Ask Christian Bale about the next “Batman” movie, and these days he offers a standard eight-word reply -- and occasionally, two extra vowels to show his sincerity.
“Believe me, I have nothing to tell you,” Bale told MTV News when we spoke over the weekend. “Truly.”
Such words won’t thrill the millions of moviegoers who’ve powered the Dark Knight to the top of our recent Superhero Power Rankings list -- but dig a bit deeper and there might be some good news for those who fear that director Christopher Nolan could be finished with the franchise.
“Chris is the guy who will be making the calls about that,” Bale responded when asked what the latest news is on the sequel -- clearly implying that Nolan is still the man in charge. “And until he does, I have nothing to tell you.”
Instead, Bale had plenty to say about taking on the iconic role of John Connor in the May 21st film “Terminator Salvation.” And when asked whether he saw any similarities between the orphaned, mentally-scarred, technology-embracing Bruce Wayne and the orphaned, mentally-scarred, technology-detesting Connor, Bale had an interesting response.
“I don’t even begin to compare the two of them. I just don’t do that with characters,’ he insisted. “I don’t do that, I never do it myself. I don’t even sit back with myself and self-analyze. I just know that I do enjoy these characters for whatever reason.”
The reasons behind Bale’s lack of self-analysis, he reasoned, are what makes his performances so compelling to us fans.
“I like to maintain a certain mystery with myself on why [they tick]. Because that makes you, pursuing it through the course of the movie, [interesting to watch],” he explained. “You put your finger on something in too articulate a manner, and it ceases to have that mystery about it.”
If anything, Bale said, it’s interviewers who make him over-analyze characters like Bruce Wayne and John Connor.
“In honesty, I often start asking myself these questions after being interviewed -- when people who were not involved with filming see correlations,” he reasoned. “[Similarities between my characters] might be very obvious to you, but to me, I keep myself in the dark.”
Do you see similarities between the characters of John Connor and Bruce Wayne? What do you think of Bale’s method of waiting until he’s on screen to analyze his characters?
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