[More at Atticus Finch, via Reddit]

Sam Neill as Dr Grant, in Jurassic Park
Sean Bean and Viggo Mortensen in Lord of the Rings

Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho

Gerard Butler as Leonides in 300

Lawrence Fishburne as Morpheus in The Matrix

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead

The Harry Potter trio

Arnie in T2.

Looking at these storyboards, we wish we could go back in time and give Terminator Salvation's entire budget to James Cameron, circa 1991, so he could film these intense post-apocalyptic battle sequences. There's also an extra Sarah Connor nightmare, which includes Arnold Schwarzenegger menacing her son, and a fiery nuclear holocaust. And you glimpse concept art for the Terminator's cryogenic "hybermatrix."

These storyboards come from 1991's Terminator 2: The Book Of The Film, which includes the entire movie's original script illustrated by stills — or, in the case of these unfilmed scenes, by storyboards and art. It's out of print, but you can get a used copy on Amazon. Many thanks to David J. Williams for mailing us his copy!

The deleted Future War sequence, page 1

The deleted Future War sequence, page 2

The deleted Future War sequence, page 3

The deleted Future War sequence, page 4

The deleted Future War sequence, page 5

The deleted Future War sequence, page 6

The deleted Future War sequence, page 7

The deleted Future War sequence, page 8

A deleted scene involving the T-1000.

Some concept art/storyboards for the peaceful future coda showing an older Sarah Connor.

The Terminator ensconced.

Another stunt sequence involving the T-1000 which didn't get filmed.

Sarah Connor's nightmare, page 1

Sarah Connor's nightmare, page 2

Sarah Connor's nightmare, page 3

Sarah Connor's nightmare, page 4

The Terminator in his "Hybermatrix."

Too bad War Of The Worlds goes downhill a bit after that amazingly portentous opening. No movie could live up to the promise of Morgan Freeman reading H.G. Wells, more or less verbatim, but it's still a sad thing.

The greatest voiceovers tell you what kind of movie you're in for, and also give you the information you need to hit the ground running. Take Sean Connery's iconic voiceover from Highlander, which is so awesome, you need it written out for you to appreciate its greatness:

Sadly, most voiceovers that launch movies either try to pack in way, way too much backstory ("And then there was a man named 92ZorkX, who built a mega-cube in his pants") or go way, way overboard with the cheese. Here are 48 more voiceovers that mostly go way over the top, sorted by type:

In The Year 2727, Some Messed Up Shit Happened!

Perhaps my favorite kind of opening voiceover is the kind where the narrator starts out by intoning, "In the year 2027, we realized we had gone out of the house without any lower garments, and the Earth was reduced to rubble as a result. The survivors lived in caves, eating scraps of jerky. Until one day, a new hope appeared." Here are ten of the most awesome voiceovers that begin with a date and end with a sad recitation.

Anything Sounds Cool If You Say It In A Creamy English Accent

It's really true. You can narrate anything in a smooth English accent, and it sounds awesome. It's like spreading brie all over your frontal cortex, eliminating all of your B.S.-detectors. Someone with an English accent is saying it, so it must be brilliant. Right?

What The Hell Are You Talking About, Crazy Announcer Guy?

You know a science fiction movie is going to be totally absurd when it starts off with a voiceover that just throws a giant ball of crazy at your head. Someone who is trying not to giggle gives a little speech about how there was a guy named Zaark 795, and he rose up against his brother, the Bishop of Pluto, because they both wanted the power of the Dodecahedron-o-gram. Yeah. Anyway, here are the nonsensical opening voiceovers that make us happy to be alive.

You Can't Have An Apocalypse Without A Gloomy Speech

It's just the law of apocalypses: You can't feature the destruction of all (or most) life on Earth, without throwing in a gloomy monologue explaining exactly how we blew it all to hell. It's the way things work around here. Typically, these monologues include scenes of devastation as well as a droning voice talking about viruses or bombs or people not washing their hands. Here are some of the greatest.

Science Fiction Movies That Start With Deep Personal Monologues

Some science fiction movies start out with a more personal touch — one character giving an internal monologue about their feelings. Either it's a character being introspective, or it's some kind of noir deal, where the person talks about their pain in a hardcore, tough-guy way. Here are some of our faves.

