Buying Laughs: The movie that earned Arnold Schwarzenegger $900,000 per quip
Is it really an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie if he doesn’t drop at least one of his signature one-liners? Based on how highly crime story Sabotage, zombie drama Maggie, and thriller Aftermath are thought of amongst his litany of legendary big screen credits, the answer would be a firm no.
Quips have become such an integral part of Schwarzenegger’s on-screen arsenal that there’s something off-putting about films where he doesn’t drop at least one pun, although that hasn’t happened often. Even in The Terminator, he may have played a remorseless, cold-blooded killing machine sent back from the future that’s hardly a stand-up comedian. Still, everyone remembers “I’ll be back” and “Fuck you, asshole” nonetheless.
It was that combination of gags, biceps, brawn, and innate charisma that elevated Schwarzenegger from a bodybuilder with an impenetrable accent and unpronounceable surname into one of the biggest stars of the modern era. His track record of box office success made him one of the highest-paid names in all of Hollywood. So much so, in fact, that he was marketed as the star attraction of a blockbuster boasting one of the most notable icons in pop culture as its focal point.
George Clooney may have played the ‘Dark Knight’, but it was Schwarzenegger who was the top-billed name in Batman & Robin. It was Mr. Freeze who took pride of place on the posters featuring the film’s four main characters, and his $25million salary comfortably dwarfed the earnings of everyone around him.
Those are the perks of being a world-renowned A-list megastar, and that even extended to his experience on the set. Not only was he paid 25 times more than Clooney, but he also revelled in the amenities that come with having a production cater to his every whim. Schwarzenegger was only required to be present for six weeks of the movie’s four-month shoot, and as a result, he never even met Chris O’Donnell in person until Batman & Robin‘s red carpet premiere.
He was also equipped with a constant supply of his favourite cigars so he could puff away on a stogie during his downtime from being caked head-to-toe in makeup and kitted out in Mr. Freeze’s bulky armour. Still, he whittled away the hours by having his friends stop by for a visit, with Jon Bon Jovi repeatedly turning up to hang out with the ‘Austrian Oak’.
For his $25million troubles, Schwarzenegger is only on-screen for 23 minutes, which makes his contributions even cushier considering Batman & Robin runs for 125, including credits. One of the many detestable aspects of the bungled comic book blockbuster is the sheer relentlessness of Mr. Freeze’s awful puns, with the antagonist barely managing to go a complete sentence without dropping some sort of verbal atrocity.
In fact, Schwarzenegger delivers no less than 27 puns, quips, or jokes in the film, which equates to over one a minute relative to his screen time. Breaking that down even further, that equates to a rate of over $900,000 for every single example of cringe-worthy wordplay espoused by the character.
To think that when he refers to himself and Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy as “Adam and Evil”, he made almost a million dollars. “My condition has left my cold to your pleas of mercy”? Almost a million dollars. “You’re not sending me to the cooler”? Almost a million dollars. On and on it goes, another two dozen times, and each time, Schwarzenegger is pocketing the equivalent of nearly seven figures.
Clooney has never passed up the chance to savage Batman & Robin, but Schwarzenegger is one of the few key players who hasn’t followed suit, saying he doesn’t regret it at all. He’s smart and savvy enough to know that it’s terrible. However, if anybody walks home with a $25million payday for six weeks of work that’s consisted almost entirely of sitting in a makeup chair and tossing out puns like there’s no tomorrow, it’s hardly going to stand out as an excruciating experience they’d never want to relive again.
