Board 8 > Anagram Ranks Anything Arnold Schwarzenegger-related with write-ups (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

and my next nomination is of course this picture of Wilt Chamberlain, Andre the Giant, and some tiny wimp

<img src="https://i.redd.it/qioy2zha4ct11.jpg">

Johnbobb posted...

Pumping up With Hans and Franz

I dont know what this is.

Dolph Lundgren

Anagram posted...

I dont know what this is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mk1nykjnYA

redrocket posted...

Like a much dumber version of Amadeus.

I love this. This is beautiful, Anagram.

Also, thank you, redrocket, forgot to reply to this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui_6jBMSU9s

True Lies

Come With Me If You Want To Live
Arnold's Accent
Terminator 2: Judgment Day: The last of the four truly great Arnold films, and the last of his important movies. He had a few okay movies after this, but nothing anyone particularly cares about. This one has everything: perfectly-executed action, characters whom you actually care about, a theme that makes sense and is thoroughly explored, plot twists, special effects, and a great ending. Probably the best Arnold ending of all time, right? If there's one thing to complain about, it's that this is sort of the Resident Evil 4 of the series: it's the best thing the franchise has to offer, but it ruined everything afterward. Everything after this tries to be Terminator 2 again, there's always ANOTHER new Terminator who comes back who has ANOTHER magical ability to kill you with. Well, not Terminator 4, but let's not talk about that movie. It's actually shocking how bad every Terminator-related thing is after the first two movies, even Alien eventually got a good video game. I think the problem with this series is that the central conceit of the story is that John Connor is the most important person in the universe, but all of the pathos is with Sarah Connor. She's the interesting character, so doing anything with John Connor is incredibly difficult. They managed it one time with this movie, but every subsequent movie, yeesh. I'll go more into this later, if someone nominates those trashfires. This is also the last time Arnold ever said "I'll be back" and it didn't annoy me. That line, man, that line is the albatross around his neck. He was never able to ever make a movie again after this without it being a self-referential joke where you're supposed to be amused by Arnold's sheer presence. Terminator as a series would have been better if this was the last time we ever saw Arnold.
Conan the Barbarian (Film)
Predator
Total Recall
Ahnald Voice

Hasta La Vista, Baby
Conan the Barbarian (Character)
Austria (Nation)
"Get to da Choppa!"
Rainier Wolfcastle
7-time Mr. Olympia Winner: Yep, Arnold is the greatest bodybuilder of all time. I don't pretend to know anything about bodybuilding, but I can't imagine anyone will dispute that, right? The guy is the Platonic ideal of swoleness, an Adonis made flesh.

Stick Around
The Running Man
Pumping Iron
Arnold, Wilt Chamberlain, and Andre the Giant Photo: I've seen this before. Imagine being Arnold, known throughout the world for being huge, and then meeting these two at the same time. Of course you'd take a photo with them, how could you resist? Andre the Giant and Arnold is like when in Street Fighter, Zangief was initially the big guy, and then each guy adds progressively bigger guys who are each the new big guy, and meanwhile Zangief is still 7'0". It's also kind of sad that both of the other men died young, forever ago. Arnold must look at pictures like this as the good old days, right?
Hercules in New York

See You At Da Party, Richtah
Crystal Beef Arnold Mammoth
Governorship of California
Joseph Baena
Arnold Pipe
Planet Hollywood
Conan the Destroyer: This is definitely in the Lesser Arnoldcore filmography, but I'm not sure where. It retains a little of what makes Conan the Barbarian so good, but only like 30%. The movie isn't as fun, but it still has some of the insane energy, like when Arnold has to outwit the room of magical mirrors, or having Grace Jones as one of his sidekicks. Of the two movies I've seen with Grace Jones, this is indeed better than A View to a Kill. It's like... if you asked me to place where this goes relative to other Lesser Arnoldcore films, it's definitely below Running Man, but it's still better than like True Lies and Red Heat, so I don't know. It's sort of the forgotten classic Arnold film, and while it does have some positive qualities to fall back upon, I don't think anyone will dispute that it falls into that sort of gray zone of unremarkableness.

