson for the detonator. But, he’s wounded and Sarah’s pinned down by gunfire. John sees his Mum’s trapped and alerts the T-800.
The T-800 bursts through the wall and pulls Sarah to safety. The SWAT team notices Dyson with the detonator and quickly leaves as Dyson breathes his last. The entire floor’s destroyed. The group arrives at the lobby, where police fire gas at them.
The T-800 walks at the police as they fire hundreds of rounds at it. There are metallic sounds as they pepper it with bullets. The T-800 shoots them all in the legs and fires gas.
The T-800 gets a van and collects John and Sarah. The T-1000 jumps onto the helicopter and bursts through the windscreen, oozing into the cockpit and ejecting the pilot.
Sarah shouts there’s a chopper and starts shooting at it. An airborne T-1000 returns fire, flying under low bridges. Sarah’s shot in the leg.
The T-800 brakes, causing the helicopter to hit the van. Then, the van’s tyre bursts and it topples over. A trucker asks if the T-1000 policeman’s alright. It executes him and steals his juggernaut.
The T-800 takes another vehicle as a speeding T-1000 bashes through the van changing gears. John prepares a tourniquet for Sarah.
She says the T-1000’s gaining. It then rams them. The T-800 grabs a machine gun and mounts the juggernaut’s bonnet. At point blank range, it sprays bullets into the T-1000.
The T-800 then yanks the steering wheel and the juggernaut topples over, splitting in two and spilling out liquid nitrogen. The T-1000 is then surrounded by freezing cold liquid.
It slowly breaks apart as it walks until it’s frozen with a shocked expression. The T-800 says “Hasta la vista, Baby” and shoots the T-1000, shattering it into a million tinkling pieces.
The nearby burning steel soon thaws these pieces. The pool of the T-1000’s molten metal grows as smaller drops add to it. A human form re-emerges.
The T-1000’s feet briefly melt to the floor. It surprises the T-800 and they fight. The T-1000’s thrown against a wall, shape-shifts and its back becomes its front.
The T-800 punches through the T-1000’s head, but the head morphs into hands which apply a wrist lock. The T-800’s left arm gets momentarily trapped in machinery.
The T-1000 hunts for John and Sarah. Sarah blasts a big hole in the T-1000’s head, but this heals. Its left index finger becomes a metal spike inserted into Sarah’s right shoulder.
The T-1000 says call to John. Sarah won’t. Its right index finger also becomes a spike. Now with only one arm, the T-800 gets a metal pole and slices the T-1000’s torso down to its waist.
The T-1000 pulls out the pole through its side and crushes the T-800’s head several times. The T-1000 then stabs the prone T-800 twice in the back.
Electricity’s released and the T-1000 leaves. But, the T-800 switches to alternate power. John sees his Mum and there’s an imitation of her behind her.
The Sarah in front’s feet are melting, so John ducks. Sarah’s first shotgun blast puts a hole in the T-1000, then she exhausts her ammunition shooting it. The T-1000 shakes its head and wags its finger.
The T-800 appears and fires a grenade which lands inside the T-1000. It explodes and the T-1000 is stretched apart almost paper-thin, screaming. It falls into molten steel.
John throws in the arm and the chip. There’s also a chip in the T-800’s head. The T-800 gives Sarah the winch controls. It cannot self-terminate.
The T-800 tells John it knows now why John cries, but it’s something it can never do. John hugs it and Sarah shakes its hand. She lowers it into the steel.
The T-800 gives a last thumbs-up sign. Sarah is hopeful. If a Terminator can learn the value of human life, maybe Mankind can, too.
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Linda Hamilton. Edward Furlong. Rated 15. Dir James Cameron. Released in the UK 1991. Runtime 2hrs 17mins
