Monday Morning Critic – Five Sequels Arnold Schwarzenegger Should Do Instead Of A Conan the Barbarian Sequel

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Every Monday morning, InsidePulse Movies Czar Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings an irreverent and oftentimes hilarious look at pop culture, politics, sports and whatever else comes to mind. And sometimes he writes about movies.

As everyone who has read this column knows I’m unabashedly a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Have been since I was a child and my brother and I forced my father to take us to all his films. I always presumed through the years that my father was an action movie fan and wanted to impart it upon us; really he just wanted to get us to shut up and sit still for a couple of hours. Me and my brother were a couple of hell-raisers as children, at least I like to think so, and thus anything that could get us to do either of those things was worth it.

In reality my father really just wanted to see a really filthy comedy but he couldn’t justify bringing young children to something with sex and nudity; graphic violence and language were a-ok but apparently nudity wasn’t. So a good ‘80s action film wasn’t the end of the world I think. In the end scheme of things we both turned out fairly well so I’m not going to argue with his parenting style, mainly because afterward he made us do push-ups if we used to language from any of the films we saw. That came after we rented Eddie Murphy Raw for like two straight weeks and memorized it. Then my parents finally watched it with us … and yeah … not quite as bad as when we figured out how to turn “20 Questions” on the Apple 2E into a “spout profanity” game but close.

So yeah … needless to say my childhood was a good one despite the shenanigans we got into it. And it starts with Arnold, the man who used to be governor and comes back to the silver screen in less than three months in The Last Stand. Arnold was a guy who inspired me to work out as a child and remains as one of my heroes. So when Deadline reported that Arnold’s looking to bring back Conan to the screen. And it comes with the best of intentions.

“The original ended with Arnold on the throne as a seasoned warrior, and this is the take of the film we will make,” Fredrik Malmberg told Deadline. “It’s that Nordic Viking mythic guy who has played the role of king, warrior, soldier and mercenary, and who has bedded more women than anyone, nearing the last cycle of his life. He knows he’ll be going to Valhalla, and wants to go out with a good battle.”

At first I was kind of excited, especially after the remake gave the world douche chills, because it’s more films with Arnold. Considering his plate is fairly full over the next couple years with films he’s doing, included a team up with Stallone in The Tomb, so going back to beloved franchises isn’t the worst thing in the world. Colin Farrell already made a version of Total Recall this year that could only be called a crappy remake at best; I’d rather see Arnold go back to the well with older characters than seeing someone else.

I’d rather see Arnold try, and fail, than to see someone else fail doing Arnold’s old work. And in any other circumstance I’d be all about this; this is another Conan film and that has to give any fan of Arnold an anticiparection of epic proportions. But I don’t like a Conan sequel of all things.

It has been a while since Conan the Destroyer and I thought it was a good way to end the franchise. No one has been clamoring for more Conan films over the years. So Arnold going to the well for what he wants to be an Unforgiven style take on the fantasy genre just feels like a bad idea as far as I’m concerned. But I don’t think he should be looking to new characters exclusively, either. Sometimes you can mine some good things from the past. Others, like Conan, are best left to comic books and DVDs of cinema past.

What should he do? I think there are five films he could legitimately make sequels to and have something to say about the character involved. And that’s the criteria I’m using for this list: is there something to say or new territory to conquer with a character? Thus comes this week’s idea:


The Five Sequels Arnold Schwarzenegger
Should Do Instead Of A Conan Sequel

Red Heat 2 – A lot of things have happened since James Belushi and Arnold teamed up, most notably the fall of the Soviet Union. But Russia is still Russia, America still America, and seeing what presumably would be a Moscow police chief and a Chicago police chief team up together to bring down a crook could be intriguing. Belushi and Arnold are both older guys, as well, and seeing the same sort of chemistry all these years later could be an amusing thing. There’s something you could do nearly 30 years later with these character, I think.


