All the Sarah Connors in town are being executed in the order they appear in the telephone directory. Thankfully, our hero is number three in the list and so realizes what is going on.

The Terminator (Arnold Schwartzenneger) hunts her down but fails to get her. The Terminator comes from the future, as does another, human, time traveler and good guy who befriends Sarah and then fathers a child with her. The Terminator is eventually killed after moments of animatronic/ stop-frame animation mayhem.

Two

Sarah is now in an asylum after giving birth to a son, John. Arnold Schwartzenegger plays the Terminator again, but this time he is the good guy - his opponent in this movie is a super advanced Terminator whose task now is to kill John Connor, who in the future becomes the leader of the rebellion.

This time the special effects are more expensive, including moments of liquid metal rebuilding which were impressive in their day.

Both Terminators get destroyed in the end, and the guy who invented the Terminator technology destroys his work (and so they should have disappeared there and then, if Back to the Future time paradox theory was correct).

"I would still like to see Arnold Schwartzennegger sing."

"I still say the Rock could take him."

"Whilst murders pepper this movie, it does not detract from the almost cerebral consequentialness of the underlying metaphor."