Terminator: Genisys’ Arnold Schwarzenegger, one would think, has seen it all in his many decades of work as an action movie superstar. What he witnessed making his latest film, and his fourth Terminator movie, amazed a man who has to be hard to impress.
When The Movie Mensch caught up with Schwarzenegger, he revealed that what went into that scene where his current self fights his 1984 version left him astounded (check out the clip here).
“In the old days, you had to do split screens and you could tell that it was not the same, and it was not two Arnolds fighting, two Terminators fighting. But in this movie, it totally worked. I was really impressed,” Schwarzenegger said.
A lot of work and time went into making that scene look as seamless as it does. “They did that scene pretty much at the beginning of the movie, because I did not realize that it would take one year. That is really amazing when you think about it. You have to have the money for it, obviously, and you have to have the time.”
During the actual filming of the Griffith Observatory scene that has Terminator: Genisys sharing a moment with James Cameron’s initial The Terminator, Schwarzenegger did everything director Alan Taylor told him to do, but always wondered how it would all work. Having the right bodybuilder certainly helped.
“The bodybuilder that they picked for me to fight with was really an extraordinary, champion body builder. He had terrific muscles. So it was great they used that approach. But even after three/four days of doing this fight scene and being thrown around and doing all the crazy stunts and this epic battle, I was always wondering while I was doing it: ‘How are you going to do this face replacement? How are you going to do the head replacement? How do you make the body exactly like my body?’ Because his body was extraordinary, but it was not exactly like my body was. Everybody is different,” Schwarzenegger said.
“I saw the finished movie for the first time a few weeks ago and I looked very carefully at the technical aspect when I watched it the first time. I just thought it was so seamless.”
What’s incredible from our conversation with the former Governor of California is that he almost did not play the iconic role in Cameron’s The Terminator. He was set to be Kyle Reese, a role that went to Michael Biehn which is played by Jai Courtney in Terminator: Genisys.
“I was approached to play Kyle Reese by Mike Medavoy. He said, ‘We have this great project with Hemdale and Orion. It’s kind of an action flick — kind of low budget. James Cameron, you probably have not heard of him, but he has done one movie before, so this is his second movie. As far as we are concerned O.J. Simpson is going to play Terminator,'” he recalled. Thank goodness that all changed over a fateful lunch.
“I got the script, I read it and it was a really great script. Then, I met with James Cameron and during the lunch period with him, and with John Daly, I started talking more and more about the Terminator and how he has to train, and how he has to prepare for this part, and how he has to act like a machine, and how he has to assemble and put together guns blindfolded, and how he has to practice shooting and on and on and on. The whole lunch went like that. Then, at the end, James Cameron said, ‘So why are you wanting to play Reese? You should be the Terminator.’ I said, ‘No, no, no. The Terminator only has 27 lines. I don’t want to go back with my career. I like Kyle Reese and he really says a lot. And he’s the hero. I just started out being the leading man and being the hero in the Conan movies, so I want to continue on like that,” Schwarzenegger admitted.
“[Cameron] says, ‘No, but the most memorable really will be the Terminator. The way I shoot it is this way.’ He was explaining the whole thing, and says, ‘You should be the Terminator, and I will make sure that you don’t have to think about the villain’s aspect because it’s a machine, so everyone is going to think that he’s a hero anyway because he’s going to do cool things.’ So he talked me into it!”
Many might argue that Schwarzenegger would not have the movie career he has now without taking that role. “It ended up one of the ten top movies for Time Magazine. I was called the Ultimate Villain, and then, at the same time, the Ultimate Hero. All this great stuff started happening which not one of us knew would happen,” he said.
“It was all kind of exploding. Then, there was a demand for a second one. And then, we did the second one and that became the highest grossing movie of the year.”