John Connor — how central is he, again?

Christian Bale has been making the rounds lately, promoting The Dark Knight, but along the way, he has talked a bit about his role in the upcoming Terminator movies as well. ComingSoon.net recently posted this interview snippet:

CS: What attracted you to another big franchise like “Terminator?”
Christian Bale: Well, initially, actually, that was NOT an attraction. I felt that I wasn’t sure where it could go to. Before I gave an answer, I went back and reviewed the other movies. I felt like “Okay, unlike ‘Batman Begins,’ this would be something where we would be respecting the previous mythology.” Certainly of one and two, not so much number three – but certainly you would be recognizing that mythology, unlike “Batman Begins” where we were saying that this is the beginning, right here. But what I view in it, and what has ultimately made me make the choice to make it, is that I see the same potential for reinvention and for breathing new life into the mythology. That’s what I view our responsibility as filmmakers to be. It’s pointless if we don’t succeed in doing that.

CS: How is filming going?
Bale: Good, good. They’re a number of weeks in. I’m just a week and a half in… It’s going well. It’s a tall order, it really is, and I recognize that and we have a lot of work to do, and I’ve just begun on it, because I only just finished working on “Public Enemies” a couple of weeks back.

It is curious that Bale would say the new film is going to “respect” the mythology of the first two films but “not so much” the third, since there wouldn’t even be a war between the humans and the machines now if it weren’t for the third film. Plus, Bryce Dallas Howard is co-starring in the new film as John Connor’s wife Kate, a character who didn’t even exist until the third film. Who knows, perhaps Bale is hinting that the new film will re-invent the events of the third film or something, which would be fair enough I guess, considering how the third film re-invented the first two films.

Also interesting is Bale’s revelation that he has just started work on the film, which began shooting way back on May 5. The Mansfield News Journal reported a few weeks ago that cameras will probably be rolling on this film until some time in September — so it would seem that Bale will be on set for a little more than half of the production schedule, if that. This may or may not have some bearing on those conflicting reports regarding whether or not John Connor will be the movie’s central character.