Kyle Reese is a fictional character in the Terminator franchise, who serves as the protagonist of the first film with a supporting role in other works. The character is portrayed by Michael Biehn in The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Jonathan Jackson in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008–2009), Anton Yelchin in Terminator Salvation (2009), and Jai Courtney in Terminator Genisys (2015). Terminator film series Reese is a soldier in the human resistance from the post-apocalyptic future of The Terminator (1984), where most of humanity has already been wiped out in a deadly nuclear war on August 29, 1997, sparked off by an artificial intelligence known as Skynet. The survivors fight extinction against the sentient computer system's genocidal war on humanity. The resistance is led by John Connor, under whom Reese serves. In The Terminator and Terminator Genisys (2015), Skynet sends one of its most feared machines, a Model 101/T-800 Terminator, back to pre-apocalypse Los Angeles, California on May 12, 1984, to assassinate John Connor's mother Sarah Connor and prevent his birth. Reese volunteers to travel back to 1984 and intercept the Terminator. Backstory According to Terminator Genisys, Kyle Reese was born in 2004. He eventually becomes a sergeant (dog tag number DN38416), working in the Tech-Com facility of the Resistance. He is one of the personal soldiers to John Connor, and is often selected for personal infiltrator missions by John. Reese learned to make explosives as a child. He also assisted in stealing and reverse-engineering most of the Skynet technology, conducting raids on armouries and stealing most of the laser-rifle equipment with his troops for the Resistance, along with the time-travelling technology that Skynet had developed. The Terminator (1984) In 2029, Skynet has been defeated by human resistance, but manages to send one of its infiltrators back in time to assassinate Sarah Connor before she can give birth to John; the resistance decides to send a soldier back to defeat the Terminator and protect Sarah's life. Reese personally volunteers for a one-way mission back to pre-apocalypse Los Angeles to save her. Once he had been sent back, he was told that the time displacement equipment would be destroyed, stranding him and the Terminator in 1984. Arriving naked and unarmed, and not knowing what the Terminator looks like in its human disguise, Reese steals clothes and a police-issue shotgun. He locates and follows Sarah (Linda Hamilton), shadowing