8 Movie Heroes You Didn’t Realise Were Actually The Sidekicks
6. Terminator 3 – The Terminator Is The Sidekick To John Connor
The Terminator was back once again for Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. But rather than coming up with a fresh plot the writers popped Terminator 2: Judgment Day in the microwave to reheat it, and replaced the T-1000 with a foxy female terminator. The main focus of T3’s story is John Connor facing up to his destiny. He can’t run from it anymore, and he has to decide if he’s man enough to save mankind from extinction.
This time around Arnie's Terminator, instead of functioning as a hero or villain, is really just Connor’s bodyguard. He does most of the work when it comes to the action, but his role is to keep Connor safe, provide comic relief and dump exposition when necessary. He doesn’t even get an arc like the machine in Terminator 2, who learned to understand human emotion by spending time with them. Here John learns to become a soldier, while The Terminator learns how to make bad jokes.
And it seems this role will extend to the forthcoming Terminator: Genisys, where an older version of the T-800 will be acting as a sidekick and surrogate father to Sarah Connor.