You demonstrate the problem of time travel in fiction. Skynet sends a terminator back in time to kill Sarah Conner in order to prevent the existence of the guy that will eventually defeat Skynet. But if the terminator were successful, John Conner would never exist and wouldn’t end up defeating Skynet and therefore Skynet would have no reason to send a terminator back in time to kill Sarah Conner.
Right. This is why I prefer T1, because the time travel makes sense - it’s single-timeline, closed-loop, no-paradox travel. Skynet was unaware that it worked like that and hoped they’d change the past rather than cause it to happen.
But it doesn’t make sense. Skynet should have been smart enough to realize that if had succeeded in preventing the John Conner from existing, Skynet would then have no reason to send the Terminator back in time and then John Conner would exist, then he wouldn’t and then he would and then he wouldn’t . . . see the problem? Why didn’t didn’t Skynet?