Best and Worst Arnold Schwarzenegger Movies

[x Tame Impala]

I don't know about you guys but Arnold movies have been aging like fine wine with me. They're still campy and dumb but they're authentic and watching them in the 20's has made them funnier and better than i remembered. What're are some of your favorite Arnold movies and some of the worst?

 

[Rabid Ranger]

Favorite: Commando
Least favorite: Batman & Robin

 

[NyQuil]

Good:
-Predator
-True Lies
-Total Recall
-Terminator
-Terminator 2

Cheesy but Good:
-Red Heat
-Kindergarten Cop
-Conan the Barbarian
-Commando
-Last Action Hero
-The Running Man
-The Expendables
-Twins

Bad:
-Conan the Destroyer
-Batman and Robin

Unseen:
-6th Day
-Jingle All the Way
-The Last Stand
-Raw Deal

Can't Remember:
-End of Days
-Eraser
-Escape Plan
-The Expendables 2

All in all, he's had a pretty decent career playing roles in his lane.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Good:
-Predator
-True Lies
-Total Recall
-Terminator
-Terminator 2

Cheesy but Good:
-Red Heat
-Kindergarten Cop
-Conan the Barbarian
-Commando
-Last Action Hero
-The Running Man
-The Expendables
-Twins

Bad:
-Conan the Destroyer
-Batman and Robin

Unseen:
-6th Day
-Jingle All the Way
-The Last Stand
-Raw Deal

Can't Remember:
-End of Days
-Eraser
-Escape Plan
-The Expendables 2

All in all, he's had a pretty decent career playing roles in his lane.

Jingle All The Way falls into the "cheesy but good" category for me. It's a Christmas movie, so it's cheesy by default but it's not done poorly.

Eraser for me is objectively not a good movie, but factor in nostalgia goggles and it becomes cheesy good

 

[NyQuil]

I thought of putting Total Recall in the cheesy but good but I think I like it too much.

 

[The Macho Man]

I thought of putting Total Recall in the cheesy but good but I think I like it too much.

Dude no that movie is objectively great.

 

[kook10]

The Running Man should be up in the Good section. So many great one-liners in there.

...and I might be biased. Professor Tanaka (Sub Zero) used to share the ice with my Squirts team during our practices when he was learning how to skate for the movie.

 

[shadow1]

I've always looked at Arnold's golden era being from the early 80's to early 90's; beginning with Conan The Barbarian and ending with True Lies. Between that time was a solid string of movies, with only a few duds mixed in.

After that time frame (and before his turn as Governor), Schwarzenegger's movies range between average (Eraser, Jingle All The Way) to terrible (Batman & Robin, Junior) for my taste.

My personal top 5 would be:

• The Terminator (1984)
• Predator (1987)
• Total Recall (1990)
• Terminator 2 (1991)
• True Lies (1994)
  • Guilty Pleasure: End of Days (1999)

I've checked out a few of Arnold's post-politics movies within the last year. I thought the best of the bunch were probably Escape Plan and Terminator: Dark Fate. I thought Aftermath was a decent try at a new career direction, though the results were mixed. Maggie, an independent zombie film, was truly horrible; I could barely get through it.

 

[Guardian17]

My favorites are:

-Conan the Barbarian
-Terminator 2
-Predator
-Running Man

 

[Ceremony]

From what I've seen (and can reasonably remember enough of to judge I don't watch many films):

The Terminator: Classic
Commando: Terrible yet somehow quintessential Arnold
Predator: I've seen it once I remember not finding it stupid
The Running Man: Hilarious
Total Recall: Brilliant
Kindergarten Cop: Saw this again recently and he almost acts in it, and the story/setting itself is relatively interesting
Terminator 2: The Terminator does single parenting
Last Action Hero: I've seen this but I think I was too young to understand it
The 6th Day: I enjoyed this a lot when I was young but I watched it again relatively recently and it's like someone heard about Arnold Schwarzenegger movies then decided to make one without ever having seen a movie before
Collateral Damage: Bad and stupid
Terminator 3: I like this film and I like his performance in it
Sabotage: An ostensibly bad film, badly made, but this and Kindergarten Cop are the only films where I'd say he acts, and acts well
Terminators Genisys and Dark Fate: Hateful, stupid films made worse by his presence reminding you what's being exploited

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I'd need a rewatch on most of these (and I've already seen them a few times, but they're a type of films that are easily forgotten), but my top-10 should look approx like this:

1) Total Recall - only film here that would go above 5/10 for me
2) The Terminator - as a sci-fi/horror b-movie, it's great.
3) Last Action Hero - it's a brilliant film that almost works.
4) Maggie - I don't recall much, but remember I thought it was a valid effort.
5) Predator - it remains a classic, it's just really uneven.
6) Aftermath - another valid effort into making a more serious film.
7) Running Man - edit, I just couldn't stand to see T2 at #7.
8) Terminator 2: Judgment Day - the fact that I'm including this here only proves how little interesting films Arnold made.
9) ...

Ok, I must admit that after that, I don't know. A guilty pleasure of mine would be The 6th Day, which is built on an interesting premise, but only made into a goofy movie, I guess it could be 9th, or Red Heat, but most of the others I don't remember.

