The Return of the King

Once upon a time, he said, “I’ll be back”.

And he did. And how.

And then he left. Supposedly for good. And a million fans around the world despaired. Ten years later, these million fans grew up. And then he said again, “I’ll be back”.

I don’t know about the millions but I know I am excited. For a second, it took me back to those days when as a kid, I used to follow each and every movie of this man. I remember the huge poster of his that adorned my bedroom wall. I remember fighting with my parents for the TV remote so that I could watch the latest movie of his at the expense of my mom's 'saas bahu' serials. I remember always being inspired by his story: he was an Austrian malnourished kid, and to avoid being bullied by bigger kids, he got into body building. He later went on to become the strongest man in the Universe. Thrice. Then he headed over to Hollywood with broken English and a name that was too long to be displayed on the billboards. People told him he had no chance in movies and to shut shop and go back home. And then the Terminator was born; Action movies were never the same after that. He later went on to become the greatest action movie star in the world. Then he quit movies and all that jazz to become the governor of California. However whenever there came a movie with him in a small role, I used to call all my old friends, now all grown up, and talk about the good ol days. And we all became kids again talking about Commando, Predator, Running Man, Total Recall and the like. The last such movie I remember doing this was The Expendables (Of course, Stallone and Schwarzenegger in the same frame was worth the ticket!)

In his absence, action got redefined; action became slick n stylish (a la 300), action got high tech, with CG and FX (Transformers), action became superheroic (Iron Man, X Men…) taking the place of good ol’ old fashioned brawn. But somehow robots and super heroes just didn’t give action its soul. They are all good movies, but they aren’t the action that he represented; the type that satisfied very kid’s fantasy where one man could single handedly bash up all the bad guys with his bare hands. Today’s action movies are just clever amalgamations of good graphics, good visuals or good scripts. We so badly needed the last action hero.

And last week, he said that he’ll be back. And it looks like that he will be. He said in an earlier interview that is looking at three different scripts, including “With Wings as Eagles,” where he would play a WWII German soldier who disobeys orders and rescues prisoners of war.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is back where he belongs.