Voiceovers That Turn Into Conversations, And Weird Voiceover Spoofs

This is sort of a catch-all for two categories that didn't quite deserve their own pages: monologues that start out as a voiceover, and then turn into someone talking to the camera; and voiceovers that are just sort of demented, silly or satirical. They're both a bit different from your standard science fiction voiceover, in any case.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day:

Sarah Connor herself decides to explain the first movie, and the background of the second movie to us, while robots slaughter people and her scarred son scowls at us. (That glimpse of Future John packs more punch than five hours of Bale, incidentally.)

Robot Jox:

An all-time classic movie, this Joe Haldeman/Stuart Gordon joint starts out with a gruff voiceover packing everything we need to know about robotic single combat into one speech. With rubble.

Slipstream:

This opening monologue from Steve Lisberger's followup to Tron almost belongs in the "what the hell are you talking about" category. What the Hell? Earthquakes, okay. And then they "merged civilizations together?" But then there's a wind that ate everything. And someone is traveling it. Wha?

2019: After The Fall Of New York:

This one wins extra points for having the synthesizery blues score, and the guy in the trenchcoat pretending that the synthesizer is actually his trumpet. Twenty years after the bombs fell, New York is still a shithole. Sorry.

Doomsday:

This actually isn't the entire opening voiceover of this film, because it continues after about five minutes of people being shot by riot cops. Scotland gets turned into a scabby plague sore, and those sensible Brits wall it off. Which works out perfectly, of course.

Judge Dredd:

Can I just say, I love it when a voiceover comes with a text crawl, in case you need to follow along at home? Most movies do one or the other, but only a truly great movie has a text crawl and a voiceover. The U.S. has gone to mega-shit with Megacities, and a new breed of law enforcer rises up.

City Of Ember:

The movie's entire backstory is compressed into a couple of minutes. Global disaster, underground city, box of instructions... box gets lost. Oh noes.

The Road Warrior:

Thanks to John Hazard for finding this online. Still the greatest post-apocalyptic movie opening of all time.

1) The original (?) timeline: Sarah Connor conceives John Connor with some random guy. (All we hear about him is that "He dies, even before the war." Presumably it's not Kyle Reese, since time-travel always seems to create an alternate timeline.) John Connor's resistance is on the verge of defeating Skynet in 2029. (Reese says, "The defensive grid was smashed. We'd taken the mainframes. We'd won. Taking out Connor then would make no difference. Skynet had to wipe out his entire existence." Date of Judgment Day: August 29, 1997.

2) A T-800 and Kyle Reese both travel back in time from 2029. Kyle Reese fathers John Connor. Date of Judgment Day: still August 29, 1997.

3) A "scrubbed" T-800 and an "experimental prototype" T-1000 travel back from 2029 to 1995. Sarah Connor destroys Cyberdyne systems and apparently stops Skynet. (In a deleted scene from Terminator 2, we see that Sarah lived to an old age and John became a Senator.) But we learn in Terminator 3 that Judgment Day was only delayed, until July 24, 2004. According to T3, Sarah Connor dies of cancer in 1997. John Connor dies in 2032, at the hands of another T-800.

4) The T-800 which killed John Connor is "scrubbed" and sent back in time to protect him, and a T-X is sent back to kill him and his future lieutenants. What changes as a result of this time travel is unclear: the T-800 ensures John Connor and Kate Brewster survive Judgment Day, but they were presumably going to survive it anyway. John Connor now knows that this T-800 will kill him in 2032, meaning it probably won't. And the younger John Connor has now encountered a T-X. This timeline leads into Terminator Salvation.

5) Sarah Connor doesn't die of cancer in 1997. Instead, she's still alive in 1999, when a T-888 (Cromartie) comes back to kill John, and another one (Cameron) comes back to protect him. The Terminator known as Cameron jumps the Connors forward in time to 2007, and Cameron informs Sarah she would have died of cancer in 2005. Judgment Day: unknown, but later than 2010, because the Terminator known as Myron Stark is sent to kill the governor of California in 2010.

6) Derek Reese, brother of Kyle, travels back in time with a whole squad of resistance fighters. They seem to make a number of changes in the timeline, but most notably Derek kills Andy Goode, creator of an A.I. that might become Skynet. From the glimpses of Derek's version of 2029, Skynet may no longer be on the "verge of defeat" as it was in the original timeline. Judgment Day is now April 21, 2011.

