Terminator Salvation director McG hopes to share his darker cut of the film

Terminator Salvation, Terminator Genisys, and Terminator: Dark Fate were all supposed to be the first entry in a new trilogy of Terminator movies. Each time, the trilogy plans had to be scrapped due to disappointing box office. But the Terminator franchise isn’t over yet. Terminator: The Anime Series will be reaching the Netflix streaming service sometime in the near future – and while we look forward to seeing how that’s going to turn out, Terminator Salvation director McG is looking forward to the day when he’ll be able to share his darker cut of the movie.

Speaking with ComicBook.com while doing the press rounds for his new movie Family Switch, which will be available to watch on Netflix later this week, McG said, “We tried hard. On that one, we brought in Jonah Nolan to write it, there was a writers’ strike back then. Brought in Christian Bale, you can’t reach much higher than that. We certainly gave it everything we had. A lot of people like that movie, it didn’t quite do what I hoped it was gonna do and I’ve been living with that wound a long time. There’s a cut out there with an entirely different ending, I just can’t share it with the world yet. It’s beyond dark.” This echoes something McG previously told the site: “It’s interesting because I feel like we did so much right with Terminator but, ultimately, got just enough wrong that we got beat up a little bit by the fanbase and it really, really broke my heart. And now, strangely, I think the film has started to age better. And there is a different cut: I have my own cut of that film and there’s people online that talk about wanting to see that cut. And that’s interesting! But I think I got a lot of things right with that.“

As we explained in a different article, “While Terminator Salvation ends on a relatively victorious note, the original ending was much bleaker. The planned ending had John Connor (Christian Bale) dying with his skin, including his face, being grafted onto Connor’s ally, the human-Terminator hybrid Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington). The theatrical ending that was ultimately used sees John Connor in a one-man rescue operation on a Skynet stronghold to rescue a young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), the man who will eventually become his father, as seen in the original Terminator. Marcus eventually learns the truth behind his own creation, that he was designed to kill John Connor before he becomes the leader of mankind’s war against the machines. Connor rescues Kyle but he is mortally wounded after battling a T-800 that features Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face being digitally applied so it appears as he did in Terminator 2. In the end, Marcus sacrifices himself to save John Connor by giving his heart to be transplanted into Connor’s so that he may live. It’s a more heroic, albeit safe, ending that the studio probably thought would go down better with fans.”

I couldn’t have described those events myself, because I did not like Terminator Salvation at all and haven’t watched it since it was first released in 2009.

What do you think of Terminator Salvation? Would you like to see McG get the chance to show his darker cut of the film to the world someday? Let us know by leaving a comment below.