Terminator 1: The Terminator
In 1984 Los Angeles, a cyborg assassin known as a Terminator arrives from 2029 and steals clothes and guns. Kyle Reese, a human soldier sent back in time from the same year, arrives shortly afterwards. He steals clothes and weapons and evades the police. The Terminator begins systematically killing women named Sarah Connor, whose addresses it finds in the telephone directory. It tracks the last Sarah Connor to a nightclub, but Kyle rescues her. The two steal a car and escape with the Terminator pursuing them in a police car.
As they hide in a parking lot, Kyle explains to Sarah that an artificial intelligence defense network, known as Skynet, will become self-aware in the near future and initiate a nuclear holocaust. Sarah's future son John will rally the survivors and lead a resistance movement against Skynet and its army of machines. With the Resistance on the verge of victory, Skynet sent a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah before John is born, to prevent the formation of the Resistance. The Terminator, a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101, is an efficient killing machine with a powerful metal endoskeleton and an external layer of living tissue that makes it appear human.
Kyle and Sarah are apprehended by police after another encounter with the Terminator. Criminal psychologist Dr. Silberman concludes that Kyle is paranoid and delusional. The Terminator repairs its body and attacks the police station, killing seventeen police officers in its attempt to locate Sarah. Kyle and Sarah escape, steal another car and take refuge in a motel, where they assemble pipe bombs and plan their next move. Kyle admits that he has been in love with Sarah since John gave him a photograph of her; she reciprocates his feelings and they have sex.
The Terminator kills Sarah's mother and impersonates her when Sarah, unaware of the Terminator's ability to mimic voices, attempts to contact her via telephone. When they realize it has reacquired them, they escape in a pickup truck while it chases them on a motorcycle. In the ensuing chase, Kyle is wounded by gunfire while throwing pipe bombs at the Terminator. Enraged‚ Sarah knocks the Terminator off its motorcycle but loses control of the truck, which flips over. The Terminator hijacks a tank truck and attempts to run down Sarah, but Kyle slides a pipe bomb onto the tanker's exhaust pipe, causing an explosion that burns the flesh from the Terminator's endoskeleton. It pursues them into a factory, where Kyle activates machinery to confuse the Terminator. He jams his final pipe bomb into the Terminator's abdomen, blowing it apart, injuring Sarah, and killing himself. The Terminator's torso reactivates and grabs Sarah. She breaks free and lures it into a hydraulic press, crushing it.
Months later, a pregnant Sarah is traveling through Mexico, recording audio tapes to pass on to her unborn son, John. She debates whether to tell John that Kyle is his father. At a gas station, a boy takes an instant photograph of her and she buys it — the same photograph that John will give to Kyle.
The movie ends with a gas station attendant stating that “there’s a storm coming” and Sarah responding grimly “I know”.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
In 1995, John Connor is living in Los Angeles with foster parents. His mother Sarah Connor had been preparing him throughout his childhood for his future role as the Human Resistance leader against Skynet – the artificial intelligence that will be given control of the United States' nuclear missiles and initiate a nuclear holocaust called "Judgment Day" on August 29, 1997 – but was arrested and imprisoned at a mental hospital after attempting to bomb a computer factory. In 2029, Skynet sends a new Terminator, designated as T-1000, back in time to kill John. The T-1000 is an advanced prototype made out of liquid metal (referred to as "mimetic polyalloy") that gives it the ability to take on the shape and appearance of almost anything it touches, and to transform its arms into blades and other shapes at will, but it can't form any complex machines like guns or vehicles. The T-1000 arrives under a freeway, kills a policeman, and assumes his identity. Meanwhile, the future John Connor has sent back a reprogrammed T-800 (Model 101) Terminator to protect his young self.