7) Various other Terminators travel back in time, including Carter, who guards a warehouse full of coltan, Vick, who marries an L.A. city planner, and Myron Stark, who travels back to the 1920s by mistake. There's no telling what changes to the timeline these Terminators, in particular, make.

8) A T-1001 travels back in time to around 2005, and kills Catherine Weaver, the CEO of Zeira Corp, and her husband. It then impersonates Catherine Weaver. What changes does she make to the timeline? It's not entirely clear yet. She buys Andy Goode's A.I., "The Turk," preventing it from falling into the hands of the Connors. She saves a nuclear power plant that's crucial to Skynet's future operations, and later she destroys an entire factory that's creating prototype Hunter-Killers. She seems to be nurturing the "Turk" into becoming a more compassionate version of Skynet, but her real agenda remains unclear. Judgment Day: unknown.

9) Jesse Flores and Riley Dawson travel back from the future (possibly later than 2029.) The future Jesse comes from is much darker than the one Derek comes from, perhaps as a result of either Derek's actions, or Cameron's. We know that Jesse's future is - at least partly - one Derek helped to create, because Jesse doesn't know "Billy Wisher," aka Andy Goode, the guy whom Derek killed in 2007. In Jesse's timeline, John Connor's resistance is heavily dependent on scrubbed Terminators, to the point where there's "metal everywhere these days. Connor's got one in every major base." Sometimes the scrubbed Terminators go wrong and kill people. And the Terminators seem to be running Connor's war effort to a large extent, keeping secrets from Connor's human lieutenants. Skynet's human agents (like Charles Fisher) commonly torture humans, like Derek Reese. And there seems to be another "faction" of Terminators, which aren't on Skynet's side but also aren't on the humans'. Jesse won't say when her Judgment Day happens, but it's implied to be sooner than April 2011, because Jesse is certain it can't be prevented.

10) In Terminator Salvation, it's 2018, and somehow Skynet is already developing the T-800, which isn't supposed to exist until 2029. And in the trailer, John Connor says "This is not the future my mother warned me about. Something has changed") According to John Connor, Skynet's defeat is even less certain than ever in this new altered timeline: "I don't know if we can win this war." It's not clear what's changed the timeline from the T2 version, but hopefully the film will explain a bit. We meet Marcus Wright, an advanced model of Terminator who has a great degree of self-awareness and believes he's human until he sees his own metal body. Marcus has the memories (and appearance, presumably) of a man who was executed in 2003, and that's his last memory before he turns up in 2018. (Rumor has it Marcus' body is donated, after his death, to something called "Project Angel," which turns him into a quasi-Terminator.) It's implied that Marcus' arrival has something to do with changing the timeline. Judgment Day: still July 24, 2004, since this movie follows on from Terminator 3.

So we showed this list to Josh Friedman, producer and creator of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and here's what he had to say:

Jesus Christ. I want to drink whatever you're drinking. Obviously (or maybe not obviously but it should be said) TSCC never attempted to mesh with the movies, maybe in the spirit of T/1/2 but certainly not T/3/4. We've gone off the temporal reservation lately but to some degree that IS canon: almost all expressions of the franchise have massaged dates/ages to their convenience, some more than others. The most controversial idea you have in here is the first one: the "pre-Kyle" Johnfather. I believe the Terminator mythology supports that concept but many die hards just embrace the loop-ness of John sending back his dad to impregnate his mom. Of course, a pre-Kyle Johnfather calls into question genetic differences in the two Johns and whether or not Sarah's influence is the key to John v.2. If you go with the pre-Kyle Johnfather theory, the first John managed to become John Connor without her help.

Or did he?

I've mulled it over some more, and I still believe there has to be a timeline where someone other than Kyle Reese is John Connor's father. When The Terminator was a standalone movie, you could read it either way. Either there's a circular causality, where Kyle is "always" John Connor's father, or Kyle's time travel creates a new branch. But Terminator 2 pretty much establishes that time travel always creates new branches, because there's no fate but what we make. And the Connors, with their friendly T-800, are able to stop or at least delay Skynet. But of course, your mileage, even backwards and forwards through time, may vary.

