Trivia / Terminator Salvation

• Billing Displacement: Despite receiving prominent billing, Helena Bonham Carter only gets five minutes of screentime.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Earlier drafts of the script before rewrites focused a lot more on just Marcus Wright and Kyle Reese, with John Connor making an appearance in the last few scenes. Christian Bale was first offered the role of Marcus but took more interest in the character of John so rewrites took place to give him more of a substantial role throughout the film.
• Channel Hop: The producers of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines were planning a fourth movie, then started feuding among themselves and The Halcyon Company purchased the franchise rights to get the thing done. Amusingly, in a way, the "Channel" didn't change, as like the predecessor, Warner Bros. released it domestically while Columbia Pictures did so internationally.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Co-writer John Brancato, who wrote the first script alongside partner Michael Ferris (which is why both are the only ones credited in spite of other scribes contributing), had lots of bad words about the film, specially regarding how the original ending was discarded (see What Could Have Been below).
  • Christian Bale initially rejected the role three times but eventually accepted it to spite haters, and laments that Jonathan Nolan's initial script was scrapped due to Nolan being called away to other commitments because of the Writer's Strike.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger was glad he passed on the movie and thinks it sucked.
  • On his return to the franchise with Terminator: Dark Fate, James Cameron criticised the Terminator films he wasn't involved in, stating, "I don't have a lot of respect for the films that were made [after T2]."
• Creator Killer:
  • The relatively low intakes ($371.4 million, about a third from the US) compared to the huge $200 million budget sent the Halcyon Company into bankruptcy.
  • This film also proved to be a serious blow to McG's career. His next two films, This Means War and 3 Days to Kill, would also under-perform or bomb, and all his next projects have been direct-to-Netflix affairs.
  • The video game adaptation of the film also ended up killing its developer, Swedish based GRIN, not at all helped by the similar failures of Bionic Commando and Wanted: Weapons of Fate.
• Deleted Role:
  • Terry Crews plays Jericho, a Resistance soldier and Barnes' brother, in a Deleted Scene. Similarly, Greg Plitt's brief role as a hybrid similar to Marcus was deleted after a general plot change.
  • Stan Winston had a cameo as a Resistance Soldier fighting a Hydrobot that was cut.
• Deleted Scene: There were many scenes that didn't make it to the screen, (some of which were in the trailer), including (see What Could Have Been as well):
  • An Opening Narration by John:
    "The future is not set. I've been told I said that once. Many years from now. It was a warning. That I was going to hell. But if I fought hard enough, I could escape. I believed it for a lifetime. Now I pray I was wrong. Because now I am in hell. We all are. And the future I used to dread is the only hope I have left."
  • Marcus' infiltration of Skynet Central was originally longer and involved an HK-Tank destroying a church.
  • Serena Kogan appears as a Hybrid and has a conversation with Marcus, but the scene is replaced with Skynet talking to Marcus.
  • Several scenes involving actors cast to play Hybrids working at Skynet Central were cut following the removal of the Project Angel subplot.
  • A scene was filmed involving Reese burying Marcus after the surgery, which response to Kyle's line to Marcus "Nobody will bury you" early in the film.
  • A scene of John telling Command about the Series 800 at the USS Wilmington.
  • Kate Connor had a subplot of being pregnant. She discovered she was pregnant shortly before the battle at Skynet Central, at a point where it wouldn't impact the plot.
  • The original cut of the film included a topless scene when Blair and Marcus are warming themselves by the fire. McG said that it was meant as a Shout-Out to Kelly McGillis' topless scene in Witness, but that it ultimately felt exploitative and would have flouted a PG-13 rating. The scene is reinstated in the Director's Cut Blu-ray.
  • A longer third act had John and Kate having a longer conversation before he leaves on the mission to rescue Kyle; appearances by T-700's, more footage of Marcus infiltrating Skynet, prisoners escaping during the attack, the T-800 trying to use the T-600's minigun, and Kyle burying Marcus and finding Sarah's Polaroid in John's jacket.
