Top 8 Arnold Schwarzenegger Films

Welcome, one and all, to the 8 Ball in the Movie Zone! I’m your host Jeremy Thomas and as always, we will be tackling a topic and providing you the top eight selections of that particular category. Keep in mind that this list is meant to be my personal opinion and not a definitive list. You’re free to disagree; you can even say my list is wrong, but stating that an opinion is “wrong” is just silly. With that in mind, let’s get right in to it!

Another sci-fi action blockbuster invades cinemas this weekend, as Terminator Genisys attempts to reinvigorate that storied franchise. The film features the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the franchise after he skipped Terminator Salvation. The film is one that could be a return to form for the actors, who has had problems with his films scoring at the box office audiences since he returned to acting. But there was a time when he was the biggest movie star on the planet and I think his recent work has been a bit underrated to boot. As such, this week I thought we could take a look at the Austrian-born bodybuilder-turned-movie star’s greatest films to date.

Caveat: The only criteria this week was that to qualify, a film had to have Arnold Schwarzenegger as the star or a major supporting role. No cameos or the like. Keeps it simple!

Just Missing The Cut

• Kindergarten Cop (1990)

• Last Action Hero (1993)

• Maggie (2015)

• Pumping Iron (1977)

• Conan the Barbarian (1982)

#8: The Running Man (1987)

First on our list this week is a sci-fi classic, a genre that Schwarzenegger has a very good track record with. Sci-fi didn’t always come out with the best results in the 1980s or even the early ’90s, but when Schwarzenegger has starred in one it’s a safe bet that (The 6th Day aside) it will be enjoyable. The Running Man is a great example of that. This loose adaptation of the Stephen King novella, initially written under his Richard Bachman persona, is a disturbingly prescient look at how far audiences’ television tastes might really go one day. Reality TV is the kind of thing that we scoffed at back in the day, but look at your cable schedule guide today and all it takes is a dose of cynicism to think we might someday get to the point that executing death row inmates through rigged games is a thing.

Schwarzenegger leads a great cast in The Running Man. He gives us an excellent turn as Ben Richards, the framed military pilot who is forced to fight for a chance to live in front of millions of viewers. Arnold plays up the sympathetic aspects quite well and has great support from the likes of María Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, Jesse Ventura and especially Richard Dawson as the slimy host Damon Killian. Even Mick Fleetwood — yes, of Fleetwood Mac — is solid as the secret leader of the resistance. The film’s theme has been handled many times in science fiction at this point, but Running Man remains the high mark of the “kill or be killed reality show” film subgenre with ease.

#7: True Lies (1994)

True Lies has the significance of being Schwarzenegger’s last big hit of the 1990s. The action icon had a rather unfortunate series of films throughout the latter part of the decade with entries like Junior, Eraser, Jingle All the Way, Batman and Robin and End of Days all fall short to various degrees with critics and fans. But in 1994 everything was flying high, and James Cameron’s action-comedy dominated the box office. The film has a few hokey elements to it, but it sails on the chemistry between Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis as secret superspy Harry Tasker and his wife Helen. We can say what we want about Cameron in a post-Avatar world, but he was pretty much untouchable at this point and this is a great example why. His grasp on action is top notch and with one of the highest budgets ever at that point, he had a lot to work with and wasted no opportunity.

It wasn’t just the action that allowed True Lies to become an unforgettable film though. As a quick look at Michael Bay’s resume can tell us, great action doesn’t always make for a great blockbuster. It is the way that Cameron seamlessly mixes the action and comedy which elevates it to a new level. There are so many great sequences — Jamie Lee Curtis seduction scene, anyone? — and Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton and even the young Eliza Dushku are perfectly cast here. This is the closest to a James Bond film we’ll ever see out of Arnold Schwarzenegger and he knocked it out of the park.

#6: Twins (1988)

While we all think of action when Arnold Schwarzenegger comes to mind, he’s also proven himself to be a talented comedian as well. Schwarzenegger has proven his comic chops in films like The Last Action Hero and Kindergarten Cop. While I thoroughly enjoy both of this, it’s Twins which draws the best laughs for my money. Schwarzenegger plays gloriously against type as Julius, the muscular but naively optimistic genetic twin of Danny DeVito’s worldlier yet thoroughly average Vincent. The pairing of these two against each other served for great comic ground and Ivan Reitman mines it for all its worth for a constant stream of laughs.

What’s amazing to me about Twins is how well it holds up. Mainstream 1980s comedies don’t generally age well; it was the beginning of a heavy reliance on pop culture and the more we get away from that, the cheesier the films seem. But with the two stars playing perfectly off each other and establishing great chemistry with Kelly Preston and Chloe Webb as their love interests, Reitman was able to craft a film that remains as funny now as it was at the time. There’s just enough action to play into Schwarzenegger’s strengths there, but the best thing about this is how versatile he proved himself to be. It was an important turn for the man who was largely seen at the time as a one-dimensional action star.

#5: Commando (1985)

As an action vehicle for Schwarzenegger, Commando is just about a perfect film. Taken on the whole it might not hold up as well as a couple of other films of his, but it’s still a blast from start to finish and there isn’t a more badass Arnold character than that of John Matrix. The action icon absolutely owns the screen as Matrix, the retired Special Forces commando now living in the country with his daughter Jenny under new identities. When Jenny is kidnapped in order to coerce him into assassinating the president of a Latin American country, Matrix bursts into action in order to get his daughter back.

