Oh man, I had more fun than should be legally allowed while working on this month’s Geek in Review, Sci-Fi Guilty Pleasures: Schwarzenegger Edition:
Long before he was the most dangerously incompetent governor California has ever had, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the biggest action superstar on the planet, and everything he touched turned to box office gold.
Most of my generation first saw him in the title role of 1984’s The Terminator, a movie that was perfectly suited to his, um, acting ability, and (unfortunately for science fiction fans) cemented him in the minds of studio executives as the guy for science fiction movies…and he can be found chewing up cigars and scenery in some of the biggest blockbusters of the 80s and 90s.
In true action star fashion, Schwarzenegger totally overwhelms the roles he plays to the point of self-parody in each one. In the 80s, as a science fiction fan, I hated this, but with the benefit of time and the ability to not take these movies so seriously, I can enjoy them for the guilty pleasures that they are.
For this month’s Geek in Review, I reached into the vault and pulled out a few of the future Governator’s more memorable sci-fi vehicles. To get perspective from the damn kids today, I convinced my 17 year-old son, Nolan, to watch them with me and give me a comment on each one.
Here’s a little excerpt from the Total Recall portion of the column:
Douglas Quaid is a construction worker with the hottest wife on the planet, who wants to fuck him every time he breathes. Because he is some kind of asshole, this dream life isn’t perfect enough for him, and he constantly fantasizes about living on Mars. His entire household budget goes toward keeping his wife’s hair huge, though, so they can’t afford to take an actual trip. Luckily for him, a company called Rekall can implant vacation memories that anyone can afford, so he visits Mars that way. But just visiting Mars isn’t awesome enough, so he tells Rekall to make him a secret agent, throw in some alien artifacts, and a nefarious plot to destroy the planet. He also wants to nail a girl while he’s there who isn’t nearly as sexy as his wife, and is actually kind of skanky. Seriously. Asshole!
Something goes wrong (or does it?) at Rekall, and Quaid finds out that … he’s a secret agent on a mission to Mars, where there are lots of alien artifacts and he’s nailing a girl who isn’t nearly as sexy as his wife. Before we’re done, people try to kill him, he uncovers a nefarious plot, saves the world, and gets the girl –– who isn’t as sexy as his wife. We’re not sure if he’s dreamed the whole thing, but one thing is crystal clear: this guy is an asshole.
Here’s Nolan’s comment on The Running Man: “This movie needs 33% more skin-tight jumpsuits.”
So, yeah, it’s not the most serious column in the world.
As always, the article is SFW, but the rest of the website is delightfully NOT SAFE FOR WORK. You have been warned, so don’t complain to me if you get in trouble.
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“Predator” — I mean, how cool? TWO governors in ONE movie! I still remember the morning Jesse won here in Minnesota. My older son wouldn’t believe me until he heard it for himself on NPR.
*giggles* You said “fuck”! And “asshole”! *goes into linguist researching foul language overdrive*
Oh yes, Paul Verhoeven directed Total Recall…total explanation of the skanks.
Wil,
I think you cheapened yourself with the opening line. Not trying to criticize your political views but opening up a column with a cheap political shot like that really makes you look like a tool. You aren’t a tool, but you sure as hell came off like a bigmouth hollywood a-list actor there. Not the image you usually go for.
I love your work and bite my tongue when you go off on politics on your blog since the rest of the content you create is cool, but taking a deliberate political cheap shot as you open a column about a guy’s acting career made me totally think “whatever, typical hollywood shitbag” and close my mind.
The rest of your work opens minds, your political shots like that close them and make you part of the *problem*, not the solution. Think about that just a little please, because you blew the fuse on my political nonsense filter before I had a chance to read the article, and I’m not gonna waste more fuses on that article. It makes you and by extension the websites you write for, look more partisan than a blender full of election year congressmen.
In my opinion.
“This movie needs 33% more skin-tight jumpsuits.”
That is pure love right there. My sides are splitting.
Conan The Barbarian was actually the first movie in which our age group made Arnold’s acquaintance. The Terminator probably got him the bigger geek credibility but I will always love Arnold best as the Cimmerian Barbarian who punched camels and took names. True, not sci-fi, but still….
