EXCLUSIVE: WHAT WENT WRONG WITH TERMINATOR SALVATION?







This article, while about an alternate version of Terminator Salvation, does contain spoilers for the version in theaters now.







The Terminator Salvation you saw on movie screens this weekend was not

always the Terminator Salvation that was meant to be. Like in the

franchise itself, history has been changed, and the original script for

Terminator Salvation ended up getting gutted. You can still see the

outlines of that script in the current film (a form of deja vu, as

similar vestigial script elements can be seen in this summer’s

blockbuster hit Star Trek), but the specifics that might have made

Terminator Salvation if not better at least more interesting are gone.







What caused these massive changes? And what were they? The biggest

change came when McG flew to the UK to talk to Christian Bale about

starring in the fourth Terminator movie. The director wanted the Batman

star to play Marcus Wright, the cyborg protagonist of the script. But

Bale focused on another part: John Connor. The only problem is that

John Connor had about three minutes of screen time in the entire film;

most of Connor’s moments were played offscreen. In the original script

John Connor was the secretive leader of the Resistance. He lived on the

HQ sub, and almost no one saw his face, so as to keep him hidden from

the robots. Connor made radio addresses and existed as a legend for the

fighting men and women of the Resistance, but in the original script

Connor didn’t show up onscreen until the last minutes of the movie.







You may remember in late 2007 when the rumor that Bale was signing on

to Terminator 4 surfaced there were two competing reports: while Aint

It Cool had Bale tipped to play Connor, we had him tipped to play a

Terminator. As you can see both are correct; for a little while people

involved in the film were assuming that Bale was going to let go of the

Connor idea and move over to the Marcus role, but he had something else

up his sleeve: massive rewrites to beef up the John Connor role.







Watching Terminator Salvation as it exists in theaters it’s easy to see

that this was a bad idea. The script that ended up getting shot never

quite finds anything for John Connor to do. If you were to remove

Connor from the film, relegating him once again to radio voice over,

almost none of the film’s plot would be changed. It’s likely that the

new Connor scenes were the work of Jonathan Nolan, who did do a lot of

writing on the film, but who was denied credit by the WGA. The reason

would be that all of the work Nolan did was cosmetic – adding Connor

scenes that had no bearing on the film’s structure or plot.







Bale’s desire to star as John Connor was probably the most fatal blow

to the film; it completely distorted the shape of the story as it

existed. But the other fatal blow came from the internet. When the

original ending of the script leaked – John Connor is killed by a

Terminator and has his skin grafted onto Marcus Wright, who takes up

the shadowy leader’s place as the leader of the Resistance – many people

went crazy. On the surface it seemed like a major slap in the face of

the franchise, and doubly so on paper: John Connor, the guy who the

entire franchise is ostensibly about, shows up for two and a half

pages, gets killed and has his face transplanted onto a robot (in the

original script it’s actually just the face that gets slapped on

Marcus).







There are differing reports as to how far that ending made it. McG has

gone on the record again and again saying that was never the ending he

wanted (he came on to the project after the script we’re talking about

here was written), but there’s a lot of contrary evidence, including

on-set reports that have ‘Connor becomes robot’ written on production

calendars. The entire finished film itself feels like evidence that the

original ending was always the intended ending. The movie seems to be

inexorably building towards the ‘Connor dies’ finale, including

elements like endless scenes featuring Sarah Connor’s tapes, obviously

intended to give Marcus/Connor a primer on John Connor’s life and

destiny. In fact, when John Connor got a pole through the chest I was

excited – had McG been lying to us all along and kept the original

ending?







Of course he wasn’t. The film’s biggest weakness comes in the final

minutes, which feel almost completely slapped on, as the character

we’ve been following makes a sudden and boring sacrifice. The air just

explodes out of the movie as John Connor’s rescue feels utterly

unearned, and the ending of the movie is so final that you walk out of

the theater not caring whether or not the future war is ever again

revisited.







So what might have been? Before the Bale rewrites and before the internet kiboshed the original ending?







With John Connor relegated to the shadows for most of the film, the

original Terminator Salvation focused more on the relationship between

Kyle and Marcus. Star was always there, and was essentially always just

as useless, but without the constant cutaways to pointless Connor

scenes the film was able to delve more into Kyle/Marcus. The script

spent time examining what it was like living in a post-apocalyptic

world, and was more definitively R-rated. At the gas station Marcus

saves Kyle and Star from a group of cannibals, throwing one of them

into an open fire (intended as a callback to the biker on the stove in

T2. It’s important to note that the original script by extraordinary

hacks Brancato and Ferris – the guys who wrote The Net, Catwoman and

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines – is not some discarded gem. It’s

got plenty of problems of its own).







But again, with Connor out of the script the relationship between Kyle

and Marcus gets to grow, which gives Marcus’ later quest to rescue Kyle

more weight. And the early scenes where Kyle can’t drive are paid off

in this script, first with a sequence where Marcus teaches him to drive

and later, in the third act, where Kyle gets the final heroic beat he’s

missing in the finished film.







