Kyle Reese is a fictional character in the Terminator franchise.
He is the posthumous father of John Connor and the love interest of Sarah Connor.
The character is portrayed by Michael Biehn in The Terminator, Jonathan Jackson in Terminator:
The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Anton Yelchin played him as a teenager in Terminator Salvation
and Australian actor Jai Courtney will be portraying him in Terminator: Genisys.
Terminator film series Kyle Reese is a soldier in the human resistance
from the post-apocalyptic future of The Terminator, where most of humanity had already been wiped
out in a deadly nuclear war on August 29, 1997, sparked off by an artificial intelligence
known as Skynet.
The sentient computer system launched a genocidal war on the survivors.
When Skynet sends one of its most feared machines, a T-800 series Terminator, back to pre-apocalypse
Los Angeles, California on May 12, 1984, to assassinate the young Sarah Connor, Connor
decides to send a soldier to intercept the Terminator.
Sergeant Kyle Reese volunteers.
Backstory In the original war, Kyle was born sometime
in 2002, 5 years into the War.
Apparently, his mother died in childbirth, while his father died when he was a young
child.
He quickly rose through ranks and he was a soldier, and he held a rank of a Sergeant
in 2029.
His official dog tag number is DN38416, and he works in the Tech-Com facility of the Resistance.
He is one of personal soldiers to John Connor, and is often selected for personal infiltrator
missions by John.
He also assisted in stealing and reverse-engineering most of the Skynet technology, pulling raids
on gunshops and stealing most of the laser-rifle equipment with his troops for the Resistance.
His troops are also responsible for stealing the time-traveling technology that Skynet
has developed.
He personally volunteered for a one-way mission back to pre-apocalypse Los Angeles to save
Sarah Connor, mostly because he has her picture of her given by John.
The Terminator Once he had gone through, the time displacement
equipment was destroyed, leaving only him and the Terminator in 1984.
Arriving unarmed and not knowing what the Terminator looks like in its human disguise,
Reese locates and follows Sarah Connor, shadowing her until the T-800 attempts to carry out
its mission.
He rescues her, warning her of the impending doom of the human race and of the future significance
carried by her and her unborn son.
Though initially hostile towards Reese, Sarah grows to trust and love him as he becomes
the only thing between her and the Terminator.
On the run from the Terminator, Kyle reveals that he volunteered because he has long been
in love with Sarah, because John gave Kyle a picture of her.
Though battle-hardened and world-weary, Reese fell deeply in love with Sarah Connor, a woman
he had never met and only knew through her photo.
After Kyle tells Sarah of this history, the two consummate their relationship and Sarah
conceives John.
Kyle's life, however, is cut short when both he and Sarah are forced to confront the Terminator.
After a high speed chase where he is wounded by gunfire and thinking that they destroyed
the Terminator in an explosion of a fuel truck, they are again chased by the now bare metal
endoskeleton inside an automated factory.
In a final confrontation, the Terminator attacks Reese and delivers a mortal blow.
Though dazed, Reese reaches for his last homemade pipe bomb, lights it, and wedges it in between
the Terminator's pelvic strut and torso.
The Terminator is blown apart, and Kyle is killed.
The top half of the Terminator remains functional however, and it is left to Sarah to destroy
it by leading it into a hydraulic press.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day Michael Biehn reprises his role for a cameo
in T2.
Though it was cut from theatrical release, it was restored in the DVD version.
When Sarah Connor is having a nightmare about Judgement Day, Kyle appears in a dream state
version of her prison cell and reminds her of the coming danger, and the need to protect
their son.
However, as Kyle begins to walk out of the cell, Sarah desperately follows him only to
be led to a courtyard of kids playing before they are killed by a nuke.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Kyle Reese never made a physical appearance
in Terminator 3, but his son, John Connor appears to bear a striking resemblance to
him throughout the film.
John also stated out of pity to the Terminator that it was the closest thing he ever had
to a father due to him never meeting Reese.
Terminator Salvation
Kyle Reese is portrayed as a teenager by Anton Yelchin in Terminator Salvation.
The film takes place in 2018, and it revolves around his first meeting with his future son
John.
As a teenager, Kyle was the leader of the Los Angeles Resistance cell, even though it
only consisted of two people.
Because of this, he aspires to join the formal Resistance regulars, who mark themselves with
a red stripe on their left sleeve, once he has "earned it".
It is clear that Kyle is immediately drawn to the charismatic figure of John Connor due
to the fact that he leaves his Los Angeles base after hearing the latter's Resistance
broadcast.
Inspired by Connor's example, he frequently quotes segments of the broadcasts and adapts
strategies that Connor suggests for taking down Terminators.
He similarly shares a unique bond with Marcus Wright, who helps hone Kyle's strategies in
close-quarters combat, whereas Kyle's lectures on what humans are fighting for reminds Marcus
of his humanity.
