10 Sci-Fi Movie Endings You Can No Longer See
6. John Connor Dies, "Becomes" A Terminator - Terminator Salvation
When Terminator Salvation director McG was recently asked if there was anything he wished he'd done differently with the movie, he offered up a simple response:
"I would have stuck with the dark ending that we photographed that got cut."
McG is referring to the film's stunning original ending, which would've seen John Connor (Christian Bale) die after being mortally wounded in the climax.
But human-Terminator hybrid Marcus (Sam Worthington) then volunteers to have John's skin fitted over his own body, effectively allowing John Connor to live on as a mythic, hopeful figure for humanity despite his actual death.
The dramatic irony of Connor becoming a Terminator speaks for itself, yet this ending ultimately received pushback from both test audiences and the studio, with the latter feeling it was too dark.
And so, a new ending was shot in which Connor survives his grim injuries after Marcus offers up his own heart for a transplant, making the ultimate sacrifice for the cause.
Not a bad ending in of itself, but not nearly as interesting as what was originally planned - nor a scripted-yet-unfilmed version, where the Terminator John Connor gets taken over by Skynet and murders all key members of the human resistance.