• Disowned Adaptation: After Terminator: Dark Fate's production, this film is one of the three Terminator movies that is completely turned away by James Cameron.
• Fake American:
  • All three leads, though it's worth mentioning that Russian-born Anton Yelchin has lived in the United States since he was six months old.
  • General Ashdown is played by Michael Ironside, who's Canadian.
• Focus Group Ending: The film originally ended with John Connor dying, and his skin grafted onto Marcus so that Marcus would impersonate him from then on. Test audiences hated it. The "heart transplant" ending saving his life was a quickly filmed re-shoot to change the ending into one that audiences would accept.
• Foiler Footage: There is an alternate scene John shoots the T-800's face off. The scene is created in case Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to lend his likeness to the film.
• Hostility on the Set: During production, Christian Bale infamously went off on a furious and profane rant directed against director of photography Shane Hurlbut, telling him to get off the set because he was blocking the shot and calling him unprofessional. The audio of the incident went viral and has since become one of the most oft-quotes and -remixed viral videos of the 21st century. Bale later issued an apology and both he and Hurlbut claimed to have made up shortly after the incident.
• In Memoriam: The film is dedicated to Stan Winston.
• Lying Creator: Pre-release publicity played up Roland Kickinger's role as the new T-800 actor. What said publicity conspicuously failed to mention was that Arnold Schwarzenegger's head would be rendered on top of Kickinger's body.
• Meme Acknowledgement: Both Christian Bale and McG have approved the meme popularity of Bale's infamous rant and the "Bale Out" remix, the latter claiming to have a copy of it.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The humans escaping from the Skynet Work Camp was filmed for use in the film and could be seen on the trailer; however, for an unknown reason, these scenes were cut from the final film. Also, the T-RIP picks up and uses the Series 600 Terminator's minigun. The scene is not featured in the film.
• Old Shame: Christian Bale admitted that he turned down the role of John Connor at least three times before signing on and only accepted to prove that he could bring something to the role. Bale ultimately regrets his now-infamous on-set rant and was ashamed the film failed to re-ignite the franchise.
• The Other Darrin: Since the film follows Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Christian Bale replaces Nick Stahl as John Connor and Bryce Dallas Howard replaces Claire Danes as Kate Brewster.
• Prop Recycling: Of sorts. Recreating the face of a younger Arnold Schwarzenegger was made possible thanks to moldings of his face that were preserved since The Terminator. Those served to create the animatronics back in the day.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Anton Yelchin was uncanny as a young Kyle Reese, who was originally played by Michael Biehn.
• Troubled Production:
  • The film's script was extensively rewritten at least three times, both for Bale's Executive Meddling and testing audience's reactions. Then filming was delayed for four months when Helena Bonham Carter lost members of her family in a car crash and had to attend to her relatives in England.
  • The lead producers have alleged that elements of the production team deliberately made the film a Springtime for Hitler-esque Failure Gambit to bankrupt the production company so they could swoop in and scoop up the company's assets for cheap. Whether or not that's true or just sour grapes is only known to the lawyers and accountants.
• Viral Marketing:
  • Welcome to Skynet Research...
  • "Resist or be terminated."
• Wag the Director: Christian Bale was offered the part of Marcus, but wanted John Connor. This expanded the role, and kind of threw things off-balance. Of course, the most infamous case involving Bale was the rant he delivered at Shane Hurlbut, the director of photography. In the leaked audiotape, Bale chews out Hurlbut for changing the lighting levels while he's in the midst of performing a scene, and subsequently tells McG that he will not have it happen again. Bale would later go on to apologize for the rant sometime later of his own volition, and most cast and crew reaction when asked about it was, "You don't change the lighting during a scene."
• What Could Have Been: See the franchise's page.
• You Look Familiar: Michael Papajohn, who played a paramedic in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, appears in this movie as Carnahan, the leader of the gang who harasses Blair.

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