The Terminator Movies: 5 Things That Still Make No Sense About John Connor
The Terminator franchise has many great qualities, but not every part of its story makes sense. The franchise establishes very early that John Connor plays a pivotal role in humanity’s war against the machines, and their attempt to kill him before he can become a threat to them is what effectively kicks off the entire narrative. This means that the entire Terminator film franchise relies heavily on the character for its story to function, as so many crucial plot points hinge on the actions and destiny of his character. While John Connor doesn’t always feature as heavily as one might expect, he’s undeniably the most important human character in the Terminator franchise’s story.
There are many things about John Connor that don’t really add up. Much like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800, there are numerous plot holes and head-scratchers that focus specifically on John Connor and his role within the franchise. For a man destined to become humanity’s most important and inspiring leader, John Connor’s story really isn’t handled all that well by the Terminator franchise, as in many ways, it makes no sense at all.
5) John Connor Really Isn’t That Special
The whole reason for Skynet sending Terminators into the past is to prevent John Connor from being born — or, later, to kill him before he can become the leader of the human resistance — but that fact never quite sits right. It’s established that John is destined to become the savior of humanity and lead his fellow humans in the war against the machines, but exactly what makes him so special is relatively unclear. It might not quite be a Terminator plot hole, but it still doesn’t make a lot of sense.
One of the most obvious ways this makes no sense is that even without John Connor, humanity will resist Skynet’s oppression. Should a Terminator succeed in eliminating him, another human will simply take his place as humanity’s leader, and they could even prove more formidable than Connor. Assuming changes to the past have an impact on the machines’ future, the countless unknowable variables involved in killing Connor effectively outweigh any possible positives of eliminating him. It seems an act of frustration by the machines rather than a sign that Connor is effectively unbeatable in their present, which just doesn’t add up.
4) His Inconsistent Characterization
Many consider the Terminator movies a sci-fi franchise that should have quit while it was ahead, and it’s hard to disagree when considering the inconsistent quality of its releases. Perhaps the worst-handled element of the entire franchise is John Connor, as despite being its most important character, he is rarely depicted with anything remotely close to consistency. Throughout his many appearances, the different versions of John Connor all seem like distinctly different characters.
Sometimes, John Connor is intelligent but arrogant, and other times he’s simply terrified and wilfully ignorant. He has been shown as an exceptional military tactician and hardened soldier, but also as an ineffective, selfish coward. The only way this sort of makes sense is the notion that Skynet’s constant meddling with the past repeatedly changes John Connor’s character, but even this falls apart when considering the ways it should — and doesn’t — impact the story, effectively disproving it. For such a crucial character, it’s odd that the Terminator franchise doesn’t know how to handle John Connor with any form of consistency.
3) He Didn’t Protect His Own Father
There are some things that Terminator Salvation got right, but there are also things it got very wrong. In addition, there are also elements of its story that don’t make much sense at all, particularly where Kyle Reese is concerned. In the movie, Reese is played by Anton Yelchin, and while he’s unaware that he is John Connor’s father, Connor himself knows that he will need to send Reese back in time in order for him to be conceived. The worst part is that the above isn’t even the bit of this story that doesn’t make sense.
Considering John Connor knows that Kyle Reese is his father, it seems odd that he would have allowed him out onto the front lines at all, effectively risking his own existence. Reese is abducted by Skynet after it learns he will become Connor’s father, which only proves what a strange choice it was for the older Connor to put his young father in harm’s way. While that perhaps oversimplifies the situation, it’s still hard to understand the logic behind Connor’s nonchalant treatment of the man who will one day become his father.
2) The Machines Never Really Needed To Target John Connor
As with many time travel movies, establishing the ins and outs of The Terminator‘s timeline is far more complex than it seems. The many sequels that flesh the franchise out only compound these issues, as they see more and more revisions made to the timeline that only serve to further complicate proceedings. One of the biggest logical flaws in the entire franchise, however, is that the machines never should have bothered targeting John Connor at all.
Basic logic shows that the machines targeting Sarah Connor is ultimately what turns John Connor into the incredible Terminator-fighting soldier he grows to be. Had the machines simply ignored Sarah and her unborn son, he likely wouldn’t have grown to be anywhere near as dangerous to them. This seems especially obvious after Terminator 3 establishes that Judgment Day cannot be prevented, hinting that certain parts of the timeline are inevitable. The decision to target Connor in the past is both incredibly risky and deeply illogical, meaning it makes very little sense considering it was made by machines incapable of emotion.
1) His Existence Should Have Been Erased
As well as delivering some of the best action scenes in the Terminator franchise, Terminator 2: Judgment Day also served up some of the biggest John Connor plot holes. The movie’s ending sees Judgment Day averted (at least, temporarily), but that itself creates a pretty huge narrative problem. Without Judgment Day, the entire future timeline is erased, which includes the events that led to Kyle Reese returning to the past and fathering John in the first place.
The subsequent retcon that Judgment Day is unavoidable goes some way toward fixing the plot hole, but it still doesn’t make a lot of sense. In fact, it makes it seem as though Judgment Day is only inevitable because without it, John Connor wouldn’t exist, which itself creates far more questions than it answers. By all sci-fi logic, the moment Judgment Day is averted, John Connor should have blinked out of existence à la Back to the Future, but instead, he’s given a seemingly happy ending that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
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