Kyle Reese
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Kyle Reese (2008-2029/1984), played by Michael Biehn, is the main fictional character and hero of the first Terminator film, father of John Connor, and brief lover to Sarah Connor.
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[edit] Character history
Kyle Reese was a soldier in the post-apocalyptic future of the Terminator universe (where most of humanity had been wiped out by an artificial intelligence entity known as Skynet). Reese was one of the last remaining human survivors of the war on humanity launched by the self-aware computer system, Skynet, being himself born after the war.
Reese survived the capture and killing of his fellow humans only to serve as a worker in one of Skynet's concentration camps, where he and others were forced to load huge numbers of bodies into Skynet's machines to be exterminated. Reese's freedom would come when a Resistance movement, led by John Connor (whom Reese would unwittingly father later in the movie), freed him and the others from Skynet. After the camps Reese served in the 132nd under Perry from 2021 to 2027 before transferring as a sergeant to Tech-Com under John Connor himself. John Connor and the resistance would eventually rally enough remaining humans and resources to launch an assault on Skynet.
The final assault would eventually allow the human resistance to cripple Skynet, as Reese explains in The Terminator. The resistance was able to destroy Skynet's defense grid allowing them to enter Skynet's main complex and attempt to destroy it. Skynet however would have a final move left: using time displacement equipment, Skynet would send one of its most feared machines back (the terminator of the title) to 1984 to kill the young Sarah Connor, known to have been the mother of resistance leader John Connor, and thus prevent the birth of Connor and his future rebellion.
Realizing what Skynet was about to do, John Connor would send back a soldier to protect himself from the machine menace. It would be Reese who would volunteer himself to go back (a point of mention here is that in the original screenplay two humans were sent back, however one would die as a result of being merged with a brick wall when the process went wrong). Once Reese had gone through, the time travel equipment would be destroyed leaving only Reese and the Terminator in 1984.
Arriving unarmed and facing a menace whom he could not recognize, Reese located Sarah Connor, warning her of the impending doom of the human race and of the future significance carried by her and her unborn son. Though initially hostile towards Reese, Sarah would grow to trust and love him as he would become the only thing between her and the Terminator. On the run from the Terminator, Reese and Sarah would share a night of intimacy in which John Connor would be conceived.
Reese's life however was cut short when both he and Sarah were forced to confront the Terminator. Reese received a number of fatal blows while attempting to destroy the Terminator and was killed. Sarah Connor would then go on to destroy the crippled android and cement her resolve to ready herself for the impending future.
Growing up in the future where the machines had all but wiped out the human race, Reese was both physically and mentally hardened. His body was scarred from numerous battles with Skynet and he had a number of burns as a result of the Time Travel process.
One of the few times Reese shows emotion he weeps at the future loss of nature (in a scene deleted from the film):
"I'm wrong here. I wasn't meant to see this (referring to a forest with a creek running through it)... It's...like some dream. This...this.....and you...all so...beautiful. It hurts, Sarah. More than death. Don't you understand...it's all gone!"
Though hard and battle weary, Reese had a love for Sarah Connor, a woman whom he'd never met and only through a photo could identify. The affection Reese felt for Sarah is similar to that of a knight's love for a princess in medieval literature - the knight has already fallen in love with the princess based purely on word of mouth about her goodness without having actually met her, and Reese had loved Sarah before he even met her, based on the legend that surrounded her and on the image of her from the photograph given to him by John. He would live on through John Connor and Sarah Connor, who would forever remember him as her lover and saviour.
[edit] Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Though he died in the first Terminator film, he does appear in the Special Edition of the second film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Sarah, who is now inside a mental hospital after being captured trying to destroy a computer factory, finds herself feeling hopelessly defeated after being beaten by guards in hospital, when Reese appears as a dream. Still dressed in the clothes he died in and remaining ageless, he warns Sarah of the danger now facing a young John Connor, before disappearing out of Sarah's reach.
Another point to mention is that the writers of the second film when working on the alternative ending for T2 (the future coda ending) scripted an older aged Sarah walking through the park which appeared in her dreams and Judgement Day never happening. As she walks through the park she sees a young Kyle Reese, unscarred and happy, she can only look on.
[edit] Trivia
Originally, Reese and another soldier named "Sumner" were sent to protect Sarah from the Terminator, but Sumner died upon arriving after the time portal fused him into a fire escape (interestingly, the sequels show the time displacement field melting whatever object is in the way). In the original script, Reese says to Silberman: "The Terminator had already gone through. Connor sent two of us, but Sumner didn't make it." Coincidentally, the second actor to play a Terminator, Robert Patrick, went on to play a character called "Sumner" in Stargate: Atlantis.
A still shot of Kyle Reese was used as the basis for a pose held by Solid Snake on the box art for the MSX game Metal Gear, right down to the gear he is wearing.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was the original choice to play Reese while director James Cameron intended to use a thinner, more ordinary looking actor as the Terminator. Upon meeting Arnold, Cameron decided to cast him as the Terminator instead.
Michael Biehn almost didn't get the role of Reese because, at his audition, he spoke in a Southern accent after having just auditioned for a role in a stage production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof earlier that day and couldn't shake the accent, and the producers did not want Reese to seem regionalized. After Biehn's agent explained this to the producers, he got a second audition and won the part.
The original screen treatment gave Reese's age as 21, while a later draft gave his age as 22. In real life, Michael Biehn was 27 at the time that he was cast as Reese.
Reese's height is 6'0" (1.83 meters).
It is interesting to note that because Kyle was John's father, if the Terminator had killed Kyle before he met Sarah or before their night together he would have killed John. However, this is debatable, since John Connor didn't HAVE to be fathered by Reese in order to Sarah to have a son.
Reese's compliment to Sarah about providing a good "field dressing" to one of his wounds has inspired a salad dressing product with the same name.