Get Out
President Schwarzeneggar (The Simpsons Movie)
ERB: Terminator vs Robocop: ERB to me is peak 2010 youtube. It didn't age well, and I was shocked to learn they were still putting out videos. Did you know they made an Indiana Jones vs Lara Croft video in 2023? And it sucks! The idea of the Terminator vs Robocop is mildly fun, but neither of them can exactly rap, because both are emotionless robots. I do like how the Terminator sections sound super aggressive, but that's about the best I can say for this one. There are strong ERBs, but this isn't one. I'll say that the Terminator actor does OKAY at looking like Arnold. He doesn't nail it or anything, but you can at least identify the character he's playing. Honestly, it might have been cleverer to just do an ERB of different Arnolds, where it's Dutch vs the Terminator vs John Matrix vs Quaid, etc.
Terminator vs Jesus
Terminator 2 (NES): I'll say this for it: briefly looking through a longplay of the game, it DOES look more like Terminator than the Predator game did. Sorry, but I'm just going to say it: the low bar for games today is much higher than the low bar for games back then. I'm not saying that 80s and early 90s games are bad, obviously I love many classic games, but this one looks pretty good by the standards of the time, and it's still not great. Actually, wait, Terminator 2 came out in 1991. This game is from 1992, the SNES came out in 1990. This must have been one of the last NES games, right? How odd to release a tie-in game on the older system, it's not like they could have started this game long during the heyday of the NES and then the SNES came out midway through development. Does this game use a ton of assets from another, older game? That would explain it.
Midwich Elementary School (Silent Hill)
EM-1 Railgun (Eraser)

I'm Going to Kill You Last
Dolph Lundgren: Dolph Lundgren is another wannabe Arnold, another giant European man who wanted to become an actor. He's been in a million movies, but the only one anyone remembers is Rocky 4, where he plays a genetically-engineered superboxer who kills Carl Weathers, prompting Rocky to train with a sassy robot so he can win a boxing match and stop the Cold War. I guess he was also in Universal Soldier? What a pathetic film career. I mean, Lundgren is a tall, handsome, buff man, but he just had no acting chops, and by the time he was getting famous, the market for invincible action men was already saturated. The only unique attribute he brought to the table was being blond, and I mean, sorry, bud, but that's just not enough.
Last Action Hero
The Last Stand (2013)
Predator (NES)
Japanese Arnold Film: Japan has a reputation for weird, incomprehensible commercials starring washed-up American celebrities, and this is sure one of them. I'll give this one credit for not just being a bunch of references to his films, but I think that's probably just because he doesn't speak Japanese. I mean, honestly, this is just Arnold and a bunch of tiny Japanese businessmen laughing together. Who... cares?
Mortal Kombat
The Expendables 1
Escape Plan: It's not just that this movie is bland and stupid. It's the sheer patheticness of it. If you're going to make the epic Stallone x Arnold crossover, the time to do it was in like 1990. This movie came out in 2013, long, LONG after anyone cared, and when both men were in their 60s and had sagging guts. It's even worse than the Expendables, because at least those movies have other ancillary actors to do the action scenes. And like... I know I praise 80s Arnold movies for having stupid plots, but it's different when it's 2013, and you're trying to replicate them. The plot of this movie is that a guy's made a prison where you can pay to have someone sent to for the rest of his life, and it's like... why don't you just murder them instead? It'd be fine if this was a brainless 80s film, but when someone tries to replicate that style with a self-aware tone, it completely fails. Why is it so "high" on this list, then? Because it's still not the worst Arnold movie.
The New Celebrity Apprentice
Austrian Death Machine

To HELL With You!
Pumping Up with Hans & Franz (SNL): Comedy ages poorly even when it's good. I watched a youtube video of this, and this must have been EARLY in Arnold's fame. I love the tepid laughter of the audience, who clearly don't think any of this is funny. Why even namedrop Arnold in this skit? They are really relying on the phrase "pump you up" as funny. This is painfully unfunny. I'm just going to say it: any pure comedy pre-1995 is basically unwatchable. The sole exception is Airplane. I mean, why even name them Hans and Franz? "Arnold" is a perfectly normal name even outside of Austria, the joke should be that they have unpronouncable super-long German last names, like Lukas Burgenhausmeistreinharder.
Conan O'Brien's Arnold via Satellite Skits
Mr. Freeze

Veto
True Lies: Okay, I'm sorry. I thought I'd seen this movie, but looking it up, what I thought was True Lies was actually Basic Instinct. I thought True Lies was the movie where the director tricked the main actress into showing her vagina on-screen, and I was going to talk about that, but these movies are not the same, so I just have no memory of True Lies at all. If I ever have "Anagram ranks Forgotten 90s Action Films," I'll have a lot to say about Basic Instinct.

