Sarah Connor (Terminator): Difference between revisions
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Weedy action heroine under fire] - Fans and feminists criticise a British actress for having the wrong physique to play the star role in American TV's hit Terminator spin-off" by David Smith for ''The Observer'', Sunday January 20 2008. Retrieved 20 January 2008</ref> and [[The Guardian]],<ref name="Guardian"/> as well as in online forums.<ref name="Guardian"/> |
Weedy action heroine under fire] - Fans and feminists criticise a British actress for having the wrong physique to play the star role in American TV's hit Terminator spin-off" by David Smith for ''The Observer'', Sunday January 20 2008. Retrieved 20 January 2008</ref> and [[The Guardian]],<ref name="Guardian"/> as well as in online forums.<ref name="Guardian"/> |
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The television series largely ignores the continuity of the third film. The series opens in 1997, two years after the events of T2. Sarah and John seem to be living a peaceful life. Sarah is even engaged. However, Sarah, fearing discovery, and perhaps, as John suggests, the certainty of a stable life, forces the two of them to flee again. On his first day in his new school John is attacked by a terminator calling himself Cromartie who posed as a substitute teacher. He only escapes with the help of Cameron, a |
The television series largely ignores the continuity of the third film. The series opens in 1997, two years after the events of T2. Sarah and John seem to be living a peaceful life. Sarah is even engaged. However, Sarah, fearing discovery, and perhaps, as John suggests, the certainty of a stable life, forces the two of them to flee again. On his first day in his new school John is attacked by a terminator calling himself Cromartie who posed as a substitute teacher. He only escapes with the help of Cameron, a sexy teenaged girl Terminator, programed to warm up to John, being sent back to protect him. Sarah hears of the shooting on tv and rushes to the school, but is captured by Cromartie, who uses her to lure John into a trap. Again with the help of Cameron they escape, fleeing to a bank where resistance members have hidden the parts of a time machine. As Cromartie attacks them, the trio disappear. When they reappear it is the year 2007. |
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Cameron suggests to Sarah that their purpose in this time is to stop Skynet, which she claims will go on line in 2011. Sarah argues that time traveling was a wrong move and that if she had been allowed to stay in 1997 she would have had longer to prepare John and to prepare to destroy Skynet. It is at this point that Cameron informs her that she would have died in the intervening years of leukemia. Traveling to the future has given Sarah the time she needs to destroy Skynet in its infancy. As the three of them attempt to evade discovery, and track down the origins of Skynet, Sarah is burdened with the extra knowledge that her own body will betray her. The latest episode of the series has Sarah at a doctors appointment where she is informed that she is completely healthy. Still, she knows that it is only a matter of time until she becomes sick. |
Cameron suggests to Sarah that their purpose in this time is to stop Skynet, which she claims will go on line in 2011. Sarah argues that time traveling was a wrong move and that if she had been allowed to stay in 1997 she would have had longer to prepare John and to prepare to destroy Skynet. It is at this point that Cameron informs her that she would have died in the intervening years of leukemia. Traveling to the future has given Sarah the time she needs to destroy Skynet in its infancy. As the three of them attempt to evade discovery, and track down the origins of Skynet, Sarah is burdened with the extra knowledge that her own body will betray her. The latest episode of the series has Sarah at a doctors appointment where she is informed that she is completely healthy. Still, she knows that it is only a matter of time until she becomes sick. |
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Revision as of 06:00, 29 January 2008
| Sarah J. Connor | |
|---|---|
| Terminator films and Sarah Connor Chronicles character | |
.jpg) | |
| First appearance | The Terminator |
| Created by | James Cameron |
| Portrayed by | Linda Hamilton Lena Headey |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Children | John Connor |
Sarah J. Connor is a fictional character, the heroine of the first two Terminator films and the television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. She was played by American actress Linda Hamilton in the films and is currently portrayed by British actress Lena Headey in the TV series.
