Kyle Reese

Infobox character
colour =
name = "Kyle Reese"


caption = Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese
in "The Terminator"
first = "The Terminator"
age = 25
born = 2002
death = 1984/2027
occupation = Soldier
family = Dennis Reese (father)(T:TSSC timeline)
Mary Shea (mother) (T:TSSC timeline)
Derek Reese (brother) (T:TSSC timeline)
children = John Connor
portrayer = Michael Biehn
Jonathan Jackson
Skyler Gisondo
Anton Yelchin
creator = James Cameron

Kyle Reese is a primary fictional character and protagonist of the first Terminator film, father of John Connor, and brief lover to Sarah Connor. He is played by Michael Biehn in the films and Jonathan Jackson in the television series. He will be played as a teenager by Anton Yelchin in "Terminator Salvation", currently in production. [cite news | author = Gregg Goldstein | title = Yelchin finds 'Salvation' | publisher = The Hollywood Reporter | date = 2008-03-19 | url = http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3ifff588c2bae9eaff4982de057e9344ff | accessdate=2008-03-19]

Character history

Kyle Reese (DN38416) was a Human Resistance soldier in the post-apocalyptic future of the Terminator universe, where most of humanity had already been wiped out in a deadly nuclear Third World War, sparked off by an artificial intelligence entity known as Skynet. The sentient computer system launched another genocidal war on the survivors of the war between the Eastern Bloc and the West. Reese, born after the first war, was one of the last remaining humans who achieved a victory over the machines.

Reese survived the capture and killing of his fellow humans only to serve as a Sonderkommando in one of Skynet's concentration camps, where he and others were forced to load huge numbers of bodies into Skynet's furnaces to be incinerated. Reese's freedom would come when a resistance movement, led by John Connor (whom Reese would unwittingly father later in the movie, and ironically consider his closest friend), freed him and the others from Skynet. After the camps, Reese served in the 132nd under Perryfix|text=who?|link=Wikipedia:Please clarify from 2021 to 2027 before transferring as a sergeant to Tech-Com under John Connor himself. John Connor and the resistance would eventually rally enough remaining humans and resources to launch an assault on Skynet.

The final assault would eventually allow the human resistance to cripple Skynet, as Reese explains in "The Terminator". The resistance was able to smash Skynet's defense grid allowing them to enter Skynet's main complex and attempt to destroy it. Skynet however would have a final move left: using time displacement equipment, Skynet would send one of its most feared machines (the Terminator) back to May 12, 1984, a Thursday, to kill the young Sarah Connor, known to have been the eventual mother of resistance leader John Connor, and thus prevent the birth of Connor and his future rebellion.

Realizing what Skynet was attempting to do, John Connor sends a soldier to protect himself from the machine menace. It would be Reese who would volunteer himself to go back. Once Reese had gone through, the time travel equipment would be destroyed leaving only Reese and the Terminator in 1984. Arriving unarmed and not knowing what the Terminator looks like in its disguise, Reese locates Sarah Connor, 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 night of intimacy, in which her future son and human 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 numerous battles with Skynet and he has a number of burns as a result of the time travel process. 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 now 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 doesn't belong here, and he wasn't meant to see 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'd never met and only through a photo could identify. The affection 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 apparently thinking that they destroyed the Terminator, they run to an automated factory, later revealed to be owned by Cyberdyne Systems, where the now-metal endoskeleton of the Terminator pursues them inside. Kyle turns on all the equipment as cover while the Terminator batters its way through the door. After Sarah accidentally turns on a machine, their hiding place is discovered and the Terminator finds them. After reaching the stairs of a crawlway, Reese tells Sarah to run for cover while Kyle tries to beat the Terminator with a metal rod. The Terminator slashes Kyle to the floor, and the nearly-dead Reese reaches for a pipe bomb and lights it up, as he runs for cover. The Terminator's body is blown apart, and though it is not yet completely destroyed, it has been weakened to the point that Sarah is able to kill it herself, crushing it inside a mechanical press. A short time later, after Sarah removes a piece of shrapnel from her leg, she tends over to Kyle and finds his dead body with his face covered with blood from the fight with the Terminator and the shrapnel/debris from the explosion.

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. In the end of the film, Sarah is in Mexico, 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 Reese 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 Polaroid camera, and gives the developed photo to her--it is the same photo John Connor would eventually give Reese to identify Sarah by.

In "", Biehn reprised the role of Reese, whom Sarah Connor, under heavy sedation, imagines 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. This scene was removed for the original theatrical release, but restored to the extended editions released on VHS and video disc.

"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"

In the television show "", in the episode "", it is revealed that Kyle has an older brother named Derek (Brian Austin Green) who's also a Resistance soldier.

Actor Jonathan Jackson of "General Hospital" portrayed Kyle Reese in the episode of the first season "", which detailed of the last days of what happened of how he and his brother are separated 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 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, the older boy turns around and John sees what is written on the back of his shirt: REESE. John realises 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 and a small group of his unit, attempted to save forty prisoners, included John Connor, from Skynet's forces. However, he became trapped and one of The Resistance's senior officers, Martin Bedell, sacrificed his life to save him and freeing Skynet's prisoners. Derek also mentioned of one event during the future war which have traumatized Kyle, of watching his best friend dying after he carried the soldier to an aid station after a battle.

In the episode "The Demon Hand," it's hinted by Sarah to Derek Reese that Kyle's remains have been cremated, and scattered "in the grass."

Behind the scenes

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 Silberman: "The Terminator had already gone through. Connor sent two of us, 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 didn't 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.

References

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