Kyle Reese
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| Kyle Reese | |
|---|---|
 Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese in The Terminator |
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| First appearance | The Terminator |
| Created by | James Cameron |
| Portrayed by | Michael Biehn Jonathan Jackson Anton Yelchin Brian Finn |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Age | 32 |
| Date of birth | 1997 |
| Date of death | 1984/2029 |
| Occupation | Soldier |
| Children | John Connor |
Kyle Reese is the primary character in the first Terminator film, the father of John Connor, and the love of Sarah Connor. He is played by Michael Biehn in the first and second Terminator films, Jonathan Jackson in the television series, and played as a teenager by Anton Yelchin in Terminator Salvation.
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[edit] Character history
Kyle Reese (Sergeant, Tech-Com, DN38416), 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 29th, 1997, sparked off by an artificial intelligence known as Skynet. The sentient computer system launched a genocidal war on the survivors.
Kyle Reese was born after the nuclear attacks. He was later captured by Skynet forces as a child and to survive he was forced to work in one of Skynet's concentration camps, where others are sent to their deaths. His freedom would come when a resistance movement, led by John Connor, freed him and the others from Skynet. Afterwards, Reese served in the 132nd Infantry under Justin Perry from 2021 to 2027, before transferring to Tech-Com under John Connor, someone he would come to admire and (coincidentally) consider his closest friend. Eventually, the resistance would rally enough remaining human forces to launch a successful, final assault on Skynet's central complex.
The final assault would eventually allow the human resistance to cripple Skynet, as Reese explains in The Terminator. In 2029, the resistance was able to smash through the last of Skynet's defense grids, allowing them to enter Skynet's main compound and destroy it. Skynet however would have a final, unexpected option: using experimental time displacement equipment, Skynet would send 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, known to have been the mother of resistance leader John Connor, and thus prevent the birth of Connor and the success of his future rebellion.
Realizing what Skynet was attempting to do, Connor sends a soldier to intercept the terminator. It would be Sergeant Kyle Reese who would volunteer. Once he had gone through, the time displacement equipment would be 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, Reese and Sarah share a moment of intimacy, in which her son and future leader John Connor is conceived.
Having grown up in the future where the machines had all but wiped out the human race, Reese is both physically and mentally hardened. His body is scarred from action against the machines, including healed burns as a result of wounds sustained after destroying an enemy, as witnessed in a nightmare when he tries to sleep.
In a deleted scene, when he tries to stop Sarah from going to Cyberdyne Systems, he sees something he has never seen before, what the world looks like before the war in the future. He says he thinks of it as a dream, the trees and stream, the flowers, and Sarah, all beautiful. He bursts into tears, saying it hurts and he believes he does not belong there, and he was not meant to see any of this. He then agrees with Sarah that they should try to change the future.
Though hard and battle weary, Reese had a love for Sarah Connor, a woman whom he had never met and only knew through a photo. The affection Kyle Reese felt for Sarah was based on the legend that surrounded her and on the image of her from the photograph given to him by John Connor.
Reese'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-metal endoskeleton inside an automated factory, later revealed to be owned by Cyberdyne Systems.
Kyle turns on various mechanical equipment as visual cover while the terminator batters its way through the door. After Sarah accidentally turns on a machine, they are discovered by the terminator. After reaching the stairs of a footwalk, Reese tells Sarah to run for cover while Kyle tries to beat the terminator with a metal pipe.
The terminator knocks Kyle to the deck of the footwalk, 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 Reese is killed. The terminator, though blown in half and missing an arm, is not destroyed. A wounded Sarah is able to find enough courage and resolve to destroy it, crushing the machine inside a mechanical press. While being taken away by paramedics soon afterward, Sarah tearfully watches as Reese's dead body is zipped up in a body bag and taken away.
Sarah stops at a gas station in the deserts of Mexico six months later, already well into her pregnancy, and is debating to herself whether or not she should ever tell John who his father is. Eventually, she decides that she will, reflecting that Kyle deserves to be remembered for his sacrifice and contribution. Although Kyle Reese died not knowing that he was John Connor's father, John himself would know. Just then a young Mexican boy takes Sarah's picture with a Kodamatic camera, and gives the developed photo to her; it is the same photo Connor would eventually give to Reese.
In Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Micheal Biehn reprised the role of Kyle Reese, whom Sarah Connor, under heavy sedation, imagines him visiting her in a mental institution. 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.
[edit] Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
In the television show, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, he is born in 2002 before the events of Judgment Day in this altered timeline.
In the episode "Queen's Gambit", it is revealed that Kyle had an older brother named Derek (Brian Austin Green) who was also a resistance Soldier.
Actor Jonathan Jackson portrayed Kyle Reese in the episode of the first season "Dungeons & Dragons", which detailed of 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, and later on the episode of the second season "Goodbye To All That", during Derek's recollection of the future war.
He is also played by Skyler Gisondo as an eight-year old version of the character in the beginning of the episode of "What He Beheld." In the final episode of the first season "What He Beheld", Derek Reese takes a now 16-years-old John Connor out for ice cream, as it is his birthday. As they are watching two boys play baseball, the younger boy drops the ball and it rolls over to John. John picks it up and hands it to him. As he and Derek are watching, John finds the older boy strangely familiar, and when he turns around John sees what is written on the back of his shirt: REESE. John realizes that Derek took him to see a five-year old-version of Kyle and eleven-year-old version of Derek, before telling John that he figured out that Kyle is John's dad as "Whenever I look at you, I see him. Plus, your mom's his type".
In the episode "Goodbye To All That," during one of Derek's recollections of the future war, Kyle (when he was a Corporal) and a small group of his unit, attempted to save forty prisoners, included 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. Derek mentions to John that Kyle might have been traumatized when he watched his best friend die after carrying him to an aid station. Derek also tells John of his brother's fondness for using powerful incendiary armor piercing rounds against Hunter-Killers. During the brothers' period of hiding after Judgment Day, Derek killed a deer for food; however, Kyle convinced him that it was unfair for them to eat the animal and Reese buried the deer instead. In the episode "The Demon Hand," it's hinted at by Sarah to Derek Reese that Kyle's remains have been cremated, and scattered "in the grass."
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-Judgement Day timeline where John Connor has never lead The Resistance due to the displacement from his present. There, he encounters his father for the first time alongside Derek Reese and Allison Young.
[edit] 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 (Christian Bale). As a teenager, Kyle was the leader of the Los Angeles resistance cell, even though this 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 immediately 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 (Sam Worthington), who helps hone Kyle's strategies in close-quarters-combat, whereas Kyle's lectures on what humans are fighting for remind 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 father John Connor. In the film, Kyle is already working with and protecting a child named Star (Jadagrace Berry) 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 (signified by inheriting John's tactical jacket with red stripe) comes alongside his joining of John's inner circle at the end of the film.
[edit] 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 (the sequels show the time displacement field melting whatever object is in the way). 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.
A still shot of Kyle Reese was used as the basis for a pose held by Solid Snake on the box art for the MSX game Metal Gear, right down to the gear he is wearing. 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.
[edit] References
[edit] 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
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