“This movie needs 33% more skin-tight jumpsuits.”
Hilarious. I’d love to see the formula that generated 33%.
Hi Wil,
Great column but sad to see Predator on the list – it’s one of my favourites and I feel no guilt in my pleasure (well except maybe at the end when Arnie does the world’s worst dive clear, dodging a nuclear blast). But for sci fi of the era it was a stand out in that it had no technobabble to try to justify itself – it was just a monster movie in the jungle where the antago/protagonists are there for reasons that make sense within the text of the film (yes it’s ridiculously implausible, but it is self-consistent). It never pretends to be more than it is – unlike say Alien Nation.
Also, as a geek of your generation (born 1970) I feel obliged to mention that Arnie virtually carried big-budget scifi in the late 80’s. As a teenager I knew I was in for a ride worth the price of admission with an Arnie movie – even the exceptionally bad ones. Aside from Aliens, nothing stands out over Arnie!
Thanks for the nostalgia and keep up the great blogging!
Back in the day, I remember a discussion of which movie set the highest on-screen “body count,” Total Re-cahl or Die Hard 2. The number of doofuses gunned down in TR apparently set an initial high water mark, but then they crashed a jet full of passengers in DH2. Hard to remember now, but it was pretty shocking at the time to see someone so cold-hearted they would obliterate a whole plane as a negotiating tactic!
Y’know, I realized, reading the article, that your feelings about “The 6th Day” and what went wrong almost perfectly mirror my feelings on the Will Smif “I, Robot.”
I have no idea what the McBain scale is.
The extent to which Arnie’s behaviour in the film resembles the character McBain from the Simpsons.
Whaaa….? You mean there’s no deep philosphical meaning in Running Man? I’m crushed.
(I do enjoy both RM and TR when they’re on the late night repeat circuit. Whoohoo … popcorn!)
And what about True Lies and Last Action Hero?!
(Oh, and you’re at #20 on twiiterrholic today.)
Predator has got one of the best Arnold quotes ever. When he throws a machete through a badguys stomach that makes him stick to a tree he says “Stick around!”. Hilarious.
Actually, I liked the skank better than Sharon Stone. Only now, in my forties, do I appreciate blondes, and only because I bag- er, um… married one. (She doesn’t read this blog. Does she?) Back then, I was loved brunettes. (Probably because I’d married one.)
However, Quaid’s alien skank still trumps Sharon Stone because, let’s be honest, if you bed Sharon Stone, you still have to make her breakfast, and, because she is Sharon Stone, you would never get it right (and if you did, you eventually would end up getting bitten by a Komodo dragon, but that’s another story). A Sharon Stone blow-up doll would have been better as you would just clean it and put it away afterward.
That said, I agree Quaid really was an asshole, but so was everyone else in that movie. (Except the midget hooker. She was pretty cool.) Probably why it was as much fun as it was.
I gotta agree with James Winter, I liked Melina better than Sharon Stone’s character. As I approach 35, I still like brunettes better than blondes, though I’d never judge someone based solely on hair color.
Thumbelina rocked! She killed Richter’s right-hand man, who was also one of the terrorists in one of my favorite movies Wil’s ever been in: Toy Soldiers.
It’s off topic, but Toy Soldiers was when I realized disliking Wesley Crusher did not mean I couldn’t enjoy Wil Wheaton. Cheers!
That article made my brain hurt.
You referred to Arnie a few times as ‘McBainesque’. Given that McBain is actually a parody of Arnold…What you’re saying is that Arnie is almost a parody of a character who is a parody of Arnie.
Remember those episodes of Star Trek when Kirk would make the alien/android/robot’s head explode with a paradoxical riddle? That’s what you just did to me.
I hope you’re proud of yourself.
(Great article, BTW!)
Wil, it hurts a lot that the first comment I leave here defends… *gag*… “Eraser”. You forgot to mention this fine – albeit typical – Arnie movie. Although it has all the Arnie-stuff in it (and is still watchable if nothing else is on), it just feels wrong. Definitely a guilty pleasure!