Character history
The Terminator
In The Terminator, Sarah Connor is a young Los Angeles waitress who finds herself pursued by a relentless cyborg killer, the Cyberdyne Systems T-800 Model 101 Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), for reasons completely unknown to her. She is rescued from the Terminator by time traveling soldier Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), who explains that in the future, an artificial intelligence called Skynet will be created by military software developers to make strategic decisions. The program becomes self-aware, seizes control of most of the world's military hardware (including various highly-advanced robots), and launches an all-out attack on human beings. However, a man named John Connor eventually leads the human Tech-Com resistance to victory, only to discover that in a last-ditch effort, Skynet had researched time travel and sent a robotic killer back in time in an effort to destroy John Connor's family before he can be born. John Connor is Sarah's future son, and Connor sends back a trusted sergeant (Reese - who, unbeknownst to Reese, is John's father) to protect his mother at all costs. During their brief time together, Sarah falls in love with Reese. Reese becomes the only thing protecting her from the Terminator, and her only companion as they flee together. Initially, she is unaware that Reese himself had been in love with her from afar, having been given a picture of her by John Connor, and having always admired her legendary strength and resilience. They share a night of intimacy that results in the conception of John. Their relationship is cut short when Reese dies fighting the Terminator in a Cyberdyne factory; Sarah in turn crushes the Terminator in a hydraulic press. Though Reese's death deeply saddens her, his sincerity and courage inspires Sarah to carry on and develop the necessary skills and abilities that would make her a suitable mentor and teacher to John.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
We next see Sarah Connor about thirteen years after the events of Terminator. She and John have been separated. John is in a foster home and Sarah has been institutionalized in a mental hospital. In the years between films she has transformed herself from the mousy woman seen at the beginning of the first movie into a muscled violent warrior. In fact the first image of her in the film is of her doing pull ups on her hospital bed. After the death of Kyle Reese, Sarah took his warnings, and the responsibility of raising the hope of mankind, to heart. She dropped off the grid, the better to protect herself and John. She lived a semi-criminal life among various outlaws and survivalists and attempted to teach her son the skills he would need to lead the resistance. Eventually her activities, and her claims of fighting evil robots from the future led to her being deemed crazy and therefore being committed. Sarah only seemed to confirm the judgment of phsychiatrists by committing acts of violence against hospital staff and attempting to escape multiple times. During her final escape attempt, Sarah encounters two different terminator models. One is the T-1000, a liquid metal cyborg sent back to kill her son. The other is a T-800 of the same model which tried to murder her, and was sent back to protect them. When she initially encounters the T-800 she flees in fear, but goes with him when she sees her son, John, accompanying him.
Sarah finds it nearly impossible to accept that the T-800 is benevolent; throughout the film, she remains hostile towards it and what it represents, while her own son develops a bond with it, resembling a father-son relationship. In the director's cut of the movie, it is revealed that Sarah has an opportunity to destroy the machine's processor, thus killing it. She nearly does so, but John stops her.
In a moment of desperation, Sarah attempts to murder Miles Dyson, the computer researcher who is destined to build the revolutionary microprocessor that eventually becomes Skynet. In doing this, she loses touch with her humanity, becoming eerily similar to the Terminator itself. Ultimately, she regains her humanity and does not kill Dyson. Shortly afterwards, John and the T-800 arrive and, together, they succeed in persuading Dyson to stop his research and destroy all recovered remnants of the first Terminator. The Terminator then, with the help of Sarah Connor, destroys himself, despite the protests of the young John.
