Before they died, my parents told me stories about how the world once was; what it was...

[first lines] Kyle Reese: [narrating] Before they died, my parents told me stories about how the world once was; what it was like long before I was born; before the war with the machines. They remembered a green world, vast and beautiful, filled with laughter and hope for the future. It's a world I never knew. By the time I was born, all this was gone. Kyle Reese: "Skynet," a computer program designed to automate missile defense. It was supposed to protect us, but that's not what happened. August 29th, 1997, Skynet woke up. It decided all of humanity was a threat to its existence. [scenes of mass destruction] Kyle Reese: It used our own bombs against us. Three billion people died of nuclear fire. Kyle Reese: Survivors called it Judgement Day. People lived like rats in shadows, hiding, starving, or worse, captured and put into camps for extermination. I was born after Judgement Day, into a broken world ruled by the machines. The worst were infiltration units that posed as humans. We called them Terminators. John Connor: [finding young Kyle in subterranean tunnels] Are there others down here? Kyle Reese: And then one man found me. His name was John Connor, and he changed everything. John showed us how to fight back; how to rise up. He freed prisoners. He taught us how to slash the machines to scrap. People whisper about John and wonder how he can know the things he does. They use words like prophet. But John's more. We're here because tonight, he's going to lead us to crush Skynet for good.