Sci-fi sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day almost included a violent massacre scene, and the cut sequence could have fundamentally altered the genre of the Terminator franchise going forward. The franchise has moved between different genres and tones throughout its six movies. The 1984 original is a dark action thriller with sci-fi and horror elements, as director James Cameron’s Terminator borrowed from slasher cinema to make its implacable villain more threatening.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day was an action extravaganza that abandoned these horror elements in favor of large-scale setpieces, a path the series has mostly stuck to ever since. Later outings like Terminator: Genisys or Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines have none of the original's horror elements, likely due to the outsized success of Judgment Day. However, the blockbuster sequel nearly had a horror scene to rival anything shown in the first entry.
The missing Gant camp attack, committed by the T-1000 in the original script, is a scene that would have altered the tone of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and could have changed the franchise's style by extension. Terminator 2: Judgment Day cut numerous promising scenes as many proved prohibitively expensive to stage. However, the Gant camp massacre, wherein the T-1000 murdered Travis Gant and everyone living on his ranch and the onscreen death of Enrique Salceda were both dropped for being too violent and serving too little story purpose. Keeping these gruesome scenes could have kept the horror element of The Terminator’s sci-fi/horror tone, however.
Where the original Terminator was an unapologetically intense slasher, the sequels grew lighter in tone and elided these horror elements. This process began when Terminator 2 flipped the original movie’s dynamic, making the previously intimidating eponymous killer a protector. However, this tonal shift is something that would not necessarily have been occurred if the T-1000’s camp massacre made it to the big screen. Arnie’s original villain would still have been a heroic character in the Terminator sequel, but the T-1000 racking up a higher and bloodier onscreen body count could have kept Judgment Day’s tone closer to the original’s slasher-style pacing.
The Terminator franchise has attempted to revisit its earlier brutality but never really went all in on the overt horror elements of the original. Terminator: Dark Fate’s opening scene killed the young John Connor in a shocking twist few viewers saw coming, but that moment of bleakness was the sequel's only truly horrific scene. After that opening shock, Terminator: Dark Fate settled into a bloodier remix of Genisys’ sci-fi action tone, a style that has been adopted by every Terminator outing save for 2009’s Terminator Salvation. That sequel attempted a post-apocalyptic war movie style, but the series has still never revisited the slasher horror roots that the missing Gant Camp attack could have kept intact in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.