If I could summarize briefly why TS is so unusual, it would have to be that the film is falsely heroic on a level that is weirdly satiric. He didn't go as far as Strangelove (is that level achievable any longer?) but the safe bet is: the machines are essentially running a 'game' on humans, the entire film is machine-plotted. Rebels are safely contained in their underground bunker, surrounded by a machine filled moat, they are lured easily to learning about a new Terminator, they are handed a code they think is the end of the war when it is actually their destruction, all dialogue, even John Connor's, is false, the only one with an individual brain, ie thinking for himself, is Marcus. The only one who recognizes it is the Pilot. Now I'm not sure I believe in this auteur idea completely, but what I do know is masterpieces hide their real plots and real connections under a simplified surface to better deliver ah-ha moments, whether in the last moments of the film or hours, days, months later, and for me these moments followed me out the doors. With a series that began with time-bending (time travel game theory developed by machines) in the past and now ends with physical game-playing in our future with paradoxes as to who john conner really 'is' makes for unusual human cosmology.

This is our brief
http://www.mstrmnd.com/log/1046