SPOILER ALERT: Do not read any further if you don’t want to know plot details of Terminator Salvation. Seriously! You’ve been warned!
Two weeks before Terminator Salvation hit theaters, the film’s director, McG, sat in his L.A. production office for an interview with EW. He was talking about the swirl of rumors and gossip surrounding the film — about how bloggers had posted all kinds of far-fetched speculation during production and how it drove him nuts.
And then, out of nowhere, McG smiles and says, “Here’s something I’ve never talked about before…”.
Now, before we go any further, there’s some backstory about the movie’s plot you’ll need to know if you haven’t already seen it. Terminator Salvation is set in the year 2018 — after the apocalyptic Judgment Day, which was prophesied in the earlier films. There are three main characters in the story: John Connor (Christian Bale), the son of Sarah Connor who will lead the resistance against the evil Skynet; Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), the young resistance fighter who will grow up and eventually travel back in time (as seen in the 1984 original when Reese was played by Michael Biehn) to impregnate Sarah Connor with the young savior, John Connor; and Marcus Wright, a mysterious dude who’s half human, half machine programmed by Skynet (the fact that he’s unaware of this makes for some of the most poignant scenes in the film).
Okay, now back to McG’s big, juicy secret. A secret, by the way, that Bale will back up as you read on.
“There was talk on the Internet about an alternate ending where
Connor dies and they take Connor’s likeness and put it on top of Marcus
Wright’s machine body. So that it’s actually a machine that’s leading
the resistance! And the Internet caught wind of that and people went,
‘That’s bulls—! We don’t want that!’”
McG grins. “Well, that’s not really what the ending was.”
Actually, the bloggers were on the right track. Except, McG adds, the original ending actually went even further.
“Connor dies, okay? He’s dead,” McG continues. “And Marcus offers his
physical body, so Connor’s exterior is put on top of his machine body.
It looks like Connor, but it’s really Marcus underneath. And all of the
characters we care about (Kyle Reese, Connor’s wife Kate, etc.) are
brought into the room to see him and they think it’s Connor. And Connor
gets up and then there’s a small flicker of red in his eyes and he
shoots Kate, he shoots Kyle, he shoots everybody in the room. Fade to
black. End of movie. Skynet wins. F— you!”
F— you, indeed.
We tell the director that this would be the darkest, bleakest summer blockbuster ending of all time. He agrees.
“It’s the most nihilistic thing of all time. And Christian went
f—ing crazy, of course. He was insistent that it be done that way! He
wanted the bad guys to win! Can you imagine the oxygen going out of the
theater?! What just happened! It would piss you off! But maybe two
years from now, you’d think it was ballsy. But in the end, it just felt
like too much of a bummer.”
He pauses, thinking about the alternate ending that wasn’t. “Maybe we blew it.”
McG says the studio had signed off on this original dark-as-night
ending. But something about it didn’t smell right to him in the end.
How could a movie with a reported budget of $200 million and a possible
future of sequels possibly end that way?
EW sits down with Bale the next day and tells the star how McG let the cat out of the bag. Bale laughs. “There’s not much McG can keep in, is there?”
Was he really, as McG says, gung-ho to shoot that everyone-dies ending?
“I’m not the director,” says Bale. “There came to be a different
option that almost everyone, except myself, felt was the better way to
go. I took a bit of convincing, but you know, at the end of the day,
you need a director to make that call.”
But doesn’t he think that his Salvation would have been a depressing bummer, not to mention suicide at the box office?
“Done the way I saw it? No. But am I disappointed with this one? No.”
"There was talk on the Internet about an alternate ending whereConnor dies and they take Connor’s likeness and put it on top of MarcusWright’s machine body. So that it’s actually a machine that’s leadingthe resistance! And the Internet caught wind of that and people went,’That’s bulls—! We don’t want that!’"
McG grins. "Well, that’s not really what the ending was."
Actually, the bloggers were on the right track. Except, McG adds, the original ending actually went even further.
"Connor dies, okay? He’s dead," McG continues. "And Marcus offers hisphysical body, so Connor’s exterior is put on top of his machine body.It looks like Connor, but it’s really Marcus underneath. And all of thecharacters we care about (Kyle Reese, Connor’s wife Kate, etc.) arebrought into the room to see him and they think it’s Connor. And Connorgets up and then there’s a small flicker of red in his eyes and heshoots Kate, he shoots Kyle, he shoots everybody in the room. Fade toblack. End of movie. Skynet wins. F— you!"
