MovieChat Forums > The Terminator (1984) Discussion > Was this Arnold's best performance as th...

Was this Arnold's best performance as the Terminator?


I think so. I feel like too many human characteristics crept in to his later performances. This was his most convincing turn as a machine, the eye movements and the monotonous speech was spot on.

T2 was great too but the learning mode gave him greater license to creep in human elements.

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Maybe; might have been his most convincing. He is good in T2 and True Lies as well. I actually think (despite his limited English at the time) Conan the Barbarian was a great performance.

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I think my title may have been a bit misleading. I meant his best performance out of the Terminator movies.

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oh, well now that you point it out; I think I read it wrong. lol

OUt of the Terminator movies, yes this is probably his best (in the first one). But it is also the one where he has the least screen time and the least to do. The others he has to do a majority of the exposition dialogue

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I love Arnie as the bad guy in T1. So I'd have to agree.. he is at his best here.

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I love this movie but love a lot of his other films too. But Terminator was an iconic performance.

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No. He's even better in T2. Required more depth. The Terminator is awesome, but T2 is perfect.

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I think Dark Fate, he was at his best. In the original, he was too mean looking. But in Dark Fate, he established some humanity within him and helped our heroes survive

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Genysis was his best because that one was the funniest.

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I’ll say yes, but I like the T-800 in T2 more...but based on performance, yes...

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As far as I am concerned, this is his ONLY performance as 'a terminator'.

In any case, one bit always bothers me, that he could've done better. The people making this movie supposedly thought it was brilliant that he made his eyes look like he's scanning the environment, but it doesn't look as robotic and cool as it could.

You see, human eyes don't move smoothly normally, they fixate on a point, then they fixate on another point, etc. You can see this in his movements, so it looks too 'human'. To make it look more robotic, someone should've MOVED a point where his eyes are fixated on, and that would've made his eyes move SMOOTHLY side to side, back and forth - now, THAT would've been cool. Such an easy trick, and THEY DIDN'T DO IT. AAGH!

I have done it many times to test it.. it looks really neat, try it yourself. They ABSOLUTELY should've done it this way. I always dream of a parallel Earth, where this has actually been done, just to know what it would've looked like.. sigh..

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Because T1 is the only moment in the series that has him cast as a coldblooded murderous cyborg. In T2, although a masterpiece, he acts like the likeable savour in Last Action Hero.

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