top 10 greatest arnold schwarzenegger movies

10. the running man : this movie seemingly has so many things going against it, but in true arnold fashion he turns those negatives into positives. for example, he takes a ridiculous[!] plot [seriously, i can't ever see a game show where people hunt people, even in the 'future'] and makes it somewhat forgivable with classic one-liners. but why was richard dawson in this movie? i still can't figure that one out. it's not like game show hosts are the only people who can play game show hosts in a movie. not only that, he was pretty weak as arnold's main villain. everyone knows he would snap richard dawson like he did that pencil in kindergarten cop.

9. twins : this movie showed that arnold could play more than a killing machine. in twins, he played a experimental superfreak, while danny devito played what basically was the genetic feces of a human being. together they went on a zany adventure to find their long lost mother, teach each other about humanity, and deliver a some type of jet engine which was kept in the trunk of danny devito's car. upon further review, this may have been a stretch. but it doesn't really matter since it was here where arnold would began to tap his unlimited comic abilities.

8. total recall : when i think about this movie, i think about how gross it would be to live in a world like that. it also reminds me a lot of mexico, in the way the society is lawless. and it was hard for me to get past all the mutant stuff happening in the movie. i just didn't want to see that. i'd much rather watch arnold tear stuff up with his bare hands than deal with mutants on the planet mars. with that being said, i enjoyed the movie in the sense that it was a new role for arnold [a role that he has often duplicated since].

7. predator : this movie would be rated higher if there were more dialogue and if the director acquiesced to jean-claude van damme and allow him show his face while he was in the predator suit. it was virtually a nra fantasy from beginning to end. it had more firepower than almost every movie i have ever seen. and i think it's a safe bet to say that it's the only alien bounty hunter movie with two future governors playing mercenaries carrying heavy artillery. despite having very little dialogue, this movie still had some classic arnold one-liners.

6. the terminator : being offered a role to play a robot is probably the best thing to happen to arnold. not only did playing a robot hide the fact that he is a limited actor who couldn't speak english very well at the time, it provided another medium [science fiction] in which he could unconsciously destroy humankind. this movie would be higher if not linda hamilton's unforgivable 80's hair.

5. commando : at first i didn't like this movie that much for the same reasons that i didn't like predator that much. but after several viewings, the unintentional comedy has lifted this film to another level. arnold's dialogue consists heavily of one-liners, which necessarily isn't a bad thing. at this stage of arnold's career, he was still performing feats that would require otherworldly strength to emphasize his larger than life stature. for example, in one of his first scenes, he is carrying a 3-feet thick and 30-foot long tree trunk over his shoulder. in another, he rips a phone booth out of the ground and lifts it over his head. these type of things kept happening in the movie. in the final scenes he eliminates all life [this includes humans, animals and plants] on some remote island. it couldn't have had a better ending.

4. terminator 3: rise of the machines : t3 was arnold's last major motion picture before taking his life seriously and getting a real job as the governor of california. this film captures some of the more breathtaking scenes in cinema history, which were larger in scale than most other movies. since arnold was a robot [again], the action scenes were more realistic than other movies of this genre since laws of physics didn't necessarily apply.

3. kindergarten cop : the best of arnold's 'comedies.' sure it relied heavily on kids, but what makes this movie stand apart from the rest is the fact that everything arnold says is funny. it is by far arnold's best comedic turn as an actor. unfortunately, this led arnold to believe that he should do more comedies, which pretty much became downright embarrassing later in his career. by the way, for a long time i believed that guns that dominic made were real and that they worked. it was not until i was 24 years old that i realized that no kid could make guns out of aluminum foil.

2. true lies : arnold was able to give life and personality to this movie, and that made all the difference. the supporting actors also did their parts very well, providing more than the usual flat characters that often accompany arnold's movies. plus the writing actually matched its spectacular action scenes [for once]. too bad that this would be one of arnold's last blockbuster movies.

1. terminator 2: judgment day : this is arnold at his best. he mixes action and comedy to create one of the better movies of all time. his one-liners from this movie is still quoted today, although i wouldn't be surprised if younger people nowadays don't know where they came from. the action scenes were beyond anything seen at the time of this film's release, and even today they hold up fairly well. with all of those factors, it is the quintessential arnold movie.