Here we have the fourth Terminator movie – which is also the film, in case anyone has forgotten, from which an audio tape of actor Christian Bale spectacularly losing his cool was leaked on to the internet. Bale's central complaint in his epic rant 
was that his attempt to get into character was being ruined by cinematographer Shane Hurlbut fiddling around in his eyeline; well, we can now report that Bale gets pretty deep into his role of future resistance leader John Connor, essaying a comprehensive range of growls, yells and strange barking sounds as he hurtles around a grimy post-apocalyptic landscape.
- Terminator Salvation
- Release: 2009
- Country: USA
- Directors: McG
- Cast: Anton Yelchin, Bryce Dallas Howard, Christian Bale, Sam Worthington
Exactly what he's trying to do is never entirely clear; partly because, since the first Terminator film back in 1984, the convoluted backwards-and-forwards narrative superstructure has become ever more clotted and confused. Hitherto, Terminator films have generally been set in the present day, with one eye on vague future events from which time travellers are constantly popping back. Added to this, the series has always had a tenuous relationship with reality, as near-future science fiction tends to do. Judgment Day — the nuclear holocaust that paved the way for the whole machine-human war thing in this series' mythology – is now technically in the past: it was supposed to have happened in July 2004.
