Original 'Terminator Salvation' Ending

SPOILER ALERT: Do not read any further if you don't want to know plot details of "Terminator Salvation." Seriously! You've been warned!

McG, director of "Terminator Salvation, recently told Entertainment Weekly in an interview about the original scripted ending of the film.

“There was talk on the Internet about an alternate ending where Connor dies and they take Connor’s likeness and put it on top of Marcus Wright’s machine body,” McG adds referencing early talk online that appears to have been true even though at the time it was flatly denied and McG is even still unwilling to admit it saying, “Well, that’s not really what the ending was.” But it was, even if all the details weren’t in place.

“Connor dies, okay? He’s dead,” McG told EW. “And Marcus offers his physical body, so Connor’s exterior is put on top of his machine body. It looks like Connor, but it’s really Marcus underneath. And all of the characters we care about (Kyle Reese, Connor’s wife Kate, etc.) are brought into the room to see him and they think it’s Connor. And Connor gets up and then there’s a small flicker of red in his eyes and he shoots Kate, he shoots Kyle, he shoots everybody in the room. Fade to black. End of movie. Skynet wins. F— you!”

Of course this mildly resembles the moment in the now official ending when Marcus offers up his heart to save a dying John Connor in an act of compassion and not machine driven trickery, as well as a moment that could be seen from a mile away. It’s an uplifting ending, much different than what would have been a shocker of a downer ending as McG agrees.

“It’s the most nihilistic thing of all time. And Christian went f—ing crazy, of course. He was insistent that it be done that way! He wanted the bad guys to win! Can you imagine the oxygen going out of the theater?! What just happened! It would piss you off! But maybe two years from now, you’d think it was ballsy. But in the end, it just felt like too much of a bummer.” After a pause he finally added, “Maybe we blew it.”

Indeed the movie kind of blew, but it was not the ending. While the ending McG wanted would separate this from the other "Terminator" films as being the bleakest film in the franchise (indeed, of this entire summer probably), it would not fix the other flaws in the film, such as character development.

But did Bale really want that kind of an ending?
EW sat down with Bale the next day and asked him.

"I'm not the director," Bale said. "There came to be a different option that almost everyone, except myself, felt was the better way to go. I took a bit of convincing, but you know, at the end of the day, you need a director to make that call."

But doesn't he think that his "Salvation" would have been a depressing bummer, not to mention suicide at the box office?

"Done the way I saw it? No. But am I disappointed with this one? No."

Would you have liked that ending to "Salvation"?
I wonder if it will come as an alternate ending on the DVD...
More news to come! Catch ya' later!
Source: Rope of Silicon, EW