In recent months, the roles of writers and actors have been under greater scrutiny due to the strikes. When the writers’ strike first started, many actors showed their support by posting messages saying they would be “nothing” without writers. And this was the point that James Cameron had to make to Arnold Schwarzenegger on the set of The Terminator.
Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke recently to Jimmy Kimmel about his new self-hope book Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life. Kimmel said that Arnie must have great appreciation for screenwriters, because he has delivered more classic one-liners in some of the best action movies ever than probably anyone else.
The best Arnold Schwarzenegger movies are packed full of iconic lines, but the star says that he rarely knew which ones would be special before the movies came out; “I have to say, that most of the lines that I’ve used, we did not know ahead of time that they were going to be funny lines or that they would be lines that people would repeat over and over again,” he told Kimmel.
Schwarzenegger continued; “With ‘I’ll Be Back’ we had a dispute – the director [James Cameron] and I – because I didn’t really feel comfortable with the word ‘I’ll.’ I asked him, if I already talked like a machine, why can’t I say ‘I will be back’? He said, ‘no it doesn’t sound as good.’ I said, ‘it sounds better to me!’ And he said, ‘Arnold – are you the [bleep] writer here? What’s going on here! I’m the writer, so I decide what we’re gonna do!'”
Schwarzenegger added that he didn’t know that “I’ll Be Back” from the first of the two best time travel movies was going to be such a famous line until people excitedly started to approach him asking him to say the now-iconic words to them – with the exact right delivery of course.
Terminator 2 is of course widely known as one of the best sequels of all time, and it helped cement Terminator as one of the best science fiction movie franchises ever. We’re of course looking forward to Avatar 3, which is the next sequel in the other ongoing sci-fi saga amongst the best James Cameron movies.