Arnold’s Cameo in Terminator Salvation Will Be 100% CG… Obviously

Posted by on April 24th, 2009   Filed under: Action, Sci-fi, Technology

terminatorarnoldcg

There has been a lot of heated discussion over the past year or so regarding whether it is possible to make a Terminator movie without Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s a valid question, since his presence and star power were central to the previous three films, and his current starring role as Governor of California has left an appearance in Terminator Salvation unlikely. But then Arnold was spotted on the set of T4 a while back, and it sparked a lot of rumours about a possible cameo in the film, perhaps using some type of face replacement technology. Well, it turns out his face may not be the only thing we see on screen… according to Variety, his whole body is being recreated digitally for the film.

In a recent webcast, Schwarzenegger caused confusion when he revealed that he would be in the new movie, but that he wouldn’t be acting. Now we’ve got an explanation: they have worked out the technology to insert him into the film as a fully computer-generated character. Apparently a full body-cast mold was taken of his physique during production on one of the previous films, and this served as the source for his digital counterpart. Schwarzenegger has given the resulting footage a thumbs up, so McG will be including it in the film. Even in this day and age, a realistic full-size digital model is no easy technical feat. Do you think there’s a chance they can pull it off? Will it enhance the movie, or should they have just left it alone?



  • Dan

    I have a suspicion that (given the apparent difficulty in making a convincing CG-double, particularly under such a tight schedule because of Arnie being “difficult”) that the scene will be incredibly short. A few glimpses of a CGI face, some body-double shots from behind, etc. Nothing substantial. Just a 5-10 second CGI cameo that the fans can grin at. But, hey, maybe they’ve been lowering our expectations on purpose and have a massively expensive 10-minute sequence ready to go, as a big surprise. But I doubt it.

  • Yeah, especially considering that Arnold’s approval of the scene was left to the last minute, I can’t see it being anything all that important.

  • I agree with Dan, and as such, it could have just been left out.

  • I don’t know what you guys are worried about, I can’t imagine anything I’d rather watch than Arnold Shwarzenjarjarbinks flickering on screen while the other actors look somewhat in his general direction and stumble their way through painfully akward scenes trying to interact with something that isn’t there.

    CG charcters are totally AWESOME!

  • Matt

    “Schwarzenegger caused confusion when he revealed that he would be in the new movie, but that he wouldn’t be acting.”

    What’s so confusing? What Schwarzenegger was trying to say is that he never acts in any movie he’s in. He’s always Arnold.

  • Haha good point, Matt.

  • patrik

    well they could easily do it without him..I mean, look at Sarah Connor Chronicles..Awesome show and Summer Glau is perfect as a terminator

  • they need an entire army of AHNOLDS running up to hug John Connor for moral support. Whatever happens I hope it isn’t just some meager attempt to validate an otherwise sucky film.

  • Marc H

    I don’t care how short this shot is, as long as Arnold’s face is in the movie, I will consider Terminator Salvation to be a part of the Terminator Series.

    It will be a great day when I see Arnold’s face on the big screen again, and as a Terminator, doesn’t get any better than that.

  • I pretty much agree with Marc H. It isn’t Terminator without Arnold.

    P.S. Sarah Connor Chronicles are so painfully bad, hopefully the show gets canned as predicted.

  • shin

    i just saw the movie and seeing him back as cg was great but it didnt last that long

  • Seeing a CGI Arnold was one of the best parts of the film. The only time the crowd cheered in the theater. The other throw back was the Guns N Roses song playing on boom box that young John Conner had on the boom box in T2.

    Nice nod to the creator James Cameron. McG did a great job with the film and this should define his career. Not “Charlies Angeles”

    McG is a solid director and I hope this puts the doubters to rest.

  • Yes I was really hoping for at least a cameo appearance of Arnold, but we really did get much more – and I have to say that the ONLY reason I was certain it was a CG appearance was because he appeared to be 10-20 years younger than he is today. Absolutely convincing and fantastic CG job, and the film was thrilling from beginning to end.

  • Brandon

    It really was a good movie! I’m EXTREMELY picky about CGI and its use (or overuse) in movies. When I heard about the CG Arnold I was thinking of The Rock in Mummy 2.. but I gotta tell ya.. It was AMAZING! My brother in law is a graphic artist and 3D animator and he was equally impressed. T4 was a win! better than T3 by far.

  • Steve

    Brandon, I agree with you 100%. Good CG and a much better movie…seeing the “cameo” was great.

  • John

    How long is the Arnold cameo in the movie? Seconds? Minutes?

  • Ian

    Good movie!..not the best of the terminator series, but better plot by far as oppose to the previous T4..

    The Arnold cameo was impressive, almost looked like the original back in T1… kudos to McG and the cast!