The Arnolds in Metal Gear

The 6th Day

Nevermind it's been ranked.

The last 20 seconds of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbZojqbYst0

You can talk about the rest of the video if you want but I only really care about the last part

Anagram posted...

Actually, wait, Terminator 2 came out in 1991. This game is from 1992, the SNES came out in 1990. This must have been one of the last NES games, right? How odd to release a tie-in game on the older system, it's not like they could have started this game long during the heyday of the NES and then the SNES came out midway through development.

The last licensed NES game in America was Wario's Woods in 1994, late enough that it has an ESRB rating.

You know how for most of the PS5's existence, big games released on it have also been on PS4 since it has such a large install base compared to the PS5? This is the same reason that many licensed games got NES versions for much of the SNES lifespan.

The Terminator (as in the 1984 movie)

WazzupGenius00 posted...

You know how for most of the PS5's existence, big games released on it have also been on PS4 since it has such a large install base compared to the PS5? This is the same reason that many licensed games got NES versions for much of the SNES lifespan.

Ah, that makes perfect sense, thank you.

Muscleboundness

https://i.redd.it/z9zjjl378zv41.jpg

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Jingle All the Way

Jorgen Von Strangle

"I love you, Alex."
Bullshit! Your sex life is terminated!

It's not one of my favorite ERBs but it's not terrible, there's worse. And I feel like the later ERBs still have some great lines but their longer duration has diminishing returns.

Anyway, nominate:
His Wikipedia page

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1187317916/come-with-me-if-you-want-to-lift-arnold

The SNES came out in 1991 in america.

pjbasis posted...

The Arnolds in Metal Gear

note the wiki page calls him Bloody Brad because of the american NES version, but you can see the MSX version calling him/them Arnold

Come With Me If You Want To Live
Arnold's Accent
Muscleboundness: If I had to distill what Arnold is into just two concepts, it's an absurd accent mixed with an absurd body. Those are the important ingredients to what makes Arnold Arnold: he is not a human being. He's a cartoon character, he's Tex Avery's interpretation of a human being. People are always like "Dwayne Johnson is also huge," and it's like, compare Dwayne Johnson in his prime to Arnold in his prime. Arnold makes Johnson look like Johnson makes you look. It's the fact that you have this bizarre foreign man who looks like no human being in the universe should look, saying words that you can barely understand. I think this is also part of what gives Arnold the edge over Jackie Chan, whom I compared him to earlier. I can imagine seeing a guy who looks like Jackie Chan on the streets, but I cannot imagine seeing another Arnold. He's not merely a bodybuilder, he's THE bodybuilder, he has THE body by which all others are judged and found inadequate. I am being sincere when I say this: what Albert Einstein is to science, what Leonardo da Vinci is to art, Arnold is to bodybuilding. He is the definition of the profession, the image you have in your mind when you think of "bodybuilding," and no one can ever measure up against him. Even other bodybuilders who look like cartoon characters, like Lou Ferrigno, don't even come close to him. Everyone knows the story about them shooting Predator, and Jesse Ventura couldn't actually like the minigun, so it's always shot from below so that you can't see the staff members helping him lift it into the air while he pretends to fire it, right? The only person on the entire set who actually could lift the thing by himself? ****ing Arnold. He is the closest humanity will ever come to having Bugs Bunny in real life.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Conan the Barbarian (Film)
Predator
Total Recall
Ahnald Voice
The Terminator (Film): This might be controversial, but of Arnold's six greatest films, this, to me, is very clearly #5. It's better than the sixth, it's worse than the other four. Maybe if you really like horror or terrible stop-motion skeletons, it'll be higher for you, but I cannot justify putting it on the same level as Terminator 2, Predator, Conan, or Total Recall. It's actually amazing that this is the only time Arnold ever played a villain, and he's amazing at it. This is the only movie ever where I would say his acting rises above cartoonish and becomes "good." I said it before, but let me draw another comparison. Do you remember Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen? She's great at playing a waify princess who looks off into the distance meaningfully and has a lot of inner strength, but the instant she has to speak, she sounds and looks like a little kid throwing a tantrum. That works in the context of Game of Thrones, but when she has to be Sarah Connor in Genisys, yeesh. My point is that the ideal way to utilize Emilia Clarke is to have her not speak, and just look at things imperiously. And Terminator 1 understands that's also true of Arnold. If you just need a big guy to stand in a room and look dangerous, he works great. It's like, yes, even without him being a robot, I believe that Arnold can beat me up. He can believably play "big strong guy who doesn't speak." He says like 24 words in this entire movie, all of them in short bursts. And it makes you forget that none of this makes any sense at all. If you want to build a robot infiltrator, you do not make him an eleven-foot-tall Austrian bodybuilder. The most comical thing in the entire Terminator series is the scene where there're a bunch of 20-year-olds at a nightclub dancing, and this 40-year-old mound of muscles in a leather jacket, standing a full head taller than everyone else, walks in, and the movie presents this like he's completely fitting in with no problems. I'm sure everyone already knows this, but Arnold wasn't the first choice for this role, it was supposed to be OJ Simpson, who was rejected for "not being believable as a murderer" (amazing), and then Lance Henriksen. It's funny that this is the movie that made Arnold, that gave him the catchphrase that he could never ascend beyond, when Conan came before it and is better than it, and has way more actual Arnold in it. I like Terminator and everything, but this is also a prime example of a horror movie that is not scary at all. I also need to point out that every Terminator movie (except the fourth one, but I'm sure we'll get to that later) is the same thing. Robot comes back to stab you, protector comes back to protect you, run away, final fight scene is in a factory or very technological area.

