There are potential spoilers in this post regarding Terminator: Salvation, so if you don’t want to read them, don’t go on.
There have been a bunch of minor “controversies” surrounding the new Terminator film even before it started filming. Sure, most people just remember the little Christian Bale 3 year old outburst… but there were plenty of complaints and rumors of problems running around before that.
One of the nastier ones (that quite honestly I ignored because I didn’t think there was anything to it) was the rumor that McG kills off John Conor, and then they make a terminator that looks like him… and it got worse! The good folks over at Cinema Blend give us this:
But with the movie just two weeks away from release, McG is finally coming clean about the leaked ending. SciFiWire reported on the director’s spoiler-filled roundtable conversation at the Terminator junket, in which McG admitted the leaked ending we heard about was only one part of a terrible, terrible ending.
SPOILERS OF TERMINATOR: SALVATION BELOW
“”There was this leak that Connor dies and they put Connor’s face on top of the machine body of [half-man, half-machine] Marcus [Sam Worthington]. Everybody went, ‘Booo! What’s that?’ That’s half of it. We had a jet-black ending. Connor dies, we’re in a room with all the people we care about. You take Connor’s likeness, you put it on the living machine of Marcus. He sits up now looking like Christian Bale, takes a gun, kills Kate, kills Kyle, kills Star, kills everybody, eyes flare red, the end.”Apparently they were so attached to the notion of Connor becoming half-man, half-machine that they wrote out several different versions of the dark ending, including one in which the Terminator version of Connor goes on to lead the resistance just as before.
I have two thoughts about this. First of all, I’m glad he changed that ending. I think it would have been far too “out there”. I respect them wanting to make some changes with the terminator franchise at this point “This is not the future my mother told me about”… but at the same time there are some things I don’t think you touch… like killing Kyle off before he jumps back in time. Just my thought.
BUT… having said that… I also think a director should stay true to his own vision. Yeah it might sound bad… but only he really knows how it plays out in his head. If you have a vision for your story, then make it and let other people judge your vision AFTER you’ve put it on screen.
So like I said… I’m not sure how I feel about this news. Either way I’m really looking forward to seeing the movie next week.
