The British acting legend Christian Bale broke through at the tender age of 13 after appearing in Steven Spielberg’s 1987 war drama Empire of the Sun. Through his teen years into early adulthood, Bale developed his talent through a series of smaller roles, returning to widespread consciousness in early adulthood with his appearance as Patrick Bateman in Mary Harron’s 2000 thriller American Psycho.
Over the past two decades, Bale has continued to impress, displaying rare versatility, devotion and a staggering ability for bodyweight manipulation through several critically and commercially favoured movies, including The Machinist, The Prestige, The Dark Knight Trilogy and The Big Short. In 2011, following a memorable portrayal of boxer Dicky Eklund in The Fighter, Bale also won his first and only Academy Award to date.
With such an impressive filmography already behind him and many monumental titles yet to come, Bale has very little to lament or dwell on. However, if he were to pick out one project to delete from his catalogue, it would undoubtedly be McG’s 2009 movie, Terminator Salvation.
The groundbreaking Terminator franchise was kicked off by James Cameron in 1984, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in his most iconic role. The sequel, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, built upon the original movie’s success with an impressive twist and a rather entertaining lump of liquid metal, but the franchise began to falter with the arrival of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003, the first movie not to involve Cameron.
Terminator Salvation arrived six years later as the franchise’s fourth instalment. It was initially intended as the beginning of a new trilogy and was the first and, so far, only Terminator movie not to feature Schwarzenegger. Instead, Bale and Sam Worthington co-starred in central roles.
Schwarzenegger once gave his thoughts on Terminator Salvation while addressing the prospect of a reunion in a 2012 conversation with Collider. “[I’m open to] all those things, if it’s True Lies, Terminator – a well-made Terminator, the last one [Salvation] was awful,” he said. “It tried hard, not that they didn’t try, the acting and everything. It missed the boat.”
Terminator Salvation was widely panned by critics upon its release and is generally regarded as the worst movie of the franchise. The movie’s failure was attributable to several factors, including poor writing and, notably, a lack of chemistry, as Bale’s infamous on-set rant attests.
Bale remembers Terminator Salvation as a career blip but doesn’t shy from reflecting on the experience. “I said no three times,” Bale revealed while discussing the role with Happy Sad Confused. “I thought that the franchise…I went, ‘Nah, there’s no story there.’ I’d seen the first one and enjoyed that back in England; I’d been to the movies and seen the second one.”
“It was an unfortunate series of events involving the writers’ strike, involving Jonah Nolan, who was able to come on and really start to write a wonderful script, but then got called away for a prior commitment that he had,” Bale explained. “And it’s a great thorn in my side because I wish we could have reinvigorated [the franchise]. And unfortunately, during production, you could tell that wasn’t happening. It’s a great shame.”
“There’s a perverse side to me, where people were telling me that there’s no way on God’s Earth that I should take that role, and I was thinking the same thing,” he continued. “But when people started verbalising that to me, I started to go, ‘Oh really? All right, well, watch this then.’ So there was a little bit of that involved in the choice.”
Speaking to MTV several years later alongside Ridley Scott, Bale discussed Terminator Salvation once again as a misfire. “It didn’t work for us. It was a shame, but everything was against us. […] I knew that we gave it a shot. It didn’t work. I know the reasons for that, but… No. Wisdom sometimes is knowing when you just need to walk away.”
Watch the trailer for Terminator Salvation below.
This content was originally published here.