Hasta La Vista, Baby
Conan the Barbarian (Character)
Austria (Nation)
"Get to da Choppa!"
Rainier Wolfcastle
7-time Mr. Olympia Winner

Steek Around
The Running Man
Jorgen von Strangle: I wonder what the thought process was for this character. Like, obviously they just thought it would be funny to have a fairy who looks like Arnold, since fairies are stereotypically tiny and feminine, that's fine, that makes sense. But when did they decide he would be the person in charge of all fairies, as opposed to a random enforcer? You could have so much more easily made like the Fairy Queen, who would be some wacky nonsense character to make jokes out of, but instead, they stay consistent with their random Arnold parody.
Pumping Iron
Arnold, Wilt Chamberlain, and Andre the Giant Photo
Hercules in New York
Arnold Stogie Rant: How dare you tell me not watch the entire video. I had never heard Arnold pronounce "Johannesburg" before, you monster. I enjoy how Arnold has done so many interviews by this point, that he immediately knows what the interviewer's next question. In the last part, he breaks character and starts smiling and laughing because he's playing up being a big tough guy as a reason for why he's allowed to smoke in the house and why his wife accepts it. Oh, Arnold. I could make so many jokes about your wife not accepting you boning the maid right now, but luckily for you, I'm far too classy for that.

See You At Da Party, Richtah
Crystal Beef Arnold Mammoth
Governorship of California
Arnold's Wikipedia Page: I mean, it's fine. It's exactly what I expected. It has a lot of dry information about Arnold for you to puruse at your leisure. The only thing I actually learned was that his wife was the niece of JFK, which I didn't know. Or maybe I knew it at some point, and just forgot. Holy goddamn, the page mentions Cruz Bustamante, what a blast from the past. Do non-Californians even remember him?
Joseph Baena
Arnold Pipe
Planet Hollywood
Conan the Destroyer

Get Out
The 6th Day: This is solid midcard Lesser Arnoldcore, right alongside Conan the Destroyer. Extremely watchable. It's some kind of dumb sci-fi thriller, instead of Arnold's standard sci-fi action, about the most convoluted cloning plot you could possibly have. I mean, it's easy to make fun of it now, because now when you watch a movie with the premise "cloning is super easy and you can be replaced whenever," all you're ever doing is thinking "who would be the biggest plot twist if they were revealed as a clone," and you'll just immediately know it's Arnold himself, followed by everyone else in the entire movie at the same time, which is indeed what proves to be the case. But seriously, how do you improve on having Arnold in your movie? Have him in your movie... twice! Have him interact with himself, so they can have entire conversations in that incomprehensible accent. This movie is also guilty of trying to make Arnold a normal joe, which I hate, because the man looks like no one you have ever seen. When Arnold is some kind of military commando, that's fine, when he's a businessman, no. Here he's a pilot, which is REALLY stretching my suspension of disbelief, but I'll accept it. I know this movie isn't really "good," and I know it was a box office failure, and I know they really skim over the fact that they can take a recording of your memories to put into clones, as if that technology wouldn't completely change all of society, but it's still a perfectly watchable film. If you want to watch Arnold kill like five clones of the same woman over the course of one film, this is the movie for you.
President Schwarzenegger (The Simpsons Movie)
ERB: Terminator vs Robocop
Terminator vs Jesus
Terminator 2 (NES)
Midwich Elementary School (Silent Hill)
EM-1 Railgun (Eraser)
Bloody Brad (Metal Gear): Originally named Arnold in the MSX2 version, these are just like subbosses you fight. There's not much to them, and not much to really analyze. I think the more interesting part is how this series just has fully humanoid robots, and they're never brought up again. Once you hit MGS, everything is either a cyborg or a big, clunky robot the size of a truck. I wonder how much Kojima considers them canon, but I suspect nothing is really canon to him, and he just makes up everything as he goes along. What I really wonder is if Konami has the balls to ever continue the series without him (Survive and remakes don't count).

