Seriously, What the Hell Happened to Christian Bale?

American Psycho, The Machinist, Rescue Dawn, The Prestige - that's a pretty impressive list of credentials for a ten-year period. Any working actor today would love to play just one of those roles. Christian Bale is the man behind all four, and he's great in every one of them, each character completely different from the next. But since his reputation for excellence began preceding him, Bale has offered up some fairly uninteresting performances, even though he continues to land characters that should give him plenty of room to showcase his talents. In the past 12 months, we've seen Bale as a pedestrian Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight, as a hotheaded bore in Terminator Salvation, and now as G-man chasing down a consistent accent more than he is John Dillinger in Public Enemies. So what happened? Partly, the problem is Bale himself. I doubt it's a conscious decision to slack off, but when Bale said recently he wasn't going to put himself through the kind of hell that made a yo-yo of his body weight between The Machinist and Batman Begins, that says something about the lengths an actor is willing to go. Nobody can blame him for not wanting to take his six-foot frame down to 120 pounds and instantly build it back up to over 200 pounds; it's not healthy, and in fact, it's very risky. Call it not needing to prove himself or whatever, but Bale hasn't been very good since his last starvation role in Rescue Dawn. I don't want to say it's laziness, but maybe Bale just isn't looking for the kinds of roles that require that much of him physically and being an actor who processes so much about his characters through that physicality leaves his less demanding performances a little stagnant. There are other factors for why he hasn't been good since Rescue Dawn. The quality of the scripts he's accepting is a huge culprit. Good actors have always been in bad movies. It happens. Movies aren't easy to make. Even the most expensive of them can be mired in bad screenplays, bad direction, whatever. Bale's recent films aren't very well written where his character is concerned. Unfortunately, all of those recent films are big summer movies. But his Wayne in Dark Knight is nowhere near as compelling as he was in the origin story of Batman Begins, Terminator Salvation made the conscious and very peculiar decision to develop Marcus Wright as the only role with any depth and character arc, and Public Enemies has no interesting lead characters period. Bad luck? I dunno. Following the money? That's his right. And it's not like Bale had been improving with every movie since Empire of the Sun. Again, good actors make bad movies. But it does seem that as the roles have gotten bigger and the paychecks have increased, the need to see Christian Bale working has diminished. There's potentially good news on the horizon: Bale said this week that he's dropped some weight for David O. Russell's The Fighter, and that's served him well before. As it stands now, we're almost three years removed from the Christian Bale everybody used to talk about.

Comments

[Jeremy]

I agree. I would throw 3:10 to Yuma in the good performance category, though. I would also throw in Reign of Fire. I know it's not really a performance piece, but it's really cool movie.

[Taylor]

I can see what you're saying, Colin, though I don't necessarily agree completely about his performance in The Dark Knight. I felt that he was spot on, once again, but that even Bale was overshadowed by Heath Ledger.

(Never in my life would I have imaged ever saying that, either).

[Ray]

What happened, you ask? Someone leaked the so-called "rant" and it became fashionable to dump on Bale. That was followed with Terminator Salvation, which clearly wasn't his best work but which suffered more from a poor script (the writer's strike had something to do with that) and lousy directing and editing. He's always been a subtle actor, even when losing weight for roles, so maybe you didn't "get" his performance in Public Enemies. Others have called him flawless. Maybe you saw a different film. I also think you're wrong lumping the Dark Knight in there. He wasn't the focus as much as in Batman Begins but he continued the evolution of Batman and Bruce Wayne as the tortured billionaire. I LIKED that he used the "Bat voice" when Batman because, finally, someone realized that if he spoke like well-known Bruce Wayne that people would quickly figure out his identity! I could go on and on. But I like your site and would hate to see you jump in the "let's dump on Bale" corner. Ask yourself if your opinion of him changed after hearing the rant.... and wait until the Fighter comes out.

[Get The Big Picture]

I'm not dumping on him; you'll notice that you brought the rant into this equation, not me. In fact, going into Public Enemies, I considered him a real strength of the production. But I'm not being glib when I say he was outmuscled by Stephen Lang, who only has a handful of lines. The accent was bad, the passion wasn't there, and it was as monotonous as Terminator.

Speaking of Terminator, there were two good performances there, three if you count Moon Bloodgood extracting blood from a turnip. But Bale was the worst actor on screen most of the time. Maybe he and McG whiffed on what the character should be, but after watching that movie, who gives a damn about John Connor?

All I can say about The Dark Knight is that after watching it now four times (twice theatrically, once in IMAX, and once on DVD), there's only one really good performance in the whole movie. I can't blame Eckhart, because the script was so bungled in the third act that they flash fried Two-Face instead of letting him boil up slowly. Rachel Dawes is worthless in both movies. Lucius is limited. Nolan spends way too much time on ancillary characters like the mobsters and the rogue Wayne employee. And you're left with The Joker.

Actually, I take that back: Michael Caine was really good, too. He's basically reading fortune cookies, but he's still effective.

So I don't hold Bale singularly accountable for that. But even though the character isn't explored as much in the sequel as in Batman Begins, I thought having been there, Bale could have shown more insights into Bruce Wayne. I don't care about the Batvoice; that's Nolan's failure. He should've fixed that in post-production. I mean his completely static reaction to Rachel's death and his totally mechanical expression when he shows Lucius his stupid sonar supercomputer. Watch that scene again: Freeman's trying to act. He's aghast at what Bruce Wayne has created, but you can't read anything on Bale's face. He might as well be waiting for a cab.

He was good enough in 3:10 to Yuma. It's not the best role of the two, but yeah, he was up to Crowe's significant challenge there. If only he could have done that with Melvin Purvis...

[Charcole]

I like how you thought that Sam Worhtington was the best thing of Terminator, and you criticize Bale for losing an accent in Public Enemies. That Worthington guy lost his accent quite a few times in Terminator. Enough for me to notice and lose interest in his character. I have not seen Public Enemies yet (going tonight) but his performances have been fine. No one in Terminator stood out, maybe the kid who played Reece actually, and he did a great job in The Dark Knight. Bale is still one of the best actors in his age group.

[Mike]

I find it to be a pretty impressive ostrich routine to describe the guy who played Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight and John Connor in Terminator Salvation as "a subtle actor." He's turned in "subtle" roles in the past, but certainly not as of late, and that was the point of the post.

[Get The Big Picture]

I didn't make a lot of hay about Worthington's accent for two reasons: 1) It's a more subtle dialect he's trying to hit 2) The rest of the performance is really good. Bale's accent is one of those big, looping drawls. It sounds hokey when it's done wrong. And, as I've mentioned, there's nothing else about Melvin Purvis to latch onto. We don't know if he has a family, friends, vices, afflictions, nothing. So because the character has no conflict and the accent is a show pony, that's really going to stand out.

[Mike]

Regarding the Bat-voice, I read somewhere that it was actually "enhanced" in post. Wish I could find the link now. Bale's delivery is still pretty laughable for much of the movie, but Nolan's choice to not only go with it, but to intentionally make it even worse, is where the blame should lie.