The Best and Worst of Arnold Schwarzenegger

“The Best and Worst of” series chronicles the career highlights and lowlights of an actor starring in one of the week's new theatrical releases. This week, I take a look at the filmography of “Terminator: Dark Fate” star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger that I've seen:
The Terminator 
Commando
Predator 
The Running Man
Red Heat
Total Recall
Kindergarten Cop
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Last Action Hero
True Lies 
Eraser
Jingle All the Way
Batman & Robin
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
The Expendables
The Expendables 2
The Last Stand 
Escape Plan
Sabotage 
The Expendables 3
Maggie
Terminator Genysis 

Best Performance: Predator (1987)
Picking a top performance for Schwarzenegger was a painful exercise. He's an action movie legend with a stupid good resume that has brought his A-game to nearly every role he's ever played. I ended up going with Predator because Alan "Dutch" Schafer is the character that I feel does the best job of showcasing the combination of macho charisma and slick comedic timing that has made him one of the greatest protagonists the genre has ever seen.

Worst Performance: Batman & Robin (1997)
In a way, Mr. Freeze is one of Schwarzenegger's most memorable characters. A comically large man on skates going around spewing ice puns at a record clip is the type of image that's really hard to forget. That being said, no amount of memorable visuals can save this from being anything more than a less effective version of his signature deadpan joke delivery routine.

Best Film: Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
Fair or not, Judgement Day set a bar so lofty for the Terminator franchise that any subsequent sequels were pretty much doomed from a popular opinion standpoint before they were even conceived. James Cameron improved upon the excellent original with a sharp expansion of the mythology, more staggering action sequences, effects that were groundbreaking for its era and a villain in the T-1000 (Robert Patrick) that is the perfect complement to Schwarzenegger's cyborg killing machine turned human protector.    

Worst Film: Batman & Robin (1997)
Given how safe the superhero genre can be in the era of the MCU, the balls Joel Schumacher displayed by making such an odd, absurd movie centered around a character that had been beloved for decades is something I find kind of admirable. On the other hand, Batman & Robin's bursts of hilarity are often weighed down by a level of campy stupidity that truly needs to be seen to be believed.  

Thank you for reading this week's edition of “The Best and Worst of”. The next victim of my praise and ire will be “Doctor Sleep” star Rebecca Ferguson.