I'm Going to Kill You Last
Dolph Lundgren
Last Action Hero
The Last Stand (2013)
Predator (NES)
Japanese Arnold Film
Mortal Kombat
Come with Me if You Want to Lift Shirt: I just don't believe any actual bodybuilder would ever wear this. Look at the sleeves. They'd barely even fit ME.
The Expendables 1
Escape Plan
The New Celebrity Apprentice
Austrian Death Machine

To HELL With You!
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: The most incredible thing about this movie is that not only is it not the worst Terminator film, it's not even in the bottom three Terminator films. Terminator films after 2 are like Die Hard: every movie is worse than the previous one. I mean, first of all, having any more Terminator films after 2 just ruins the entire franchise right off the bat. The only Terminator 3 film should be about Sarah and John hiding in Costa Rica, and Sarah has mental problems from a lifetime of fighting robots, and she gets a job as a waitress and meets a guy and is like "what's your job" and he's like "I work at the robot factory" and she flips and starts stabbing him, and it turns into a courtroom drama. Along with Alien 3, this is one of the definitive "ruins the perfect movie before it" movies. But setting that aside, what we have here is another retread. There's ANOTHER super robot assassin who's even MORE dangerous than Arnold, and Arnold has to protect you AGAIN. But this time, there's a twist: remember Sarah Connor, the protagonist of the series whom everyone loves? She died of cancer off-screen. Instead, John is joined by his future-wife, who's TOTALLY important and is TOTALLY necessary for the Resistance of the future to succeed even though no one ever mentioned her before, and also John is now a drugged-up loser. Like, who came up with this concept? And how did Sarah Connor, who was dying of cancer, convince the people making her tomb (which is like a giant medieval mausoleum, and not a random grave in the ground) to fill it with weapons for Arnold to find just in case of more time travel shenanigans? There isn't a single thing in this movie that makes any sense at all, and it's not in a good way. I'll admit, the movie does have exactly one good joke, which is when the female Terminator looks at a billboard of a sexy model, then shapeshifts so her boobs are the same size as the model's, but like, I don't want to watch an entire movie just for that. I guess I can say that the ending of the movie is kind of ballsy, where the girl's father is like "the world is about to be nuked, but totally go to the inside of this mountain bunker where there is TOTALLY a switch that will disable the nukes," and Arnold immediately knows that he's lying and just trying to trick his daughter and John Connor into hiding someplace safe, and also lies to them so they'll survive as the world explodes. It's not a TERRIBLE ending, if you don't care about how it ruins Terminator 2. Is Terminator 2 the most ruined movie ever? It has three sequels that all go out of its way to establish how it doesn't matter and everything is for naught. But yeah -- this is a bad movie, but it has kind of a ballsy ending, Arnold's motivations still make some sense, and it's still rated R and has lots of bloody action, which puts it well above Terminator 5 and 6. God, those movies.
Jingle All the Way: I hate this movie. I have always hated this movie. I don't understand why people like it, other than that it's from their childhood. And Jake Lloyd? This movie and Phantom Menace ruined his life. He has like horrible mental problems from being a child actor. How many lives will Arnold ruin in his pursuit of extremely mediocre comedy? At least one.
Pumping Up with Hans & Franz (SNL)
Conan O'Brien's Arnold via Satellite Skits
Mr. Freeze

Terminator Salvation

T-1000

caps

the SchwarzeneggerStallone rivalry

The Terminator (Sega CD) - Taking to the Air
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGobJ153r78

Cottage Cheese

Tommy Tallarico

T2: The Arcade Game

Terminator fatalities

https://youtu.be/pArw05oPu9w?si=frW_KgJtupWRJAoc

WarThaNemesis2 posted...