  • Mike

    I thought the movie was great! I heard a lot of crap about it not being up to par with the other 3, which I’m glad I ignored :)

    I thought Arnold’s cameo was VERY well done. He threw in several things to show respect for the other 3 movies, as well as to the passionate fans out there. The cameo was the perfect icing on the cake. Austrian bodybuilder Roland Kickinger played the Terminator so that Bale would have someone to act opposite. Schwarzenegger’s face was superimposed on Kickinger’s head in post-production.

  • truth

    Am I the only one here who thoroughly disliked this movie?

    First off, Bale was a terrible choice for John Connor. John Connor has a heart, Bale does not. Besides, Bale’s acting (which for him is synonymous for yelling) was the cheesiest crap I’ve seen in a while.

    Second off, the feel of the movie was just all around wrong! So wrong it hurt to watch the glory of the old movies be buried under this BS! I saw hundreds of machines in this flick, and the cumulation of all of them could not strike the fear and angst in me as ONE Arnold from T1 and T2. Think back to those scenes of Sarah or John Connor scampering and crawling away from the machines, barely making it. It had your heart racing, your mind tried to come up with something, ANYthing to help them escape. This movie barely kept me awake!

    One of the ONLY good parts of the movie was the upwards panning of the camera, starting from the feet of Arnold to his head with the classic music reverberating in the backround. That sh*t gave me goosebumps. Biggest problem with it was not that it was a CG arnold…it was that it was so short-lived! His mere image was so nostalgic…it just strikes the horror back into your soul of the original idea of machines taking over!

    I don’t think this series can make it without arnold…no way. Look at Rotten Tomatoes. Tomatometer for T2: 97%. Tomatometer for T3: mid 70’s. Tomatometer for T4: 33%….that’s a big statement to a movie with such a fanbase…

    I really hope they take the next one in a totally new direction…this was just not good.

  • Ya Boi

    For the person who posted the #19 message- Yes…you would seem to be the only one who didn’t like the movie. It was really quite good, great all around from start to finish. I thought Arnold being in the movie (all CG’d up) was great and a surprise (I didn’t look into it until after seeing the film, so I wasn’t expecting him to show up- it looked so real).

    And as far as the hundreds of machines not being scary compared to the Arnold from T1 or T2….dude, come on! The machines come out of nowhere and grab people! That junk was pretty intense. The only thing to thoroughly dislike is the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series… Such a bad idea.

  • kyriacos

    Hey you guys i am a Huge fun of the T series I watched the first 2 movies a thousand times ,,or even more..

    … You CANNOT compare the first 2 movies with the 4rth one..

    they are way different between them.. you just cannot compare them in any way..

    its stupid..

    its like comparing \Godfather\ with \Taxi driver\ or Clockwork Orange\

    you just cant do this kind of comparison

    As we all know The first 2 movies set the bar pretty high and

    They are now consider 2 of the best sci-fi Classic movies ever made

    Now why i consider T4 a much better movie than T3?

    First of all T3 was just a cheaper dullest version of T2

    With out linda hamilton!!!
    i mean come one.. at least T4 has 2 great actors in the leading roles.

    For me Christian bale is PERFECT for the role of John C
    He is not OVERACTING and he gives space to MARCUS to build his character.

    In T3… john Connor is just a skinny-short, bear belly junky

    worst Casting EVER

    In T3 Arnold is practically the best actor in the movie AND THATS SAYS something Because , as much as we love Arnold, we all know he is not the best actor out there//
    The rest of the actors are even worse!.. you just cannot make a good movie out of such kind of Actors…

    :)
    For me what makes the first 2 movies so great is:

    … Good story telling Dark atmosphere perfect End with no [[to be continue]] tricks. Everything ENDS and thats the POINT! (i believe thats what we are suppose to always believe in the T series.. and then we are sadly proved wrong..

    ..Great Gore scenes: in T1 arnold removes his eye with a knife, and kills a whole police department in T2 he removes his hand (not as Gore) but T-1000 does all the dirty work by killing John f. parents and a fat security guy/ In both cases Gore fits right into the scene and it does not feel like a ”need to do it” comment. IN T3 when Arnold removed his chest.. it was sooooo predictable.. i remember while watchin T3 i was felling like .. And now is the scene that Arnold is going to to This and that all the time.. !!

    …and now Arnold is going to appear naked..
    and now Arnold is going to enter a bar..
    and now Arnold is going to steal some clothes and now arnlold is going to remove something from his body
    and now Arnold is going to say.. I ll be back
    and now arnold is going to sacrifice him self..

    if you hadent seen any of the first films maybe T3 felt ok but For me was just Sooooooo predictable and boring..

    Some times T4 felt the same way especially at the END

    but most of the time the references were really original..

