Let me be clear, I don’t begrudge Arnold Schwarzenegger for being an action star. He is a wonderful action star, and should rightly revel in it.
But still, for an art project of mine, and my own curiosity…has Arnie ever actually had a good touchy-feely, emotional, or “tearjerker” lines in a role of his?
(I’m pretty much abandoning all expectations of hearing about any heartwarming, gentle movie roles he might have had. As noted above, the man’s not exactly “Field of Dreams” material.)
The closest I can think of is, naturally, the “I know now why you cry…” scene from Terminator 2. Brief and robotically subdued, but if that doesn’t get you even a little, you have not even a heart of steel.
Aside from that, and maybe a couple of moments from the Conan films, I’m at a loss. But does anyone here more familiar with the Schwarzenegger oeuvre have any suggestions?
I’m sure there’s a few scenes where he acted like a real person in True Lies, Kindergarten Cop, and Twins but it’s been too long since I’ve seen them to give an example.
The bits in Twins where he realizes how much his brother means to him, were somewhat moving. Not Old Yeller or Burnt By The Sun, but not bad. It’s been awhile though.
True Lies, for me, like all Bond movies, didn’t affect me emotionally at all other than: this is really neat! The best Bond movie until Goldeneye, but really until the reboot, IMHO.
Dude… the look he gives Billy when they’re making the run to the chopper in Predator? Billy decides to face the Predator so Arnie and the chick have more time to “get to da’ choppa!” You can read the sorrow, respect, and gratitude in Arnie’s head nod.
There’s that one scene in Jingle All the Way where… Umm… No…
Well, in Twins he, uh…
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say when you’re an Austrian bodybuilder who’s basically gargling his own testosterone, your emotional well might not be all that deep or close to the surface. So, that’s a ‘no’ from me.
I, being among the minority who actually rather liked The Last Action Hero, was rather struck by the moment when Jack Slater realized he was a fictional movie hero. (In one of his movies, there was a rare Downer Ending when Jack failed to save his young son’s life.)
He says something along the lines of, “How would you feel if you found out someone had made you up? Push your kid off a building, give you nightmares the rest of your life, but it doesn’t count, you’re only fictional?”
Heh. I was thinking more of his ‘roughing up the child abuser’ scenes, and his ‘bleeding out while being menaced by the villain at the end’ scene, is all.
That movie had a lot of potential and some very funny bits about the absurdity of the action-movie premise. Personally, I think it was undermined by Austin O’Brien - spunky kid characters almost always gets on my nerves. I think if that character had himself been less of a cliché, the movie would have worked a lot better.
Yeah, this. It was an amazingly fertile idea, and having Arnold himself in it was an amazing opportunity, but it was mostly squandered. One problem, I think, is that it was trying to parody the action hero genre, but seemed to shy away from parodying Schwartzenegger himself. Imagine if, at the end, the villain mistakes “real” Arnold for the movie character and goes after him - and Real Life Arnold just completely comes apart. On his knees, begging and blubbering. “Take my wife intead!” he says, shoving Maria in front of him, “She’s almost as pretty as I am!”
Or, what if the premiere of Arnold’s new Jack Slater movie was preceded by a short clip package showing all his iconic roles, and somehow the magic ticket gets loose in the theater then. As each Arnold role comes up on the screen, it steps out into the theater, and you end up with Jack, Arnold, Conan, and the Terminator all running around together at the film’s climax.
I enjoyed Last Action Hero and found it to be a pretty good tongue-in-cheek action movie (wouldn’t go so far as to call it a parody). His line about realizing that he’s just a fictional character was actually pretty moving, and I remember how it impressed me when I saw it. His delivery of the line was pretty believable too. I don’t know if it works as a standalone moment taken out of the context of the movie, but it probably does.
I vote for Twins. The movie’s main point was the bonding of two brothers that had been raised separately. From what I recall Danny Devito was the hustler/con man? Arnold was the dim-witted, very strong, and trusting brother.
Granted, neither actor was exactly stretching that much. From what I recall, the two brothers bonded throughout the movie and it was convincing.
It says a lot that a broad comedy is the most emotion we’ve seen from Arnold. Danny Devito deserves a lot of credit for making it work. His strong acting gave Arnold something to connect with.
Arnold’s character had a genius-level IQ. The joke was that Arnold was genetically designed to be superior in every way, having the best of the genetics of all of his multiple parents. DeVito got what was left over.
