It’s always interesting to hear how a film or TV product will mutate from beginning to end: House, for example, was originally going to be a medical procedural not unlike E.R., with the idea of House himself not even being created until AFTER the project was greenlit! (Or you could look at Superman Returns, which could have been Kevin Smith writing robots fighting polar bears and giant mechanical spiders.)
So this article on SciFi Wire discussing Terminator 4 is also really interesting. Apparently, the role of John Connor was a fairly minuscule one, until Christian Bale opted for that role as opposed to that of the proto-Terminator Marcus Wright (now being played by Sam Worthington):
“What can you do when you go and say, ‘Hey, Christian, I want you to play Marcus,’ he says, ‘I want to play Connor’? You say, ‘Maybe we need to go back and make this a little bit more of a two-hander,’” McG said.
Now, I don’t know about you, but that comment sounded a touch hostile, which is perhaps no surprise given Bale’s angry outbursts (which were recorded by the insurance company as “collateral,” presumably so he wouldn’t potentially walk off the set, and was eventually leaked to the web).
But my two cents is that this movie wouldn’t be nearly as compelling without John Connor being front and center. The Terminator series has always been about sweeping character development and parallelism: while Sarah Connor is the damsel in distress in the first film, she becomes a tough-as-nails guerrilla fighter in the second. The murderous Terminator of the first film becomes an unwavering protector in the second. John Connor, at least in the first two films, is first a passive nonactor (considering he isn’t even born yet), and then a surprisingly effective target in Terminator 2.
I think is the reason why the third film left such a bad taste in my mouth: while having a flawed character is well and good for this series, the third film downgraded John Connor into a weak damsel in distress, giving him little agency to fight his own battles. Considering he was trained from birth by Sarah to wage war against the machines, Terminator: Salvation’s John Connor feels like a better fit to the franchise, sharing a bit of his mother’s overzealousness and resourcefulness, but working the parallel of the son rescuing the father (with Anton Yelchin’s Kyle Reese being the all-important target in this film), as well as Connor and the Terminator finally seeing each other as equal partners. What do you think, Rama readers? Sound off!
May 11th, 2009 at 10:53 am
That didn’t really sound hostile to me at all.
And I wonder, are people making Bale out to be the bad guy in that outburst story? B/c a lot of actors get like that when someone in the crew screws up during an intense scene. It’s pretty much the reason why most of the actors came to Bale’s side during this thing. Sure, he probably got angrier than most, but outbursts like that aren’t uncommon. You just don’t hear about them b/c they’re never taped, like in this rare instance.
I wonder if they found out who leaked the audio.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:01 am
We’re through professionally.
May 13th, 2009 at 1:05 am
I agree the John Conner character has always been the architect behind all the movies. I’ve heard that the Marcus Wright character is the juicer role but Conner is the foundation and you need a good actor to play that and not give an over the top performance. You need an actor who’s willing to be apart of the film not its shining star and from what I’ve seen of the trailer and heard from other sites that’s what Bale dose. Its what he’s good at. As for the rant if everyone would stop bringing it up every time they wrote story about the movie it would die the death it needs. i would love to see someone write a review that didn’t include the words, “leaked audio” or “on set explosion”.
February 2nd, 2012 at 10:50 pm
after watching terminator 4 salvation…i am dissapointed. christian bale is a horrible john connor. his wife catherine brewster was horrible as well. the plot sucked..the acting sucked..i hope terminator 5 and 6 dont suck and christian bale isnt in it. cristian bale is batman..not connor. nick stahl is a better john connor anyday hands down. besides..corrupt bankers stole the franchise so who knows what t5 and t6 will be like. if they ever make them