Like a studly Michael Biehn sent back to protect Linda Hamilton, we warned you about Terminator Salvation. Fortunately, it appears that the middling box office will preclude a nightmarish version of the future in which McG gets to make two more joyless, muddled sequels, but until then, let's console ourselves with the dumb original endings that might have been. Spoilers ahead!
CHUD's Devin Faraci fleshed out the initial take on Salvation that director McG had teased: before Christian Bale got involved, the role of John Connor was a mere cameo. What Faraci reveals, though, is just how much the beef-up of Connor warped the script (as well as what story elements appeared to be retained almost at random), and how far along into shooting those original plot points remained.
In the version of the script Faraci read, hero Marcus Wright (eventually played by Sam Worthington) makes his way to Skynet City and finds a Club Med-type resort called Project ANGEL, where Skynet is turning some humans into cyborgs while wiping the rest out. Helena Bonham Carter's character, Dr. Serena Kogan, is one such cyborg (which would explain the concept art that leaked revealing her robotic innards), and when the humans mount their attack on Skynet City, she shoots and kills John Connor.
The script ends, Faraci says, with the dead Connor's face being grafted onto Marcus Wright so that this mechanized man might take up his mantle as the leader of the resistance. It's an ending that leaked during Salvation's production, and despite all the signs Faraci found that would seem to confirm the production's fidelity to this version of the script (including Project ANGEL logos on press badges during set visits), McG is telling EW that an actual, darker ending was the one that was greenlit.
"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!" [...]
"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."
While that dark ending may have been ballsy, you know what we think would have been even more daring? Finishing the script before the movie started shooting so that it would actually makes sense from beginning to end. It's one thing to commission rewrites, but when so many vestigial elements remain in the film (completely devoid of their intended context), it starts to resemble not a movie but a jigsaw puzzle where certain pieces, plucked out on mere whims, are replaced by shapes from an entirely different puzzle.
Also, it should have been funner.
· EXCLUSIVE: WHAT WENT WRONG WITH TERMINATOR SALVATION? [CHUD]
· 'Terminator Salvation': The shocking, bummer of an ending you didn't see! [EW]