Commando 2 – Yeah they’d probably end up kidnapping his grand children or something, as Alyssa Milano is quite grown up at this point, but John Matrix was also a bit of a loon if you think about it. He lived almost off the land in a way, raising his daughter on his own far from civilization, and then destroyed a small South American country to get her back. That has to do something to you, one imagines, on a psychological level. While Die Hard was originally envisioned as a Commando sequel I always wondered how John Matrix and his daughter turned out. That could make for a really interesting film.


Pumping Iron 2 – It was a documentary, and had a sequel with female bodybuilders, but I’d love to see Arnold go through and guide us through the modern sport of bodybuilding. It’s changed a lot since his day and I’d love to see Arnold shadows someone like Jay Cutler or Ronnie Lawless on the circuit. Arnold was such a pioneer of the sport and I think there could be something to be mined out of it.


True Lies 2 – Getting Arnold and James Cameron together would probably be fairly difficult, of course, because both are now super busy guys. But getting those two and Tom Arnold together for another big budget adventure would be fun. You get all three back together, along with Jamie Lee Curtis, and you have a recipe for a $300 million domestic box office gross potentially. Plus Arnold and Tom had great chemistry in the film as partners, and Curtis and Schwarzenegger had one of the most awesome strip scenes in movie history, thus there’s something more you could mine out of this.


Hercules in New York 2 – It was Arnold’s first role, of course, and with the Clash of the Titans remake and sequel doing good cash why not Arnold as a fish out of water tale again? Imagine he comes back and still thinks it’s 1969 in America. He’s older and thinks he knows the ways of Earth but little does he really know. Granted it sounds exactly like Dark Shadows but this would be more muscled up.


A Movie A Week – The Challenge

This Week’s DVD – Scream

Its Halloween week, after all, and I should do something to commemorate the holiday. Since I’m not a noted horror film fan I didn’t devote my column to some horror thing BUT there should be a place in the column for it on occasion. And considering I got Scream for a steal via Amazon it makes sense to kill eight birds with 20 stones or something. I don’t have a degree in math so someone else needs to make that work, ha ha.

Scream is up and it’s one of the few horror films I genuinely love. It’s odd because I didn’t see it in theatres originally and don’t have some great story about it. A bunch of us watched it because one of the student organizations was showing it, mainly to try and give student something to do instead of go out and get slizzered. This was Wisconsin, though, and a small town in it. Thus it became something to do before you went out instead of pre-gaming. I actually enjoyed it then and bought it on VHS but hadn’t upgraded to a DVD for some unknown reason.

The film has a fairly simple plot: an unknown killer is slashing through high school students in a sleepy town. We follow the events through the eyes of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) as the murders take place on the one year anniversary of the death of her own mother. As the events of the film progress we get more bodies and shenanigans. It’s a film much like Hot Fuzz in that it parodies a genre while also being a great genre film. If you’ve watched enough horror films, and I have over the years (I always find girlfriends that love horror films for some reason), you can spot the parody by Wes Craven and company.

Why do I really like this film despite disliking the genre on the whole? Because it’s a good story, first, and it came at a time when horror was full of garbage. It still is, for the most part, but every now and again you get something that’s quite engaging and intriguing. This is one of those films.

Strongly recommended.

What Looks Good This Weekend, and I Don’t Mean the $2 Pints of Bass Ale and community college co-eds with low standards at the Alumni Club

Flight – Denzel Washington saves the day, Captain Sully style, but happened to have been trashed the night before.

See It – Robert Zemeckis back into live action is an interesting proposition. It also has Denzel in an end of year film, which usually means he’s gunning for another Oscar.

The Man with the Iron Fists – Crazy kung fu stuff from the creative master of the Wu Tang Clan.

See It – Russell Crowe in a grindhouse type exploitation film with kung fu? Yeah, I’m down with that.

Wreck-It Ralph – John C. Reilly is a bad guy in a crappy ‘80s arcade game that wants to do something else. So he does.

See It – If there ever was a guy made for voice work it’s Reilly and there’s a great cast surrounding him, too.

Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings his trademarked irreverence and offensive hilarity to Twitter in 140 characters or less. Follow him @ScottSawitz .