Thomas Shey
Legend
So I think with Terminator 1 the idea was....all the time travel did was actually set in place the events of the future. In trying to kill John Connor, skynet actually creates John Connor, because his father is sent back in time to actually meet his mother.
In Terminator 2, there is a sense of closure. The machines took one last shot to change things, but with the destruction of cyberdyne it suggested that the judgement day might not come.
After that though they kept going with more time travel and so you have to introduce the multiverse concept to really have it make sense.
At the time I was, really, super-soggy about T3, but I think there have been some virtues to some of the things that have come later.