In truth this is a badly flawed film if you look at it objectively. The logic problems are obvious, the performances are cheesy and the film gaffes are legendary, most notably the Porsche that gets flipped and is clearly destroyed on the driver’s side, but is suddenly perfect when Arnold takes off in it. But none of that really matters because it’s all part of the fun, and we aren’t supposed to look at this film in the same light as we would more serious ones. This is a film that rests almost entirely on its lead star, and Schwarzenegger is firmly within his skin as Matrix. Arnold delivers some of his best one-liners and walks through battle scenes like Ares on a mission while Mark L. Lester throws all sense of realism out the window in favor of excitement. It delivers and is incredibly rewatchable to boot. Among his non-sci-fi action films, Commando ranks at the top.

#4: Predator (1987)

From here on it’s all sci-fi. Predator, however, is a very different kind of science-fiction film than most in that it’s sci-fi horror and is, in truth, almost more of a slasher film. Say what you want about the successive films — in most cases, I’d agree with you — but Predator set the bar high for the subgenre created something that still hasn’t been quite replicated yet. In most slasher films, the killer spends their time hunting down defenseless teenagers, camp counselors or babysitters. The predator, on the other hands, is hunting a hardened, battle-capable special ops team and killing them off without breaking a sweat…at least until it comes down to it and Schwarzenegger’s Dutch. That truly established the alien big game hunter as a force to be reckoned with.

Predator also stands as one of the best ensemble casts of Schwarzenegger’s career. Sure, Dutch is basically the quintessential Arnold role; he’s bad-ass, witty and thoroughly dangerous, but with a sense of honor and righteousness that lets him rise above. But the rest of the team is memorable and well-played by the likes of Jesse Ventura, Carl Weathers, Sonny Landham and Bill Duke and they all get their chances to shine. Of course, in the end this is all about Dutch and the Yautja (as we eventually learned it was known). And they have a great final act, going head to head and then battling through Dutch’s trap-building expertise. It’s an iconic role in the actor’s storied career and one of his most enjoyable films.

#3: The Terminator (1984)

If there is any role that is truly synonymous with Arnold Schwarzenegger, it has to be the Terminator. The cyborg killing machine known as the T-850 is the character that people most strongly associate with the actor, and that is an absolute compliment because with the cybernetic killer of James Cameron’s time travel sci-fi film Arnold created one of the most iconic science fiction villains/heroes of all-time. The first Terminator is almost more sci-fi thriller than sci-fi action, with Arnold taking on the same sort of unstoppable killing machine that he battled in Predator.

The concept of the 1984 film that powered a full franchise after is complex in how it handles time travel, but straight-forward enough that it doesn’t get too cerebral for its tone. Linda Hamilton wouldn’t come into her own quite yet in the first film but she’s an affable heroine and Michael Biehn is a badass hero as Kyle Reese. Working with a budget of only $6.4 million, Cameron made the film look like a far more expensive effort. The Terminator was terrifying in this first entry and it successfully kickstarted a franchise that has now lasted over thirty years.

#2: Total Recall (1990)

We love our science fiction dystopias, and clearly so does Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Running Man and The Terminator both tackle the themes of a future where everything has fallen apart, as does Total Recall. This film, inspired by Phillip K. Dick’s 1966 short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale,” is an absolute mindbender of a film that doesn’t get too wacky for its own good. Paul Verhoeven took a script from Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon and Gary Goldman and constructed a fantastic future-set world which isn’t so far out there as to be unrelatable, but which definitely settles in at the edges of our imagination.

Credit has to be given to Schwarzenegger’s performance, which is often underrated against other sci-fi films. Many times when an actor is required to play two roles within one film, it just doesn’t work. There is a need to put the two characters right next to each other for the visuals and many actors have difficulty with acting opposite nothing, which shatters the illusion. Total Recall allows Schwarzenegger to bypass that curse by putting the two characters in the same body. Douglas Quaid and Carl Hauser are very different characters and he does well with both of them. Meanwhile Sharon Stone, Rachel Ticotin, Ronny Cox and Michael Ironside all give great performances while Verhoeven keeps things moving along without ever letting the high concepts drag things down. The action work is great, the one-liners are top-notch and the sets are incredibly memorable. The remake fell flat for various reasons but the original, and Schwarzenegger’s performance in it, is unforgettable.

#1: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

And here we have the top pick. As good as The Terminator is, when James Cameron decided to blow things up into pure sci-fi action he took things to an entirely new level. Judgment Day is a landmark film in terms of action, special effects and science fiction in general. The first film’s huge profit margin and Cameron’s emergence as a big name in Hollywood allowed them to shoot the budget through the roof and once again, Cameron was able to make the most of it.

With T2, Schwarzenegger got a chance to play his iconic role with a very different bent; turning the Terminator into a protector of John allowed Cameron to up the stakes with the T-1000 and let the Governator spread his wings a little bit. He establishes some serious chemistry with Edward Furlong and gets to let a bit of his comedy skills come out to play. Of course, this is the film where Sarah Conner really stepped into her own as an action heroine thanks to Linda Hamilton’s badass performance and Robert Patrick was pretty much perfect as the T-1000. T2 set a new high mark for what an action blockbuster was capable of and to this day it still stands as Schwarzenegger’s single-greatest film.

And that will do it for us this week! Join me next week for another edition of the 8-Ball! Until then, have a good week and don’t forget to read the many other great columns, news articles and more here at 411wrestling.com! JT out.