Dynamite's Terminator comics are based on the Terminator 2 movie (as opposed to IDW's comics, which are based on the upcoming Terminator: Salvation; Dark Horse have also published comics, but they're based on the original movie. So far, no comics are based on the television show, and everyone would rather that Terminator 3: Judgement Day didn't exist), giving writer Furman the chance to play with a lot of mechanical toys. Talking to Comic Book Resources, he explained just some of the protagonists from the December-launching Terminator: Revolution:

Dynamite’s instruction to me when we were kicking ideas for 'Revolution' around was pretty much 'go wild.' So I did. The T-Infinity really gets to strut its stuff, and pretty much is the spur for everything that happens in the series. Then the Dire Wolf (the epitome of a Hunter-Killer in every sense of the phrase) gets into the mix, and takes on all-comers, humans, other Terminators, other Hunter-Killers — even, ultimately, the T-Infinity. Oh, and then there are the eight T-850s running around in 1996! Eight! ...In a way, Sarah [Connor] fulfills the same role she does in the Terminator movies and in 'The Sarah Connor Chronicles,' but then we throw her a curve that really puts her through an emotional mill, like never before. She really has some weird stuff to deal with. Kyle is a teenager (there or thereabouts) going through growing pains in ‘Revolution,’ wondering why his ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ keep, in his own words, 'wrapping him in cotton wool.' And like any teenager, he’s going to rebel, in a big way. Of course, if anything happens to Kyle it’s game over — no John, no Resistance, Skynet wins. That’s how big the stakes are in 'Revolution.'

If you think that that sounds like Furman is aiming high with his new series, he'd agree with you:

Something happens in issue #1 that throws events in 2015 together with events in 1996, in a strange and hopefully unexpected way. We’re kind of playing around here with people’s expectations of how, in general structure terms, things happen in Terminator stories. I’m pretty sure what we’ve done has never been done before in any of the various Terminator media, so my feeling is it will really excite readers.

Something that's never been done before in any Terminator story? I'm hoping that it'll include pacifist Terminators teleporting back to 1967 and sparking the summer of love.

Furman on Making Dynamite's Terminator Revolutionary [Comic Book Resources]

Obviously the man is kidding about the whole Titanic in 3D, but you know if he did it, it would be a ridiculous success.

[CBC]

12) Searle in Sunshine.

Okay, I may be the only person who really loved Danny Boyle's blazing space opera about a doomed crew trying to reignite the sun. That's okay, I can be right all on my own. I especially love the way the character of Searle, the ship's psychiatrist, surprises you in his final moments. He's kind of a prurient asshole for most of the movie, obsessed with looking into the sun with as little filter as possible. He's a pretty terrible therapist. But when the chips are down, he knows he's the most expendable crewmember. When four crewmembers from the Icarus II get trapped on the wrecked ship Icarus I, with the airlock damaged, Searle agrees to stay behind so the rest of the away team can get back to the Icarus II. He helps blast the others out the airlock, then exposes himself to the sun, dying the same way as the Icarus I's crew.
If you're going to be a creepy therapist, the least you can do is self-immolate to save the rest of us.

11) Woody in Mission To Mars.

This is a pretty terrible movie overall, but a fantastic death scene. Our heroes have to abandon their vessel. And then Woody, played by Tim Robbins, leaves the others and launches himself at the Resupply Module (REMO), but after he attaches the line from the other astronauts at the REMO, he keeps moving towards the planet. His wife, Terri, wants to go after him, but Woody knows she'll die in the rescue attempt. So he takes off his own helmet and dies of depressurization rather than let her die for him. (Thanks to Meredith for the suggestion!)

Runner up: Speaking of depressurization deaths, Graeme really wanted me to include Cally's death from Battlestar Galactica. But I didn't really think her death was awesome. Sorry, G.

10) Graham in "The Sleeper Wakes" by H.G. Wells.

One of Wells' weirdest stories involves a man known only as Graham, who sleeps for over 200 years and wakes to find that he's not just the richest man in the world, but actually the owner of the entire world. He eventually discovers that the White Council, which governs in his name, is oppressing everyone, and he helps a revolutionary named Ostrog to mount a revolution. But afterwards, Ostrog starts oppressing people just as badly as the White Council had. So finally Graham gets mad. This time, it's personal — he gets into an airplane and rams a whole bunch of Ostrog's air fleet. (Remember, this was written in 1910.) Finally, he rams his plane into Ostrog's, then spirals to Earth, knowing that the revolution will prevail at last.

