Christian Bale doesn’t need much convincing to be part of the Star Wars franchise.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter for his upcoming movie Amsterdam, the Academy Award-winning actor, best known for his titular role in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, revealed that he is very much open to joining the Star Wars universe.
“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,” Bale said when asked if he has a desire to do Star Wars someday. “The real nerds who watched Star Wars way too many times always knew about that one scene where the Stormtrooper hits his head on the door as he comes through. I wanted to be that guy. That was it.”
Bale was of course referring to the stormtrooper who banged his head on the doorframe in the background of the 1997 movie Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Several Star Wars fans have been intrigued by the identity of the helmet-knocking stormtrooper, so much so that a fan-made documentary chronicling the pursuit of the extra’s identity was released in 2019.
While Bale would be totally fine playing that particular stormtrooper, he, too, is open to playing any role bigger than that. “If I’m fortunate enough to be more than that, oh man, yeah. What a delight that would be,” the actor said. “I’ve still got the figures from when I was little. I also know Kathy Kennedy very well because she was working with [Steven] Spielberg when I did Empire of the Sun, and now, she runs the Star Wars universe.
For the uninitiated, Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun is a 1987 war film, in which Bale played his breakout role as Jamie “Jim” Graham.
The Empire Strikes Door
Released in September 2019, The Empire Strikes Door is the fan-made Star Wars documentary that attempts to find the actor behind the notorious helmet-knocking stormtrooper in A New Hope. If you haven’t seen it yet below is the official description of the documentary:
“It’s cinema’s most concussive blooper but who was that clumsy trooper? Three men claim responsibility and [YouTuber] Jamie Stangroom is on a mission to find out which one is the true galactic idiot. Along the way he’ll interview and perform polygraph tests on the suspects, he’ll speak to witnesses who worked on the film, and finally, with the help of a jury (Kevin Smith, Chris Jericho, Ahmed Best, Greg Grunberg & more) he’ll attempt to unmask the true galactic idiot. As well as all this, Jamie pays a visit to the factory where they made the original outfits to try one on for size and he speaks to four troopers from the Disney sequel trilogy (including John Boyega) to find out how things have changed since the original films. It turns out that quite a lot has changed, including actors having to undergo a ‘stormtrooper boot camp with a member of the British army.”
Christian Bale’s upcoming projects
As mentioned above, Bale will be next seen in the comedy thriller film Amsterdam, which will open in U.S. theaters on October 7th. . Based on the Business Plot, a 1933 political conspiracy in the United States, the film follows three friends—a doctor, a nurse and a lawyer—who are caught in the mysterious murder of a US senator in the 1930s. Aside from Bale, the David O. Russell-directed movie also stars Margot Robbie, and John David Washington, featuring Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, and Taylor Swift, among many others.
Bale also stars in The Pale Blue Eye, a Gothic horror crime film, scheduled for limited theatrical release on December 23rd, before streaming on Netflix on January 6th, 2023. Adapted from the 2006 novel of the same name by Louis Bayard, The Pale Blue Eye follows veteran detective Augustus Landor as he investigates a series of murders at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York in 1830.
