According to a Google search:

Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released in 1991, but its events take place in 1995, although the film does not directly specify the day or year. A police monitor shown in the film confirms that John Connor was born Feb. 28, 1985, which makes him 10 years old in the film.

I never knew that. As mentioned above, no date is given in the film so I assumed it was set in the year of its release: 1991. I guess John Connor would be six years old in 1991 and he looks older in T2! Yeah, never thought of that before! Ah, these pesky details.

It's a deal!

DUDE SAYS "FEMALE" LIKE ITS THE F WORD.

Female - a woman, opposite gender to men.

That's all I meant. I think you're reading too much into it. No big meaning to what I wrote. My point was it looks as if the writers/producers have gone with a woman type John Connor character to appeal to the female audience. Disney did that with Rey in the new Star Wars trilogy and this looks the same tactic.

Internet hearsay is that John Connor is dead in this new timeline. Dunno if it's true or not. You can logic your way to that conclusion, though, if you assume that Old Arnold is one of the two T-800 models. You could assume that in this timeline, the "friendly" T-800 failed to save John Connor. Why else would Sarah be fighting for this new, female protagonist, as though she were the new "savior of humanity?" If JC were alive, she'd never leave his side. (I edited this to take out the possibility that the original T-800 is involved because, clearly, Sarah was his target and not John and she's clearly alive.)

Possible Scenario? Arnold has already dropped hints that he's reprising his T-800 in a new way, and again with a HELL of a lot of speculation, you can assume that this was the "good" T-800, programmed to save John Connor. According to some sites I've found, they're using an actor named Jude Collie, who looks very close to young Edward Furlong, for a flashback sequence in the movie. Why would they film a flashback to Connor at the time of T2 if they didn't plan on killing him off to serve this new timeline? As for the T-800, he has absolutely no loyalty to (or interest in) other human beings or in the new "savior of humanity." The only reason he didn't kill anyone in T2 was that he was commanded not to by JC, who was the only person that had that power. Sarah would have to find a way to convince the new Arnie that supporting her still served that mission. He's aged because the flesh over the endoskeleton is mortal. The T-800 core can't age, but the flesh on top can still waste away; it's actual human tissue. Bet he'll look downright gnarly when he hits 150 or so.

Idk. Trailer left me cold. Not interested at all in the all-female cast, save Hamilton. I can already predict that the female John Connor will be useless for 90% of the film, and then break out as the "new Sarah Connor" at the end. I hate admitting that I see it as a huge PC move by both Cameron -- accused of being misogynistic -- and the Hollywood male corps, deathly afraid of how they're perceived by the "Me-Too" movement. I love female action heroes like Sigourney Weaver, Hamilton, and Jodie Foster. They've been terrific. But when it feels like naked pandering, it's a huge turn-off. (And the idea of a human/cyborg outcast "more human than human" hybrid is such an old trope my eyes reflexively rolled back in my head.)

Tangent aside, my gut says John Connor is dead in this timeline and that we're expected to fall in line behind the new Latinx crew because we're all bigoted woman-haters if we don't.

@AlienFanatic Interesting theory. Makes sense, given what little we know. I won't like it, if that's the direction they go, but can you blame them? The role of John Connor is cursed - no actor has ever played the roll more than once, in all these films. From a producer's standpoint, it would be prudent to move on from the character in whatever way possible.

The franchise should be left to die, but the horse will continue to be beat until long after it is dead.

If they have killed off John Connor I think that's a foolish mistake and undemines the previous two movies. If John has died before the war then that makes a time paradox. The start of T2 - where we see the future - is wiped from the timeline. There is no resistance led by Connor, no need for the T-1000 and the second T-800 to go back in time to 1995 because John Connor has died a decade or so after?

It depends if you believe in the one or two timeline theory of time travel.

One theory is if you change the past the future is changed. It's the same timeline but altered.

Timeline ---------------------------------------split-< same Timeline with change to future-----------------------------

The other theory is if you change the past the timeline splits. One goes on as it was meant to be, the other timeline splits because of the change in the past.

Timeline --Split-< Original Timeline (no change to future) --------------------------

Timeline --Split-< New Timeline 2 (change to future) -----------------------------

If Connor never became an adult and never led the war it means T1 and T2 never happened. It's a classic time paradox! You could argue John Connor did live long enough to lead the resistance. In one timeline that happened. However... in another altered timelime he didn't. It's paradoxical with no logical explanation. It's going to be interesting to see how they deal with this issue in Dark Fate.

@AlienFanatic said: According to some sites I've found, they're using an actor named Jude Collie, who looks very close to young Edward Furlong, for a flashback sequence in the movie. Why would they film a flashback to Connor at the time of T2 if they didn't plan on killing him off to serve this new timeline.

https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3502421/photo-shows-return-young-john-connor-terminator-will-take-us-back-90s/

I'd rather Connor were alive to preserve the continuity (see my previous posts on this thread!) but I suppose it makes sense for Cameron and the other writers to move on from John Connor. We've seen Terminator vs John Connor before, (that's the plot of T2) it would feel too much of a rehash to do it again in Dark Fate. Killing off John Connor would be quite a daring thing to do. Going the unpredictable route is better than playing it safe, I guess. I hope he is alive but we'll have to wait and see!

WHEN I WATCH SAID FILM I WILL FIND OUT THE ANSWER TO THE JOHN CONNOR QUESTION.UNTIL THEN...POSITIVE THOUGHTS AND REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS.