Runner up: Someone suggested Hari Seldon from Forward The Foundation, but I haven't read that book and couldn't find much about it or track down a copy. Was his death truly awesome? Let me know.

9) The Controller in Doctor Who, "Day Of The Daleks"

"Day Of The Daleks" is probably not on my list of the 100 greatest Doctor Who stories of all time, but it has a few really amazing moments. The greatest of these is where the Controller finally stands up to his Dalek masters. All along, the 22nd century bureaucrat has been fooling himself that he can help the Daleks govern the human race and actually do some good along the way, helping people when the Daleks aren't looking. But after a few chats with the Doctor, he finally realizes you can't work within the Dalek system. He helps the Doctor escape, and when his coverup fails, the Daleks decide to exterminate him. "Who knows?" he says. "I may have helped to exterminate you." Awesome.

Runners up: Various people suggested the deaths of various Doctors, but none of them really jumped out at me as especially cool. One person suggested Adric, and I'll protect his/her identity, to save him/her from the inevitable scorn of the masses.

8) Lt. Paul Wang from Space: Above And Beyond.

"Everybody's favorite tortured bipolar guy," Lt. Wang, callsign "Joker," gives his life to hold off the aliens while everyone else gets away. "This is for you!" he shouts as he pours ammo into the enemy. Commenter oconnellmd suggested this scene, and I can see why.

7) Certain people in Blake's 7, "Blake"

I'm going to show an unusual degree of restraint and not say who dies in this episode. Let's just say it's an incredibly fitting end for the saga, one which makes all of the stuff that comes before seem cooler because it leads up to this. In my write-up on how to discover Blake's 7, I actually advocate watching the last episode first. At the very least, I think this is one spoiler that makes you appreciate the rest of the show more. But don't take my word for it: watch for yourself.

6) Pham Nuwen from A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge.

Pham Nuwen is animated by the Old One, a super-powerful artificial intelligence, and he dies fighting the Blight, another super-A.I. First Pham downloads as much of the Old One into his brain as possible, overclocking his human brain by containing this massive superhuman intelligence, which will inevitably destroy him. And then he launches the Countermeasure, an advanced weapon which moves the boundaries of the Slow Zone far enough to enclose and destory the Blight. But the Countermeasure also has the effect of terminating Pham at the same time:

The Countermeasure's writhing had slowed. Its light flickered bright and then out. Bright and then out. She heard Pham's breath gasp with every darkness. Countermeasure, a savior that was going to kill a million civilizations. And was going to kill the man who triggered it.

Almost unthinking, she dodged past the thing, reaching for Pham. But razors upon razors blocked her, raking her arms.

Pham was looking up at her. He was trying to say something more.

Then the light went out for a final time. From the darkness all around came a hissing sound and a growling, bitter smell that Ravna would never forget.

(Thanks Annalee!)

5) The T-800 in Terminator II.

After Arnold Schwartzenegger's T-800 helps Sarah and John Connor defeat Robert Patrick's mean T-1000 by blowing it up and knocking it into molten metal, Arnie knows he has to go too. If there's anything left of the T-800, the technology could be used to reconstitute Skynet and bring the badness down on our heads. So Arnie gets Sarah Connor to lower him — slowly — into the molten metal. He gives a thumbs up as he descends to his robo-fondue doom. (Thanks, Annalee!)

4) Biggs from Star Wars.

I was seriously considering making Obi-Wan the coolest death from Star Wars, but really, screw that guy. First of all, as he points out himself, he comes back a thousand times more powerful afterwards. And secondly and more importantly, he's kind of a big martyr, as everyone points out in the awesome parody Hardware Wars. And Biggs doesn't have any super Force powers, or the ability to come back a thousand times more anything. All Biggs has is a X-ing, a can-do attitude, and an awesome porn-stache. And he's the greatest wingman ever, taking enemy fire and blowing up so that Luke can nuke the death star and get all the glory afterwards. And look how stoic Biggs is in this deleted scene from Episode IV, telling Luke he may never come home again because he's off to join the rebels:

When does baby Biggs get his own episode of the Clone Wars cartoon? Preferably with a little baby mustache?

3) Spike from Cowboy Bebop.

