Terminator (1984-2015)

The central theme of the franchise is the battle for survival between the nearly-extinct human race and the world-spanning synthetic intelligence that is Skynet. Skynet is positioned in the first film as a U.S. strategic “Global Digital Defense Network” computer system by Cyberdyne Systems which becomes self-aware. Upon activation, it immediately perceives all humans as a “security threat”, and formulates a plan to systematically wipe out humanity itself. The system initiates a nuclear first strike against Russia, thereby ensuring a devastating second strike and a nuclear holocaust which it anticipates will instantly wipe out much of humanity. Indeed, it does, with approximately 3 billion casualties – more than half of the total human population at the time – in the resulting nuclear war. In the post-apocalyptic aftermath, Skynet later builds up its own autonomous machine-based military capability which includes the Terminators used against individual human targets and, therefore, proceeds to wage a persistent total war against the surviving elements of humanity, some of whom have militarily organized themselves into a Resistance. At some point in this future, Skynet develops the ability of time travel, and both it and the Resistance seek to use this technology in order to win the war; either by altering or accelerating past events in Skynet’s favour, or by preventing or forestalling the (present) apocalyptic timeline.