The Terminator and the T-1000 converge on John in a shopping mall, and a chase ensues after which John and the Terminator escape together on a motorcycle. Fearing that the T-1000 will kill Sarah in order to get to him, John orders the Terminator to help free her, after discovering that the Terminator must follow his orders. They encounter Sarah as she is escaping from the hospital, although she is initially reluctant to trust the T-800. After the trio escapes from the T-1000 in a police car, the Terminator informs John and Sarah about Skynet's history. Sarah learns that the man most directly responsible for Skynet's creation is Miles Bennett Dyson, a Cyberdyne Systems engineer working on a revolutionary new neural net processor that will form the basis for Skynet.
Sarah gathers weapons from an old friend and plans to flee with John to Mexico, but after having a nightmare about Judgment Day, she instead sets out to kill Dyson in order to prevent Judgment Day from occurring. Finding him at his home, she wounds him but finds herself unable to kill him in front of his family. John and the Terminator arrive and inform Dyson of the future consequences of his work. They learn that much of his research has been reverse engineered from the damaged CPU and the right arm of the previous Terminator who attacked Sarah back in 1984. Convincing him that these items and his designs must be destroyed, they break into the Cyberdyne building, retrieve the CPU and the arm, and set explosives to destroy Dyson's lab. The police arrive and Dyson is fatally shot, but he rigs an improvised dead man's switch that detonates the explosives when he dies. The T-1000 relentlessly pursues the surviving trio, eventually cornering them in a steel mill. The T-1000 is frozen with liquid nitrogen and shattered, but manages to reform itself.
The T-1000 and the T-800 engage in physical combat and the more advanced model seriously damages and shuts down the T-800. However, unbeknownst to the T-1000, the T-800 brings itself back online using emergency power. The T-1000 nearly kills John and Sarah but the T-800 takes it by surprise and blasts it into a vat of molten steel with a grenade launcher, destroying it. John tosses the arm and CPU of the original Terminator into the vat as well. As Sarah expresses relief that the ordeal is over, the Terminator explains that to ensure that it is not used for reverse engineering it must also be destroyed. It asks Sarah to assist in lowering it into the vat of molten steel, since it is unable to "self-terminate". Although John begs and eventually orders the Terminator to reconsider, it makes the decision to disobey him, bids them farewell and hugs a tearful John before it is lowered into the vat, giving a final thumbs-up as it disappears into the molten steel.
John and Sarah drive down a highway and Sarah says in a voice over, “The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too."
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
John Connor has been living off the grid in Los Angeles following the death of his mother, Sarah Connor. Although a war between humans and Skynet's forces did not occur on August 29, 1997, as foretold, John still fears it. He rejects his fate as humanity's savior and hides from Skynet. Unable to locate John in the past, Skynet sends a Terminatrix called the T-X to 2004, to kill other members of the Human Resistance instead. The Resistance again sends a reprogrammed Terminator (T-850 – Model 101) to protect the T-X's targets, including John and his future wife, Kate Brewster.
After killing several other targets, the T-X locates Kate and John at an animal hospital, where Kate has caught John stealing drugs. They escape with the Terminator's help. The next day, the Terminator takes them to a mausoleum where John's mother is supposedly interred. Inside her vault, they find a weapons cache left at Sarah's request in case Judgment Day occurred. Police arrive and a gun battle ensues. The T-X also chases them, but they escape. The Terminator reveals that John and his mother's actions only delayed Judgment Day, and that its plan is to drive John and Kate to Mexico to escape the fallout when Skynet begins its nuclear attack. John orders the Terminator to take Kate and him to see Kate's father, a U.S. Air Force general who, in the present, is supervising the building of Skynet after Cyberdyne Systems went defunct. John threatens to kill himself if the Terminator refuses. The Terminator calls John's bluff but agrees to take them after Kate orders him to. The Terminator reveals that it killed John on July 4, 2032; Kate sent it back after having him captured and reprogrammed, and she is the only one who can give him orders.
