Terminator Genisys (2015)

In 2029, Human Resistance leader John Connor launches a final offensive against Skynet, an artificial general intelligence system seeking to eliminate the human race. Before the Resistance can triumph, Skynet activates a time machine and sends a T-800/Model 101 Terminator back to 1984, to kill John’s mother Sarah. John’s right-hand man, Kyle Reese, volunteers to travel back in time to protect her. As Kyle floats in the machine’s magnetic field, he sees John being attacked by another Resistance soldier. This creates a temporal paradox that alters the timeline and causes Kyle to experience childhood memories from a parallel version of himself. When it arrives in Los Angeles 1984, Skynet’s T-800 is disabled by Sarah and “Pops”, a reprogrammed T-800. An unknown party had sent Pops to 1973 to protect Sarah when she was nine years old, after her parents were killed by a T-1000 sent by Skynet. When Kyle arrives in 1984, he is intercepted by the T-1000, which Sarah and Pops destroy with acid. Sarah and Pops have constructed a makeshift time machine like Skynet’s, and Sarah plans to stop Skynet by traveling to 1997, the year it becomes self-aware.

However, realizing that the timeline has been altered, Kyle is convinced that the future has also changed. He recalls a warning he received in his childhood vision, convincing Sarah that they instead must travel to 2017 to stop Skynet. After fighting the T-1000, Pops has sustained exterior damages that prevent him from time-travelling. He stays in 1984 and plans to meet up with Kyle and Sarah in the future, preparing for their arrival in the meantime. In 2017, Kyle and Sarah materialize in the middle of a busy San Francisco highway and are apprehended by city police. While they are treated for injuries, Sarah and Kyle learn that Skynet is called “Genisys”—a soon-to-be-unveiled global operating system which is embraced by the public. John suddenly appears and rescues Sarah and Kyle; Pops arrives and unexpectedly shoots John, revealing that John is now an advanced Terminator. The resistance soldier who attacked John is revealed to have been Skynet in physical disguise as a Terminator. While Kyle was traveling back in time, Skynet attacked John and infected him with machine phase matter. John, tasked with ensuring Skynet’s creation, traveled back in time to assist Cyberdyne Systems with the development of Genisys, hence securing Skynet and its machines’ rise. Pops fights John before trapping him long enough for them to escape.