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Last night I arrived and what I think might be the final stop on my Catch Up On Hugely Popular Action Movies That I Just Never Watched Back In The Day Tour: True Lies.
Yes, that's right, I never saw True Lies either. With Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, I have something of an excuse: My dad didn't let me watch rated R movies when I was a kid, so no one showed those films to me when they were first released. And then, years later, I just never did double-back to them, preferring to watch contemporary films instead.
But with True Lies, which was released in 1994, I was living with my mom, who didn't give a fuck, so it's a mystery to me why I didn't watch this one immediately upon release.
But I've seen it now, that is, at least as of about 1 AM this morning.
First off, let's just gt this out of the way: Of course I liked it! It's a rad film.
It really reminded me how much charisma Arnold had back in the day, and Jesus Christ, James Cameron really does know how to stage an action sequence! The scene near the end on the bridge was just so well done, and his reliance on practical effects when possible really sets a movie like this apart from today's action films.
Bill Paxton is funny as hell and . . . wait . . . this shit has Tia Carrere in it? Tia fucking Carrere? Where the hell did THAT bitch go? I haven't even THOUGHT about her in years.
Jamie Lee Curtis just might be the MVP here. She gives a great performance and seemed to be having a lot of fun. And holy shit, that scene with her dancing is incredible!
It seems to me that this was the last truly great Arnold film. Like, this is THE film that marks the end of an era. I mean, let's look at it. This is what he released after True Lies, in this order:
Junior
Eraser
Jingle All the Way
Batman & Robin
End of Days
The 6th Day
Collateral Damage
Terminator 3
Whereas the eight PREVIOUS films included:
Last Action Hero
Terminator 2
Kindergarten Cop
Total Recall
Twins
Red Heat
The Running Man
Predator
I'm sure we all notice a difference there. I count five great movies in the second list, but NOT ONE in the first.
True Lies was a big hit for Arnold but then it seems like his problem is that he lost in way in terms of how to pick good projects. I mean, how did he think Pregnant Arnold was a good idea? Collateral Damage was completely forgettable. The 6th Day was not good at all. Eraser (which amazingly cost $100 million to make, almost as much as True Lies) is a fairly serviceable action film but nothing more.
I can understand why he took Batman & Robin. He couldn't have know it would be the trainwreck that it was. Perhaps the same goes for T3. And I will give him a pass for Jingle All the Way and End of Days because I kind of enjoyed both of those.
Now let's talk about James Cameron. I mean, what can you say, the dude's a winner.
It's interesting to note that he's not like Spielberg. He hasn't made like 40 movies in his career. If we don't pay attention to his first film, Piranha 2, and also throw out his documentaries and TV stuff, here's his entire filmography:
The Terminator
Aliens
The Abyss
Terminator 2
True Lies
Titanic
Avatar
That's it. That's his whole fucking career in a nutshell. And, in my opinion at least, his only misstep was Avatar. And it was the kind of "misstep" that happens to become the highest grossing film of all time.
Summing up: All in all, I really enjoyed this film. But I do not think it's flawless. It's a little too long, for one. We basically get two big finales (the bridge scene, and the Harrier scene) and I'm just not sure that we needed BOTH, especially since the Harrier scene just takes things to a new level of unbelievability). But any faults can be forgiven for how well everything is done as a whole.
Trivia!
Before I go, I want to leave you guys with a few bits and pieces from the IMDB trivia for the film.
* Tom Arnold didn't expect to get a role in the movie, and went to the audition mostly for the chance to meet director James Cameron. Cameron liked Arnold, despite 20th Century-Fox's objections (Arnold's reputation at the time wasn't positive, mostly due to his public antics with then-wife Roseanne Barr), and Cameron threatened to not make the movie at all, if Arnold couldn't be cast. When Arnold later learned about this, he was grateful to Cameron for taking a chance on him.
* Arnold Schwarzenegger's biggest challenge for the movie was not doing all the physical stunts, but dancing a tango. He had to take dancing lessons to realistically perform the dance. He rehearsed the dance scene for about six months. He wanted to make sure he was as good at the tango as Al Pacino was in Scent of a Woman (1992).
