Will fans of sci-fi horror franchise The Terminator ever get to see the darker director's cut of McG's Terminator Salvation, and how does his vision differ from the finished film? For all of his flaws and merits, The Babysitter director McG is not a name many movie fans associate with dark, edgy self-seriousness. The former music video helmer rose to prominence with the early 2000s Charlie's Angels reboot, a series of movies which succeeded with audiences and bombed with critics by upping the campiness of the already over-the-top source material.
In the years since, the divisive director's biggest hits have been relatively light-hearted, fast-paced genre fare like 2019's sci-fi comedy Rim of the World and the acclaimed horror-comedy The Babysitter, which got a 2020 sequel in the much-maligned The Babysitter: Killer Queen. Despite leaning toward the sillier side of genre filmmaking, one title stands out in McG's filmography. In 2009, the director released Terminator: Salvation, the long-awaited fourth installment of the beloved sci-fi horror franchise. As the only installment of the franchise that didn't feature Arnold Schwarzenegger returning to reprise the title role, Salvation took the franchise in an even darker direction than its predecessors.
Terminator Salvation wasn't a flop upon its 2009 release, but it earned the ire of both franchise fans and critics for its inconsistent tone and convoluted storyline. McG's contribution to the series has since been the subject of some reappraisal, with fans claiming that the director's cut is an improvement on the original theatrical film, as it came closer to embracing the Terminator franchise's horror movie roots. During a recent interview with CBR, the director confirmed that an even darker director's cut of the film exists, prompting fans to trawl through rumors, shooting scripts, animatics, and production detritus to work out what was cut from the original Terminator Salvation. With the two most recent additions in The Terminator franchise underperforming with both critics and audiences, there's no better time to see whether McG's vision could have been better than fans gave it credit for.
Terminator Salvation's Alternate Third Act
According to rumors, the film's entire third act was radically restructured, as the filmmakers felt a subplot about human Terminator Hybrid villains wasn't working. The original third act would have seen Marcus face off against a fellow Hybrid in the form of Helena Bonham Carter's Serena. Unlike Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Terry Crews, whose Terminator Salvation cameo was cut from the film completely, Bonham Carter's character Serena does appear as an AI in the version audiences saw. In the original script, she would have appeared in person, commanding a pet T-8000 and confining Marcus to a chair for a classic villain lecture.
In this version of events, the on-screen death of Ashdown angers Marcus enough for him to free himself from the T-8000's clutches, although not before a bizarre kiss from Serena. This would have prompted another fight sequence; its elision explains why fans were so frustrated by the PG-13 rating the film ended up receiving. Serena's original gory demise would no doubt have jeopardized the family-friendly rating, and while there are some solid PG-13 horror movies, there's no denying that Terminator Salvation needed a punchier death scene for its antagonist. That's what it would have gotten with an R rating, as Marcus was originally supposed to rip the microchip from Serena's neck, prompting a robotic claw to register her as human and tear her limb from limb.
This bit of brutal action was reportedly cut because Carter's performance was deemed too campy, despite the campiness arguably being part of what makes Schwarzenegger's Terminator so iconic. With it went the brutal death of minor character Virginia, who was originally intended to be the victim of a sudden, nasty neck-snap assassination by the titular bots during a concurrent battle sequence.
Terminator Salvation's Missing Deaths
Len's demise was also one of the bloody scenes cut to secure Terminator Salvation's much-maligned PG-13 rating. According to the film's original shooting script, the barely-glimpsed human resistance fighter holed up in an abandoned 7-11 convenience store was involved in a tense dispute over whether or not to share dwindling supplies with Marcus and John when, in classic McG fashion, the choice becomes gorily irrelevant as his neck is opened by a shot from outside. The shooting script follows this with Virginia being dragged out through the store's roof by a metal claw and, although her capture remains a plot point, Len's vicious death preceding it didn't make the final cut, much like Virginia's aforementioned snapped neck death.
It's always unfortunate when a horror franchise doesn't have the gumption to keep its gruesome scenes intact, but this moment was more than merely a good jolt for fans of blood and guts in the audience. Understandably, Schwarzenegger hated Terminator Salvation, as this sort of punchy violence made the first movies in the series scary and unpredictable, and the absence of carnage contributed to the neutered atmosphere of the franchise's weak third outing, Terminator: Rise of the Machines. Keeping Len's death intact would have justified Terminator: Salvation's dark, gritty tone and re-established the franchise as an edgy, brutal series where no one is safe.
Terminator Salvation's Original (Crazy Dark) Ending
The real meat of Salvation's changes came from its studio-mandated happy-ish ending, a misjudged moment of sentimentality that jars with the preceding film's dark, post-apocalyptic atmosphere. In the version viewers got, Marcus dies to give his heart to John Connor, saving the leader of the resistance in the process. Terminator Salvation's original ending could have saved the franchise, injecting a viciously dark twist into proceedings, and reinvigorating the predictable plot as a result.
In McG's darker cut of Terminator Salvation, John would have died due to the injuries sustained in his battle against the eponymous killer robots, and his face would then have been grafted onto the still-living Marcus, allowing the human-Terminator Hybrid to lead the Resistance in his place. The scene opened on an operating table as Marcus—now in the guise of John Connor—woke up, revealed the red light behind his eyes, and proceeded to slaughter every surviving character. This insanely bleak coda would have seen the secret Terminator kill not only the resistance's top brass, but implied that he would go on to infiltrate the organization and murder everyone else too, providing exactly the sort of devastating shock that the franchise needed.