Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

A bodybuilder, entrepreneur, and movie star, Arnold
Schwarzenegger is associated with the box-office
prominence of spectacular action cinema through the
1980s and into the 1990s. Schwarzenegger achieved fame
first as a bodybuilder, appearing in the documentary
Pumping Iron (1977). From his early leading roles in
comic book, fantasy muscle movies, notably Conan the
Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984),
Schwarzenegger demonstrated a capacity for physical
acting. His key success came with The Terminator (1984),
a noirish science-fiction film in which he plays a cyborg
sent from the future to kill the unwitting mother of a rebel
leader yet to be born. Playing off the performer’s machine/
body and ‘‘robotic’’ delivery, the film ensured his iconic
status. With minimal dialogue, Schwarzenegger’s part
focused on the formation of an image, one defined by his
physical presence.
Schwarzenegger’s subsequent 1980s action vehicles,
such as Commando (1985) and Predator (1987), turned
him from menacing villain to hero, frequently dwelling on
his upper body in fetishistic detail. Many found the loving
portrayal of strong, white male bodies to be a persistently
troubling feature of the Hollywood cinema of this period.
The qualities that had made Schwarzenegger so effective as
a monstrous threat in The Terminator were harnessed with
tongue-in-cheek humor in the films that position him as
an action hero, yet the complex potential of such an iconic
figure is evident, for instance, in Total Recall (1990), in
which Schwarzenegger plays an everyman figure, his
extraordinary physique somewhat less central against the
futuristic context and various rebel mutants he encounters.
The film that marked Schwarzenegger’s mega-stardom,
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), rewrote his earlier
signature role in these new heroic terms. His Terminator
comes back from the future with a mission to protect,
facing down an enhanced model (Robert Patrick) whose
Vols. 1 and 2 (2003, 2004) in China suggests that both
economic and aesthetic interests are at work in the
ongoing exchange between Asian and American cinemas.
Alongside this American refiguring of martial arts as a
more central component of its action cinema, Asian film-
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
b. Thal, Styria, Austria, 30 July 1947
Action and Adventure Films
relatively slim frame and shape-shifting potential contrast
sharply with the muscular cyborg ‘‘hero.’’
Ironically, Terminator 2 foregrounded the built-in
obsolescence of the muscular persona. The disappointing
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) some twelve
years later underlines the difficulty in sustaining such a
physically-defined mode of performance. The star’s move
to comedy built on and fed his action roles, themselves
tinged with an almost parodic excess. Generic crossover is
most explicit in Kindergarten Cop (1990), in which he
plays a tough cop who goes undercover as a kindergarten
teacher. In another kind of crossover activity,
Schwarzenegger was elected as the Republican governor of
California in 2003.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Conan the Barbarian (1982), The Terminator (1984), Predator
(1987), Total Recall (1990), Kindergarten Cop (1990),
Terminator 2 (1991), True Lies (1994)
FURTHER READING
Andrew, Nigel. True Myths: The Life and Times of Arnold
Schwarzenegger, from Pumping Iron to Governor of
California, revised and expanded. London and New York:
Bloomsbury, 2003.
Gallagher, Mark. ‘‘I Married Rambo: Spectacle and
Melodrama in the Hollywood Action Film.’’ In
Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media, edited by
Christopher Sharrett, 199–226. Detroit, MI: Wayne State
University Press, 1999.
Glass, Fred. ‘‘Totally Recalling Arnold: Sex and Violence in
the New Bad Future.’’ Film Quarterly 44, no.1 (1990):
2–13.
Jeffords, Susan. ‘‘Can Masculinity Be Terminated?’’ In
Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood
Cinema, edited by Steve Cohan and Ina Rae Hark,
245–261. New York: Routledge, 1993.
———. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan
Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
Yvonne Tasker
makers have secured global successes, producing an internationalized
cinema that drew initially on the
commercial success in the West of Ang Lee’s art house
action movie, Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon, 2000). In this context, the commercial and
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