Cottage Cheese

I don't know the Arnold connection here.

Anagram posted...

I don't know the Arnold connection here.

It was Arnold's favorite snack during his bodybuilding days.

Major Dutch Schaefer as depicted in Capcoms Aliens Vs. Predator arcade game

NFUN posted...

Tommy Tallarico

I went out of my way to avoid using a Tallarico topic upload, lol

Terminator Genisys

Come With Me If You Want To Live
Arnold's Accent
Muscleboundness
T-1000: The perfect Terminator. Everything was downhill after this. Robert Patrick actually looks like a normal man, unlike Arnold, the shapeshifting makes complete sense... of course, how it can go back in time when it's not organic is nonsense, but sure, I'll accept it. The way the movie keeps it ambiguous as to who wants to kill and who wants to protect John at the start is great, it makes complete sense that he'd replace a cop, all of his actions make total sense, and the actor always sells everything. This is random, but I love the shot where Arnold smashes his face into a wall, then he does CGI to reorient his body to be facing Arnold without actually turning around. Perfect. Flawless. The only thing I'd complain about is that part at the ending where he tut-tut-tuts Sarah Connor before killing her, which does negate the idea that he's just an emotionless assassin, but it's fine. It's the end of the movie, and should have been the end of the franchise, you've earned one moment like that. And Robert Patrick, unlike Arnold, was smart enough to refuse to continue being in more Terminator movies when asked. The only bad thing about the T-1000 is that it establishes the precedent of each new assassin having a new gimmick. Liquid metal is cool. The next one just has a bunch of sci-fi guns inside of her, which is not as cool. The one after that is made of nanomachines that fly around and bite you to death, which is not as cool. And then the one after that can have skin flake off his skeleton, so there are now two robots after you, which is still not as cool. They just could never come up with another idea for a robot assassin that was as cool as liquid metal or Arnold.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Conan the Barbarian (Film)
Predator
Total Recall
Ahnald Voice
The Terminator (Film)

Hasta La Vista, Baby
Conan the Barbarian (Character)
Austria (Nation)
"Get to da Choppa!"
Taking to the Air (Sega CD): This ascends beyond being merely serviceable video game music, and reaches the hallowed halls of "I like it." Probably served by the fact that video games default to synth-y sounds, and Terminator's theme heavily uses synth, so they fit together well. A little before 2:00, it starts having this cool wavery sound, but I don't know how to describe it other than "cool."
Rainier Wolfcastle
7-time Mr. Olympia Winner
Tommy Tallarico: Oh, this is the guy who did the Terminator video game music? Clearly, he is very talented. Guy obviously knows exactly what Terminator should sound like, exactly how to capture that grungy, disgusting 80s feel, and how to make a Sega CD sound good. Ah, the Sega CD. Are you the most forgotten major console accessory ever? Probably not. I still hear more about it than, like, the Kinect. Remember when everyone made a Wii knockoff?

Steek Around
The Running Man
Jorgen von Strangle
Pumping Iron
Arnold, Wilt Chamberlain, and Andre the Giant Photo
Hercules in New York
Arnold Stogie Rant
Terminator Fatalities: Hey game, how dare you have the Terminator's intro be the thing where you're zapped through time, then he appears wearing a leather jacket and with weapons. How dare you. Strange creative decision to make this Old Arnold, I assume this was timed with Dark Fate. Call me crazy, but I don't hate this decision, even though Dark Fate is garbage, and this makes no sense, since that Arnold had a specific reason for being old, as opposed to this Arnold, whom I presume is fresh out of the facory? I like the fatality where he sends the guy forward in time to be randomly killed in a battlefield by a random robot soldier that doesn't know what's going on. "You won't be back," man, have you played fighting games before, Arnold? I like his use of the shotgun as well. God, MK character designs are so lame sometimes, who is this guy with a big fang mouth? I just clicked on the MK Wiki's list of cyborgs, which includes the original character Triborg, and god, Arnold is so much cooler than him, it's insane. Anyway, these were better than I expected. I moderately-to-greatly approve of this version of the Terminator. I assume he has a complicated backstory in the game that doesn't actually matter, like most fighting game characters do. Has any fighting game ever made the guest characters actually a part of the story for real, where it's actually canon that some weird guy from another franchise showed up and punched people a lot?
T2: The Arcade Game: Oh god, what genre does this count as? Rail shooter? I appreciate how "realistic" the Terminators look for the time, they clearly put a ton of effort into making the game look good. The T-1000 final boss looks amazing, there are modern indie sprite games that look worse. Even if it makes no sense that infiltration units are firing at you. I mean, really, even ignoring the fact that no one on Earth looks like Arnold, why would you build all of your infiltration units to look like the same guy? Surely the Resistance figures it out after the first time. I also appreciate Arnold saying "reloading" or "excellent" or "above you" periodically. Man, I don't even know what modern arcade games look like. I haven't played an arcade game in like a decade.

