The original The Terminator may be seen as a sci-fi horror classic, but James Cameron’s slasher cut a lot of notable moments from its original script and outline. Beginning in 1984 with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career-defining titular role as The Terminator, the series spent the subsequent three and a half decades bouncing between grim horror, family-friendly blockbuster action, goofy self-aware action-comedy, and eventually even post-apocalyptic war film with 2009’s Terminator: Salvation.
The strange tonal transformation of the Terminator franchise was made possible by the original movie’s massive success with both audiences and critics, as Cameron’s gritty low-budget chase thriller was praised for its relentless pace, compelling mystery, involving characters, and unforgettable killer cyborg villain. However, the original sci-fi slasher The Terminator may have made an impact at the box office, but the movie was originally intended to be very different from what audiences ended up seeing.
It’s no secret the original Terminator’s budget fell short of Cameron’s ambitious vision, with many of the director’s more impressive flourishes proving prohibitively expensive for the original but ending up in the 1991 sequel, Terminator 2: Judgement Day. However, not all fans know about the missing moments that were trimmed from the original film not because they were too costly, but because they could have ended up seeming unintentionally goofy, wasted screentime, or in one particular case, were simply too boring for Cameron's taste. Whether it’s the Terminator imitating an old lady in his first appearance or the skeletal Terminator’s slasher movie moment, there are a string of scenes missing from the original Terminator movie that appear in the production notes, original screenplay drafts and concept art.
The Terminator’s Mr. Bean Routine
The Terminator’s initial appearance may be iconic, but the sight of Arnie strutting through night-time Los Angeles naked as a jaybird could easily have been unintentionally hilarious - a fear that may have contributed to another scene being cut from early drafts. The Terminator was originally intended to steal a car from an elderly woman after she attempts to escape the hulking mandroid and he offers an uncanny repetition of her gestures in the process. However, despite how chilling that description sounds, this missing Terminator scene could have played out a little more comically than viewers may expect. Watching the woman put her car into reverse in a harried panic before trying to drive off, the Terminator was originally intended to copy her movements and put the car into reverse and crash before driving away.
It’s a moment that was intended to be a chilling clue as to how the robots try to mimic human behavior and pick up tics and blend in, but odds are the sequence was cut because Schwarzenegger imitating an old woman’s bad driving simply looked too comical for Terminator’s brooding tone. A similar moment did appear in Terminator 2 when Robert Patrick's T-1000 took the form of a chirpy suburban mom, but it’s up to individual viewers whether this scene was as scary as intended or a little laughable.
The Terminator’s Missing Second Time Traveler
RIP Sumner, Terminator franchise fans barely knew you. Originally, Kyle Reese had a companion who time-traveled with him to the past but fell victim to a gruesome slapstick gag upon their arrival in the year 1984. If viewers have ever wondered what happens when time-travelers teleport into the middle of a fire escape, in the case of Sumner a mumbled “he didn’t make it through” is what the original script offered to explain his demise. This is another detail that may have been cut due to its unintentional dark comedy, as the sight of Sumner mangled into a fire escape could have been a memorable death but would have been a casualty that had more to do with his poor planning and spatial awareness than The Terminator’s intimidating villain, so understandably, this gory moment was dropped between script and screen.
The Original Terminator Ending
A rare case of the original scene being less ambitious and impressive than the finished product, The Terminator’s first draft ending was actually less intense than the one audiences got to see. Closing after the tanker explosion with Reese alive and safe, The Terminator was originally a shorter and less intense (as well as, crucially, less expensive) chase thriller with a slightly lower body count. The original would still be a solid slice of sci-fi horror without the ending viewers got, but when The Terminator’s now-legendary factory sequence was cut in favor of this milder ending, Cameron insisted it be added back in so it had a dramatic, impactful ending (not to mention a perfect setup for Terminator 2: Judgement Day’s iconic ending sequence).
The Skeletal Terminator’s Slasher Scene
This missing moment doesn’t come from the script, but instead from The Terminator’s concept art. However, it’s an unforgettably spooky sight the movie could have benefited from, particularly given how little traditional horror imagery is present in the story despite the movie's debt to the then-popular slasher sub-genre. Alien has more of a slasher-style horror tone than The Terminator, something that could have been avoided if it had included this piece of terrifying imagery. The sequence was quite literally dreamed up by James Cameron during a fever dream he suffered whilst exhausted from making his debut feature Piranha 2: The Spawning.
Cameron envisioned the Terminator emerging from a wall of flame, skin melting off to reveal its robotic skeleton, but the concept art’s sketch went a step further into horror territory. This scrapped sequence saw a skeletal Terminator on all fours, crawling and brandishing a butcher’s knife at Sarah Connor like a classic slasher villain and showing how unstoppable it is. The skeletal Terminator would likely have been prohibitively expensive in the original, but it’s a shame such a uniquely unsettling image - and one that essentially gave birth to the entire franchise - never made it to screens. None of the subsequent Terminator sequels have utilized this image either - at least not so far.