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There have been a total of six “Terminator” films, including the first – 1984’s “The Terminator” – and believe it or not, Arnold Schwarzenegger has his own opinion on which one was the worst.
Asked about it on “Watch What Happens Live”, Schwarzenegger picked 2009’s “Terminator Salvation” as the worst of the bunch for a simple reason: he wasn’t in it. You can watch Schwarzenegger talk about it in the video below.
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Asked by an audience member what he thought about which “Terminator” movie was the worst, Schwarzenegger answered, “I would say the worst was probably the No. 4, because that was done during the time I was governor [of California] and I was not in it.”
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“How do you do a ‘Terminator’ movie without me being in the ‘Terminator’ movie?” Schwarzenegger mused. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Host Andy Cohen asked if he made angry calls about the film, and Schwarzenegger joked, “I called immediately. I said, ‘I’m going to pass a law forbidding [filmmakers] to do movies that suck!'”
Schwarzenegger got the game-changing role of the murderous titular cyborg in 1984’s “The Terminator,” about an android sent into the past to kill the mother of a human resistance leader before he can be born.
Schwarzenegger returned for 1991’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”, but this time as the hero. He played a reprogrammed terminator sent to protect the now teenage future resistance leader.
Robert Patrick played the new villain: the upgraded T-1000, made of near-indestructible liquid metal.
The “FUBAR” star returned for 2003’s “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines”, 2015’s “Terminator Genisys”, and 2019’s “Terminator: Dark Fate”. The latter film ignored the continuity of all the films before it that released after “Terminator 2”.
In 2009, “Terminator Salvation” solved the problem of Schwarzenegger’s absence by making it less about time travel and setting almost the entire film in the same post-apocalyptic future in which machines have taken over.
Christian Bale plays a grown John Connor, the same resistance leader that the villains of so many of the previous films were always hunting.
“Terminator Salvation” made $371 million in the global box office, but that was against a production budget of $200 million. Initially meant to begin a new trilogy, “Salvation” proved to be a financial and critical failure.
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