They already had major plot holes in the first two films, and I love & own them!! Now they are just messing everything up with Genisys and this one seems like a mess already. It's time travel, none of it will make logical sense in the end. Destroying the main plot of a popular franchise or totally altering a character in a nonsensical way just seems to be the norm in this current era though (See Star Wars: Episode VIII).

I READ THAT TWICE..ARE YOU AWARE YOU ARE ARGUING AGAINST YOURSELF THERE?

So I've been reading a bit about this film (not particularly tempted into a cinema trip) and my question is this:-

Is John Connor getting bumped off in this a paradox? The end of T2 closed off the timeloop, Skynet was defeated, the future was open... However I understand that somehow a T-800 manages to come back in this one from a now (post T2) deleted timeline. How so?

... And if John Connor was bumped off, shouldn't Skynet's future survival now be assured? So how can they have this alternate Skynet?

@The Midi-chlorian Count said:

So I've been reading a bit about this film (not particularly tempted into a cinema trip) and my question is this:-

Is John Connor getting bumped off in this a paradox? The end of T2 closed off the timeloop, Skynet was defeated, the future was open... However I understand that somehow a T-800 manages to come back in this one from a now (post T2) deleted timeline. How so?

... And if John Connor was bumped off, shouldn't Skynet's future survival now be assured? So how can they have this alternate Skynet?

The story in Dark Fate makes little sense. I'm assuming you don't care about spoilers, based on the discussion in this thread, but SPOILER ALERT regardless.

The whole idea of time travel precludes a neat and tidy story, but if we're going to go down that rabbit hole, then we may as well have fun doing it.

Dark Fate kills off John at the beginning via an Arnie-style T-800. If Skynet kills John, that means he was never a threat to them in the future, meaning they never needed to counteract him by sending a terminator back to kill either Sarah or John in the first two movies. But if we overlook that, then Skynet killing John means they can arise un-molested. However, Dark Fate gets this wrong, as well, because they replace Skynet with 'Legion,' which seems to indicate that Skynet was, in fact, stopped. How does this make any sense? If Skynet didn't exist anymore in the Dark Fate timeline, then how and why did they send a T-800 to kill John, as we see in the opening to the film? Unless that was supposed to be a T-800 from Legion? In which case, that's incredibly weak storytelling, expecting a totally different entity called Legion to develop an identical machine to the Arnie-style T-800 and have the same tactic as Skynet, but just have it work out for them, because 'they're not Skynet, they're Legion.' Again, very weak storytelling.

All of that is to say nothing about the absurdity of the entire premise of Dark Fate. If killing off the saviour of humanity - John Connor - merely causes a new saviour to arise (fate vs 'there is no fate but what we make' argument from T1 and T2) then that means that the whole franchise is bullshit, because even if the terminator from T1 had killed Sarah, a new hero would have arisen. Or if the terminator from T2 had killed John, somebody else would have come along at that time. But now that they've killed John after T2 ended, a new hero comes along now. How does any of this make for a sensible plot? Why would the machines be doing this, if every time they are successful (which doesn't seem to be often) then fate or destiny just negates their victory? A machine wouldn't bother with this, given these rules.

The first movie had it's own issues - again this is because time travel cannot make sense in a story - but it was a fun action-horror that was well-made for little money. Then, T2 retconned some of the story from T1, but people let that slide because it was also a well-made and fun movie. However, suspension of disbelief can only go so far, and movies such as Salvation, Genisys, and Dark Fate are asking the audience to suspend too much disbelief. That's why Dark Fate is a bad movie.

On its own, Dark Fate could maybe work as a mediocre sci-fi movie. But as a Terminator franchise flick, it just doesn't work.

Spoilers:

@Ellison Havelock said:

Dark Fate kills off John at the beginning via an Arnie-style T-800. If Skynet kills John, that means he was never a threat to them in the future, meaning they never needed to counteract him by sending a terminator back to kill either Sarah or John in the first two movies. But if we overlook that, then Skynet killing John means they can arise un-molested. However, Dark Fate gets this wrong, as well, because they replace Skynet with 'Legion,' which seems to indicate that Skynet was, in fact, stopped. How does this make any sense? If Skynet didn't exist anymore in the Dark Fate timeline, then how and why did they send a T-800 to kill John, as we see in the opening to the film? Unless that was supposed to be a T-800 from Legion? In which case, that's incredibly weak storytelling, expecting a totally different entity called Legion to develop an identical machine to the Arnie-style T-800 and have the same tactic as Skynet, but just have it work out for them, because 'they're not Skynet, they're Legion.' Again, very weak storytelling.

The other T-800s (yeah there were multiple according to Sarah Connor) was sent while Skynet was still around along with the other terminators in T1 and T2. When they killed off Skynet in T2 and created the Dark Fate timeline, the terminators already sent still existed in the timelines though Skynet no longer existed in the future. They do gloss over an explanation of this during the movie.

Nice posts there chaps 👍

I really don't like that additional Terminators sent back by Skynet plot they seem to have used. Yeah T2 retconned the initial somewhat but using the chip from Terminator as part of Skynet's creation was a nice plot point and it's conclusion closed off the timeloop encompassing the two films. Fin.

But saying several were sent back and at different times more or less renders the events and drama of the previous films meaningless. No matter what you do another Terminator can just show up and take you out, no warning!

Also a good point about just replacing the saviour (and the Skynet Legion replacement) - also makes all the films pointless. No matter who you kill another saviour will pop up, no matter what you destroy another AI will send killer robots back in time 😂 Absolute joke...