T-3000

T-3000 Terminator "John Connor"
Terminator films character
250px T-3000 in its default machine form
First appearance	Terminator Genisys
Last appearance	Terminator Genisys
Created by	Laeta Kalogridis Patrick Lussier Alan Taylor Double Negative (based on John Connor by James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd and William Wisher Jr.)
Portrayed by	Jason Clarke, other cast members, special effects
Information
Aliases	John Connor
Species	Cyborg
Gender	Male
Occupation	Assassin Infiltrator Architect Businessman
Manufacturer	Skynet
Model	Prototype Series 3000 Terminator (only one unit successfully created)

The T-3000 is a fictional cyborg assassin, serving as the primary antagonist in Terminator Genisys, the fifth installment in the Terminator series, portrayed by Jason Clarke. T-3000 also serves as a foil personality to "Guardian" (a reprogrammed T-800 portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger), a protagonist who is somewhat similar to T-3000 but also opposite in many ways. In the film, the T-3000 is an alternate counterpart of Skynet's (portrayed by Matt Smith) nemesis John Connor (also portrayed by Clarke), created after Skynet infects Connor with nanotechnology and fractures the timeline.

The T-3000's sole mission is to protect and ensure the ultimate survival of Skynet, which seeks to eliminate the human race with its global machine network. The T-3000 describes itself as neither machine nor human; rather, it is a hybrid nanotechnological cyborg. Producer David Ellison explains that the title Terminator Genisys "[is] in reference to genesis, which is in reference to the singularity and the man-machine hybrid that John Connor ends up being."

Background

See also: John Connor

In a desperate effort to ensure its survival, the rogue artificial intelligence Skynet creates an avatar for itself in the form of a T-5000 (Matt Smith). This Terminator travels through many timelines searching for a way to defeat the Human Resistance and ultimately infiltrates it under the guise of a fighter named Alex. "Alex" is present as a soldier when John Connor and Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) discover Skynet's time machine at the end of the war with the machines. As Kyle is being sent back in time to protect John's mother Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) from the T-800 Terminator sent to kill her in 1984, "Alex" carries out his attack. He kills all of the other soldiers and infects John Connor with nanomachines, transforming him into a new hybrid Terminator designated as the T-3000. John Connor's conversion into a Terminator as Kyle travels back in time turns out to be such a major event that it leads to a fracturing timeline, completely rewriting the past and the future.

The T-3000 is sent back in time to 2014 and given the mission to assist Cyberdyne Systems in developing a new operating system named Genisys, which is in reality Skynet. When Sarah and Kyle arrive in 2017, he meets them at a hospital and convinces them that he really is John Connor, but his disguise is exposed by the Guardian (a reprogrammed T-800 portrayed by Schwarzenegger). The T-3000 engages the trio in multiple destructive battles before finally being destroyed by the Guardian by having his body disintegrated by a prototype time machine's magnetic field. Before his demise, the T-3000 furiously throws what remained of the Guardian's endoskeleton into a vat of mimetic polyalloy, inadvertently converting the Guardian into a nano-android with abilities similar to those of the T-1000, and saving the Guardian's life.

The Guardian explains during the film that before the final battle between Skynet and the Resistance, the former attempted to create a number of T-3000s, but the human subjects went insane and died; John Connor was the only known subject to survive the infection reasonably mentally intact, albeit now loyal to Skynet as opposed to his previous loyalty to humanity.

Design

The on-screen representation of the T-3000 was made by British effects company Double Negative. Footage would combine Jason Clarke filmed on set, keyframed animation, and motion capture. Supervisor Peter Bebb said that the company tried to design the T-3000 like a computer would do it, focusing on design and battle efficiency, "form follows function". Given it is a Terminator built out of a human, the result is "a pure robot that sits under flesh structure", still retaining an overall human shape. The mechanical cells tried to resemble the material on stealth aircraft, with a result described as "more matte than metal", resembling a slightly iridescent ceramic carbon.

Abilities

The Guardian identifies the T-3000 with John's form and memories as being made of machine phase matter. Due to these nanomachines, the T-3000 has highly advanced abilities, including accelerated regeneration, advanced shapeshifting capability, the ability to move at a rapid speed and the ability to break apart into particles for combat and then reconstruct itself, it is thus a lethal "nanocyte prototype". Because of this, the T-3000's transformation abilities are far beyond those of the T-1000, for the cyborg is able to change its appearance into any shape or form that it touches much faster. However, it is still limited by complexity or mass. It is also capable of simulating bleeding when injured, but this is not required for its function; it sheds nanomachines imitating blood when first shot, but subsequently reabsorbs them. Once its identity is exposed, it retains its human appearance but no longer "bleeds," even when suffering multiple, penetrative wounds throughout its body. These aspects, combined with the access the cyborg has to its original human host's memories in addition retaining his or her personality and behavioral traits, the T-3000 can easily convince even those well-versed in tactics used by Terminators that it is actually a human, essentially a machine that thinks like them (see Turing test). This makes it more effective than other Terminators at infiltration. How its abilities compare against those of its creator, the T-5000, is unclear. It appears to retain the ability to infect others and create more T-3000s, as it offers this to Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese in Terminator Genisys. The infection, which is described as changing its victim on the cellular level, cannot be reversed.

Though a formidable enemy, the T-3000 is not invulnerable. Its weaknesses include a high sensitivity to strong magnetic fields. The T-3000 is still susceptible to some degrees of physical injuries and pains, and its agonies can escalate when it is under a magnetic attack. It is also shown to experience pain and have its movements impaired when trapped in an electrical current. However, these effects are only temporary due to its regeneration capabilities, which give it an accelerated healing process that is far beyond those of an ordinary human and previous Terminator models. Weaker magnetism is capable of disrupting or disabling the T-3000's shapeshifting and regeneration abilities, due to affecting its ability to manipulate its particles. A sufficiently strong magnetic field can pull the T-3000 apart briefly to restrain it, and, if its body is exposed to a powerful magnetic field for a sustained amount of time, the cyborg can be torn apart and terminated. The machine phase matter is also vulnerable to the laser used in shaping mimetic polyalloy for use in the construction of T-1000s. If struck by this laser, the T-3000 can suffer enough external damage to render its outermost layer irreparably compromised, forcing it to discard its human appearance and use its true machine form.

See also

• Human enhancement
• Nanotechnology
• Nanotechnology in fiction
• Posthuman
• Quantum field
• Self-assembly of nanoparticles
• Time travel
• Transhumanism
• Utility fog