Terminator How Arnold Schwarzenegger Helped Shape The Original T800

Terminator: How Arnold Schwarzenegger Helped Shape The Original T-800

The Terminator is one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s most famous roles, and the actor himself provided many of the ideas that made the villain so popular.

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Terminator How Arnold Schwarzenegger Helped Shape The Original T800

Although director James Cameron had an idea of what he wanted the T-800 to be, it was leading man Arnold Schwarzenegger who shaped The Terminator’s iconic titular villain. Few sci-fi antagonists are as memorable as The Terminator’s T-800. Schwarzenegger’s towering android assassin is one the most memorably chilling faces from the history of the genre and can go toe-to-toe with Alien’s Xenomorph or Predator’s Predator as one of the subgenre’s most lethal killers.

However, Terminator creator James Cameron did not envision the Terminator as viewers now know him. While Cameron had the original idea for the T-800 while experiencing a fever dream, his vision of a metal exoskeleton emerging from a wall of flames did not provide the helmer with much insight into the Terminator’s disposition. For that, Cameron had to rely on The Terminator’s eventual star. Although Cameron originally met with Schwarzenegger to see if the actor was interested in the role of hero Kyle Reese, Arnie’s take on the Terminator was so inspired the director left the meeting wanting to cast the Austrian strongman as the villain.

Initially, Schwarzenegger was not interested in the Terminator role because it had almost no lines, but eventually, he took the part regardless. Arnie’s original T-800 went on to become an icon of sci-fi cinema, and this was due in large part to the advice the actor gave Cameron about the character. Schwarzenegger reasoned that the Terminator should operate like a real-life machine, taking no pleasure or sadistic joy in his killing, but instead coldly completing each mission without any emotional investment. This even included body language, such as the way the T-800 turns its eyes first before the head follows while it scans for targets.

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Per a 2019 MensHealth interview, Schwarzenegger recalls telling Cameron, “He’s a machine. So everything has to be matter-of-fact… I said there should be no joy, no gratification, no kind of victory lap of any sort.” It was clear that Arnie had given more thought into the T-800 than Reese, and his concepts stuck home with the filmmaker. In that same meeting, the actor recalled that “Jim, afterward, says to me, “[expletive deleted], you analyze it better than the way I have written it. Why don’t you play the Terminator?’” Interestingly, Schwarzenegger was not the only unexpected big name considered for the role of Reese.

Cameron also offered the part to musician Sting, who hilariously rebuffed the director upon learning his only credit to date was 1981’s critically-mauled Piranha II: The Spawning. The role eventually went to Michael Biehn, who also starred in Cameron’s Aliens. Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, went on to reprise his role as the T-800 in all but one of the subsequent Terminator movies, with the critically-acclaimed Terminator 2: Judgment Day recasting the character as a heroic protector but keeping his emotionless veneer intact nonetheless. This take on the Terminator proved even more popular with audiences resulting in a string of Terminator sequels that continued until 2019’s box office disappointment Terminator: Dark Fate.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/terminator-how-arnie-schwarzenegger-defined-t800-character/

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