The performance that inspired Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator
It’s fair to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger has given countless iconic performances throughout his career as a movie star. While the likes of Predator, Conan the Barbarian and Total Recall immediately spring to mind when thinking of Arnie, it’s hard to look beyond his legendary turn as the Terminator in James Cameron’s classic science fiction franchise.
A truly unforgettable set of performances that began in the 1984 original movie, Schwarzenegger plays the cybernetic assassin sent back in time to kill the mother of the future saviour of humankind with a striking physicality and menace, uttering his infrequent lines of dialogue as though knowing they would forever be written in the halls of cinematic history.
Arnie’s Terminator is a true specimen, with Cameron getting every inch out of the actor’s bodybuilding physique. Action cinema would be little without The Terminator, and with Schwarzenegger playing the antagonist in the original movie and its equally impressive sequel, Judgment Day, Cameron had his star power.
Interestingly, Schwarzenegger was inspired by another actor who played a machine in a classic science fiction movie. In an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, Arnie named his five favourite movies of all time, and after discussing the likes of The Godfather and Titanic, he drew attention to a sci-fi film dating back to 1973.
Michael Crichton’s science fiction western Westworld tells of the guests of an interactive amusement park featuring lifelike androids that malfunction and turn malicious. “Westworld. Now, that’s not the most well-known movie, but it just had the most profound impact on me,” Schwarzenegger said. “What got me to be really interested in playing The Terminator?”
Russia-born actor Yul Brynner played an android of the park with Richard Benjamin and James Brolin playing two of the guests, and it was Brynner’s effort that seemed to inspire Schwarzenegger’s turn in The Terminator. “Yul Brynner plays a machine that malfunctions, and it’s a very well-made movie,” Arnie said. “A very well-written movie.
“Westworld is so unique,” he added. According to Schwarzenegger, Brynner was a “brilliant stage and film actor” who was at the height of his career when Westworld came out, “and he played this tough western guy.” There was a certain sense of reality in Brynner’s effort whereby Arnie found it hard to tell whether he was a machine at all “until there were certain mannerisms when things started not functioning well that he acted out that were just brilliant.”
When watching the film for the first time, Schwarzenegger was struck by the realisation that Brynner’s character was indeed a machine. He noted, “He just did it so well that I learned from that when I did Terminator. I looked at that movie; I remembered it very well and then re-watched it a few times. Because it was like there was no one that played a machine better than Yul Brynner, and it was a really great story, also.”
Crichton’s film was later adapted into an HBO television series, which was well-received. Schwarzenegger had not seen the series at the time of the interview, but he had been aware of it. Perhaps for Arnie, one could not get better than the original, which had been nominated for Hugo, Nebula and Saturn awards. Most importantly, perhaps, for the science fiction genre, Westworld was the film that inspired one of sci-fi’s greatest moments and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s most iconic performance.
Check out the trailer for the original Westworld below.
