Terminator Franchise

The Terminator Franchise includes movies, television series, books, and other media featuring the use of time travel to prevent a dystopian future ruled by machines. The main plot element revolves around the Terminator cybernetic organism, which travels back in time in order to assassinate Sara Conner (Linda Hamilton), or her son John (Edward Furlong in Terminator 2, Nick Stahl in Terminator 3) to stop John from growing up to command to the human resistance to the machines.

The Terminator Story (1984)

Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) is the target of the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), an extremely powerful cybernetic organism from the future with one mission: kill Sarah Connor, to stop her from giving birth to John, the future leader of the human resistance. Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), is also sent back by the human resistance, to help Sarah defeat the Terminator.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day Story (1991)

Sarah Conner is locked in a mental institution, while her son John (whose father is Reese, from the previous film) is a hard-nosed teenager living in Los Angeles with foster parents. Two Terminators come back in time in an effort to intervene with John's upbringing: the T100 (Robert Patrick), who tries to kill John, and the original 101 model (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who is sent by the future John Conner to protect his past self. Once John and the Terminator break Sarah out of the mental institution, the three band together to stop the T1000.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Story (2003)

Sarah Conner has died, and John Conner has grown into a man, living a life of secrecy so that Skynet cannot find him. The machines send back another terminator, the T-X (Kristanna Loken) to kill John before the wars between the machines and humans finally break out. The 101 model (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent back yet again to defend John Conner and his future wife Kate Brewster (Claire Danes).