Logan Marshall-Green recalled the time he turned down the chance to play John Connor in Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. Despite the huge success of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, it took 12 years for the next movie to arrive. The delay was partly down to rights issues, and while James Cameron was initially interested in returning to write and direct another movie, he eventually left the project.
In the end, Terminator 3 became something of a remake of the second movie, with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator once again being reprogrammed to protect a now grown John Connor from an advanced female terminator. While the movie had some great action and a shocking twist in the finale, many fans and critics found it inferior to the first two movies. That said, the threequel is still considered the best, non-James Cameron entry in the series.
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Nick Stahl inherited the John Connor role from Edward Furlong, but in a new interview with Logan Marshall-Green on the Maltin on Movies podcast, the actor reveals he turned the part down to focus on academic studies.
I actually went on my first audition and booked it – in school – and I only went on the audition knowing I wouldn’t book it, and I wouldn’t have the deal, and it was for Terminator 3. I think Nick Stahl would play the role, and Jonathan Mostow was the director and they were going through all these machinations of starting a fellowship at NYU under my name if I had to leave early and I told them no. I wanted to graduate and I come from an academic background and more than anything I was with my fellow classmates for three years, I wasn’t going to just leave in the middle of it. That was a hard thing for Jonathan Mostow to swallow but it set me up, I think, to really only go after what I believe in.
Most acting students would have jumped at the chance to play a leading role in a major blockbuster like Terminator 3, so it was a gutsy move on Marshall-Green's part to focus on his studies instead. It doesn’t seem like he has regretted the decision either and has gone on to work solidly in movies like Upgrade and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
John Connor has had a weird journey onscreen, with Christian Bale and Jason Clarke later taking on the character in Terminator: Salvation and Genisys, respectively. John would actually become the main villain of the latter entry after being turned into a machine by Skynet, and if a sequel had been made, it apparently would have focused on the cyborg version of the character.
Instead, the series will hit the reboot switch again with Tim Miller’s Terminator 6, which Cameron will produce and oversee. Linda Hamilton will also return for the first time in over 25 years as Sarah Connor, and while the storyline has yet to be confirmed, the movie will also feature a young version of John Connor, too. Cameron has confirmed that while the events of the original two entries will be canon, later sequels like Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines will be ignored.
More: Terminator 6 Set Photos: Linda Hamilton Is Back As Sarah Connor
Source: Maltin on Movies
