Wow, just saw an interview by Sophia Stewart and she appartently has lawsuits out over both The Terminator series and The Matrix.  Does anybody give her any credit towards this, or just a hoax?

she tried before and lost. So not sure how she will win this time.

I just read a brief overview. She's accusing them of plagiarism and claims her story inspired both.
First, inspiration is not even plagiarism.

Second, biblical links and savior characters is major theme in Western literature and film dating back thousands of years.

Third. Narratively, both Terminator and Matrix pull from classic narrative themes in western literature outside of religion as well.
Terminator takes its main inspiration from Frankenstein... or the idea that ambition for greatness will be the death of us. Matrix is Plato's Republic, specifically the cave allegory where what we perceive isn't the true reality, but shadows of things the people in the true reality want them to perceive, rather than seeing anything real. Robots have been a fairly big part of Western science fiction since Isaac Asimov in the 1950s, and he didn't invent robots, merely established them as a permanent fixture of the genre. Both themes have been covered extensively. So I would say the biggest crime these two films made was being generic.

Of course, I don't know the exact details, but from what I read, it seems one generic western story complaining that other similarly generic western stories were more successful. So, I'd be interested in if there are any comparative details that are any deeper than that?

I'm not super familiar with this particular case, but this happens alot.

Famously there is the accusation that the Lion King was plaguerized from Leo the Lion (Kimba in the US) an anime by Tezuka.
There is a claim that Zootopia was plaguerized, and similar complaints about Moana.

When you look into these claims, it is usually very hard to verify them. It is hard to tell what is the case of two people coming up with similar ideas or drawing from similar inspiration. Humans stories tend to have a lot of elements in common because we often work from a similar background. Determining when the similarities are too much to be coincidental is incredibly difficult.

In this particular case, I am extremely skeptical for a few reasons.

1. She claims that both the Matrix and Terminator were based on her work, when those are two very different movies. I don't think it's possible that both can be plaguerized because if you follow them closely enough to be plaguerism, then you can't possibly wind up with two movies which are so different.

More likely, the book deals with the general theme of machines vs humanity, which is something that we've been exploring since the 20s.Even in the 1990s robots taking over was not a new concept.

2. One of the similarities she mentions is that the machines in her book were called "Sentinels" which are also present in the Matrix. But, the Sentinels in the Matrix are really just generic mindless robots and are not a major plot point really. Moreover, Sentinel is a term used in the X-Men to describe killer robots, so if they took it from anywhere, that seems the more likely source. And, the word "Sentinel" means soldier, so it's also very likely that this could have been thought of independently.

3. Sophia Stewart is straight up a liar. Her case against the Matrix was dismissed. She then later sued her attorney for not properly representing her. She did win some damages in that case.

However, she has consistently dishonestly portrayed the above. She has framed it as though her victory proves that she was the rightful author of the Matrix/Terminator. But, it does no such thing. The case she won just showed that her lawyer sucked and had nothing to do with plaguerism.

She won damages of 300K or so. Considering the original lawsuit was for about 3,000,000, this would indicate that the court determining the damages believed she would have had a roughly a one in ten thousand chance of winning if the case had gone to trial. That is assuming none of the damages were punitive, which they probably were. So, winning those damages certainly doesn't mean she would have prevailed in court on the plaguerim case. 

Considering her evident dishonesty, it is hard to take her original claims seriously. These stories tend to flourish because they are ones we want to believe are true. The poor artist being taken advantage of by a faceless corporation makes a great good and evil tale. But when you look into these cases more closely, the evidence tends to be sketchy at best.

Isnt this case decades old tho? Already over, no? She even sued her own lawyers for not following through with discovery/evidence or something.
Unless theres something new going on that i havent heard about