5. Give Us More Of Skynet?
Who is the villain is The Terminator series? Arnold Schwarzenegger? The liquid metal guy who can look like people? That hot chick in the red leather? No, it is and always was Skynet. All of the time travelling stalking machines are merely drones on a mission for Skynet. So who and what exactly is Skynet? We know from the first film that its an artificial intelligence that becomes self aware, and that for some reason it saw the human race as a threat that must be destroyed. We can assume Skynet saw humans as a threat against its own existence, but its never really been explained why. Upon it becoming self aware in Rise of the Machines it instantly launched an attack on the world. This was without there being any build up of it making decisions that the humans tried to stop or the human race trying to stop it doing anything. Realistically Skynet was just a faulty piece of kit as it was never provoked by the human race before it decided to destroy it. The first two films only featured mentions of Skynet with the third film showing its activation. Terminator Salvation was a film set in the war against the machines, and so gave us the greatest vision of what Skynet is and had created. Despite this, we only really got one scene where we see any version of what Skynet actually is when a version of it depicted on screen by Helena Bonham Carter. The big face on a screen approach was fine, as was choosing the skilled Helena to play it, but the dialogue was firmly placed in the situation of the moment Skynet wants to kill John Connor. We already knew this. Thats what they always want. This was the first time we had a fully formed representation of Skynet on screen and instead of some insight of what its overall purpose and aim is, we just got the same old thing weve always had from it. If there is one thing Terminator 5 should feature it is indeed time for the man behind the curtain to step out and reveal its true self and true intentions.