Fine Films, But Was The Casting A-1?

[John Thiel]

Schwarzenegger's casting as Conan was aces for the casting department, the only possible choice for the role, in my opinion. However, I think he was mis-cast in Terminator. It's there that one sees that he's one of these actors afflicted with a permanent accent (like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre; it seems to be a trademark of horror actors) so that he seems to be the same nationality in every film. With the Conan role, it didn't matter. Conan was a polyglot sort, and anyway it may have been a linguistic roots accent. I heard one of Schwarzenegger's speeches when he had become Governor of California and he had that accent when he made the speech, and similarly when he speculated about becoming President in a speech. The accent gives one the impression that he hasn't cleared customs yet. I think TERMINATOR deserves a more individualized performance; that particular casting was the only fault I could find in the TERMINATOR films. Not that Schwarzenegger didn't contribute a lot to the films, but he wasn't, I think, believable enough in the role.

[Connavar]

He was a machine who cares about his accent.

If anything it only made him sound more machine like.

Terminator movies specially the first two who were great would not be as famous and as good without him.

[andrew.v.spencer]

The judgement of history is that Arnie was near perfect for the Terminator film. The fact that, what, 23 years later you're talking about it attests to the accuracy of the casting.

[John Thiel]

Maybe I was looking for something to say about the film. It was a knockout. In fact, the first reply about hit it--he was the making of the film. But I was thinking about the finer points of the production.

Er, history ceased to exist in the film. (Not events or life, but historical progress.)

Not that the film won't have a first place in the history of film-making.

[that old guy]

I thought the casting in the third movie was awful, personally. For everybody BUT Arnie. Everybody else was so wooden they made him look like John Gielgud.

[RustyHicks]

I didn't like the third film at all. They made the Terminator seem comical as compared to the previous two. I think Arnold did a fine job as the killing machine in the Terminator and T2.
Linda Hamilton did great as Sarah Connor turned warrior in T2

[andrew.v.spencer]

Hmm John Gielgud as the TERMINATOR. I can see that.

[ravenus]

I think I read somewhere once that the original idea was to have Lance Henriksen as the Terminator...someone who could do the machine-like look and yet be able to blend in a crowd as a stealthy assassin should. But somewhere that idea got tossed out.

[Circus Cranium]

LOVE Lance Henriksen

But can't picture anyone but Arnie as the Terminator. I agree with the above that the third one fell short. There were great lines in the second one from the T like 'Say, that's a nice bike' before he steals it. They tried to do that with the female one, with "Like your car" etc, but it just couldn't pull it off. She didn't scare me like the Ts in the first two did.

[John Thiel]

Sylvester Stallone could have made a good terminator.

So, the TERMINATOR was popular in India, eh?

[Dave]

I read that the inspiration for Arnie's Terminator was Yul Brynner's Gunslinger in Westworld. Before Arnie retired to politics, there was talk of a remake with Arnie in that very role.

I don't quite understand your point; Arnie IS the Terminator. Who else could play that role if not him? As for his one-liners, they were written for him especially because originally his grasp of the English Language was so poor he could not handle a longer script.

[steve12553]

Quite Right, Dave. Arnie is the Terminator. He is also Conan. Most of his other parts are either the Terminator or Conan. Maybe as the spy from True Lies he actually played a different character. Course, I enjoyed John Wayne movies, too and he always played John Wayne.

[HanaBi]

Arnie IS the Terminator ~ I couldn't imagine anyone else filling the role (especially not Sly. Even though Sly & Arnie aren't the world's finest actors Arnie is Olivier compared to Sly's Sid James' abilities).

Some of Arnie's one-liners are classics and I doubt if anyone else could have said them with the same kind of eloquence or force as him, especially :-

"Your clothes - give them to me!"
"**** you, Asshole"
"Come with me, if you want to live"
"I'll be back!"

class

[Delvo]

Originally Posted by John Thiel

Sylvester Stallone could have made a good terminator.

In the Schwartzeneggar movie "The Last Action Hero", a kid from the real world ends up inside a Schwartzeneggar movie as if it were a real universe he could live in, trying to convince Schwartzeneggar's character (a cop) that he's a character in a movie played by an actor named Schwartzeneggar. When they're in a video store, the kid spots part of a well-known "Terminator 2" poster and gets excited at the chance to show the cop his look-alike actor as proof that he's another character played by the same guy. But the kid doesn't realize that, here in this movie, there is no Arnold Schwartzeneggar the actor. So when he finally manages to drag the cop over there to look at the poster, it turns out to be Sylvester Stallone's face, because in a Schwartzeneggar-free world, that was who played the Terminator.

Whe the kid starts saying something like "No way" or "This is all wrong" or such, the cop actually starts saying about Stallone in that movie the same things the critics had been saying about Schwartzeneggar in real life, like "What do you mean? That was his best one ever!".