T-1000

The T-1000 (ADVANCED PROTOTYPE TERMINATOR INFILTRATOR Series 1 Model 1A Type 1000) is a fictional android assassin, featured in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

T-1000, played by the actor Robert Patrick, is an extremely advanced Terminator (killing human-imitating robot). It is made of liquid metal, so it is a shapeshifter, acquiring new shapes on physical contact. It can also mold its body into simple weapons, "knives and stabbing weapons" in the words of the T-800, but cannot form mechanical or chemical weapons. This gives it incredible resiliency — it seems more susceptible to being knocked down than the T-800, but it repairs itself in seconds, even from truly staggering damage.

In Terminator 2, the T-1000 is sent by Skynet from 2029 back in 1995 to kill John Connor, future leader of the Human Resistance against the machines. As before, the Resistance is able to send back a lone protector, a reprogrammed T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger). The T-1000 ambushes a police officer on arrival and takes on his role, tracking down John Connor through the police cruiser's onboard computer, eventually tracking him down in The Galleria, an arcade in a shopping mall. It isn't clear until this moment which Terminator is the hunter and which is the protector.

It predicts that John and the T-800 will next attempt to rescue Sarah Connor, John's mother, and infiltrates the mental hospital at the same time John arrives and Sarah makes an independent escape attempt. It demonstrates impressive abilities, such as flattening itself into a thin 'carpet' of metal and walking through solid metal bars. The attack fails, though the T-1000 follows them on their frantic escape, and eliminates their survivalist ally Sal (though not in the theatrical version.)

Once again predicting its target's actions, it arrives at the home of Miles Dyson after the family is already evacuated and the files destroyed, speeding to the labs of the Cyberdyne Systems Corporation in an apocalyptic confrontation between it, the Connors and their allies, and hundreds of policemen. It hijacks a police helicopter in a freeway chase sequence, which concludes in its ramming a tanker truck of liquid nitrogen into the entrance of a steel mill, which is rapidly abandoned.

The cyborg leaves its truck and tries to track them down on foot, but the chilled nitrogen freezes it into a bewildered statue in moments. The T-800 shatters it into thousands of pieces, but the steel mill's machinery soon thaws it out into tiny droplets that eventually run back together into the T-1000. It starts to exhibit glitches after this resurrection: it picks up the textures of nearby objects, and sticks to exposed metal surfaces. After a short hunt, disabling Sarah and the obsolete T-800, it tracks down John, who is confronted with two identical versions of his mother. A quick glance down shows the feet of one of them melded with the steel grating, and the imposter is destroyed through a combination of incredible damage and being mixed into a vat of liquid metal, where it melts in a frenzy of previous disguises. He was succeeded as Skynet's time-traveling infiltration assassin by the T-X.

The T-1000 special effects were revolutionary, a new step in Computer-generated imagery. The effects won an Oscar,and were referenced in Virtuosity and The Matrix, and also spoofed by movies like Hot Shots! Part Deux and Last Action Hero, the latter of which features Robert Patrick in a brief cameo in the familiar police uniform.

External links

• T-1000 technical data (http://www.goingfaster.com/term2029/t1000techdata.html)