B-Grade Schwarzeneggers of the 1980s

It’s interesting how if you want to do a parody version of a typical 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger movie in something (like The Simpsons does with Ranier Wolfcastle’s McBain movies), you make it a fairly lowbrow straight-ahead 1980s action movie – no offbeat counterfactual genre stuff like horror/SF/fantasy movies might include, nothing fancy, just a badass cop or special forces guy blowing away bad guys and delivering quips.

The thing is, Schwarzenegger’s filmography doesn’t actually reflect that. The 1980s movies which made his reputation for the most part consisted of fantasy schlock (Conan the Barbarian and its sequels), unexpectedly thoughtful science fiction (The Terminator, Predator, The Running Man), and the oddity which was Twins (a comedy playing off his image). This pattern largely persisted into the early 1990s, where a strand of movies like Kindergarten Cop, Last Action Hero, and True Lies emerged playing off his reputation as this archetypal hero for straight-ahead pure-action movies when, in fact, he’d hardly done anything in that vein.

The major exceptions to this are Commando, Raw Deal, and mmmmmaybe Red Heat, though that’s enough of a comedy that I’d consider it borderline. It’s certainly strange that Schwarzenegger’s cinematic reputation should be based essentially on two or three movies that rank among his less successful and of the decade. Let’s take a look at them and see how they come across these days.

Commando

Colonel John Matrix (Arnie) is a retired special forces commando who lives in a happy little mountain cabin with his daughter Jenny (Alyssa Milano). Their domestic peace is shattered when Matrix’s former boss descends on them in an Army helicopter to bring bad news and a couple of bodyguards for the family. You see, it turns out that someone has been killing off former members of John’s unit, and the assumption is that their civilian cover identities have been blown and John is next on the list.

Literally as soon as the Army brass have departed in the chopper it all goes to shit; within minutes the soldiers left behind to guard the house are dead, Jenny’s been kidnapped, and Matrix is in the hands of the mercenaries – led by Bennett (Vernon Wells), a former member of Matrix’s unit that Matrix had kicked out for getting a bit too war crimesy with their operations. Bennett and his team are working for Arius (Dan Hedaya), the former dictator of the South American nation of Val Verde who Matrix and crew ousted in a US-backed coup. Arius wants Matrix to use his status as a hero of Val Verde to assassinate the new president, with the intent of using the killing as the opening strike in a counter-revolution.

Naturally, Matrix isn’t having it; a few death-defying stunts later, and he’s on the loose, with only 11 hours to go until the plane he’s discovered. When coup conspirator Sully (David Patrick Kelly of Twin Peaks fame) makes the mistake of trying his pickup artist bullshit on flight attendant Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong), Matrix spots an opportunity to start unravelling the plot, and after some initial reluctance Cindy finds herself swept up in Matrix’s adventure.

We Can Remake It For You Wholesale

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale has one of the more cumbersome titles of Philip K. Dick’s short stories, but under the much snappier title of Total Recall it ended up being one of the more successful adaptations of his work. Though not given the reverential critical acclaim of Blade Runner, the original movie turned a healthy profit – even when you take into account its status as one of the most expensive movies ever made at the time – and has a decent critical reception among both SF fans and action movie junkies.

Hollywood cannot leave well enough alone and will always remake rather than innovate if it can, so in 2012 Len Wiseman directed a remake, retaining the Total Recall title. How do these two recollections compare? Let’s see…

The Original

It’s 2084 and humanity is in the process of colonising Mars, with a significant population living in environmentally-controlled domed cities there. The governor, Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox) exerts political control over the colony and oppresses the significant mutant population through his control of the oxygen supply. Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a construction worker living on Earth, is fascinated with the situation, not least because he’s been having evocative dreams of visiting Mars.

Quaid wants to take a holiday there, but his wife Lori (Sharon Stone) discourages this, pointing out the danger of taking a trip to a conflict zone. Instead, Quaid decides to go visit Rekall, Inc., a service which implants enjoyable memories into the minds of its customers, so he can at least have the recollection of having had an exciting visit to Mars (with an extra twist of memories of being a secret agent for good measure) even if he can’t do it for real. However, when Rekall’s technicians have sedated Quaid and are about to begin the implantation process, they discover that there’s already a pre-existing implant in there.

