The Terminator franchise has had many ups and downs over the years. AfterJames Camerondelivered a pair of blisteringly iconic films withThe TerminatorandTerminator 2: Judgment Day, other filmmakers have scrambled to repeat that success… and fallen short. The most infamous effort would beTerminator Salvation.Salvationhad all the ingredients for success:Christian Balewould step into John Connor’s shoes, directorMcGwas a major fan of the Terminator franchise, and for the first timethe film would take place in the war-torn future where Skynet reigned supreme.
Ironically,Salvation’s production would come to mirror its apocalyptic setting. WhileBale’s scathing rant toward cinematographerShane Hurlbutwent viral,other factors hamperedSalvation’s road to the big screen. Those included a constantly shifting script, actors being injured on set, and a pair of lawsuits. In addition,Salvationreceived a PG-13 rating and is the only film that doesn’t featureArnold Schwarzenegger…a pair of decisions that hasn’t bode well with Terminator fans.
Terminator Salvation
In 2018, a mysterious new weapon in the war against the machines, half-human and half-machine, comes to John Connor on the eve of a resistance attack on Skynet. But whose side is he on, and can he be trusted?
Salvation’s core issues lay in the film’s script,especially as it was constantly being rewritten before and during filming. The original draft was penned byJohn BrancatoandMichael Ferris, who had previously writtenTerminator 3: Rise of the Machines.Other writers, includingPaul Haggis(Crash) andShawn Ryan(The Shield) would polish the script even further.The project even got Jonathan Nolan onboard, though he departed due to a previous commitment. Both McG and Bale praised Nolan’s work,with McG outright stating to /Film"I don’t know how the WGA rules work but honest to goodness, we did the heaviest lifting with Jonah." The biggest change to theSalvationscript came with the film’s final act, and a major twist surrounding Connor and the mysterious Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington).
The ‘Terminator’ Easter Egg You Might’ve Missed in ‘Reacher’ Season 2
The Terminator callback isn’t the first time this actor has riffed on his own history with the franchise.
In the original finale, Connor would have died while fighting the first ever T-800 prototype, leading the Resistance to take his skin and place it over Marcus, as Marcus himself was a Terminator. But McG revealed that the original draft would have gone even furtherby having Marcus turning out to be a triple agent and wiping out the resistance.“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!”McG toldEntertainment Weekly. That ending would never see the light of day as the originalSalvationscript leaked online and fan backlash was so negativethat Warner Bros. had McG reshoot the entire third act. While Connor and Marcus still fight the T-800 in the final film, Marcus winds up sacrificing his own life by giving his heart to Connor.
‘Terminator Salvation’ Was Filled With Injuries and Lawsuits
As if a constantly shifting script wasn’t enough,multiple injuries took place during the filming ofSalvation.McG went in-depth about those injuries when promotingSalvationat WonderCon 2009,telling SciFiWire, “Yeah, I mean our special-effects guy, a guy named Mike Menardis, who didTropic Thunderand did our film, basically had his leg severed off, and they had to reattach it. He was hit by one of his own special effects—you’ll see when they escape the minefield, they kick open this sort of manhole cover, and it goes tumbling and tumbling and tumbling, and it went off inadvertently, and it caught him right in the bottom of the leg, and it just absolutely shattered his leg, and they had to reconstruct it, and for a minute there they thought that he was going to lose his leg. You know that Christian broke his hand, Sam hurt his back. Everybody really took their licks.”
Further complicating matterswere two lawsuits filed before and afterSalvation’s release. Both lawsuits involved the Halycon Company, who at that time held the rights to the Terminator franchise.Moritz BormansuedDerek AndersonandVictor Kubicekfor $160 million on the grounds thatthey had “hijacked"Salvationfrom under him. Another producer,Peter D. Graves, went on to sue Anderson and Kubicekclaiming that the duo owed him $175,000. AfterSalvation’s lackluster reception and performance at the box office,Halycon wound up auctioning off the rightsto the Terminator films when it went into bankruptcy.
‘Terminator Salvation’ Has an Unexpected Cult Following
WhileSalvationwas met with harsh criticism, (particularly from Bale,who considered it a lowlight of his career),it inspired a wealth of tie-in material that delivered upon the promise of the film. Much of this served as prequel material to the events ofSalvation, including an arcade video game and its own tie-in animated series from Machinima starringMoon Bloodgood, who plays Resistance soldier Blair Williams.Salvationwould even receive an official continuation of sorts in the form ofTerminator Salvation: The Final Battle.A 12-issue maxiseries published by Dark Horse Comics,The Final Battlewould actually incorporate elements of the original script by having Connor transfer his consciousness into a Terminator body. Unlike the original script, writerJ. Michael Straczynskiwould have Connor utilize his newfound machine gifts to end the war between humanity and Skynet in a surprising fashion.
McG has also expressed a desireto restore the original ending of the film. “I would have stuck with the dark ending that we photographed that got cut. There’s a lot about that film that people enjoyed. And, technically, we pushed some things forward… We tried to stack the deck. I tried, Terminator faithful, I tried,” he said in aninterview withThe Hollywood Reporter. In an age wheredirector’s cuts can come to lifewith the right amount of backing, it would be interesting to see McG’s original vision and if it could change the perception ofSalvation.
Terminator Salvationis available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.
