Schwarzenegger and Us

When asked to name my five favourite Arnie films recently, I gave this list:

1. The Long Goodbye
2. The Terminator
3. Predator
4. The Running Man
5. Total Recall

Okay, maybe I was being clever and obtuse with the number one pick. Remove it, and the humorously satirical Last Action Hero squeezes in at number five, and Terminator and Predator take up the top spots, largely on the strength of the villains that outgrew Schwarzenegger himself. But the truth is, I regard all of these films as solid at the very least. Total Recall, for instance, possesses a pleasingly grotesque aesthetic you don't expect from an Arnie film. During the conversation, later films such as The 6th Day and End of Days were also discussed, neither of which are without merit (the latter, for instance, is one of the only times Arnie has ever seemed completely out of his element, and Gabriel Byrne also turns in an entertaining performance). It occurred to me that Arnie has perhaps been hard done to by both myself and others who regard him as a poor man's John Wayne.

Also discussed were the much-loved Terminator 2 and True Lies. Terminator 2 was my favourite film by far as a child, and True Lies a favourite during my formative years. Now, however, I am less enthusiastic about both. T2 is still a white-knuckle ride, thanks to the still ominous prescence of Robert Patrick's T-1000, but the film as a whole is little more than a cheesy, overblown remake of its predecessor (at least as much as Terminator 3 is a cheesy, overblown remake of Terminator 2 in turn). There's also an annoying tendency of James Cameron's to act like a teenager who has only just discovered the extra features on his new camera, and we are forced to sit though what at times resembles his special effects reel. For all its bad reviews, Terminator Salvation at least looks like it's trying something new, rather than rehashing the cyborg slasher storyline and retaining the "bigger is better" philosophy of the previous two outings.

True Lies is rather more objectionable. It is, admittedly, a funny film, and the main complaint I have with it structurally is in the way it goes on for far too long: the escape from the terrorist camp feels like an ending come none too soon, but then we have a chase sequence that seems to last an eternity and an extra half hour battle between Arnie and Art Malick over a stealth jet. But something more disturbing lies at its heart. Not simply that it's a borderline-racist western supremacy power fantasy, and strangely devoid of irony in this area considering it is a comedy, but also that it is unrepentantly sexist. The women are either scheming femme fatales or painfully clueless dummy housewives. It's difficult to imagine Jamie Lee Curtis' character being able to keep up at a Stepford book club, so her transition into secret agent is dutifully insulting, degrading and embarrassing. Even by the director's own admission (a potential sequel was abandonded in 2002) this film looks even more like a relic in a post-9/11 world, and all involved should be asking themselves just what the fuck they were thinking in the first place.

Now that the latest in the Terminator franchise is out, and Arnie's term as Governator (a complete failure for anyone expecting anything like Arnie's good friend Jesse Ventura's foray into politics) is coming to an end, could we expect further instalments in the career of the Austrain Oak? If so, we want more ridiculous sci-fi and less sequels and political thrillers. Or, if that can't be managed, cameos in hard-boiled detective films.