To reiterate,
The story told in Terminator 1 is completely logical and follows the rules of time travel that nearly all physicists believe to be the correct ones. This is the causality chart:
Sarah gives birth to John -> John becomes leader of resistance -> John sends Kyle back through time -> Kyle has sex with Sarah -> Sarah gives birth to John.
The logic is 100% circular, as it should be. Time travel logic is supposed to be circular. A->B->C->D->A. The technical term for this is "closed timelike curve". A circle, as in circular logic, is a closed curve.
Terminator 1, Interstellar, get this right. Terminator 2, Back to the Future 2, Days of Future Past get this wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve
No, they don't. See above.
actually, in the very end, it does fall apart, because there is a final point that cannot be explained away even in the events of Terminator 1.
There HAS to have been an 'original' timeline > before actual timetravel.
In this '
original' timeline, this is probably somewhat how it must have happened;
Sarah Connor lives in 1984 and at some point after that,
gets pregnant with John Connor.
This John Connor can NOT have come from Kyle Reese; Kyle Reese is not even born yet.
Nor is Skynet. Nothing yet. It's just, 1984, as it is. A normal mom, with a normal child.
13 years later, in 1997, Skynet becomes self-aware and starts a war vs mankind. John is around 13 years old then. John somehow becomes leader of the resistance.
He does this,
originally,
without the knowledge his mother had of the machines as they only came into play as of 1997.
at some point before 2029, John Connor leads the resistance. The machines construct a time-travelling machine in order to send a Terminator to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor.
At this stage in time -
before the time travel occurs - Kyle Reese is a member of the resistance, under John Connor, and volounteers to travel in time to protect Sarah Connor from the Terminator.
This
original John Connor knows very well that Kyle Reese is obviously not his father - he can't be. He doesn't know whom his real father is,
since Sarah Connor had a good b*ng with a total stranger and she was knocked up first shot.
He trusts Kyle Reese, a member of the resistance, whom is NOT his father, to be capable of protecting his mother, a woman who Kyle Reese never met, and only gets handed a picture of her.
The facts in this
original timeline must be this;
- John Connor's father
originally was
NOT Kyle Reese.
- Sarah Connor lived a normal life untill 1997 (Judgement Day)
- There never was a Terminator present in 1984
This
must have happened in time, as Skynet invented the time travelling machine. Time travel can not have happened before it's invention.
Thus there can never have been a Terminator before it's sending device was invented and constructed somewhere in 2029.
So then the
original timeline gets 'ended' in 2029.
Or, better said, time gets changed in 1984, essentially, and if you go deep, it means that everything past that moment never yet has happened so anything happening then becomes canon.
Even though it's an 'alternate' timeline, it becomes the real/canonical timeline.
In this
alternate timeline, but the real 1984, The Terminator arrives to kill Sarah Connor, and kyle reese arrives in order to protect her.
So then Sarah Connor is protected by Kyle Reese, they manage to prevent the Terminator to kill her, and destroy the thing.
Kyle Reese in the events gets a crush / b*ner on Sarah Connor and Sarah Connor gets the hots for this 'savior' and at some point they 'get it on' and Kyle gets Sarah Connor pregnant.
That means, that
this John Connor is a different one than the original one.
To put it a bit clearer, original John Connor might have been, for example, John
Marshall:
In the
original 1984, there was no Kyle Reese, no running from a terminator. She goes out, or meets a stranger - let's call him Mr. Marshall, and after some humping occurs, becomes pregnant.
Instead, thanks to the arrival of the Terminator and Kyle Reese, the running and screaming cause Sarah NOT to ever meet mr. Marshall, and thus not have a good darn b*ng with mr. Marshall, and thus
Sarah never gets pregnant from mr. Marshall, so then in a way, Skynet actually succeeds, and prevents the
REAL John Connor (John
Marshall) from getting born.
Sarah Connor instead - being the sexy horny-*ss 80's bombshell she is - humps Kyle Reese, so then the child that she gives birth to later, and calls
John Connor, really is John Reese.
He's named after his mother though, so It is John Connor - but it's NOT the
original John Connor of the
original timeline resistance.
The John Connor that sends Kyle Reese back in 2029 is not the same John Connor that gets born in 1984/1985.
The original John Connor was John "Marshall", whom sends Kyle Reese back in time.
The alternate timeline John Connor is John "Reese", whom sends Kyle Reese - not knowing he is his father - to protect his mother.
John Reese - named John Connor -ultimately becomes a resistance leader, just like the original John Marshall was.
But John Marshall never gets born, as Sarah Connor is pregnant thanks to Kyle Reese.
Sarah teaches John Reese everything that Kyle Reese told her about John 'Marshall'.
Essentially,
John Reese is forced to become the resistance leader that John Marshall 'was' in the original timeline.
This 'second' timeline, this 'alternate' timeline, is the one that can become the never-ending circle, and this makes the movie so good and great.
It is however, NOT the original timeline. that one was erased.
This one is a looper.
Sarah Connor, nor John Connor know about the original timeline, and 'John Marshall' never existed.
) but it is a loop. The entire structure of the first film is based on that very premise, that it already happened and it will happen again.
haha