See You At Da Party, Richtah
Crystal Beef Arnold Mammoth
Governorship of California
Arnold's Wikipedia Page
Joseph Baena
Arnold Pipe
Planet Hollywood
Conan the Destroyer

Get Out
The 6th Day
President Schwarzenegger (The Simpsons Movie)
ERB: Terminator vs Robocop
Terminator vs Jesus
Terminator 2 (NES)
Midwich Elementary School (Silent Hill)
EM-1 Railgun (Eraser)
Bloody Brad (Metal Gear)
Cottage Cheese: I wasn't sure if this was actually cheese, so I googled it, and it is. Okay. I have absolutely no opinions about cottage cheese. I never eat it.

I'm Going to Kill You Last
Schwarzenegger-Stallone Rivalry: Everyone always compares them, but I don't really think they make the same type of movie? Yes, they're both big muscular guys who can't speak English properly, but Arnold's movies are usually either sci-fi or comedy, and Stallone's are usually sports or straight action. Like, I can't really compare Commando and Rambo, they're just completely different things... but if we ARE comparing them, then there's no comparison. This is the most one-sided rivalry ever. Arnold completely blows Stallone out of the water in every way, both as an actor and in terms of the films he makes. The only film Stallone has that compares to Arnold's best is Demolition Man, which, yes, it's amazing, but it's all he's got. Like I said, the correct analogy is Jackie Chan, and even that isn't really correct. You need a big action star who's primarily remembered for sci-fi action, which is like... maybe Tom Cruise? I'll say this, Tom Cruise's movies are generally better than Stallone's. As I write this, I saw Expendables 4 yesterday, and it was ass. Just to be clear, though, Stallone probably actually does have more 'good' movies than Arnold, but they're mostly Rockies and Rambos, which don't appeal to me personally like sci-fi shlock.
Dolph Lundgren
Dutch (Aliens vs Predator Arcade Game): lol at this version of Dutch. It looks nothing like Arnold at all, despite the guy being the size of a truck. I like how he has more power than the Predator, which directly contradicts the film. Alien vs Predator is such a waste of a franchise concept. It's so hard to get crossovers made, and AvP is such a waste and so awful. I'm sure some comic does it well, but as far as films go, god. Total trash.
Last Action Hero
The Last Stand (2013)
Predator (NES)
Termination: Salvation: This is the odd one out for the franchise, the only one that's not about a robot going back in time to kill you and another person trying to stop it. I'll give it credit for trying to do something different: instead, it's about the robot war that Kyle Reese mentioned. So, you think this stars John Connor, right? Nope. Instead, it stars Random Guy, who just sort of meets John Connor. It's also comical how the movie barely features John's wife, who was built up to be as important as him. I haven't watched this movie since it came out, but if I recall correctly, she spends the whole movie pregnant and doing nothing? They couldn't even get Arnold to be in it. Instead, they CGI his face onto a robot for four seconds, then it explodes and turns into a metal skeleton again. The most important part of the movie, in case you don't know, is the original ending. The original concept for this movie was that John Connor dies, and Random Guy gets plastic surgery to look like him and lead the Resistance so no one will be demoralized or whatever. At the last second, the producers got cold feet, and rewrote it so Random Guy says "John Connor will die, so cut my heart out of my chest and put it in his to save him or whatever," which makes the entire concept of the movie starring Random Guy instead of John Connor pointless. Imagine if they'd known where the movies would go after this. John somehow manages to die three times in two movies after this point, which is kind of amazing. And like... I think I'm going to say it. I hate to do this, but I have to. This is... the third best Terminator film. It's garbage and shouldn't be watched, but it is still better than 3, 5, and 6.
Japanese Arnold Commercial
Mortal Kombat
Come with Me if You Want to Lift Shirt
The Expendables 1
Escape Plan
The New Celebrity Apprentice
Austrian Death Machine

