John Connor
fictional character in the Terminator franchise
John Connor is a fictional character and the male protagonist of the Terminator franchise. Created by writer/director James Cameron, the character is first referred to in the 1984 film The Terminator and first appears in its 1991 sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day (T2). In the character's first appearance, John is portrayed by Edward Furlong as a child, and briefly by Michael Edwards as an adult in a small role. Other actors have portrayed the character in subsequent films, including Nick Stahl, Christian Bale, and Jason Clarke. In addition, Thomas Dekker portrayed John Connor in the two-season television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
The character serves as a protagonist in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), and Terminator Salvation (2009), the antagonist of the film Terminator Genisys (2015), and has a brief cameo in Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).
Creation
In a 2021 interview, James Cameron said that the song "Russians" by Sting inspired him to create John Connor: "I remember sitting there once, high on E, writing notes for Terminator, and I was struck by Sting’s song, that "I hope the Russians love their children too." And I thought, "You know what? The idea of a nuclear war is just so antithetical to life itself." That’s where the kid came from."
Terminator film series
In the fictional universe's narrative, John Connor is a messianic figure (born on February 28, 1985) who will lead the Resistance to defeat an empire of robotic Terminators amassed by the rogue military AI Skynet following a cybernetic revolt doomsday event known as Judgment Day. When his mother, Sarah Connor, is the target of a time traveling Terminator unit (Model 101) in the first film, John sends resistance fighter Kyle Reese (depicted in certain continuities as his adoptive son) to protect Sarah, knowing Kyle and Sarah would later conceive him. With foreknowledge from his parents, John fends off Terminator assassination attempts in the second and third films before Judgment Day.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Connor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.