Production Background
It was originally scripted that Reese and another soldier, named "Sumner", were sent to protect Sarah from the Terminator, but Sumner died upon arriving after the time portal fused him into a fire escape (the sequels show the time displacement field melting whatever object is in the way). In the original script, Reese says to Dr. Silberman, "The Terminator had already gone through. Connor sent two of us to intercept it, then zeroed the whole place, but Sumner didn't make it." Sumner would later appear in a Sarah Connor Chronicles episode and make it alive through the time portal with Kyle's brother and two other Resistance time-traveling agents.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was the original choice to play Reese while director James Cameron intended to use a thinner, more ordinary looking actor as the Terminator, his first choice being Lance Henriksen. Upon meeting Schwarzenegger, Cameron decided to cast him as the Terminator instead, and Henriksen was made a police detective. However, Cameron would revisit this idea when he cast Robert Patrick as the T-1000 in the sequel.
Michael Biehn almost did not get the role of Reese because, at his audition, he spoke in a Southern accent after having just auditioned for a role in a stage production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof earlier that day and couldn't shake the accent, and the producers did not want Reese to seem regionalized. After Biehn's agent explained this to the producers, he got a second audition and won the part. The original scriptment gave Reese's age as 21, while a later draft gave his age as 22. In real life, Biehn was 27 years old at the time that he was cast as Reese.
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Michael Biehn reprised the role of Kyle Reese; Sarah Connor, under heavy sedation, imagines him visiting her in a mental institution. Largely unchanged from his appearance in the first film, he embraces her and implores her to go to their son's aid, reminding her that "the future is not set." This scene was removed for the original theatrical release, but restored to the extended editions released.
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