Terminator: Genisys, the fourth franchise installment to feature Arnold Schwarzenegger, opens next week. As a bad ass robot, Schwarzenegger’s character is sent from the future to either kill or protect the future leader of mankind, John Connor. To celebrate the new Terminator movie, here’s a look at the five most iconic scenes from the movie franchise to feature everyone’s favorite former governor of California.
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Naked Arnold
Schwarzenegger first appears in Terminator in a flash of lightning, arriving in the present day wearing nothing but Skynet’s finest birthday suit. The T-800 quickly finds some ne’er do wells clowning around in a park and demands their clothes. While the punks brandish knives, they’re no match for the naked killer robot and he quickly dispatches them, killing one by ripping his heart out of his chest It’s one of the most iconic movie entrances of all time, establishing the Terminator as a force to be reckoned with while showing off Schwarzenegger’s buff body and tightly toned behind.
The producers of Terminator loved Schwarzenegger’s entrance so much, they brought variations of the scene back in future films. In Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Schwarzenegger strolls into a biker bar in the nude, impressing the ladies and stirring up unfelt emotions in the men. In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, he enters a cocktail bar on ladies’ night and finds a male stripper who reluctantly parts way with his clothes as women watch in delight. You got to admire James Cameron and his successors, they always found a way to fit Arnold’s bare butt into the film.
“I’ll Be Back”
After Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese are arrested by the police while trying to escape the Terminator in the first film, Arnold’s evil T-800 follows them to a police station. When the desk sergeant refuses to let him pass, the Terminator examines the flimsy wooden wall separating him from his prey and utters one of the most famous lines in cinema: “I’ll be back.” The Terminator exits the station and returns in his car, driving through the exterior wall and crushing the sergeant. Silently, he exits his car with a shot gun and assault rifle and kills most of the police officers in the station, but just misses killing Sarah and Kyle.
“I’ll be back” became a popular catchphrase for the Terminator franchise, Arnold, and pop culture itself. The line has reappeared in every subsequent Terminator movie, usually uttered by Arnold before or after an explosive action sequence. Schwarzenegger has also used variations of the line in at least a dozen other films and frequently used the line during his campaign speeches when he ran for governor of California.
“Hasta La Vista, Baby.”
Schwarzenegger’s other famous line from the Terminator franchise comes when Schwarzenegger and the T-1000 robot have their first of two final showdowns in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Earlier in the movie, Arnold’s character, the T-800, receives instructions from the very 90s child John Connor on how to act more “human”. Connor explains that the easiest way for the robot to pass off as human is to incorporate slang such as “No problemo” or “Hasta la vista, baby” into his vocabulary. Later in the movie, Schwarzenegger freezes the T-1000 with liquid nitrogen. Before shooting the frozen robot with a handgun and shattering it into a million pieces, Schwarzenegger tells the robot “Hasta la vista….baby,” delivered in that classic Arnold monotone. Of course, a single bullet isn’t enough to stop the T-1000 as the robot reforms itself after its pieces thaw.
The Browning Minigun
The T-800 wields several big guns throughout the Terminator series, but none are cooler than the minigun the robot uses to keep an entire police force at bay during Terminator 2. In the movie, John and Sarah Connor raid the headquarters of Cyberdene Systems, the future birthplace of the sinister Skynet computer system that brings about the rise of the robot revolution. To delay the police from entering the building, the T-800 uses a Browning minigun (which isn’t miniature at all!) and a grenade launcher to keep dozens of officers at bay, blowing up several cars and sending the police running for cover. Even more impressive is that the T-800 wrecks the police force without killing a single person, thus fulfilling his promise to John Connor that he wouldn’t kill any humans.
The Graveyard Scene
While not as iconic as the first two movies, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines still had plenty of fun sequences. The film’s strongest scene possibly came when the T-800 and John Connor’s escape from Sarah Connor’s alleged burying place, which contained plenty of callbacks to previous films. Pursued by both the police and the advanced T-X robot sent back in time to kill Connor and his future wife Kate, the T-800 retrieves a cache of weapons left by Sarah Connor, stuffs John into a coffin and then carries him into a Hearse while deterring the police with a Browning minigun. Chasing down the T-X, Schwarzenegger blasts her with a rocket launcher while John shouts at Kate to come with him if she wants to live, a variation of the other, other popular Terminator line.
What are your favorite Schwarzenegger scenes from the Terminator franchise? Let us know in the comments!
