"The Terminator" -- was John Connor just full of it?

Cafe Society
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SPOILERS for all three Terminator movies ahead

Just picked up T3 on DVD yesterday, seven bucks at the grocery store for the deluxe two disc set, such a deal! Anyway, so a big theme of the first movie is that there’s no future except the one we make. This is the gist of the message that Future John sends back to his mother through Reese, and the theme figures in the second movie as well as appearing on Sarah Connor’s crypt in T3. But the events of the first movie didn’t alter the future, since Skynet was still being developed by Dyson in T2 and Skynet still went online in 1997 according to T-101/T2. The events of T2 delay Judgment Day by six years, but the T-101/T3 states that Judgment Day is inevitable.

So is Future John just full of crap since by the time T3 hits in 2003 John/T3 knows Judgment Day is inevitable? Does FJ send the message back only because he knows that it was received by Sarah and John/T2? Is the T-101/T3 just wrong that Judgment Day is inevitable?

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Someone has gone through quite a bit of effort to explain just how the whole Terminator timeline (as well as the timelines of other time-travel movies) could actually work out.

http://www.mjyoung.net/time/terminat.html

I tried to understand it, but I think I sprained something. It’s an interesting read, though.

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I prefer to say that T3 screwed the time-travel rules (and franchise) set up by the first two movies.

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That site doesn’t include the third movie.

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There was no third movie. That thing was a crude imposter.

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I liked the third movie.

Future John Conner is presumably not refering to Judgement Day with his message to his mother. Remember he sends T2 back in time to keep Sarah/present day John Conner alive, not to prevent skynet from being built. It’s Sarah who hatches the plan to kill the skynet inventing guy. Indeed T2 tries to discourage them from this plan.

So what’s future John Connor refering to with “no fate but what we make”? Well, John Conner does make his own fate, in that he takes control of the human resistence at the end of the third movie, thus saving humanity. His rhyme then is not to encourage his mother to try and premtively destroy skynet, rather it’s to encourage his past self to take control of the situation in the military bunker at the end of the third movie and thus rescue humanity from the fate of a victorious skynet.

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The whole “there was no such movie” idea has gone way to far. You may not have liked T3, but I thought it was pretty good. It shoudl be reserved for movies so loathsome that none can take them seriously.
Well, on the upside, they did change history, albeit subtly. Skynet, after all, doesn’t have any robot factories or vast war machines to deploy after the nuclear exchange. It’s continuing response will be limited and meager. Moreover, the survivors will apparently never be put into death camps! Conner already has a force ready to go at the military base.

That’s a major change.