'Terminator' is back, and buff, with special effects
He did say he'd be back.
Arnold Schwarzenegger returns to the sci-fi franchise that made him a star, with Terminator Genisys, in theaters July 1. And even though the fifth movie is a reset of the time-traveling films pitting humans against the villainous machines of Skynet, not even a robot apocalypse could have kept filmmakers from including Schwarzenegger.
"He's the bedrock of the thing," says director Alan Taylor.
"Arnold is unbelievably good in this movie," adds producer David Ellison. "He steps back into his iconic role as if he never left it."
It is a different one, however, because the timelines have changed since James Cameron's original The Terminator in 1984. This time when Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) is sent from the future to the present, he finds that Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) is all ready for the battle to come and has a bodyguard in the form of a Terminator named Guardian (Schwarzenegger).
Taylor wanted something fresh for Schwarzenegger, partly because he's in a different place in his life now as a 67-year-old part-time actor (and former California governor.) But Taylor also thought it would be fun to do something new with him reappearing in the mythology.
"Cameron did it explosively," the director says. When Schwarzenegger went from being the quintessential villain in the first film to the quintessential hero of 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Cameron "radically took the same actor and basic character and found new things to do with him."
Genisys mixes the old and the new. One scene is re-created from the original film with the younger, very buff Terminator arriving at present-day Griffith Park to kill Sarah Connor but he's met by the older yet powerful Guardian.
Producers scoured the Earth for a guy who had the same body proportions as Schwarzenegger's (in his younger days as a seven-time Mr. Olympia bodybuilder) and used him as a body double to fight with the actor on set. Then through visual effects, filmmakers created a completely computer-generated character that looks like Schwarzenegger did 30 years ago.
It took months to find someone with the right build, but "he still doesn't fully measure up," Ellison says. "He was the closest there is but we could not find a single bodybuilder on the planet who actually matched Arnold in regards to his arms and back, which were obviously massive in the '80s."
Filming a fight scene in which Schwarzenegger pulls down his Guardian hoodie and says, "I've been waiting for you" was a phenomenal moment for everyone involved, Ellison says.
"Everybody was grinning from ear to ear — because the Terminator had just stepped on set."