9 Ways To Break Out Of A Time Loop (According To The Movies)

3. Kill Skynet (The Terminator Series)

In The Terminator, an Austrian man-robot named a 'Terminator' (Arnold Schwarzenegger) travels back in time to kill Sarah Connor, barer of the saviour of mankind, from human-slaughtering AI network Skynet. Human resistance fighter Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) travels back to protect her. In Terminator 2, a reprogrammed Terminator travels back again, this time to save Sarah's teenage son John Connor (Edward Furlong) from cyborg-hitman 2.0 the T-1000, also sent by Skynet. Finally, in the awful Terminator 3, an adult John Connor (Nick Stahl) is again visited by the Terminator and tasked with destroying the soon-to-be operational Skynet. The answer here appears to be simple: destroy Skynet and you eliminate the need for anyone to travel back through time to kill and/or protect things, thereby closing the loop. The Terminator loop is more complicated than that, though; for one, there wouldn't even BE a Skynet were it not for the Teutonic droid that travelled back in time in the first film €“ discovery of its leftover arm and CPU by Cyberdyne Systems is what led to Skynet's development in the first place. There's also the problem that Skynet's story alters from film to film €“ it suggests that the time loop seen in the Terminator films isn't in its first cycle and is constantly evolving, but the fact remains: successfully cancel Skynet and it's problem solved.