While another Teminator film should seem like the most inevitable possibility ever, there are a number of issues that seem to be holding it up. Little issues such as bankruptcy, lawsuits, a political scandal of some sort revolving around Mr. Schwarzenegger, and Bale’s shouting incident that occurred during the filming of Terminator Salvation.
Terminator Salvation has not been discussed much here, in part because it’s unfortunately simply not enough of a Bale film. Bale as John Connor mostly plays second fiddle to Sam Worthington as the murderer who got turned into a Terminator by Marla Singer and then lived underground for twenty years and then crawled out after a bomb went off or something, without knowing that he was a Terminator. Seriously, wasn’t that the plot?
The unfortunate reality of the latest Terminator is that it wasn’t enough of a Bale-Out. Not dark enough, not gritty enough, and not Bale enough. It’s hard to exactly reboot the Terminator franchise when the films seem to each be a reboot of the last one, as every time the events of each Terminator movie somehow change both the past and the present of the Terminator universe, from the date of Judgement Day constantly shifting to John Connor always being portrayed by a different actor to John Connor sending a guy back in time to protect his mother and then conceive John Connor, who is chosen to do this mission because John Connor knows that the guy will become his father. Or something.