The one film series Christian Bale is desperate to be in: “All I ever wanted”
Christian Bale is one of the finest actors of his generation. He’s also a master of his craft who is willing to go to extreme lengths to bring his characters to life. This isn’t to say Bale is opposed to starring in mainstream Hollywood blockbuster fare, though. After all, he’s arguably still most famous for playing Batman in Christopher Nolan’s all-conquering Dark Knight trilogy. Bale also joined the Terminator franchise with the fourth instalment, Salvation, and played Gorr, the God Butcher in the MCU’s Thor: Love and Thunder.
There is one film series that he still hasn’t managed to appear in, though, and he’s been open about it being all he’s ever wanted in Hollywood.
Bale’s first on-screen flirtation with the series he’s always longed to be a part of came back in 2002. In a heartwarming scene during Reign of Fire, Bale and Gerard Butler’s characters entertain a group of children in a post-apocalyptic dragon-razed London by putting on a play. They recreate one of the most famous moments in cinematic history, with Bale’s character donning a homemade outfit to portray the most famous villain in the galaxy. His delivery of “I am your father” makes children gasp in shock, just as Bale himself did when he was a little lad watching The Empire Strikes Back.
You see, Bale has long been upfront with how he loved Star Wars as a child, just like millions of other kids of his generation. In 2018, he told the Happy Sad Confused podcast, “I’m a huge fan. Yeah, Star Wars really interests me. I’ve still got the Millennium Falcon. I’ve got the AT-AT.” That same year, he also told The Hollywood Reporter, “I’ve still got the figures from when I was little.”
To the delight of fans worldwide, Bale also revealed that he had passed on his love of the galaxy far, far away to his daughter. In fact, he said she was an enormous fan of Darth Maul, and when she stood next to a cosplayer of the red-faced Sith Lord at Disneyland, she couldn’t have been happier. He smiled, “He growled, and he’s got those teeth, and he stayed in character – really wonderful performance – and she was teeny, and I thought, ‘This is going to scare the crap out of her. This is such a bad idea.’ And then she stopped, and she said, ‘Daddy, I’m in love.'”
Bale’s fandom has clearly never gone away, and he told THR, “All I ever wanted in Star Wars was to be in a Star Wars outfit and hit my head on a door or something as I walked through.” This was a reference to the iconic moment where a Stormtrooper in the original movie bonks his head in the background of a shot. The embarrassed actor assumed this would be removed in editing but was instead immortalised on film forever. Poor guy.
Interestingly, Bale actually has a personal connection to Kathleen Kennedy, the head honcho of the Star Wars universe at Disney. She produced Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun in 1987, which starred a 13-year-old Bale in the lead role. If he knows Kennedy, though, how come he’s not already found his way into a Star Wars film or TV show? Well, it turns out it’s not for a lack of trying.
Bale told Happy Sad Confused that when Solo: A Star Wars Story was being put together, he entered into talks to play Tobias Beckett, Han Solo’s mentor. Ultimately, Woody Harrelson took the role, but Bale hinted, “There was discussion. I hope there will be future discussions.”
In the end, it seems Star Wars has another Oscar winner more than willing to join the party if the right offer comes along. He’d be happy enough to simply cameo as a Stormtrooper like Simon Pegg and Daniel Craig in The Force Awakens, but there’s potentially a lot more on the table. He told THR, “Look, if I’m fortunate enough to be more than that, oh man, yeah. What a delight that would be.”
