Director’s Cuts are hardly a new thing, with Ridley Scott releasing multiple versions of Blade Runner over the decades as well as tinkering with several of his other previous movies. In some cases, it feels like nothing more than a transparent attempt to wring out some extra cash from home video sales, while other times it finally gives a filmmaker complete creative control without studio executives looking over their shoulder.
The two and a half year campaign to will the Snyder Cut of Justice League into existence may end up sparking a trend, as David Ayer’s Suicide Squad was heavily rumored for similar treatment, although any talk seems to have severely quietened down in recent months. The latest director to throw their hat into the ring, though, is McG, who teased in a recent interview that he has his own cut of Terminator Salvation that he’d love for fans to see.
“It’s interesting because I feel like we did so much right with Terminator but, ultimately, got just enough wrong that we got beat up a little bit by the fanbase and it really, really broke my heart. And now, strangely, I think the film has started to age better. And there is a different cut, I have my own cut of that film and there’s people online that talk about wanting to see that cut. And that’s interesting. But I think I got a lot of things right with that.”
The fourth installment in the Terminator franchise was not a great movie by any means, but it seems impossible to imagine that someone like McG has been sitting on a vastly superior edit for the last decade, considering he’s never made anything decent in his entire career. It sounds a little bit like bandwagon jumping, and most people already view Salvation as disappointing rather than misunderstood.
The reason Terminator Salvation under-performed at the box office and didn’t gain much traction with critics is because McG was the wrong man for the job, Christian Bale was the wrong choice for the leading role, Sam Worthington was nowhere near ready to be a key player in a $200 million blockbuster and the entire thing was painfully dull and severely lacking in originality and creativity. As such, whether the ‘McG Cut’ exists or not, there’s little chance it would offer much of an improvement.