F— you, indeed.
We tell the director that this would be the darkest, bleakest summer blockbuster ending of all time. He agrees.
"It’s the most nihilistic thing of all time. And Christian wentf—ing crazy, of course. He was insistent that it be done that way! Hewanted the bad guys to win! Can you imagine the oxygen going out of thetheater?! What just happened! It would piss you off! But maybe twoyears from now, you’d think it was ballsy. But in the end, it just feltlike too much of a bummer."
He pauses, thinking about the alternate ending that wasn’t. "Maybe we blew it."
McG says the studio had signed off on this original dark-as-nightending. But something about it didn’t smell right to him in the end.How could a movie with a reported budget of $200 million and a possiblefuture of sequels possibly end that way?
EW sits down with Bale the next day and tells the star how McG let the cat out of the bag. Bale laughs. "There’s not much McG can keep in, is there?"
Was he really, as McG says, gung-ho to shoot that everyone-dies ending?
"I’m not the director," says Bale. "There came to be a differentoption that almost everyone, except myself, felt was the better way togo. I took a bit of convincing, but you know, at the end of the day,you need a director to make that call."
But doesn’t he think that his Salvation would have been a depressing bummer, not to mention suicide at the box office?
"Done the way I saw it? No. But am I disappointed with this one? No."
Comments (1-30) of 143 Add your comment
yeah, cause that makes sense…why would the machine wait till it had johns skin on to kill everyone? why wouldn’t it just kill them all before? stupid idea, stupid movie
That…would have been…..AMAZING!
It would have been a great movie if it had this alternate ending.
If Connor kills Kyle Reese, how does Kyle Reese grow up and go back in time to become Connor’s father? I would say that is quite the plot hole…..
It would have been better than this one.
The hottest celeb scenes at http://www.actressscene.com
Didn’t we learn in T3 that JC was killed in the future by the Ah-nold bot?
The resistance then captured that terminator and Kate reprogrammed him to protect John and Kate when the she-bot came after them.
Although, since Ah-nold came back in time and told John what had happened, you would think that John wouldn’t be fooled by a “friendly” terminator.
So, John is how many years older than his dad?
But where would they go for the next film? That ending would make everything in T1-2 irrelevant, we’d eventually hate that McG did it.
What could have been killed is if either JC to be saved was remade like Sam worthington’s character was (lets say, in T5 the reistance captures a facility like the one that made Marcus) OR (and I like this better) Marcus assumes the identity of John Connor and fulfills the cannon (sends Reese back in time, sends future Terminators back (would also explain how they reprogrammed the T800’s) and is eventually terminated by a T-800 at the end of T6.
I enjoyed it much more than most of the haters on the other thread did, and most of the critics are just bashing this movie because it isnt Slumdog Millionaire and their still high off themselves from Oscar Season. They need to realize this is the summer, and its time for some popcorn flicks!
I liked the film. It was full of action and had an ok story line. I liked the end too as cheesey as it was. Bale on the other hand…well…not his best work. There was alot of this has to happen for this to happen and so on but as a shoot them up, blow them up movie, it did the job.
So they pulled a Prison Break eh, killing the main character, giving a big F.U. to the fans lol
http://tvdonewright.com/2009/05/26/jon-kate-plus-8-season-premiere-shatters-tlcs-record/
Here’s the beginning of Terminator IV The Erection.
To fool Skynet’s ID tracking system, John Connor added an “s” to his son’s name, disguised him as Jimmy Connors on an open tennis court, …
Ending the movie with a bloodbath (and the entire series by killing Kyle Reese) would have been stupid. McG is a moron.
“If Connor kills Kyle Reese, how does Kyle Reese grow up and go back in time to become Connor’s father? I would say that is quite the plot hole…..”
I disagree. It’s not a plot hole. In fact, it’s a new plot that can be used in a future Terminator film.
Really, it doesn’t matter if Kyle Reese lives or dies in the future. John Connor will still exist because his mother Sarah will just end up with the original man meant to be the father of John Connor before Kyle’s time traveling to 1984 in the original Terminator movie.
In fact, maybe Marcus Wright was meant to be John’s real father. He could have impregnated Sarah before he ended up in prison and assuming Kyle never showed up in 1984.