Cancelling the implant process and bundling Quaid into a cab, Rekall try to pretend he never visited – but when Quaid’s work buddy Harry (Robert Constanzo) pulls a gun on him and attempts to kill him because he went to Rekall, and when Lori tries to kill him when he gets home, he realises that something is up. As it turns out, Quaid wasn’t originally Quaid – in a past life he was Carl Hauser, an important agent for Cohaagen, who after attempting to defect ended up getting his memories wiped and a new life set up for him as Quaid. Now Quaid/Hauser must get his ass to Mars, discover the truth about his past and Cohaagen’s plans, and free the planet’s inhabitants. But Cohaagen’s goons, led by the vicious Richter (Michael Ironside) – Lori’s real husband and Hauser’s former buddy – are one step behind…

We’ve Had This 2017 Before

This article was originally published on Ferretbrain. I’ve backdated it to its original Ferretbrain publication date but it may have been edited and amended since its original appearance.

The Running Man is the other great mid-1980s SF-action satire. Whilst the original Robocop is still fondly remembered for its dryly satirical take on the creeping militarisation of the police force, The Running Man is rather overlooked these days – which is a shame, because as others have noted it’s suddenly become extraordinarily timely.

It’s 2017, in the wake of an economic collapse, and the country has taken an alarmingly illiberal turn. If that doesn’t sound familiar yet, there’s a weird connection between the authoritarian powers that be and the kayfabe world of pro wrestling. Where in our world that takes the form of the cordial business relationship between Donald Trump and WWE’s Vince McMahon, here it takes the form of a cozy co-operation between the Justice Department and The Running Man, a high-octane combat sports television show in which contestants plucked from the prison population and snatched from the street by the TV network’s private security forces are forced to do battle in a dilapidated labyrinth with colourful characters reminiscent of mid-1980s pro wrestling. (Jesse “the Body” Ventura appears as Captain Freedom, for instance, and many other bodybuilding and pro wrestling professionals fill out roles as the show’s “stalkers”.)

The Self-Hating Pantomime

This article was originally published on Ferretbrain. I’ve backdated it to its original Ferretbrain publication date but it may have been edited and amended since its original appearance.

There’s no particular reason to review Batman and Robin at this point; the consensus that it’s awful is pretty much settled. At the same time, I think there’s scope to ask just why audiences turned on it so hard.

The movie does, of course, have some major flaws. The rainforest themed party sequence with its appalling racial caricatures is, of course, hugely problematic – as is Uma Thurman’s entire arc as Poison Ivy, with the voice of ecological concern being an extremist anti-human strawman and all those nasty “nerdy woman suddenly becomes sexy” and “sexy equals evil, especially if it comes in the form of a woman” tropes coming out in full force. Unfortunately, whilst we might consider these issues problematic, none of them really constituted dealbreakers for cinema audiences in 1997 (and sadly wouldn’t today for a lot of people), so whilst they may be a reason for individual viewers to dislike the movie, they don’t constitute explanations for why audiences as a whole turned against the film.

Yes, it’s absurd, campy, ridiculous, silly… but the 1960s Batman was all of those things, as is the 1980 Flash Gordon, and people can’t get enough of those. Why can’t Batman and Robin slot into the same sort of niche?

What Is Worst In Film?

This article was originally published on Ferretbrain. I’ve backdated it to its original Ferretbrain publication date but it may have been edited and amended since its original appearance.

So recently I invited Dan and Kyra to come watch the new Conan the Barbarian movie with me, and they agreed because friends don’t let friends go into that sort of situation alone. It gave us a lot to think about and process, and you can rest assured our post-match analysis was pretty animated, but it’s only now that I think I’ve got my thoughts about the film in some sort of logical order.

Spoiler-free summary: it’s so bad that after it was over I went out and immediately bought the blu-ray of the original film so that Arnold Schwarzenegger could take the pain away in glorious high-definition.