As in the final film Kyle and Star are captured by Skynet and

transported to Skynet City, but with one major change: Skynet has no

idea who Kyle Reese is. This is a point that bothers many viewers of

the final film; I’m not radically concerned, as Kyle Reese’s time

traveling shenanigans are public record enough that it’s believable

Skynet would have found out about him while taking over the world’s

computer networks. But by having Skynet not know who Kyle is the

original script removes the machines’ idiotic plan to bring John Connor

to Skynet City instead of simply killing his dad. This feels like the

kind of change that was made to give John Connor more to do, since the

whole sequence where Connor convinces the Resistance forces to step

down doesn’t occur in this script (and why would it? He’s Michael

Ironsides in this movie).







Marcus’ adventures with Blair are slightly different. In the original

script he saves Blair from a pack of rabid wolves as opposed to horny

rapists. This scene was important because it gives Marcus his first

awareness that he’s much faster and stronger than he used to be,

something he couldn’t quite prove against humans in a PG-13 movie

(although could you wreck a group of wolves in a PG-13 movie?). In the

finished film Blair and Marcus have a tender moment; the original

script takes things very, very differently: Blair offers Marcus a STAF.

That’s Sit Tight And Fuck, a phrase in common use in the Resistance.

See, it’s a horrible, miserable future and the humans of the time have

gotten over their petty prudery. If the only joy they can get is

fucking, why not take it? Life is cheap and they may not live to see

the next night, so tap whatever ass you can.







The next big change comes when Marcus is captured by the Resistance.

John Connor remains offscreen and he interrogates Marcus via

com-link. But Connor is thinking like the John Connor who has become

used to temporal assassination attempts, and he believes that Marcus

has been sent from an even more advanced future to kill him. Meanwhile,

we have more cutaways to Kyle Reese being transported to Skynet City;

this script really forwards Reese in a way that the finished movie

fails to do.







Marcus escapes the Resistance more or less as seen in the finished and heads to

Skynet City. And it’s here that the major changes really come into play.







In the original script the title Terminator Salvation actually meant

something. Watching the finished film it’s hard to figure out why it

has that name – is it because Marcus saves Connor’s life in the last

minute? In the original script Serena has a bigger role than a quick

cameo, and she explains the salvation element.







Marcus comes to Skynet City and finds… a seaside resort populated

with humans. He sees Terminator landscapers! It turns out that Skynet

hasn’t been trying to wipe out humanity. It’s been trying to save us.







This is perhaps the most bizarre idea in the whole script, and the one

that most obviously doesn’t work. It seems as though Brancato and

Ferris thought people liked the Matrix sequels, as this all feels like

it could be in those films. See, Serena heads Project ANGEL, which is

making Hybrids (ie, Cyborgs). The reason? Skynet did a calculation and

realized that humanity was going to be extinct in 200 years; the

machines decided to save a few by turning them into Hybrids and wipe

the rest out. It makes no sense, and is the kind of thing that makes

you wonder if these guys ever even watched the previous Terminator

films.







What’s fascinating is that the Project ANGEL stuff lasted well into

production. While I was on set I was given a security badge that gave

me access to all the stages; it had Project ANGEL’s logo on it. While

being given a tour of pre-production artwork we were told more about

Project ANGEL and the role it would have in the movie, a role that’s

completely removed from the final film. At the time I visited the set

it seemed like Serena was going to show up in person at the end of the

movie, just as she does in the script, and I saw artwork depicting

that.







It’s here that you can really understand where Terminator Salvation

fell to pieces. The film was being rewritten, piecemeal, on the set.

Instead of re-engineering the whole picture it seems like McG and

company were just tackling each segment, figuring out how to get John

Connor more involved without fixing the underlying structure at which

they were picking away.







Serena, a cyborg herself, meets Marcus and explains Project ANGEL and

the seaside resort to him. She also explains the Transport chip – it’s

embedded in all cyborgs and prevents them from feeling pain and

emotion. She then gives Marcus a tour of the whole Skynet City, showing

off the T-800s that are being developed and giving him a peak at the

T-1000 and T-X in the earliest stages. She also shows him the time

machine technology they’ve been working on, and the neural net AI

database of human brains, which will allow the Terminators to better

act like humans and as such better infiltrate human encampments.







Then the big shock: Marcus is too late. Kyle’s brain has been removed

and he’s been uploaded to the neural net database, and Star has been

terminated. All hope is lost, and Serena has activated his Transport

chip, so Marcus can’t do anything.







Just then there’s an explosion. Serena is distracted and, just like in

the finished film (where it actually makes less sense), Marcus rips out

his Transport chip. He then jumps into the time machine, which burns

his clothes off, and he goes back in time just far enough to rescue

Kyle and Star, grab a laser weapon and set off the explosion that

distracted Serena (whether or not Brancato and Ferris were watching

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey while writing this scene is

unconfirmed). And then the action begins.







