Yeah, McG seemed to really get it. He also likened the original movie to Halloween, and I always shared this sentiment. How could he miss the mark so much with the right perception is beyond me

Im not sure about bale. He was clear that TS is a dumb popcorn movie with no real characters and just explosions, but did he had that approach only after it was put together or when he was coaching for new script?

I have an interview archived where he talked a bit about the problems associated with Terminator Salvation. The gist of it is that he thought the production would not have gone forward until a good script was worked out, and that there was plenty of time to write a good script. He found out the hard way that production wasn't going to wait for the script, and that various factors cut into the time available for working on the script, not the least of which was the writers' strike.

Writers' strike or not, I think TS would have been made regardless.

It seems to be a common problem or recurrence in Hollywood where the release date is decided and everything else comes after, namely a good script.

So is that how [Terminator director] McG sold you on the project? By dubbing you TBAOYG?
At first they wanted me to play another character. I read the script and was like, Nah. But McG, who had a fear of flying, flew to England to meet me. He still didn't convince me. I was very open with him and said that I hadn't seen anything he had done before that justified him being the guy to make this. But I've always been grateful for people giving me that opportunity to do things I've never done before, and I'm always for people transforming themselves. But without the script there, there was no way in hell this could work. Ultimately, McG came back and wanted me to play the Connor role. But the Connor role was small. I said, "This guy has no real role here."

How can that be?
Exactly. The Connors are the story. But then I was in Hong Kong on the very last week of shooting The Dark Knight. I had been to some teahouse where this local guide insisted I drink this tea he'd made. I don't know if he'd spiked it, but within half an hour I turned to my wife and said, "Eh, I kind of feel like doing this." So I called McG up, said, "If we can get a new script, then yeah, let's go for Connor." I felt good about it, because we really did have a lot of time. And then…ffffuck, writers' strike. I learned a lesson then about movies like The Terminator and Batman. Most people assume that if you're risking that amount of money, you don't begin until you're completely ready. In fact, that's what they do only with the lower-budget movies. With the bigger ones, the ones that keep the studios afloat, they have to release it on a certain date. In my naïveté, I thought, Of course we'll push back filming. No. Ain't a possibility. And that strike kept going on, and we were getting less and less time to get it together. In the end, it was a film experience unlike any I'd had before. A real balls-to-the-wall kind of effort.

So who is John Connor?
Well, he's not a freak like Bruce Wayne. There's nothing pathological about him. He has a burden. He knows he's to be the savior of mankind. J.C., right? In early versions of the script, they had all these weird paganistic amulets and talismans all over me. I told 'em to get rid of that crap. John Connor is all about utility: "There is no fate but what you make." As far as playing him, I thought of it mainly in terms of his mom. He's got this mad dog of a mom who everybody thinks is crazy but whose prophecies turn out to be true. I felt that a lot of her ferocity and recklessness had to be passed down.