I really enjoyed the movie, and for all the haters: can you really tell me this was worse than T3?! Anyway, I think this ending would have been great, but it would have left a plot hole. But then again, Cameron made the same mistake with T2 which was supposed to end the series as if Judgement Day had been completely averted. If that would have been the case then he would have negated his own two movies.
Darth Davidious: Without any proof, how do we know that someone else was meant to be John’s father? John gave Kyle the picture of Sarah and never talked about his father to Kyle because he knew Kyle was going to be his father, that’s the way it was always meant to be. Why would Marcus be the father? We’ve never seen him before in the series, and making him the father would add too many coincidences to the series to keep it credible.
I would have hated that ending and just because it would be ballsy doesn’t mean it would be good. Would of made the previous movies irrelevant so it would’t be smart either. I always want the director’s true vision for a film and not the studios but McG should stick to Charlies Angels movies if thats the crap he wants to pull.
Ballsy, but not good. People would be upset. This movie hasn’t done anything for the franchise, but to sink it so miserably seems reckless.
Jeremy DC: Did you read the article?! It was McG’s idea to not use the darker ending, not the studio’s, the studio initially signed off on the darker ending. Anyway, Cameron was guilty of trying to negate his own series, he meant T2 to indicate that Sarah and John had stopped Judgement Day, meaning John never had a reason to send back Kyle, if he never sent back Kyle after Judgement Day then he never would have been born and they practically did Skynet’s job for them.
I thought the movie sucked as a hole anyways, wasn’t on par with what I was expecting. So to hear this idea was being floated actually explains alot about the people making the movie and why we got what we did from Terminator Salvation. Dud.
Yeah I would have been one of the fans that mobbed McG if he ended it like this. Glad to see he smartned up.
This was a two hour movie letting you know that there will be another two hour movie in two years. Why can’t they just end this story instead of milking the story to DEATH.
I’m horrified by McG’s preferred ending, but it would have been significantly more intellectually honest than the ending we actually got. Seriously…a heart transplant in a field hospital. Yeah, not so much.
Skynet winning sucks, but come on. If they aren’t going to make the humans smarter and more creative from their adversity, then Skynet SHOULD win. And if Connor is going to be a messiah figure, he’d better be seriously different than the average person. So far, I haven’t seen anyone write him that way. The TV series hinted at going there at the end, but now we’ll never know.
THIS MOVIE IS AWESOME! I was expecting Connor to die when he was stabbed in the chest in the Machine’s base. I expected the machines to put his skin on a machine to infiltrate the resistance. Then when Marcus chose to rebel the machines and assist Connor in an escape and was thinking like a human with the machine skeleton, I was cheering! haha. This movie is AMAZING!
The movie was pretty disjointed but had some very good moments. It was a dissapointment for me for 2 reasons.
1. Star Trek was unbelievably good so T4 had a tough act to follow.
2. The new TV series (sarah Chronicles) was IMO excellent so again T4 had another tough act to follow. I would have liked the TV cast much better and maybe the director as well.
We should all agree that T4 is much better than T3 which was an easy act to follow.
The problem with some studios trying to make a science fiction themed movies is that they really understimate what true science fiction fans want. Both Iron Man and Star Trek is proof some people understand, the latest terminator is proof that some people don’t. Times are changing. To qualify as a good movie, people want more than things blowing up. Anybody that thought terminator was good, I would have to say is not a true science fiction fan. Science fiction as a genre has really improved as far as character development and writing. Terminator was sub-par. The rating and the fact that Night at the Museum took it down so fast is a testament to that.
The movie sucked, and the alternate ending where everyone dies would have been great. Of course, just like in every other Terminator film, some idiot looking for more cash would suggest that someone sent someone *else* back in time, and changed it *again*, and we’re back to square one. I loved the original, but the others have totally sucked because they use the timetravel as an excuse for bad writing. Ooop! I painted myself ina corner? Timetravel! All gone! ugh
What a disappointing movie. It was so bad that it became laughable. Plus, I have heard Danny Elfman’s score on other films and it is pitch perfect. His work on Terminator Salvation was distracting, at best.
Hey. I would’ve kind of liked that ending. Then again, I didn’t really care about the Terminator series until Christian Bale came onboard, and if this ending would’ve made for a better movie, then I’m all for it.
Love how badly Christian wanted everyone to die…
The movie was great, the END!
That makes no sense. In T3 the Terminator tells John Connor the date of his death…it was 2030 something. This is only 2018. That would have been a huge screw up.