The trio try to escape Skynet City with Kyle driving an ATV, paying off

his driving lessons. They’re pursued by Hunter/Killer Terminator Tanks,

and they take most of them out as they rip through the seaside resort

(including killing one Tank by… making it drive into a pool), but

they end up on a dock and with one last H/K tank about to end them.

Then suddenly Blair shows up leading an airstrike that destroys the

tank. Then the sub surfaces, and John Connor finally makes his

appearance, leading human troops in combat against the Terminators at

the resort. Connor and Kyle meet, but it’s not a big moment.







Marcus has rescued a bunch of humans while at Skynet City and the

Resistance take them aboard the sub. Everybody is happy and it seems

like the Resistance has won the day when Marcus suddenly realizes that

Serena is among the refugees. She attacks, blowing off his arm and gut

shooting John Connor. Fade to black.







Later Marcus wakes up in the hospital. Blair tells him that they’re

covering up Project ANGEL – even within the film this was too stupid to

let anyone know about it. But there’s bad news: John Connor’s not going

to make it. His wound is fatal. On his death bed John Connor gives Kyle

the picture of Sarah Connor (when I interviewed Anton Yelchin he

confirmed that this scene had been cut before shooting, which he

thought was a good idea. That does make it seem like the original

ending was never intended for production). John and Kate

beg Marcus to take up the mantle of John Connor – since no one has

really seen him anybody can be him. The legend is bigger than the man,

they insist.







Marcus agrees, and John Connor’s face is grafted onto Marcus (this, it

turns out, is the source of Connor’s scars. You would think they would

have cut off his face from the back of the head, under the hair, but I

guess not), despite the fact that nobody really knows what Connor looks

like anyway. But it’s done, and Connor dies and Marcus now must step up

and lead the Resistance into the future.







In a lot of ways the original Terminator Salvation script is still

poking through in the final film. In fact, except for the additional John Connor

nonsense in the first two acts, the opening two-thirds of the movie

(minus the prologue, which was not in this script) more or less follow

the original beats. These are the best parts of the movie, and it’s

when the finished film moves into the third act that everything starts

falling apart. It’s obvious that McG and Jonathan Nolan never really

cracked their own third act, and without the death of John Connor they

never found a reason for this movie to even exist. In effect what

they’ve done with their undercooked third act is make a movie that’s a

TV episode – in the end everything is more or less back at the status

quo. And by backgrounding Kyle and robbing him of his third act

heroics, the finished film has taken away its only other good reason to

exist, namely that it’s the beginnings of the Connor/Reese friendship.







Would the original ending have worked? People would have walked out of

theaters mad, no doubt. But it was a ballsy idea that could have been

executed better than it was in the script. You don’t even need to do

the face transplant – have Marcus be the original owner of those John

Connor scars the whole movie and they’d read like a reveal at the

finale. The ending of Salvation now is so pat that it isn’t the opening

of a new trilogy but just another boring prequel, setting up things we

already knew about. Killing Connor would have been shocking and would

have added drama to the upcoming installments. Hell, it sounds like

Skynet City offered pretty great technology to the heroes – why not

have Connor’s brain downloaded into Marcus’ body?







These are all pointless considerations now. The finished film opted to

play utterly safe, and as a result it’s a lump without buzz or

excitement. Ironically Bale’s demand to beef up John Connor, which led

to a final film that is utterly distended, would have perfectly set up

the character’s demise. The biggest problem with Connor dying at the

end of the original script is that his death carries no weight as he’s

a nobody throughout the film. But in the current movie, which feels

like it’s building to that death, it would have been the kind of

surprise that works, one that’s had a foundation laid.







The beefing up of Connor led to the diminishment of Reese, a big

problem in the final product. Anton Yelchin came on to Terminator

Salvation at a time when he was the second lead; I imagine his demotion

must have been disheartening. And to audiences it’s disappointing as

Yelchin is the best actor in the piece. A Terminator Salvation with

twice as much Yelchin might very well have been a movie that was more

enjoyable, in the same way that Star Trek overcomes its script

handicaps with great casting.







Looking at this weekend’s box office it’s likely that Terminator

Salvation is the end of the franchise. And it’s probably the end of

Christian Bale forcing major rewrites on projects as well. I do think

that a smarter rewrite of the original Brancato/Ferris script, one that

allowed for a truly shocking ending, might have turned out a film whose

failure at the box office would have been worth mourning. While I enjoyed myself watching

Salvation, at no point did I really give a shit about what was

happening or what was going to happen next in the series. McG and Nolan

muddied the end of the picture, delivering action

generics (yet another Terminator fight in a factory) while never

finding their own hook that would give this movie more of an impact

than you would get from an expanded universe novel. The only thing that

was really, truly broken in Brancato and Ferris’ script was Project

ANGEL, and the finished film doesn’t really give Skynet any better

motivation for collecting humans. McG, fearing the fan backlash (which

was already starting when the original ending leaked) opted to ‘fix’

the element that least needed fixing.