* The appearance and traits of Spencer Trilby (Charlton Heston) is based on Nick Fury, a Marvel Comics character. Like Fury, Trilby has an eye-patch and the same mannerisms as well as heading a peacekeeping organization. At one point, Cameron wanted to be a comic book penciller, and does alot of his own concept art. He even designed the entire T-800 exoskeleton.
* The US Government supplied three Marine Harriers and their pilots for a fee of $100,736 ($2,410 per hour).
* A sequel to True Lies (1994) was once in the works, which would've reunited the principal cast as well as been directed by James Cameron, who directed the first movie. A script was even ready for this sequel, and had the movie been made, it would've been released sometime in 2002. The sequel idea was eventually scrapped (or at least indefinitely shelved) due to script problems as well the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Cameron even said in an interview that he dropped his sequel plans because "in this day and age, terrorism just isn't funny anymore".
* Jodie Foster was originally cast as Helen Tasker, but was forced to turn the role down because she was signed to Nell (1994).
* Many problems plagued the shooting of the opening sequence: the mansion scene was filmed on an extremely cold night and the mansion itself was not heated; all of the women wore dresses with nothing underneath and a costume change room was set up outside in the cold; kerosene lamps were used to heat the tents; one of the extra's blouses caught fire. For their suffering through the harsh cold that night, the extras were paid an additional $50.
* Jamie Lee Curtis called the film "without question, the greatest experience of my professional life so far."
* Arnold Schwarzenegger said that this was the "film I was meant for."
* When asked during an interview whether his wife was bothered by him sitting there watching Jamie Lee Curtis strip, Arnold Schwarzenegger said that she asked him about it and he assured her "Honey, I hated every hour of it!"
* Originally, the writers wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger's character during the horse chase sequence to chase after the suspect through the reflecting pool at the Washington Monument. The National Parks Service refused to allow that to happen.
* Arnold Schwarzenegger did a lot of his own horseback riding. He says he couldn't have done it without his riding experience on the Conan movies.
* Tia Carrere named this as her favorite role of all time "because I got to be a villain."
* When the film was initially released, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee was one of several groups to hold a protest at a Washington, D.C., theater. The groups attacked the film for its "depiction of Middle Easterners as homicidal, religious zealots". A demand for the boycott of the movie was called, as well as a ban of its distribution in fifty-four Arab and Muslim countries.
* Cinematographer Russell Carpenter says that he became an overnight name after "20 years of swimming upstream in very obscure rivers" when James Cameron decided to hire a relative unknown to shoot True Lies.
* Arnold Schwarzenegger recalled, "The hardest thing was sitting in a cockpit for hours and days and weeks. It was 100 degrees inside... That was torturous."
* To film the scenes on the old Seven Mile Bridge in the Keys, like the arrival and take-off of the Harrier jet, the production crew closed down the traffic on new Seven Mile Bridge at intervals for several minutes at a time. Whenever this happened, women were sent among the stopped cars giving drivers Pepsis and bumper stickers that read "I was stopped on the 7 Mile Bridge by Omega Sector."
* Tom Arnold was so sure he wouldn't get this role that he asked if he could audition for a smaller part.
* The only time Arnold Schwarzenegger worked with Charlton Heston. Schwarzenegger was later slated to star in I Am Legend (2007), which is a remake of Charlton Heston's The Omega Man (1971), but the role was given to Will Smith.
* James Cameron compared the movie to "a military maneuver." "There were no easy shots on this movie, and if they were easy I found a way to make them hard."
* James Cameron described his creative process as "what I'm good at is working with actors to create scenes and then editing their performances to get the absolute best vibrating version of that scene and then share that with the audience. It's an amazing process to go through. Sometimes you think it's not going to work when you get started and then the characters come to life."
* According to the Guinness Boook of World Records this is the first movie to have a production budget of $100,000,000.