In the first Terminator movie, it is mentioned that Sarah was a legend among members of the resistance, teaching her son to fight and organize while they were still in hiding prior to the war. An alternate epilogue to Terminator 2 shows her living to become a grandmother. That ending, however, was not included in the theatrical release.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Sarah Connor is already dead, having succumbed to leukemia in 1997, after the events of Terminator 2, following a three year battle with the disease. She lived long enough to see the original 1997 "judgment day" pass without incident. Her ashes were spread at sea while a casket containing a cache of weapons was placed for John to find at a false grave site. The epitaph on her mausoleum niche reads: No fate but what we make.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
In November 2005, 20th Century Fox announced that it would produce a television series called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles featuring the adventures of the title character and her son in the years after Terminator 2: Judgment Day.[1] This was followed by a November 2006 announcement that Lena Headey had been chosen to play Sarah Connor.[2] The choice to cast the "emaciated" Headey has been criticized by a some fans and critcs, notably those who feel only an athletic, muscular woman should fill the role established by Hamilton, who transformed her body into that of a muscled warrior for Terminator 2.[3] The controversy has been covered by the Los Angeles Times,[3] The Boston Herald,[4] and The Guardian,[4] as well as in online forums.[4]
The television series largely ignores the continuity of the third film. The series opens in 1997, two years after the events of T2. Sarah and John seem to be living a peaceful life. Sarah is even engaged. However, Sarah, fearing discovery, and perhaps, as John suggests, the certainty of a stable life, forces the two of them to flee again. On his first day in his new school John is attacked by a terminator calling himself Cromartie who posed as a substitute teacher. He only escapes with the help of Cameron, a sexy teenaged girl Terminator, programed to warm up to John, being sent back to protect him. Sarah hears of the shooting on tv and rushes to the school, but is captured by Cromartie, who uses her to lure John into a trap. Again with the help of Cameron they escape, fleeing to a bank where resistance members have hidden the parts of a time machine. As Cromartie attacks them, the trio disappear. When they reappear it is the year 2007.
Cameron suggests to Sarah that their purpose in this time is to stop Skynet, which she claims will go on line in 2011. Sarah argues that time traveling was a wrong move and that if she had been allowed to stay in 1997 she would have had longer to prepare John and to prepare to destroy Skynet. It is at this point that Cameron informs her that she would have died in the intervening years of leukemia. Traveling to the future has given Sarah the time she needs to destroy Skynet in its infancy. As the three of them attempt to evade discovery, and track down the origins of Skynet, Sarah is burdened with the extra knowledge that her own body will betray her. The latest episode of the series has Sarah at a doctors appointment where she is informed that she is completely healthy. Still, she knows that it is only a matter of time until she becomes sick.
Birth and death
According to the script for The Terminator (1984)—available on the Special Edition DVD—Sarah was 19 years old. The film was set from May 12th through May 14th of 1984, placing her birth date between May 11, 1964 and May 15, 1965.
The alternate ending for Terminator 2 (1991)—available on the Ultimate Edition DVD—shows Sarah alive and well on August 29, 2029. She is by then a grandmother (and John is a Senator) in a world where Skynet was never able to start its war on humanity.
The tombstone shown in Terminator 3 (2003) reads 1959–1997. The birth year would make her 24 or 25 during The Terminator. Her death was described as from leukemia sometime after the original "Judgment Day" (August 29, 1997).
The "Pilot" episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, picks up Sarah and John on the run in 1999. Her FBI file lists her age as 33 on August 24, 1999, placing her birth date between August 25, 1965 and August 23, 1966. This would make her 17 or 18 during The Terminator.
In the "Gnothi Seauton" episode, Cameron Phillips mentions that Sarah would have died from cancer, had they not jumped forward in time. Cameron also mentions that John Connor sent Cameron back in time to help leap over Sarah's death. At the end of the episode Sarah is at a doctor's office, where her forged drivers license shows her birthday as February 4th.
References
- ^ "The Terminator Franchise Rises Again". Variety (archived on ComingSoon.net). November 10, 2005. Retrieved 2007-01-16.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Headey lands 'Connor' role". Variety. November 8, 2006. Retrieved 2007-05-17.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - ^ a b "New Sarah Connor needs thick skin" by Scott Collins, for The Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2008. Retrieved 12 January 2008
- ^ a b c "[http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/20/television.gender Weedy action heroine under fire] - Fans and feminists criticise a British actress for having the wrong physique to play the star role in American TV's hit Terminator spin-off" by David Smith for The Observer, Sunday January 20 2008. Retrieved 20 January 2008
See also
External links
- A New Body of Work: Linda Hamilton Gets Tough in Terminator 2
- The Terminator at IMDb
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day at IMDb
- T2 3-D: Battle Across Time at IMDb
- The Sarah Connor Chronicles at IMDb
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