Arnold Schwarzenegger

In 1984, James Cameron released his sci-fi thriller The Terminator: the story of a killer cyborg sent from the future, and programmed to kill the mother of a future rebel chief. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the automated hit man roaming around present-day Los Angeles to eliminate Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). Her only hope is the guerrilla fighter Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) who has followed the killer machine back through time in order to protect her. Terminator has long staked its claim as a classic for the ages (The Library of Congress even added it to its National Film Registry in 2008) and three decades later, Termiantor is still the best film James Cameron has directed, a resourceful low-budget thriller that recalls the canny exploitation work of George Miller and John Carpenter.

Despite some top-notch special effects and nostalgic callbacks, there’s a serious lack of fun and adventure in ‘Terminator Genisys.’ It seems that fate has finally caught up to this dilapidated franchise.

Liam Neeson is Hollywood’s most bankable action star. That’s a statement of fact, but how do we know it is fact? How much more bankable is he than others? First off, we take a look at the box office returns for his action films and match them against the budgets and see what sort of …

Maggie pits Arnold Schwarzenegger against zombies, but not in the way you’d expect. The titular character (Abigail Breslin) is infected, but Wade (Schwarzenegger) isn’t driving into the city to put down the zombie threat, he’s bringing his daughter home before the disease reaches its inhumane conclusion. Protocols are implemented to keep the virus contained to …

He’s back and he’s resetting the clock! Is that a good thing? Who knows. The first trailer for the reboot (but not really) of the Terminator franchise is here with Terminator: Genisys. The film brings back Arnold Schwarzenegger in his star-making role and includes a host of new faces like Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) …

Last Action Hero Written by Zak Penn, Adam Leff, Shane Black, and David Argott Directed by John McTiernan USA, 1993 The concept of a film within a film is an idea that provides for truly interesting cinema. Films that are self-referential, satiric, and make fun of their own genre are often hilarious, thought-provoking, and downright …

The Expendables 3 Directed by Patrick Hughes Written by Sylvester Stallone, Creighton Rothenberger & Katrin Benedikt   Family themes are getting a good workout in action movies lately.  From the ragtag team of outlaws in Guardians of the Galaxy to the Pizza Hut dream-team in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, filmmakers need us to know that …

What proved the saving grace to the careers of these action stars – and also a way to turn the self-caricature, normally a loss, into a win – ended up getting bigger than just any one of them. It gave them a moment of relevance to get some action films of theirs made, but it won’t last long.

When you collect your wits at last and begin to look at the mess with something approaching rationalization, you will be hard pressed to find a satisfying single explanation for just what the hell was intended, aside from epic failure, with Batman & Robin.

UPDATE: Collider spoke with Director Shane Black and got word that his Predator reboot is actually an “inventive sequel”. “Why start over when you’ve all this rich mythology yet to mine?” Predator, John McTiernan’s 1987 campy action classic starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is getting rebooted with Shane Black (Iron Man 3, Lethal Weapon) attached to write a …

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s newest film, ‘Sabotage’, is violent. Violent in a way that they rarely make ’em anymore. Violent in a way that only the star of ‘The Terminator’ and ‘Total Recall’ can get away with.

Based on a Philip K. Dick short story (We Can Remember It for You Wholesale), Total Recall is set in a futuristic society, where “it has become scientifically possible to implant fake memories into a person’s mind, while erasing their previous identity, thus creating a fictitious persona in such that the subject believes he or she is someone else.” The filmmakers took great liberty with the original story, but, luckily Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett (respected writers of some of the greatest science fiction films), whipped up one of the best produced Hollywood screenplays of the 1990’s.

With 111.5-million U.S. viewers, and a further 7.3-million in Canada, Super Bowl XLVIII was the most-watched in history. The commercial spots were the most expensive for any TV broadcast in any given year, and there were plenty of big name stars and A-list directors who helped create these very expensive advertisements. John Hillcoat, director of …

For every Terminator there’s a Running Man, each Total Recall let down by Eraser. One of his best films, ironically, is not really a Schwarzenegger film at all, and one that in unlikely standards spawned a franchise to match that of Skynet and the latterly merged Alien franchise.

While The Last Stand didn’t make much of an impression on the box office, it still left many of us here at Sound On Sight praising director Jee-woon Kim’s effort. As the first Korean auteur to direct a large-scale Hollywood movie, Kim takes inspiration from classic American westerns, specifically Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo. Apart from …

The Last Stand Directed by Kim Jee-woon Written by Andrew Knauer U.S.A, 2013 The unofficial motto for The Last Stand could very well be something along the lines of ‘the more things change the more they remain the same.’ It was not so long ago that Arnold Schwarzenegger, star of the film under review, was …

Five On Film is an occasional feature on “Hey You Geeks!!” where directors, writers, actors or just plain awesome advocates of geek culture are asked five questions in line with the theme of their current work. In this edition, I chat about action films and Arnold Schwarzenegger with The Last Stand screenwriter Andrew Knauer. Knauer …

On December 14, 2012, a young man named Adam Lanza broke into a primary school and fatally shot 26 people in the small village of Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Twenty of them were children, aged 6 or 7. On that day, no matter where I went or what I did, I couldn’t stop thinking about the …

The Expendables 2 Written by Richard Wenk and Sylvester Stallone Directed by Simon West USA, 2012 Of the myriad problems with the horrifically tedious first instalment of The Expendables, one of the most prominent was the incompetent execution of its action sequences. Prone to an absurd cut frequency, confusing spatial relations, terrible CGI blood effects …

Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series has often been compared with Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels primarily because both centre on a young female protagonist and somehow both became phenomenons for their shared young-adult demo. Personally, I think this is both an insult to the novel and the latest big screen adaptation, since The Hunger Games is …

2009’s installment in the saga against Skynet Terminator: Salvation, resulted in more of a mixed bag than anything. Audiences were left wondering where this would leave the franchise as much negative reception spread. Now per Deadline, it’s revealed that the wheels have begun spinning for the next chapter in the Terminator universe with a glimmer …

A true action hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger is also the ultimate source of classically terrible and amazing films. Forget G.I. Joe, Schwarzenegger is the real American hero proving that in America  it’s  as easy to have a lucrative film career without talent or experience as it is to be a senator of a major state without …

It has been confirmed that Brice Willis will be joining fellow action icons Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Expendables. The film, slated for a 2010 release, is based on a group of mercenaries who are trying to take out an evil South African dictator and shot like your typical 80’s-style action flick. Directed …