Oh, and for Terminator: If cyborgs from the future use Austrian accent, we probably won’t have to be afraid of them. Although…
What makes Total Recall even better in geek terms is that none other than Piers Anthony (whose borderline pedophilic Xanth novels made an impression on my late teen-hood) wrote a novelization of the movie in 1989. Read it for more hilarity.
To flensr: Not to be a “typical hollywood shitbag,” (especially since I no longer live in SoCal and have never even been to Hollywood), but that article was written for the Suicide Girls site, for crying out loud, and if you can’t express political opinions there, where can you? I hate the attitude that demands that intelligent people “shut up and sing/dance/write funny stuff,” censoring themselves to conform to majority opinion as if their job or address invalidated their personal views on current events. Besides, that opinion happens to be one shared by many, many non-Hollywood California residents, especially ones working in the school and university systems. So whatEVER right back atcha from a “typical shitbag academic.” In my best Valley Girl tone. 🙂
Nolan Says: “I’ve actually seen this before. It does not improve upon a second viewing.”
I don’t think “The 6th Day” has ever been summed up so perfectly. Nolan FTW.
I watched Total Recall for Michael Ironside. The man was a god of 80’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi. I remember a friend and I planning that if the bombs ever dropped, we would hitch a ride to Toronto to become his leather-pants-wearing spunky girl sidekicks*. Screw Ah-nold – Stick with Ironside and you’ll survive the dystopia!
*Yes, that’s a ‘Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone’ reference. Shut up.
“If it can bleed – we can kill it.” has to be one of the best worst lines ever.
I’ve always told people that the scariest movie ever was Scanners — because it’s a movie about how Michael Ironside can make your head explode just by willing it.
I have to admit Ahnold qualifies as a guilty pleasure for me. I stop to watch just about all of the “Action” related movies. I have to mention a couple that were left off due to their questionable SciFi connection. COMMANDO had to be the cheesiest of all:
“Remember Sully when I told you I would kill you last?”
“Thats right Matrix… you said that……..”
“I lied”
I loved LAST ACTION HERO… for nothing else than the sheer bluntness of the snark on action movies. Having the nerve gas delivered by the dead Mobster farting? Classic!
“Long before he was the most dangerously incompetent governor California has ever had, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the biggest action superstar on the planet, and everything he touched turned to box office gold”
Can we drop the politics for once? We get it… you’re not a Republican.
BTW… wasn’t his predecessor the most incompetent? Isnt that why California had a TOTAL RECALL?
I think I might remember McBain. It’s been quite a long time since I watched The Simpsons.
This was one of my favorite posts to read.
also: KUATO WAS ABORTED AGAINST HIS WILL
Personally I loved the first line. Liked the post and the column too. All in all, an enjoyable read this morning.
I’m with you, whatupdog, and I’m registered as a Democrat. The comment almost kept me from reading the rest of the article. Is a swipe at Schwarzenegger supposed to be cool?
Personally, I’m thankful Schwarzenegger is governor. He’s been doing his part to keep average Californians from being screwed.
Just one recent example. The Democrat-controlled legislature attempted to increase the rate of withholding on paychecks for state income tax, with the promise that the money would be returned as a tax refund the next year. In other words, the legislature tried to get an interest-free loan from all California workers. This also was an attempt to circumvent the requirement of a 2/3 vote for tax increases. Arnold said he’d veto it and they backed down. If the governor had been a Democrat, it would have gone through, making everyone’s paychecks smaller. Worse yet, we now have the State Treasurer saying he will be delaying tax refunds, i.e., holding on to the money even longer. So if it had passed, who knows how long people who really needed that extra money would have to have waited to get it back.
Apart from pure partisanship, there is no way anyone can honestly label Schwarzenegger as incompetent. And definitely not corrupt, like his predecessor, Gray Davis. Gray Davis was a “pay-to-play” guy, like Illinois’ Blagojevich. A meeting with Gray Davis cost $100,000.
I’m glad we have Arnold. I’m just worried about who we’ll get next.
Greetings from Germany,
I am still waiting for the first remake of a Schwarzenegger-Movie. They did it with Ocean’s Eleven and so can someone do it with Total Recall, Conan or Kindergarten-Cop.
So if it is 2041 now and you are reading this comment from 2009 – let me say: Told you so!