Thanks to James Cameron’s ‘The Terminator,’ Arnold Schwarzenegger became a massive draw in Hollywood. The blockbuster film spawned many sequels and created a humongous franchise empire. Since then, Arnold Schwarzenegger has had a sensational dual career as a politician but has continued playing the indestructible killing machine. However, Christian Bale didn’t believe the franchise needed Arny.

Bale starred in ‘Terminator: Salvation,’ taking the baton from Schwarzenegger. The actor, who initially didn’t want to be in the movie, firmly believed that it was time for Schwarzenegger and the franchise to move away from each and look for a new narrative to shake things up.

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Christian Bale Believes ‘The Terminator’ Franchise Outgrew Arnold Schwarzenegger

Christian Bale’s ‘Terminator: Salvation‘ pointed to the franchise’s attempt to branch outside Arnold Schwarzenegger. The story focuses on Bale as John Connor, who leads a resistance against Skynet’s lethal new robot T-800. Directed by McG, ‘Salvation’ was the first film in the franchise without Schwarzenegger. Bale believed the film was a perfect way to rev up a dying franchise, believing it was time for Schwarzenegger to step aside.

Christian Bale said, “When you’ve got someone who looked like Schwarzenegger coming after you it made a big difference but nowadays, it wouldn’t really – we’ve seen so many guys who imitated him and it just became a little passe. [The franchise doesn’t need him now] because you can’t just keep re-hashing the same plot. Yes, ‘Terminator’ is known for having this one singular figure of villainy that is constantly pursuing but how many times can you keep on doing it?”

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Christian Bale Turned Down ‘Terminator: Salvation’ Thrice

On the ‘Happy Sad Confused‘ podcast, Christian Bale told Josh Horowitz about not being interested in the projects. The ‘American Hustle’ actor declined to star in the movie on more than one occasion. Despite being advised against doing it, Bale took the role of John Connors. Unfortunately, without Arnold Schwarzenegger, ‘Terminator: Salvation’ tanked at the box office, but Bale continues to take strides in the risks he has taken.

Christian told to Josh Horowitz, “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.”

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