The worst ones are easy:

Collateral Damage and Batman & Robin are pure trash. Probably Red Sonja too, but all the heroic fantasy films are blurred to me - they were all pretty bad.

Stallone would be more interesting to do.

 

[kihei]

Good

Total Recall
Predator
The Terminator

Bad

Batman and Robin
Raw Deal
End of Days

 

[Osprey]

A few years ago, I watched and reviewed every movie in his filmography, no matter how small the part, from the 70s through the 90s in order. I'd seen the vast majority of them, but it was still fun to see the smaller roles and his evolution as an actor.

The worst was easily Beretta's Island. Arnie's in it for only 10 minutes at the beginning. It stars his best friend and long-time weightlifting buddy Franco Columbu, who wanted to try acting and needed his involvement to get financing and sell videocassettes. If you think that Arnie's acting is bad (not in this movie, but in general), you should see Franco's. No how no way this guy would've ever gotten to star in a movie, even a direct-to-video one, if not for Arnie's pull at the peak of his stardom (1993).

Most of the movies that I'd already seen were just as I remembered them. Eraser is one of the few (maybe the only) that was less enjoyable than I remembered. Perhaps because it's relatively humorless and dark (figuratively and literally), it didn't age well for me. On the other hand, True Lies surprised me with just how well it aged. I loved it in 1994 (saw it in the theater 5 times), but was a tiny bit worried that it wouldn't hold up. It 100% did. I probably shouldn't have been surprised because it's James Cameron.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

A few years ago, I watched and reviewed every movie in his filmography, no matter how small the part, from the 70s through the 90s in order. It was fun.

The few that I hadn't seen were very forgettable. The worst was easily Beretta's Island. Arnie is in it for only 10 minutes at the beginning. It stars his best friend and weightlifting buddy Franco Columbu, who wanted to try acting like Arnie and needed his involvement to get financing and sell videocassettes. If you think that Arnie's acting is bad, you should see Franco's. No how no way this guy would've ever gotten to star in a movie if not for Arnie's pull at the peak of his stardom (1993).

Most movies that I'd seen were no different than I remembered them. Eraser is one of the few (maybe the only) that was less enjoyable than I remembered. Maybe it's partly because it's relatively serious, but it didn't age well for me. On the other hand, True Lies surprised me with just how well it aged. I probably shouldn't have been because it's James Cameron, but I loved it just as I did in 1994.

Was it you or Kallyo that did it while reading a biography on Arnold? That was a pretty fun series of posts to follow.

I need to watch True Lies again, I'm probably not fair with it (in part because I hate James Cameron, I guess).

 

[Arthur Morgan]

T2 is prob his best but my fav is Predator
True Lies has to be my 3rd fav

 

[Ceremony]

Terminator 2 is on the television right now and I'm only half-watching and I may need to revise my opinion of it. I feel as if my perception of it is ruined from watching it so much when I was younger and seeing so many bits of it parodied in The Simpsons (which makes all the shot for shot recreations in Genisys and Dark Fate feel as lazy and boring as they are) and as a technical achievement alone it's remarkable. Seeing a child making a killer robot grow a personality also works. Great stuff.

 

[Osprey]

Was it you or Kallyo that did it while reading a biography on Arnold? That was a pretty fun series of posts to follow.

I need to watch True Lies again, I'm probably not fair with it (in part because I hate James Cameron, I guess).

That was me, and thanks. It was Arnie's autobiography (appropriately titled "Total Recall") and it was fun to read about his experiences while making many of them just before (re)watching them. I tried to find my reviews just now, but they must've gotten lost with the site upgrade.

 

[Guardian17]

Don't forget Red Sonja.

 

[Neutrinos]

I think Terminator 2 would be a contender for best action movie of all time

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

My favourites

The Terminator
T2: Judgement Day
Jingle All The Way (I still watch this every Christmas Eve)
End Of Days

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Trash:

 

[LeafalCrusader]

Best
1.Terminator /T2
2.Total Recall
3.True Lies
4.Predator
5.Commando

Worst
1.Hercules in New York
2.Batman and Robin
3.Terminator Genisys/Dark Fate/T3 I'll lump them all in lol
4.End of Days
5.Junior

Have a lot of his films that are guilty pleasures tbh.

 

[Dave92]

The Best:
T2 (By a mile), it may be the best Hollywood action movie ever made.

The Good:
Predator
True Lies
Terminator
Total Recall
Pumping Iron

The Bad:
T3
Batman
Junior

 

[Neutrinos]

The Best:
T2 (By a mile), it may be the best Hollywood action movie ever made.

The Good:
Predator
True Lies
Terminator
Total Recall
Pumping Iron

The Bad:
T3
Batman
Junior

Terminator 3 has no business being in the same tier as Batman & Robin

T3 was a pretty decent movie, with strong performances from Stahl and Danes. The film holds a rating of 69% on Rotten Tomatoes

B & R has a 12% rating

 

[Osprey]

I like Junior. It's the weakest of his three Ivan Reitman comedies, but I find it more enjoyable than a lot of other movies (Hercules in New York, The Villain, Stay Hungry, Red Sonja, Raw Deal, Batman & Robin and most of his post-2000 movies). Once you get past the ridiculous concept, it's fun and nice to Arnie and DeVito re-united after Twins and Arnie and Pamela Reed re-united after Kindergarten Cop.