    All in all T3 adds nothing to the myth and is just a cheap rip off while T4 althow is not a great movie from a dramatically point of view it adds something new to the myth and really respects the first 2 movies by not just trying to imitate them by try reshooting them ”better” like T3 did..
    (offcource James Cameron practicly reshooted T1 in T2 whith a bigger budged) but Thats james cameron and he is allowed to do what ever he wants with the myth.

    Both T1 and T2 had the best Special effects at their times and combined modeling with CG

    T3 did not had ground breaking special effects..

    T4 on the other hand does has the best Special Effects i ever seen in a movie..

    Especially the Helicopter Scene with Christian Bale at the beginning ..

    Now what i Did not like about T4?

    T4 was SOOOOO f*cking close to be a reaaally good movie but .. ….there is always a but..

    1) No time traveling (allthow loved the fact that practically marcus traveled from the past and he was both the good and the… bad guy (with out even knowing it)

    2) No gore scenes of ANY kind (not even blood in marcus wounded body)

    3) too many CG (allthow sometimes they used a model for a T-100 close up) but not quite as smooth as in T2 ..they were moving him too fast..

    4) No tragic ending.. Marcus did died but not in a tragic way … like Reese or Arnold in T1 and T2
    Marcus just lays on a bed.. its just not tragic enough MCG…

    for me it would have been better if JOhn Connor refused to take marcus heart and he died instead at the end…

    i just didn’t like the idea of heart transplant out of the blue..

    i know Connor is supposed to live at the end so he can sent Reese to the past ..

    but you know … you could still have john connor speak out his man-robot monologue at the end .. so that we do not really clearly know exactly what happens … JUST LEAVE IT OPEN!!
    Marcus death was tooo predictable

    i preffere to be left wondering
    ”DiD marcus or john Died” ??
    ”what will happen with Reese”??
    will Marcus Send him back?

    instead i left the movies with the felling that John Connor is such a pussssy… that would accept a heart from a ”True human”

    it just Raise up to many ethical questions..

    By the way i loved the fact that Reese looked a bit like The Back to the future Guy..

    but i HATED the Bike Terminators coming out of …Megatron

    I hated the scen when Marcus was Cured and Skynet is trying to Explain to all of us her evil plans..

    I mean If Marcus has a Robot chip then he himself sould be the one that tells to him self what he was program to do..

    something like a tragic Sad realization..

    I hated the Bitchy character of Skynet

    MCG wasted a reaaaally good opportunity to have a great philosophical dialog with the ENEMY trying to explain his Arguments…

    instead Skyned was like… ”we re going to kick your ass” we hate you… ..”… its just too Black n White..

    even Talibans have better arguments for killing people… than skynet ..i espected more!!

    In T2 linda Hamilton with her monologues explains the tragic nature of human raise in a more sophisticated way…

    T4 …is more like WAR!! WAR!!! WAR!!! KILL KILL KILL!!!

    Good guys.. Bad Guys!!! KILL KILL KILL…!!

    and thats scares me a little bit …where are we heading?

    why is Hollywood promoting so narrominded war views?

    T4 ironically becomes exactly what T2 was pointing out about us humans…

    (remember the scene with the kids in the gas station in T2 playing ”war” games)

    I loved the CG Arnold scene in T4!!!!

    they made him like he was back in T1

    So cool!

    allthow i would preferred T2 arnold to be recreated because many people do not remember exactly how arnold looked in T1 and thought that he was not ///”realistically recreated”

    Sorry for my bad english.. its not my mother tongue..

    //

  • I was not sure I was gonna go see this movie because, to me, the most important thing in the series was having Arnold as the star. I knew that he wouldn’t be able to star obviously because he is playing the role of The Governator right now and he wouldn’t have the time. I ended up going to see it anyway because I have seen the other films (even the underrated T3) each about a dozen times. I was glad that they got a good actor to play John Connor this time instead of stupid Nick Stahl from T3. I was very happy with this film, even though the formula was different than the previous films, because it pretty much answered all the questions I had from the first three. Such as how John met Reese and how John got his scar that we keep seeing in the future visions in the other movies. Obviously, because I am obsessed with Arnold in a non-creepy way, the best scene was Arnold’s CGI cameo. They made it look so realistic and he resembled the T1 Arnold from when he was young. It made me ALMOST cry tears of joy. I was happy that they did that cauz I may have not seen the movie if I didn’t know about that ahead of time. I liked how they put the famous lines from the franchise into the film and that John Connor actually grew a pair in this film unlike T3. It showed almost all of the war stuff you wanted to know and answers most of your questions. The only problem I had was that the Terminator theme song (besides that famous rhythm) was not played once in this movie. Overall, I would say to see this because some scenes resemble the previous movies. Obviously the first two films are un-beatable, but this film was WAY better than T3. See it because it will please you Terminator-aholics even though Arnold only has a cameo.

    P.S.- T3 is a GREAT film, I don’t care what you all say.

  • Kyriacos

    You know what it would had made T4 a GREAT movie?

    if they kept Arnold for a Little bit more..

