Any longtime Terminator fan knows that the fandom has long held the belief that the last good Terminator film was Terminator 2, and everything else between Terminator 3 and Dark Fate has been a poor entry in the story of Humanity vs. Skynet.
With Terminator Zero receiving sparkling reviews, showrunner Mattson Tomlin defends what he thinks is an underappreciated Terminator entry.
“People Were Tough on Terminator Salvation”
Talking to DiscussingFilm, Tomlin talks about previous entries in the franchise that he liked, and besides the first movie, he singled out 2009’s Terminator: Salvation, which McG directed. Tomlin says:
“I really love Salvation. I think people were a little tough on that movie and you look at it, the physics of it—the gunfire, the explosions, any time that there’s a terminator that—the skeleton—it really feels like it has a weight in this way—it’s one of those few movies that now, being a filmmaker making movies, you kind of know what the tricks are, so it’s still a movie that I look at and I’m like, ‘How’d they do that?’”
How Terminator Salvation Tried to be Different
Regarding Terminator movies, Salvation aimed to be different in that the movie took place entirely in the future, where the battle between humanity and Skynet raged on.
The original intention was for the movie to start a new trilogy of films, but with the poor reception, Paramount just opted to reboot the franchise years later with Genisys. When that movie also didn’t get off the ground, they rebooted it again with Dark Fate—which also didn’t manage to captivate audiences as expected.
It has been said that Salvation has earned a cult following over the years and that multiple fans have been asking for the release of director McG’s original cut. There’s no update on how close that is to happening.
Salvation’s Controversial Original Ending
It’s also worth noting that Salvation was supposed to have a much darker ending than what fans got in the theatrical cut. In the movie, John Connor (Christian Bale) is near death, and Marcus (Sam Worthington), a human/terminator hybrid, sacrifices himself so that the savior of humanity would live.
In the originally planned ending, John dies, and to keep him as a symbol of hope, the humans graft his skin onto Marcus’ robot body; after the procedure, Marcus/John’s eyes turn red, and he guns down John’s wife and Kyle Reese—effectively setting up a new timeline.
Admittedly, it’s a downer of an ending, but it would have pushed the story in an unexpected direction. Seeing how fans reacted to The Last Jedi, though, there’s a good chance that a lot of fans would be complaining to high heavens about John Connor getting killed and replaced by a machine.
Terminator Zero
Though they may have constantly stumbled at the box office, praise has been thrown at the animated Terminator Zero, which could bode well for the franchise's future.
It’s unclear when a new live-action movie will be attempted, but after the critical success of reboots like Planet of the Apes, Prey, and Alien: Romulus, maybe the Terminator reboot fans have been hoping for could be right around the corner.
For now, catch Terminator Zero now streaming on Netflix.
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