Before Christian Bale signed on to play John Connor in Terminator role for the mercurial star. Christian Bale did not have an easy time with the Terminator franchise. Leaked audio of the actor berating a colleague on the set of Terminator: Salvation outshined the sequel’s pre-release hype while the belated franchise follow-up received largely negative reviews upon its eventual arrival.
Terminator: Salvation also underperformed financially and earned the ire of former series star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who rather bluntly said the sequel “sucked.” To make matters worse, Bale’s comments on Schwarzenegger’s original T-800 alienated a lot of franchise fans, resulting in an altogether disastrous tenure for the actor in the blockbuster franchise. However, it didn’t have to go so badly.
Bale was originally approached to play Marcus Wright in Terminator: Salvation, but the actor was more interested in the part of John Connor. However, Bale is a far better fit for Wright, the hero who doesn’t realize he’s actually an android until the twist ending of Terminator: Salvation. McG’s darker director’s cut of Terminator: Salvation may have improved on some of the movie’s set-pieces, even this version of the movie didn’t have a Marcus who felt like a melding of man and machine. Bale could have provided that semi-human soul for the sequel to center around if he had chosen the original role.
It is understandable that Bale wanted to take on the part of John Connor instead. Alongside his mother Sarah and the T-800 itself, John Connor is one of the Terminator franchise’s best-known characters. However, the original script for Terminator: Salvation only obliquely referenced John, making the human resistance leader into a Colonel Kurtz-esque figure barely glimpsed before the end of Marcus Wright’s long, twisty quest. Revising Terminator: Salvation’s original script led the movie’s creators to beef up John’s role for Bale, stripping him of this intriguing ambiguity and making him the movie’s co-lead alongside Worthington’s Marcus.
This setup was the worst of both worlds for the sequel. Terminator: Salvation’s John Connor didn’t have enough screen time to become an engaging character on his own merits, despite Bale’s best efforts. Meanwhile, Worthington’s take on Terminator: Salvation didn’t blur the lines between man and machine in a way that Bale proved he was qualified to earlier in his career, making the finale’s twist feel out of place and pointless. Even though Marcus not knowing he was an android should have huge implications for earlier Terminator movies, this didn’t stop the revelation from falling flat since viewers had little reason to see Marcus as the movie’s hero. Instead, Marcus was just one of two leads in Terminator: Salvation, something that would have been solved if Christian Bale took the Terminator part he was offered instead of opting to play John Connor.