    I understand that Cg is expensive BUT come on…

    The way cg Arnold lost his face.. was LAAAAMEE lame lame lame …… They went right from a Full Perfect Arnold CG face to a lame robod… No mid Scene? … But thats whats all about! look at the make up effect above from the first Terminator.. Its Perfect!

    As we all know Cg Arnold was practically only Cg -Head- Arnold.. the body was borrowed from a real Austrian Bodybuilder and they just changed his face with Arnolds face..

    So I say…

    why didnt they just put some make up on the Austrian body builder and keep Arnold for A little more.. with a distorded face!

    Imagine how cool a closeup scene with Arnolds CG Face got Shot continuously from Conors shotgun (just like Arnold shoot T1000) in the elevetor scene

    Bang BANg BANG on Arnolds cg face …until is so much distorted that no-one would tell the difference between a Cg Distorded face and a Make up distorded face

    So if Money was the problem for not keeping Arnold for more time… well thats a good cheep way to overcome that problem and make a good movie..

    ….And ofcource KILL John Conor NOT marcus.. at the end.. and make MArcus be the New John Conor for the Resistance..

    I mean if no one from the rest of the world has Ever seen the real John conors Face For them John Conor was just a figure.. ..an Icon

    Weell whats better than an Icon that would be able to live for ever?

    oh.. and remember,,, robots can change their voice into John Conors Voice As well..

  • Alex

    What a load of rubbish Kyriacos. If you had read the article above this (how have you not? why are you posting below it if you haven’t read it?) you’d have read that they used a cast of Arnee’s body from a previous movie to do the CG of his body.

    Also no, kiling Connor and keeping Marcus would have been lame. He was a throwaway character like many in the franchise and had not the screen presence of Bale.

    Although a life long fan of the Terminator films (seen them all in the cinema upon release) I thought this was by far the best. I do like Arnee but the formulaic action movie thing he did over and over in all three movies got tired (as everyone noticed in T3)and they needed a new direction. We’ve waited so long for a movie about the future war instead of piddling about with the past time travel stuff.

    I liked the way they showed you where John’s scar came from etc. All those little loose ends tied up were great.

    Is it just me or in T1 don’t the machines in the future war use laser guns to shoot each other? I saw none of these in this film – all mini-guns and machine guns. Isn’t this a continuity error?

    A good film over all. My girlfriend has seen NONE of the other Terminator films, only watched a few episodes of the Connnor Chronicles TV series and she loved it. She was put off the movies before because of Arnee – she’s not a fan of muscled action heros. She thought this movie was awesome though.

    Alex

  • Kyriacos

    Yes dude this movie was awesome thats what i said BUT it would have been AWESOMER if it actually added something HUGE to the myth. and actually fixing continuity errors …BY ”Killing the human John Conor and replacing him with the android john Conor.. youknow.. i ve always asked how on earth john connor is so fucking important .. i mean .. he is just a guy BUT guess what! he is NOT just a guy … he actually becomes a ROBOT! and that would also explain why they didn’t have lasers

    its because they hadn’t been invented yet !

    They would be invented LATER!

    And john connor as marcus will practically live long enough and still look young to reach laser guns!

    oh.. and by the way they didn’t use a cast to recreate Arnolds cgi body they used the body of another body builder and just added Arnlonds face on it

    That i can tell you for sure.. trust me on that

    but i ll give you smt to check it for your self..

    if you look close enough you ll see that original arnold had a bigger chest and different set of abs than the what you think is a cgi arnolds body …

    WHy oh WHY?

    ..ITS BECAUSE THEY USED A DOUBLE!

    Apology accepted..

  • terminator fan

    AWESOME!!! one of the best movies that I have ever seen!

  • rajiv

    After reading some posts (number 19 had some good points!)the key element missing seems to be a convincing REAL bad guy now that arnie is gone. Arnie created menace and suspense that unfortunately CGI (no matter how awesome)cannot. Y know, maybe thats the problem with many movies today and the reason why T2 got 97% and T4 33%! There needs to be more real good old fashioned story telling ( and i dont mean over-complication of plots). Directors, writers etc should go check out Alfred Hitchcock and learn from the master how to create fear and suspense. Thats what the original T1&T2 movies did. The special effects only enhanced it. These days directors are relying more and more on plain CGI to tell a story. Now with 3d we can expect more of the same. All the more reason not to forget the basics and remember a movies is truly ONLY AS GOOD AS ITS DIRECTOR/PLOT.

  • Manoj

    Three years after release, I was watching it for the second time on blue-ray, to see what actually went wrong with this movie.
    1.Bale’s acting
    2.Arnie’s short-lived cameo.(potentially a big miss)
    3.Too much unwanted special effects which gave nothing other than those annoying shrills of the machines.
    4.Lacking a strong plot