Make your choice.
The one at the end of Terminator 1, in utero version. Best actor of the bunch.
If this had been a choice I would have picked it, too. Otherwise, Option 6. 
Edmund Kean.
He really disappeared into the role.
I think I’ll take the one from the TV show.
The one in the future war scene at the beginning of T2: Judgment Day who didn’t speak.
Runner up was John Conner as described through the eyes of Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reece.
Honestly, Furlong, Stahl, Bale and Clarke did excellent jobs of capturing the essence of the world’s biggest tool at various stages of a life of not living up to the hype.
Furlong wasn’t too bad. Has there been a poll on Sarah Connor? She’s far more interesting and heroic than her son.
Nick Stahl was great. They should have used him in Genysis.
After him, Thomas Dekker. Young, but not an idiot or a bratty smartass, and while his potential role in the future weighed heavily on him, he was clearly displaying the beginnings of the inborn wisdom, maturity, and gravitas that made him the head of the Resistance, and a “Leader of Men.”
I voted for Christian Bale, even though really, I’m not too fond of any of the portrayals. I think a big part of what makes the idea of John Connor works is precisely that he’s a Christ figure (as if the J.C. was lost on anyone). He’s compelling in the first film because we hear about him from someone who was, in many ways, redeemed and raised by him, and actually saw him performing the miracle of defeating Skynet. In his eyes, he was a mythical person.
Edward Furlong, he just didn’t seem to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, even after he realized early in the film that all that his mom was teaching him was true. I liked the relationship he developed with the T-800, but I just had trouble seeing how he’d grow to be the man we’d heard so much about. Also, it just seemed odd that he was so rebellious early in the film, always having issues with authority, then quickly somehow became morally upstanding. That character arc just didn’t seem to well fleshed out for me. It’s the weakest part in an otherwise nearly perfect film.
To contrast that, I really liked the character arc of John in T3, and I like Nick Stahl, I just felt like he was miscast for the role. The part of loved about the arc was that he was lost, having spent so much of his life believing he had purpose, then seeing Judgment Day passing, felt directionless and became a drug addict. The thing is, he still just came across as resigned to his fate when he realized it was inevitable rather than rising to the occasion. At that age, he really should have been able to kick a lot more ass, especially if he was going to quickly become the leader he’s supposed to be following the events of the movie. John Connor needs to exude charisma and strength, and Nick Stahl just doesn’t have that as an actor, even if he did a great job with where the character started.
And for Genisys, I was excited about the casting of Jason Clarke. After seeing him in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, he showed there that he had the acting chops to pull off a character like John Connor. After all, his character there wasn’t all that different, being a charismatic and burdened leader of men in a post-apocalyptic world. The problem was, the character arc for him was just straight up stupid. I went into the film hoping for the best, and even had a hope for what could have been that obvious spoiler in the trailer–that he realized Skynet and him were mutually dependent and they needed to co-exist or create a time paradox–but no, he was just taken over and became a mustache twiling parody of all the other Terminators we’d seen. Easily the most disappointing of the portrayals.
Thus, Christian Bale as Connor in Salvation. Again, one of his weaker performances, but still even a weaker performance by Bale is generally still pretty decent. And there were a lot of issues with the film, but most of them revolved around obnoxious plot holes, poor storytelling, and Sam Worthington, and not so much with his portrayal. Of all of the performances, he was the one that actually gave me a somewhat believable mythical John Connor that Reese built up in the first film. He took cues from the early films, like the rebellious nature that Furlong brought, and the burden of his fate that Stahl brought, but he showed charisma that those two lacked, and he did show some battle hardening. I still feel he was a bit miscast too, but he was probably the best part of a fairly disappointing film.
I voted for Furlong, because I can give him the benefit of the doubt: Bale and Stahl pretty much already have to be there, and they ain’t, but Furlong is plausible as a kid who knows how to handle a gun and has some hard-won experience keeping people calm in a crisis situation – and as soon as the switch flips from* ‘everything my mom said was a delusion’* to ‘everything my mom said was the gospel’, he realizes he needs to start issuing orders that minimize human casualties and obliterate Terminators; we don’t know what he’ll be like years later when the nukes start flying, but we can extrapolate that he’ll grow up to be Sarah Connor Only Taller.
I went with Christian Bale because I voted on the best acting job. I had also considered voting based on the best character, but couldn’t pick one. T2 John Connor is a little too annoying (as most kid characters are), T3 is too dopey, T4 has no character, and T5 doesn’t deserve consideration of any kind.
Furlong, especially when you consider that he had never acted before in his life. Too bad he went the typical child-actor route and is now an overweight crackhead. (That and T2 was definitely the best of the series)
Seconded. I thought he was quite good as a disadvantaged kid who’d had a crappy life through no fault of his own, and who did the best he could with what he had, under very trying circumstances.
Yep, just like Furlong wasn’t in T3 because of his drug problem.
Furlong was excellent in contrasting youthful arrogance with (youthful) vulnerability.
The relationship between the young John Connor and Schwarzenegger was heartfelt and authentic.
It is the performance that will last.
The guy in Genesys absolutely sucked for the role, the others all had good and bad points.
Furlong was playing him as a kid, so I don’t have a problem with the annoying somewhat whiny portrayal. Stahl, I could see as the guy from T2 grown up, disillusioned, gone off the grid. Bale, well, he didn’t really match up with the previous guys, but he’s good enough on his own as a future soldier/leader that I didn’t mind that I couldn’t see Stahl’s Conner turning into him over time. Genysis guy, just seemed like some herp derp with not a bit of leader/soldier to him.
I actually liked Genysys a lot (however the fuck you spell it), but Conner’s actor was easily the worst part of the whole thing.
I voted Nick Stahl. I think T3 is the most under-appreciated movie in the series and I like what they chose to do here. T3’s John Connor has been living off the grid just in case but hoping his worst nightmare has come and gone. And then one day he finds out it’s inevitable and Judgment Day is happening… that evening. He doesn’t have the strength or resources to deal with it and he knows it but he has to do it anyway. And he has to do it after crashing his motorcycle and knocking himself senseless with horse tranquilizers. I like the desperation and panic. I think the audience would prefer a cocky, self-assured JC like in T2 but Stahl’s portrayal is more realistic. T3 is not the story of John Connor’s victory of Skynet but rather Skynet’s victory over humanity. If John’s attitude from the second film had carried over it would have made for a really odd movie.
I liked T3: Rise of the Machines and the direction they were leading with it. It made more sense to me than everything they’ve retconned since. However, though I liked him in how it was written, I wouldn’t say Nick Stahl was a good representation of “John Connor the Leader of the Resistance.”
I dunno. I liked the scarred guy in the flash-forwards in T2.