I know that fans are all trying to forget about ‘Terminator Salvation‘ but the topic recently came up to star Christian Bale (‘The Dark Knight Rises‘) and he spoke up about it and that infamous moment where he had an outburst on set. McG’s take on the ‘Terminator’ franchise never went over well with audiences and was marred from the offset for Bale when he was recorded screaming profanities on the set. While he initially had hope for the film, it didn’t take long into production for him to realize that things weren’t quite going in the direction that he had hoped they were.
“I said no three times. I thought that the franchise…I went ‘Nah, there’s no story there.’ I’d seen 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. 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. But when people started verbalizing 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.”
It sounds as if Nolan’s script actually had meat to it which we never saw in the film as it didn’t see the light of day. We’ll never know if that original take on the movie before the Writer’s Strike could have redeemed the franchise in everyone’s eyes or not, but I think no one can forget how he went off on the director of photography Shane Hurlbut in a rant that made him look like one of the worst actors in Hollywood.
Bale touches on this as well trying to explain away his actions by getting into character though this is an excuse that I’m not sure many will be buying into:
“That was a very unusual occasion. Great learning lesson for me. Do you remember that scene with Linda Hamilton where she’s really going nuts in ‘Terminator 2’? We said, we’ve got to channel that at some point in the film, and that was the scene in which we were channeling it. Great lesson for me of, no matter how much you lose yourself in a scene, you do not allow yourself to behave that way. And yeah, of course I’ve got enormous regrets about it…”
Sounds like if you are using this kind of motivation for method acting you should make sure to not open your mouth unless the cameras are rolling and keep it closed outside of that.
Do you think we were robbed of a potentially great Terminator movie due to the writer’s strike? Is getting into character an excuse Bale should have for why he went off on the director of photography? Share your thoughts below!
Source: The Playlist
