Just about every movie leaves scenes on the cutting room floor, and The Terminator was no exception. However, one deleted scene from the James Cameron movie has always left Terminator fans wondering why it was dropped, and franchise producer Gale Anne Hurd has now explained the reason why.
The Terminator deleted scene took place at the end of the movie and featured a pair of scientists recovering pieces from the destroyed T-800. It’s revealed that they’re from Cyberdyne, the very company that would go on to develop Skynet. Given that this scene helped complete the time loop, some fans believed that it should have been left in, but Gale Anne Hurd explained that James Cameron axed it because of the non-professional actors he was forced to use.
“The Terminator financier John Daly’s Hemdale Films had an output deal with Orion Pictures but hadn’t yet made a hit (that changed with our film and Platoon),” Hurd said. “They insisted we use financier friends not actors in this scene, which ruined it for us.” She added that the two were paid as actors via the Taft Hartley act, but believes that Daly “insisted they be in the film because the financiers were promised a return on their investment and had yet to receive one. Daly never believed the film would be a success.” The scene was scrapped as James Cameron “was never satisfied with ‘just ok’, even back then.” You can check out the deleted scene for yourself right here.
Although the scene wasn’t included in the original movie, the revelations it contained were fleshed out in the sequel. Terminator 2: Judgment Day explained that Cyberdyne had recovered the damaged CPU and right arm of the first Terminator and that Miles Dyson was in the process of reverse-engineering a pioneering microprocessor based on its design. Thankfully, Sarah Connor, John Connor, and another Terminator were able to destroy Cyberdyne’s research and stop Judgment Day… at least until the next sequel.