Meanwhile, at a USAF base, General Brewster faces pressure from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to activate Skynet to stop an anomalous computer virus of unknown origin from invading servers worldwide; he is unaware that the virus is actually Skynet establishing control over them. John and Kate arrive too late to stop Skynet from being activated, and its machines begin attacking Brewster's staff. Brewster is mortally wounded by the T-X, which arrived before John, Kate, and the Terminator. Before dying, he gives Kate and John a code book and the location of what John believes is Skynet's system core. John and Kate head for the tarmac to take General Brewster's single-engine plane; their destination is Crystal Peak, a military base built inside the Sierra Nevada. The T-X and the Terminator fight each other. The T-X severely damages the Terminator, then reprograms it to kill John and Kate. The T-X pursues John and Kate through the military base, but it becomes trapped when a particle accelerator is activated and the magnetic field bonds the T-X to the accelerator. The Terminator, unable to control its outer functions but still consciously aware, attacks John and Kate before John convinces it to reject the T-X's control. The Terminator deliberately shuts its corrupted system down, enabling John and Kate to escape. Shortly after they leave, the Terminator's system reboots.
John and Kate reach Crystal Peak and begin entering the access codes to gain entry when the T-X arrives by helicopter. Just as it is about to attack, the rebooted Terminator arrives in a second helicopter and crashes into the T-X, crushing it. The T-X pulls itself from the wreckage and attempts to drag itself inside the bunker to follow John and Kate. The Terminator holds the bunker open long enough for John and Kate to lock themselves inside, then uses one of its hydrogen fuel cells to destroy both itself and the T-X.
John and Kate discover that the facility is not Skynet's core, but rather a nuclear fallout shelter and command facility for government and military officials. Skynet has no core and it has become a part of cyberspace after becoming self-aware. Judgment Day begins as Skynet fires nuclear missiles across the world, starting a nuclear holocaust that kills billions. John and Kate begin receiving radio transmissions on the emergency equipment; John tentatively assumes command by answering radio calls, and they reluctantly accept their fate.
Terminator 4: Salvation
In 2003, Dr. Serena Kogan of Cyberdyne Systems convinces death row inmate Marcus Wright to sign over his body for medical research following his execution. One year later, the automated Skynet system is activated and becomes self-aware; perceiving humans as a threat to its existence, it starts a nuclear holocaust to eradicate them in the event known as "Judgment Day".
In 2018, John Connor leads an attack on a Skynet base, where he discovers human prisoners and schematics for incorporating living tissue to a new type of Terminator, the T-800. John survives an explosion on the base, which is destroyed. Following John's departure, Marcus emerges from the base's wreckage and begins walking towards Los Angeles.
John returns to the Resistance headquarters located aboard a nuclear submarine and is briefed by General Hugh Ashdown that the Resistance has discovered a hidden signal containing a code protocol which they believe can initiate a shutdown of Skynet's machines. Working on this intelligence, the Resistance plans to launch an offensive against Skynet's headquarters in San Francisco. It is decided among the Resistance that the offensive will commence in four days, due to an intercepted kill-list created by Skynet, which plans to terminate the Resistance's command staff within the same time frame. John learns he is second on this list, following Kyle Reese. The Resistance leaders are unaware of Kyle's importance, but John knows that Kyle will eventually travel back in time and become his father (as seen in the first Terminator movie), and realizes that Skynet has learned of this fact.
Arriving at the ruins of Los Angeles, Marcus encounters Kyle and a mute child named Star during a skirmish with Skynet's machines where Kyle and Star are subsequently abducted and taken prisoner by Skynet. Two Resistance A-10 airplanes are shot down while trying to intercept a machine transport. Marcus locates downed pilot Blair Williams. They then make their way to John's base, where thereafter, Marcus is wounded by a magnetic land mine. Attempting to save his life, the Resistance fighters discover that Marcus is actually a cyborg, with a mechanical endoskeleton and a partially artificial cerebral cortex. Although Marcus believes himself to be human, John and his wife Kate think that Marcus has been sent to execute him and orders him to be killed. Blair helps Marcus escape. During the pursuit, Marcus saves John's life from Skynet's hydrobots and the two make a bargain: Marcus will enter Skynet's headquarters in San Francisco, to help John rescue Kyle and the other prisoners, if he lets him live.
