It’s a pretty well known fact that, due to the hiring of Christian Bale and the fact that he wished to play John Connor in the new Terminator: Salvation movie, massive rewrites had to occur, changing what was originally a short cameo of a scene into a major player for the majority of the picture.  As it turns out, the original script for the film had a great many things different in addition to the lesser John Connor role.  CHUD has an exclusive article about the subject, but here are some interesting bits.  Warning…SPOILERS follow!

…In the original script John Connor was the secretive leader of the Resistance. He lived on the HQ sub, and almost no one saw his face, so as to keep him hidden from the robots. Connor made radio addresses and existed as a legend for the fighting men and women of the Resistance, but in the original script Connor didn’t show up onscreen until the last minutes of the movie…

…When the original ending of the script leaked – John Connor is killed by a Terminator and has his skin grafted onto Marcus Wright, who takes up the shadowy leader’s place as the leader of the Resistance – many people went crazy. On the surface it seemed like a major slap in the face of the franchise, and doubly so on paper: John Connor, the guy who the entire franchise is ostensibly about, shows up for two and a half pages, gets killed and has his face transplanted onto a robot (in the original script it’s actually just the face that gets slapped on Marcus)…

…The script spent time examining what it was like living in a post-apocalyptic world, and was more definitively R-rated. At the gas station Marcus saves Kyle and Star from a group of cannibals, throwing one of them into an open fire (intended as a callback to the biker on the stove in T2…

…As in the final film Kyle and Star are captured by Skynet and transported to Skynet City, but with one major change: Skynet has no idea who Kyle Reese is…

…Marcus comes to Skynet City and finds… a seaside resort populated with humans. He sees Terminator landscapers! It turns out that Skynet hasn’t been trying to wipe out humanity. It’s been trying to save us…

The article is super long and super interesting so, if you liked or disliked Terminator: Salvation, make sure to check out CHUD!