But to understand just how much of a failure it is, we need to go right back to the beginning – to the original Dino DeLaurentiis-produced series of Robert E. Howard-themed movies, which spawned a horrifying tidal wave of second-rate imitators. Now, to be fair I’m not averse to 80s barbarian B-movies, but it’s a “so bad it’s good” sort of deal – they’re bizarre, badly acted and bizarrely-costumed cultural wreckage from a particular era and fun to watch when you’re in the mood for something completely fucking laughable, though they’re sufficiently offensive that I wouldn’t blame anyone for reviling them. The new movie is horrendous not just because it fails to replicate the success of the original, but it fails to be entertaining even on the lowest common denominator level of the imitators. Before I get to reviewing the remake, though, I want to give mad love to the original, and give its two sequels a kicking along the way too. Partially because there’s something comforting about shooting fish in a barrel, and partially to put this new failure in context.

In case you didn’t know, by the way, Red Sonja‘s premise and script are based largely on rape. So, Fantasy Rape Watch tag gets ticked, those as are likely to be triggered be warned.

Where Did the Hunt Go Wrong?

This article was originally published on Ferretbrain. I’ve backdated it to its original Ferretbrain publication date but it may have been edited and amended since its original appearance.

For such a popular film, Predator hasn’t been well-served by sequels. Unlike its cousin series, Alien, it hasn’t had nearly had a follow-up that’s as well-loved as the original. It took a couple of decades for the stink of Predator 2 to wash away and for Hollywood to have another stab at making a “pure” Predator film. (Let’s just put the Alien vs. Predator movies aside and pretend they don’t exist for now). Predators is that attempt to kindle new life into the franchise, but in reviewing it I also wanted to take a look back and work out where things started going wrong for the series, and whether the long quest to produce a decent follow-up is necessary, or even achievable.

Predator

Predator has one of those iconically simple premises that people were really good at cooking up in the 1980s – Arnold Schwarzenegger is Alan “Dutch” Schaefer, a Delta Force Major in charge of an elite search and rescue team, called in to rescue a Guatemalan cabinet minister and other hostages captured by Soviet-backed guerrillas. The hostages don’t make it, but the team is able to make it out with valuable intelligence and a prisoner in the form of Anna (Elpida Carrillo), sole survivor of the guerrilla camp the team annihilates, who they take along at the insistence of Agent George Dillon (Carl Weathers), a former teammate of Dutch turned CIA agent who seems to know more about the real reasons behind the mission than he’s letting on. But their trip to the extraction point turns deadly when they are stalked and killed one by one by an alien creature with heat vision, superior weaponry, and perfect camouflage, who’s come to Earth because there’s nothing more fun than stopping by a primitive planet during a hot year and killing the quaint little natives.

The Dark Knight vs. SkyNet

This article was originally published on Ferretbrain. I’ve backdated it to its original Ferretbrain publication date but it may have been edited and amended since its original appearance.

Be aware that I reveal plot details in this review, but I refuse to call them “spoilers”. This film came pre-spoiled; it was ruined in the production process, wrecked before it left port, shot down in flames as it left the runway. Christian Bale’s infamous meltdown on the set is the most entertaining thing to come out of this film, and it’s free to listen to on YouTube, so there’s no need to give this overhyped abortion any of your hard-earned money. (I and some comrades went on Orange Wednesday, but nonetheless I resent every penny spent.)

Let me start out by saying that I don’t think there is a single, “right” way to do the Terminator franchise. Patriots look to the first two films with a tear in their eye and pride in their heart, and that’s more than appropriate, since they are by far the best the movies have to offer. (I make no comment on The Sarah Connor Chronicles, seeing how I haven’t watched it, but a Terminator spin-off that understands that James Cameron’s original vision was always more about Sarah Connor than it was about John definitely has its heart in the right place.) At the same time, it’s easy to forget that The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day do not present 100% consistent visions. The most obvious example is in their treatment of time travel: in The Terminator the future is coldly deterministic and as immutable as the T-800; in Judgement Day we find that it is possible to change the future, that our fate is in fact as liquid and mutable as the T-1000. James Cameron offered two highly divergent views on the same premise, which led to a pair of movies with very different tones that nonetheless represent a single artistic vision, with Cameron offering point and counterpoint.