John pleads with General Ashdown to delay the offensive so he can formulate a plan to extract the human captives, but Ashdown refuses and relieves John of his command. However, the Resistance disobeys Ashdown's orders and instead, await John's signal. Marcus enters the base, interfaces with the computer, and disables perimeter defenses so that Connor can infiltrate the cellblock and release human prisoners. Marcus learns from Skynet (which assumes the form of Dr. Kogan on a screen), that he was resurrected and built into a machine to lure John to the base; when the Resistance launches its attack, John will be killed, achieving the goal that Skynet had failed to accomplish in the past. The hidden signal that the Resistance received earlier is revealed to be a ruse, and Skynet uses it to track down and destroy the command submarine with the Resistance leaders aboard.
Marcus tears out the hardware linking him to Skynet and assists John in battling the new T-800 (Model 101) Terminator, while John rigs together nuclear fuel cells identical to the ones that the previous T-800 used to destroy the T-X. Marcus is soon outclassed in strength and temporarily disabled until John comes to his aid, though he is stabbed through the heart by the T-800 from behind. Marcus destroys the T-800 by tearing its head off, and he, John, Kyle and Star are airlifted out, after which John destroys the base, taking thousands of unfinished T-800s with it. At a medical center, as John only barely clings onto life, Marcus offers his own heart for transplantation, sacrificing himself to save John. As he recovers, John radios to other Resistance fighters that, although this battle has been won, the war still continues.
Terminator 5: Genisys
In 2029, Human Resistance leader John Connor launches a final offensive against Skynet, an artificial general intelligence system. Before the Resistance can triumph, Skynet activates a time machine and sends a T-800 (Model 101) Terminator back to May 12, 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 and has visions from his childhood about Sarah Connor.
When it arrives in Los Angeles 1984, Skynet's T-800 is disabled by Sarah and "Pops", a reprogrammed T-800 sent to protect Sarah when she was nine years old. Kyle arrives shortly afterwards, and is intercepted by a T-1000. Sarah and Pops join Kyle and destroy the T-1000 with acid; she and Pops reveal that they have constructed a makeshift time machine similar to Skynet's, and Sarah plans to travel to 1997 (the year Skynet becomes self-aware). Realizing that the timeline has been altered, Kyle is convinced that the future has changed because of the warning he received in his childhood vision and persuades Sarah to travel to 2017 to stop Skynet.
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 an advanced T-3000 Terminator. While Kyle was traveling back in time a T-5000, the physical embodiment of Skynet disguised as a member of the Resistance, attacked John and transformed him into a nanocyte infiltrator. John, tasked with ensuring Cyberdyne Systems' survival, traveled back in time to assist them with the development of Genisys and hence securing Skynet and its machines' rise.
A day before Skynet's worldwide attack, Sarah, Kyle and Pops escape to a safe house and make final preparations to destroy Cyberdyne's Genisys mainframe. They head toward Cyberdyne's headquarters with the T-3000 in close pursuit. During an airborne chase, Pops dive-bombs into the T-3000's helicopter and causes it to crash. The T-3000 survives the crash and enters the Cyberdyne complex, where it advances the countdown from 13 hours to 15 minutes. Kyle, Sarah and Pops plant bombs at key points in the facility while holding off the T-3000.
In a final battle, Pops traps the T-3000 in the magnetic field of a prototypical time machine. Both are destroyed, but just before the explosion, the remains of Pops are flung out of the apparatus into a nearby experimental vat of mimetic polyalloy. Kyle and Sarah reach a bunker beneath the facility and the explosion sets off the bombs, preventing Genisys from coming online. Pops appears, upgraded with mimetic polyalloy components similar to that of the T-1000, and helps them escape from the debris.
The trio travels to Kyle's childhood home, where Kyle tells his younger self about Genisys and instructs him to repeat the warning to himself, securing the trio's arrival from 1984. Sarah and Kyle finally kiss and they along with Pops drive off into the countryside. A mid-credits scene reveals that the system core of Genisys, located in a protected subterranean chamber, has survived the explosion.
Source: Wikipedia