Terminator: Salvation was not a huge hit with critics, but a superior original draft featured a much smaller role for Christian Bale’s John Connor - and was a stronger story for it. Released in 1984, James Cameron’s original The Terminator was a slasher-influenced sci-fi action horror that kicked off a franchise. The movie saw Arnold Schwarzenegger’s eponymous assassin attempting to kill Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton’s luckless protagonists before they eventually became responsible for John Connor, the man who would lead the resistance against Skynet’s robot takeover of the world.
The tense, sparse thriller featured a complex backstory that was soon elaborated on in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, wherein Schwarzenegger’s Terminator became a hero saving a teenaged Connor from certain doom in the form of Robert Patrick’s T-1000. The second film was a huge success but later installments struggled to balance action and complex backstory, earning progressively worse reviews despite each entry attempting a new approach in terms of style and tone. 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines gave viewers a female Terminator in Kristanna Loken's T-X but earned mixed reviews, leading the 2009 sequel Terminator Salvation to skip ahead into the future for its post-apocalyptic story.
Terminator Salvation also flopped with critics, with director McG’s sequel being branded both too self-serious and too sanitized to work as an effective Terminator movie. However, before star Christian Bale signed on to play John Connor, the movie was originally intended to feature a far smaller role for the character. The early drafts of Salvation barely featured John Connor, with the character acting as Colonel Kurtz-esque figure as the story instead centered around Marcus Wright, a more relatable and ultimately conflicted figure. Unfortunately, like McG’s darker original cut of Terminator: Salvation, this version never made it to cinema screens and the movie audiences saw was a weaker story due to its increased focus on Bale's Connor,
The Movie Terminator: Salvation Could Have Been
According to co-writer John Brancato, the original Terminator 4 script was an action-adventure with kid sidekicks, a more relatable everyman protagonist, and some socially conscious backstory for him - all of which was regrettably jettisoned when Bale signed on to play Connor and rewrites ensued. Per Brancato on his 4 Big Lies blog, his version focused on a death-row prisoner named Marcus Wright. "He climbs out of the mud years later, after Judgment Day, when a Resistance assault on a Skynet facility accidentally activates him.” If the phrase "activates him" sounds strange, that may be because Marcus is later revealed to actually be a robot. This is something Marcus doesn't learn until the end of this draft of Terminator Salvation, after multiples scenes of him introducing a group of kids of this post-apocalyptic wasteland to the Bible or a Yellow Pages as they hunker down in an abounded hotel which served to humanize the character.
Early on in this Terminator Salvation draft Wright meets the original Terminator’s Kyle Reese as well as the aforementioned children. Marcus bonds with the ragtag group as they navigate a landscape full of “Terminators, cannibals, mutant dogs, and irradiated areas, scrambling to find food and ammunition,” according to Brancato's recollection. It is in this context Wright divulges the reason he was in prison, a twist that grounds the action with resonant social commentary as viewers discover he killed a cop who was beating his little brother. This fully-rounded, sympathetic version of Wright is far from what Salvation viewers got since the character had far more screen time when John Connor’s role was almost entirely offscreen.
John Connor’s Original Terminator Salvation Role
Before Bale came aboard, Connor was essentially an unseen character in this version, arriving only at the end to play a similar role to Marlon Brando’s Apocalypse Now part. When John did appear in the finale, this draft saw him killed in battle (a better death than Dark Fate’s lame opening kill) and later replaced by Marcus as the resistance grafted John's skin onto him to keep John's image - and the spirit of the resistance - alive. One darker draft of Terminator Salvation’s ending even saw a revived Marcus-as-John slaughtering the resistance upon rebooting, a bleak and admirably brutal shock that would have been in keeping with the franchise's merciless horror elements.
Why John Connor's Terminator Salvation Role Was Beefed Up
These plans changed when Christian Bale came on board wanting to play John, a casting decision that demanded hefty rewrites that unbalanced the story. However, despite John's increased screen time, the rewrites did not give the character a lot more action or growth. John has little to do for the first two acts outside brooding or investigating a red herring from Skynet, and although Bale was a real casting coup, his presence forced rewrites that reduced Marcus's role in favor of giving Connor more scenes. Along with largely eliding Helena Bonham Carter’s Selena, these rewrites seriously deteriorated the quality of Terminator Salvation’s plot as viewers lost a well-rounded hero in favor of a bland heroic figure.
Why John Connor's Presence Hurts Terminator Salvation
Most of John’s Salvation story is essentially worthless, which is not helped by Bale putting in an uncharacteristically average performance. His Connor is a humorless jerk, making it hard to see how he'd motivate anyone to follow his lead, a perception only worsened by Bale’s very public on set breakdown during the making of the sequel. As it is, Terminator Salvation mostly only hits its stride during the road trip scenes between Marcus and Kyle Reese, most of which would have been the meat of the movie’s action in the original draft.
Why Terminator: Salvation Would Be Better Without Connor
Had this subplot instead been the movie’s focus, Terminator Salvation would have been much better received. An average Christian Bale turn is a very rare feat, but even if Bale had been as charming as ever, there was no need for a major John Connor role in Terminator Salvation’s plot. The movie’s story of conflicted hero Marcus Wright could have made it the darkest, most emotionally resonant Terminator movie so far if the creators had been able to resist the allure of a big-name star and believe in the promising story they were developing.