To HELL With You!
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Jingle All the Way
Termination: Genisys: This is definitely the stupidest Terminator film. It's not close, too. This is the point where it's officially sad that Arnold is still trying to be an action star, this is the point where the inside references officially become too much, and this is the point where they hire just the worst actors ever. Emilia Clarke plays Sarah Connor, and like, I already complained about her earlier, but she has a very tiny range. I believe Linda Hamilton as a badass soldier girl, I do not believe Emilia Clarke. She's 5'2", she has the musculature of an elementary school student, and she can't act at all. There should never be a point in your action movie where I think "I could beat this person up." So, if you don't know the plot of this movie, Kyle Reese (played by an actor who looks and sounds nothing like Michael Biehn) goes back in time to Terminator 1, but at the last second as he climbs into the time machine, John Connor is killed by the T-5000, which is played by the guy from Doctor Who, who is the human embodiment of Skynet that survived Skynet's destruction. And right off the bat, anyone who thinks "we need a human embodiment of Skynet for the heroes to have witty banter against" is stupid. The scariness of Skynet is that it's an emotionless, impersonal computer that made an emotionless judgment call that humans are dangerous and should be wiped out, and that it's sort of correct. Arnold in the first movie does not banter, does not do anything, he just has as mission and is super direct at all times. Remember when he calls the hotel he knows Sarah is in, and just immediately says "GIVE ME YOUR ADDRESS?" So good. So, right off the bat, the movie ruined, and it hasn't even started. Kyle Reese lands in the past, but it's been altered, and he quickly learns that Skynet sent ANOTHER Terminator to kill Sarah as a child (even though it didn't know where Sarah lived in the first movie), but someone else sent Arnold back to protect her, which he's done since she was a child. You might wonder who that someone else is, but it's never explained. It was sequel bait for a movie that was never made. So, Kyle is like "what do we do now," and Arnold is like "I built a time machine that goes forward in time, climb into it so you can go to 2016 so we don't have to deal with a period piece set in the 80s," and they do, only to learn that John Connor also came back in time and is now a robot serving Skynet, and seeing Emilia Clarke try to act motherly toward an actor who is in his 40s is just comical. John Connor says "I have built a phone app that does ??? and is installed on a billion cell phones, but it's really a backdoor for Skynet to get into your phones and take over the world... by taking over your cell phones." Then the heroes resolve everything by building bombs, which is the only skill they possess that isn't shooting guns. It's mind-boggling how stupid and bad this movie is, and it's STILL not the worst Terminator film. This is also the start of the movies attempting to sideline John Connor. Someone clearly realized that Sarah Connor is the interesting character, so what do you do? They turn John into a villain, I guess. Why not? Why not just have Skynet always survive, always send more robots into the past? That is Skynet's only move, is sending assassin robots into the past, and when that inevitably fails, it just sends extra assassin robots into the further past. Like, this movie tries to have emotional moments by having the assassin robot be John Connor trying to kill his mother, and both of them feeling conflicted about it, but the context of this is just so outrageously stupid that it's impossible to see it as anything but comical.
Pumping Up with Hans & Franz (SNL)
Conan O'Brien's Arnold via Satellite Skits
Mr. Freeze

Tommy Tallarico's blatant and repeated authorship theft of his contemporaries and employees of his label

Terminator: Dark Fate

Kindergarten Cop

Twins

Junior

Ah man I KINDA wanted to see Terminator Dark Fate cause I was like "well there's no way it can be worse than Genisys" and then I see you're saying there is a movie worse than Genisys (good god it was bad and I agree with that write up wholeheartedly) and I just feel like "maybe I shouldn't"

Red Heat

Lopen posted...

Ah man I KINDA wanted to see Terminator Dark Fate cause I was like "well there's no way it can be worse than Genisys" and then I see you're saying there is a movie worse than Genisys (good god it was bad and I agree with that write up wholeheartedly) and I just feel like "maybe I shouldn't"

I'll go more into this later, but Dark Fate probably is better from an actual trying-to-be-a-real movie perspective. It's just also way more boring because it's less dumb. I can see thinking it's better than Genisys.

Anagram posted...

I'll go more into this later, but Dark Fate probably is better from an actual trying-to-be-a-real movie perspective. It's just also way more boring because it's less dumb. I can see thinking it's better than Genisys.

It can be much better or much worse. It just depends on what you want from a Terminator movie.