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.
addCredit(“Richard Foreman”)
“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."
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…..
Actually, it would have created an alternate parallel universe is all. Not a loop hole, but a branch out which they could have used to reboot the franchise with upcoming sequels. Think ‘Star Trek 2009′
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.
Marcus Wright was born in 1975… that would have made him 9 when Kyle went back into the 80s… And who’s to say Sarah Conner would have gotten pregnant. Maybe she just forgot the condoms cause of a killer robot chasing them. Or maybe she would have turned gay, I mean in the second movie she was a full blown lesbo
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.