15 Sci-Fi Movie Endings That Would Have Changed Everything

2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

The best film of James Cameron’s time travelling, killer robot franchise, Terminator 2: Judgment Day goes bigger and harder than the first instalment, swinging the series away from horror into booms-and-bullets action territory.

Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as the T-800, the same model of nigh-indestructible, Skynet-brand killing machine from the future as in Terminator, except now he’s swinging shotguns for the good guys. Sent back in time by human resistance leader John Connor, the T-800 must save young John (Edward Furlong) and his mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) from one of the scariest villains of sci-fi, Robert Patrick’s liquid metal T-1000. And it all goes to plan, with both models of terminator melted down, the building blocks of Skynet destroyed, and Sarah and John left to forge their own future.

However, the ending from the original script, which was filmed but never used, goes one step further. It depicts a future in which Sarah is old, John is grown up with his own family, and Skynet was never created. The end.

Cameron and co opted not to use this version, and while it does feel a bit too maudlin for the series, the jury’s out on whether this was a good thing. The open ending has afforded the franchise numerous iffy sequels, and given where Dark Fate (2019) takes things, killing young John in its 1998 opening, it may have been better for the fans if Cameron had killed it while he still could…