Our Casting Choice For General John Connor in Terminator 6

*This was written based on the idea that Edward Furlong would not be able to return and on the basis that no original John Connor’s would be able to return as an older John Connor- and if the story required a John Connor from the future (not present).

It is no secret that we want the next Terminator movie to be a sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day; something we have been vocal about for a while now.

Some time ago we began developing ideas for a Terminator 5 movie that we wanted to see and then subsequently- when Terminator Genisys failed to deliver, we sat down yet again to discuss how we could save Terminator. This was more of an exercise for our sanity than anything else as we have no power or say in the franchise itself; bar offering up our thoughts and ideas on this platform, we made some decisions on what we though the right direction was and created some scenarios of what we would like to see.

When trying to build on ideas for Terminator 5, for continuity sake, we thought about Christian Bale obviously reprising his role but Terminator Genisys re-casting John and turning him into the villain kind of just sent us down the path of wanting to ignore Terminator 3, Salvation and Genisys altogether and since we have continued to push for a requel/Terminator 2 sequel,- there is just no reason in our eyes to continue any of those movies anymore, they just didn’t work.

Nick Stahl as John Connor didn’t work, Christian Bale as John Connor didn’t work and Jason Clarke as John didn’t work either, they all brought something to the role but they were always miscast/had bad scripts to work with that would never assist any of the actors to fully embody the role. The lack of canon continuation was always dead set against the actors/movies anyway.

When discussing the character of John Connor we firmly decided that we have had quite enough of seeing whiny, cry baby John Connor who wants to revoke his destiny, and we definitely did not want to see the development of the leader anymore as we felt it has been overplayed and we do not want him to be a corrupted villain either.

We decided that we wanted to see the fully fledged hero, the one that won the war, the badass version of John Connor that had successfully fulfilled his destiny.

In one of our polls Edward Furlong is a favorite to reprise his role but as much as we love Edward and his performance in Terminator 2; in talks we just simply decided that Edward coming back just doesn’t sit right with us personally at this stage, especially if he is not willing to make considerable lifestyle changes etc.

Obviously The Terminator and Terminator 2 are the most important films in the franchise and canon sits right on that shot of Michael Edwards at the start of Terminator 2: Judgment Day in the future war.

Back in an un-restored interview we did with Terminator make-up artist Jeff Dawn; he revealed to us that they did try to re-cast Edwards in the role of John Connor in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (for the future war scenes), but it was decided that he looked too old and too out of shape to reprise the role, so aging Nick Stahl with make-up was the option taken for the movie. Michael Edwards was also not technically an actor, he was mainly a model who was cast by Cameron for his look rather than acting prowess!

We also then decided that if we are to see General John Connor on the big screen that it should be of course a mature actor and one that would have a chemistry with a certain Sarah Connor AKA Linda Hamilton and while he left the rest of the resistance on clean up duty he had one final mission to attend to in our present- to change the way it goes and to perhaps save the life of his mother from that horrid Austrian accented killer assassin.

After whittling it down to a handful of actors, there was one particular actor we just kept coming back to and that was Clive Owen, a British actor but also because we know he is capable of doing authentic American accents. He also bears a resemblance to Michael Edwards, in frame, height, hair and facial structure and it was then we said “this is our John Connor” and a John Connor we think audiences would really see as a bad ass hero and one that could definitely hold his ground in giving us a great acting performance to make audiences believe in the character fully.

The dynamic of sending back a fully matured John Connor character from the future to the present would result in a very interesting parent child forumla/dynamic for the big screen (mother and son), obviously there is another John Connor out there in the present but we decided that he should be estranged from his mother for particular reasons and in that sense he just simply does not appear in the movie, this would then lead to the family dynamic of a parent and child with distance, time, problems and emotional conflicts playing out in the course of a chase movie.

We go back to an idea we have kept throwing out there about Sarah Connor faking her death in order to protect her son from a greater threat, that perhaps she knows something about her possible end that she has has to remove herself from the equation in order to ensure her son’s survival.

We believe that Terminator 6 should play out in the present to reconnect us to Terminator and original cast members but with Clive Owen giving us the end of John Connor’s story arc. Obviously we would see John Connor come back from the future and we could also have some nightmarish flashbacks to the war during the movie (the origin of his facial scar for example).

“Thank you, Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can’t help you with what you must soon face except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist.”

This would then open the door for James Cameron to make a prequel to this idea for a John Connor arc with Clive Owen fronting a future war trilogy when Jim gets the rights back in a few years time.

Terminator 6 could be the T2 continuation we always wanted; setting the foundations for that canon to continue into the future.

We don’t think the loop should be closed just yet, first the loop needs fixing and we think James Cameron should be the one to close the loop fully. So maybe with this casting choice in mind we can get this franchise back on track.

So, there we have it, we believe the movie should be all about Sarah Connor and General John Connor in a sci-fi/psychological thriller/drama/horror Terminator movie, no friendly Terminators just a hopeless situation and difficult odds once again.

If Terminator 6 is the real Terminator 3 then all they have to do is face swap Clive Owen over Michael Edwards at the beginning of T2 for a new special trilogy box set and all the problems with the Terminator franchise are fixed with one digital tweak!

So what would Clive Owen as John Connor look like in a Terminator movie…? check out the test run below!