Martian bounty hunter Spike Spiegel gets into a duel with his former best friend, Vicious after Vicious' Red Dragon gang has killed Spike's girlfriend Julia. Spike finally decides to face the past with Vicious that he ran away from three years earlier, and he storms the Red Dragon headquarters, killing a bunch of its members as he climbs. Vicious manages to slash Spike with his katana, but then Spike shoots Vicious dead. Spike comes down the stairs, wounded and weakened, to face all the remaining members of the Red Dragon. Spike makes a gun with his fingers and says "Bang"... then collapses. Most people seem to assume Spike dies of his wounds, and it's not hard to find tons of people online listing this as one of the coolest death scenes in all anime, or all Asian films, let alone science fiction.

2) Someone from Anathem by Neal Stephenson.

Since this book just came out and it's a bit of a major spoiler, I won't say who dies and how — click here if you've already read the book and/or don't care about spoilers.

1) Spock from Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.

I'm not putting the pointy-eared green blooded Vulcan first just because I know I'd get lynched otherwise. I'm not even including the death of Spock because I pretty much memorized all the dialog from that scene as a little kid. I'm including it because it's the template of how to do a memorable, important death in a science fiction epic. The movie isn't ABOUT Spock at all, but it still feels as though the whole film has been leading up to his death. A lesser film would have been more clumsy and obvious about giving Spock a bunch of cool moments leading up to his death, and trying to manipulate us into feeling the Spock love before he snuffs it. Instead, we do get plenty of cool Spock moments, including giving Kirk his present and mentoring Lt. Saavik. But it's woven into the rest of the movie, and the film's running theme of the "no-win situation" and the impossibility of cheating death every single time help to set up the death of Kirk's best friend way better than a scene where Spock talks about what he's going to do when he retires and goes back to Vulcan. The result is one of the most amazing moments in Trek history, one of those moments where you can really beleive Trek is a sweeping saga instead of just a zany adventure with green women and Saurian brandy.

Runner up: I can't believe I left out Roy Batty in Blade Runner, as various commenters have pointed out. Especially since I went on a whole tangent about Roy's amazing death scene in my rant about why there shouldn't be a BR sequel earlier in the day. Suffice to say the Roy Batty death scene is definitely one of the all-time classic, and easily up there with Spock's.

Terminator
The most humanized of the Terminator futures. In a Kyle Reese future-flashback we see a sad world populated by filthy children, yeach. This end-of-days future puts a face on the chaos.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2 has a sexy scar-face John Connor and brings us a better look at the laser guns that were only hinted at in the original. This is puppetry Stan Winston style at it's best. Especially the legless-bot that is writhing around in the trash.

Terminator 2: Alternate Future
Another ending to Terminator 2 had John Connor as a big-time politico, and Linda in old-lady-face.

Terminator 3: The Rise Of The Machines
The debut of a super sad looking, balding John Connor. Sorry, that man does not save humanity. And also, whoa party foul. No leader of men would waste a perfectly good beer like that.

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In case you can't hear our question because the sound is a little fuzzed, we asked whether Eureka would be getting darker this season, resolving some of last season's issues and then starting a season-long plot arc. The new season of Eureka starts tonight on Sci-Fi channel, so catch Morton there and find out what's in store for our favorite non-nerdy mad scientist.

Are the robots going to negotiate the humans to death? How will they up the ante? The "softer" rating actually means there will be less creative one-on-one combat, because up-close-and-personal fighting requires more gore. Instead, there will be more pretty explosions, so 13-year-olds can up the box office sales. It was worrisome enough when we heard that McG would be directing T4, but this rating makes want to throw in the towel. You could make the argument that this will force Bale to bring his best work so far. But when I go to a Terminator movie, all I truly want to see is robots fighting humans to the bitter end, period. [Variety]

Famous Names: James Cameron (Director, co-writer); Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick (Cast).

Crunchy Goodness: 5

Spin-offs/Sequels/Copycats: The Cameron-less, too-little-too late Terminator 3 (2003) and the upcoming TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Bang for Your Buck: The silvery, featureless T-1000 striding sinuously out of a burning big rig before flowing back to the unscathed visage of Patrick's hunter-killer cop — the moment CG effects became an inescapable part of the Hollywood landscape.

Life Lesson: When a robot from the future shows up and says 'Come with me if you want to live,' believe him.

Roger Ebert's Review