In the film, Kyle's father had initially survived Judgment Day but died prior to the events
of the movie, and Kyle is the primary target of Skynet due to its awareness that he would
eventually travel through time to 1984 and become the father of John Connor.
In the film, Kyle is already working with and protecting a child named Star when the
two later save Marcus Wright from a T-600 attack in the ruins of Los Angeles.
After Skynet captures him outside of LA, Reese, upon escaping, later worked with his future
son building a bomb to destroy Skynet's San Francisco Command.
The two also fought one of the first T-800 models together during this time.
Connor took Reese into the Resistance with Star, granting him the promotion to Tech-Com
regular.
Kyle and John have begun developing a friendship as mentioned in the first film, evidenced
by the way in which Kyle's promotion comes alongside his joining of John's inner circle
at the end of the film.
Terminator: Genisys Resse will be portrayed by Australian actor
Jai Courtney in Terminator: Genisys, the character will also be planning to be in at least two
films.
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles In the parallel universe television show,
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, it is revealed that Reese has an older brother
named Derek, who becomes one of the show's main characters.
He is also a Resistance soldier from the future.
Characterization In this series, Kyle Reese is played by Jonathan
Jackson in the episode "Dungeons & Dragons", which details the last days of what happened
of how he and his brother are separated during a recon mission before he made his trip through
time to protect Sarah Connor; further details are in the episode "Goodbye To All That" of
the second season, during Derek's recollection of the future war.
An eight-year-old version of Kyle Reese, portrayed by Skyler Gisondo, briefly appears in the
episode "What He Beheld" when Derek Reese takes John Connor out for ice cream on his
16th birthday.
They find a younger Kyle and Derek playing baseball at the park.
In the episode "Goodbye To All That," during one of Derek's recollections of the future
war, Kyle and a small group of his unit attempted to save forty prisoners, including General
John Connor, from Skynet's forces.
However, he became trapped and one of the Resistance's senior officers, Martin Bedell,
sacrifices his life to save him and free Skynet's prisoners.
In the episode "The Demon Hand", it is hinted at by Sarah to Derek Reese that Kyle's ashes
were scattered "in the grass"; a later episode shows that he was in fact buried in a grave
marked only by the year of his death, and in the next-to-last episode of the series,
Derek's own ashes are buried next to his brother, or at least in the same cemetery where his
brother rests.
A mental image of Kyle Reese appeared to a wounded Sarah in the episode "The Good Wound".
Throughout the episode, her image of Kyle guides her in finding medical treatment for
herself along with getting help from Derek Reese, Kyle's brother.
In the season two finale "Born to Run", John is led by Catherine Weaver to an alternate
post-Judgment Day timeline where John Connor has never led the Resistance due to the displacement
from his present.
There, he encounters his father for the first time.
Production background It was originally scripted that Reese and
another soldier, named "Sumner", were sent to protect Sarah from the Terminator, but
Sumner died upon arriving after the time portal fused him into a fire escape.
In the original script, Reese says to Dr. Silberman, "The Terminator had already gone
through.
Connor sent two of us to intercept it, then zeroed the whole place, but Sumner didn't
make it."
Sumner would later appear in a Sarah Connor Chronicles episode and make it alive through
the time portal with Kyle's brother and two other Resistance time-traveling agents.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was the original choice to play Reese while director James Cameron
intended to use a thinner, more ordinary looking actor as the Terminator, his first choice
being Lance Henriksen.
Upon meeting Schwarzenegger, Cameron decided to cast him as the Terminator instead, and
Henriksen was made a police detective.
However, Cameron would revisit this idea when he cast Robert Patrick as the T-1000 in the
sequel.
Michael Biehn almost did not get the role of Reese because, at his audition, he spoke
in a Southern accent after having just auditioned for a role in a stage production of Cat on
a Hot Tin Roof earlier that day and couldn't shake the accent, and the producers did not
want Reese to seem regionalized.
After Biehn's agent explained this to the producers, he got a second audition and won
the part.
The original scriptment gave Reese's age as 21, while a later draft gave his age as 22.
In real life, Biehn was 27 years old at the time that he was cast as Reese.
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Michael Biehn reprised the role of Kyle Reese; Sarah Connor,
under heavy sedation, imagines him visiting her in a mental institution.
Largely unchanged from his appearance in the first film, he embraces her and implores her
to go to their son's aid, reminding her that "the future is not set."
This scene was removed for the original theatrical release, but restored to the extended editions
released.
See also Predestination paradox
References
External links Kyle Reese at the Internet Movie Database
The Terminator at the Internet Movie Database Terminator 2: Judgment Day at the Internet
Movie Database Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles at
the Internet Movie Database