Did you ever happen to notice how Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to say the same lines in various movies? He doesn’t say the same line in EVERY movie, that would be just kind of sad and wouldn’t have made him as big of an action star as he became. But in every movie he’s in there seems to be something that’s so familiar about what he’s saying, and that’s because he’s likely said it in a half a dozen of his other movies at one point or another. It’s almost like there’s a pre-approved script that he uses in order to make sure that he’s not being handed anything that’s too new to memorize which might therefore trip him up. That’s not entirely fair I know but just going by this clip you would be able think such a thing.
He’s not a bad actor and he’s not dumb by any stretch. The guy’s been through so much in his career that to think he hasn’t learned anything would be folly of the worst sort. But the fact is that a lot of his earlier dialogue and even some of that leaning into the 90’s felt canned, almost as though it was pre-written before production on the filming got going. That’s ridiculous of course but listening to this clip you almost get the sense that it was worked around so that it could accommodate the movie and was already in existence before anything got rolling.
There are some of his latest movies that don’t necessarily fit this trend since he’s really come forth as a good actor in the past couple of decades. He used to be nothing more than an action star that did a little drama here and there and even a little comedy, but now he’s a genuine actor and has done movies that are more than just the bang-bang, shoot ’em up kind of stuff we’re used to with him. The canned act is no longer a thing and the evolution of Arnold has been ongoing for some time.
There’s no doubt that from time to time he might slip back into old habits but the overall feeling is that he’s moved beyond that and is able to better express himself in a way that allows him to show that he’s grown as an actor. It’s a little funny to think that if you lumped all his movies together you’d only get a few lines of real, original dialogue, but listening to the clip you should be able to see the truth of it. Arnold was typecast for a time, and wasn’t exactly someone you could take seriously in certain roles. But as of now he’s definitely shown the world that he’s more than muscles and a thick accent.
I can think of at least a couple of movies that a lot of people might not have seen in which he worked against type. Maggie and Sabotage stand out as a couple since he’s not the pure action hero that we’re used to, but something else entirely that proves just how good he can really be.
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