Sarah Connor (fictional character)
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Sarah Connor (1959-1997) is a fictional character, the heroine in the first two entries in the Terminator film series and the upcoming TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles. She was played by American actress Linda Hamilton in the film series and will be played by Lena Headey in the TV series.
[edit] Character history
In The Terminator, Sarah Connor is a young waitress who finds herself pursued by a relentless cyborg killer, the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 800 Series Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), for reasons completely unknown to her. She is rescued from the Terminator by time traveling soldier Kyle Reese (played by 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 to destroy John Connor's family before he can be born. John Connor, of course, is Sarah's future son, and Connor sends back a trusted lieutenant (Reese - who, unbeknownst to either of them, is John's father) to protect his mother at all costs. During their brief time together, Sarah fell in love with Reese as he became the only thing protecting her from the Terminator (initially unaware that Reese himself had been in love with her from afar), and they share a night of intimacy that results in the conception of John. Their love was cut short when Reese died fighting the Terminator in a Cyberdyne factory; Sarah in turn crushed the Terminator in a hydraulic press. Though Reese's death deeply saddened her, his sincerity and courage would inspire Sarah to carry on and develop the necessary skills and abilities that would make her a suitable mentor to John.
The plot is summed up by these lines spoken by Reese, who tells Sarah Connor:
- "Listen! And understand! That Terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with! It can't be reasoned with! It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!'"
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, two robots travel back from the future this time: one to kill Sarah's son John (now ten years old, played by Edward Furlong), and one to rescue him. The twist (given away by the movie's advance publicity) is that this time, Schwarzenegger's character (another T-800) is the rescuer, having been re-programmed by John Conner to protect his younger self from the more advanced prototype T-1000 (Robert Patrick) that has been sent to kill him. The newer robot's liquid metal construction gives it the ability to change shape, an ability which was the focus of many of the movie's Oscar-winning special effects.
In some ways, Terminator 2 is a character study of Sarah Connor. She is a quite different person from the frail woman in the first Terminator film; her entire perspective on life has been irreversibly altered by the events in her life. The knowledge she has about mankind's future has made her ever vigilant, a trait which is perceived by many as paranoia and psychosis; at the outset of this film, Sarah is in a mental institution following a botched attempt to bomb the Cyberdyne Systems building. Her knowledge of the future is also a source of recurring nightmares, as well as a great deal of antagonism, which results in the doctors overseeing her "recovery" to place her under maximum security. However, she cannot be contained for long and manages several tries to escape; her latest attempt coincides with the second T-800 and her son John arriving to break her out of the hospital. During their escape, Sarah's lead doctor is horrified to see both Terminators in operation and realizes Sarah's predictions were true.
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 puts a stop to her.
In a moment of desperation, Sarah attempts to murder Miles Dyson, the researcher who is destined to build the neural network that eventually becomes Skynet. In doing this, she loses touch with her humanity, becoming eerily similar to the Terminator itself. Ultimately, John and the T-800 stop Sarah, and together persuade 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. The epilogue to Terminator 2 shows her living to become a grandmother. That ending, however, was not included in the theatrical release and cannot be considered canon.
However, at the time of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, she is already dead, succumbing to leukemia sometime after Terminator 2. Her ashes were spread at sea while a casket containing a cache of weapons was placed for John to find. The engraving on her "gravesite" reads: No fate but what you make.
In November 2005, it was announced that 20th Century Fox would produce a television series called The Sarah Connor Chronicles featuring the adventures of the title character and her son in the years between T2 and T3. This was followed in November 2006, by the announcement that Lena Headey had been chosen as the new face of Sarah Connor.
[edit] External links
- A New Body of Work:Linda Hamilton Gets Tough in Terminator 2
- The Terminator at the Internet Movie Database
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day at the Internet Movie Database
- T2 3-D: Battle Across Time at the Internet Movie Database
- The Sarah Connor Chronicles at the Internet Movie Database
