Want to know the best Arnold Schwarzenegger movies? How about the worst Arnold Schwarzenegger movies? Curious about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s box office grosses or which Arnold Schwarzenegger movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Arnold Schwarzenegger movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which ones got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
I have already done pages on 1980s action stars Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone, so I figured a page on the last original founder of Planet Hollywood was overdue. Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947-) is a body builder, turned actor, turned politician who has returned to acting. Arnold first appearance in a movie was in 1970’s Hercules In New York. He was billed as Arnold Strong and had his voice dubbed over. The rest of the 70s saw Arnold appear in a couple of weight-lifting movies and some supporting roles in movies like Stay Hungry and The Villain. In 1982, Arnold starred in Conan the Barbarian. Conan was a box office success and showed that Arnold could carry a film.
In 1984, he made the first of three appearances as the title character in director James Cameron’s The Terminator. The success of The Terminator, turned Arnold into a Hollywood superstar. From 1984-1997 he appeared in numerous successful films. Films like The Running Man, Predator, Twins, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop and True Lies. In 1997 he appeared as Mr. Freeze in the worst Batman movie ever….Batman and Robin. After the critical failure of Batman & Robin, his film career and box office pull went into decline. His last movie before he became Governor of California was Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines. After leaving office, Arnold, returned to making movies. So far the results have been pretty disappointing. Maybe the big man has one more big movie in him.
His IMDb page shows 74 acting credits since 1970. This page will rank 35 Arnold Schwarzenegger movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in theaters were not included in the rankings.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Arnold Schwarzenegger movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Arnold Schwarzenegger movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Arnold Schwarzenegger movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Arnold Schwarzenegger movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Arnold Schwarzenegger movie received.
- Sort Arnold Schwarzenegger movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the search and sort buttons to make this a very interactive page….for example…if you want to see the three James Cameron/Arnold movies only….then type “James Cameron” in the search box and up pop the three movies.
The Best of Arnold Schwarzenegger
#5 Predator (1987) Predator is Arnold’s third highest rated movie by critics and audiences with a 85% score, while finishing 9th on his top box office hits list. Whenever you read a article on the greatest action movies this movie is always in the conversation. Like the Terminator this movie also spawned many sequels. The movie was directed by John McTiernan, who after finishing this movie moved on to another action film called Die Hard. No wonder he became known as a great action director after those back to back movies. Did you know….that Kevin Peter Hall who played the Predator also played Bigfoot in Harry and the Hendersons? Did you know? The Predator’s mandibles came from a suggestion by James Cameron. Mandibles (jawbones) are the bones that form the skull with the cranium. I was not really sure what mandibles were so I had to look it up.
#4 The Terminator (1984) I have very fond memories of watching this movie at the theater. The audience reaction was one of the best I have ever experienced. I have forced my teenagers to watch this movie and even they like it….imagine that. The Terminator is Arnold’s highest rated movie according to critics and audiences with a 91% score but it barely cracks his Top Ten box office hit list…coming in at #10. This movie put James Cameron on the Hollywood map, turned Arnold into a superstar and started one of the most successful movie franchises ever. I can not believe it has been over 30 years since the release of this classic movie.
#3 True Lies (1994) Arnold plays Harry Tasker, a man leading a double life. For the sake of his wife and daughter he pretends to be a boring computer salesperson. For the sake of the country, he is a super agent and one of the last defenses who works for the secret government agency The Omega Sector. Since this is a James Cameron movie, True Lies was one of the most expensive films ever made, costing about $110 million in 1994. But the money was well spent as True Lies was the number three movie of the year with over $750 million dollars in adjusted worldwide box office grosses. Many highlights in this movie. For me the performance of Tom Arnold is one that I think about when I think about True Lies. I thought at the time Tom Arnold was headed for big things…..sadly nearly twenty years later and this is his career pinnacle.
#2 Total Recall (1990) Arnold’s 3rd biggest blockbuster hit with over 229 million in adjusted domestic box office dollars dollars. This great science fiction film was based on Phillip K. Dick’s story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”. Of all the Phillip K. Dicks’s stories to be turned into movies, Total Recall joins Blade Runner and Minority Report as the best of the bunch. This was one of the last big budget movies to use miniature sets versus computer effects. Before Arnold got the role, Richard Dreyfuss, Christoper Reeve and Patrick Swayze were offered the role
#1 Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) Schwarzenegger’s biggest box office hit with a box office gross of over 1 BILLION when looking at worldwide adjusted box office dollars. Terminator 2: Judgement Day(or T2) is ranked the forty-second best movie on IMDB. Arnold, Linda Hamilton and James Cameron all returned for this sequel. Even Kyle Reese shows up in a dream sequence if you ever watch the director’s cut.
The film’s visual effects included many breakthroughs in computer graphics that would change the way movies would be made. T2 won four Oscars® for makeup, sound mixing, sound editing, and visual effects. Arnold gets to play the good terminator this time out, while Robert Patrick as the bad T-1000, steals the show in my opinion.
There were two more sequels in this franchise but they have not been in the class as the first two. I am thinking that might have something to do with James Cameron or more like the lack of James Cameron.
Check out Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Steve Lensman’s Arnold Schwarzenegger You Tube Video
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
You know the old cliche “Out of sight, out of mind!” so I forgot to mention that our own Running Man and you have a full house: you agree on all 6 of Arnie’s best reviewed films in just a different order.
I can’t remember when that last happened – ah if only the Brexiteers and Remainers could find such common ground!
For me Arnie has always been The King of the Heavy Squad – ie those ‘muscle-bound’ stars like Stallone, Statham and The Rock whose stock-in- trade is exceptional heroics in action movies without one dramatic facial expression among most of them.
I feel that Arnold is now past his sell-by date as a credible action hero but when he was at his peak in films like True Lies and Eraser I liked watching him because, although I never regarded him as being as good an actor as Bruce Willis for example, Arnie displayed the mitigating characteristics of self-depreciation and a sense of humour in his roles, as I think True Lies and Kindergarten Cop amply demonstrate and indeed those are probably my own two favourite Arnie movies.
As an initial champion bodybuilder in real life and a politician later on he can probably be said to have transcended movies and as I have mentioned previously has been singled out as one of the great icons among celebrities in general and I have not personally ever seen any of the rest of the ‘heavy squad’ make the cut in that respect.
In his table above, Claude Rains/Dr Jack Griffin shows us that Arnie had 15 movies that crashed the magical Cogerson 100 million dollar mark in adjusted domestic revenues. Their combined adjusted US gross is approx. $3 billion, an average of some $200 million per movie. Moreover the top 20 highest grossing global hits in the table collectively amount to about $8.4 billion in adjusted worldwide receipts, averaging out at $420 per movie approx. In short, if we can employ a play on Arnold’s Terminator character, Schwarzenegger was a money-making machine in his heyday – wow!
Arnold is one of the richest movies stars of all time with a reported net worth of $400 million. IMDB credits him with 25 acting awards and 36 nominations. I have seen 14 of his movies and very much welcome your video on his career.
Best Arnie POSTERS 1/Hercules in NY 2/Red Myrna 3/two for Batman 4/3 for Sabotage 5/Collateral Damage 6/Aftermath 7/2 for Escape Plan – note the Sly/Arnie compromise billing 8/2nd one for Conan the Destroyer 9/the 6th Day 10/Terminator Genisys 11/ set for the Last Stand 12/three for Conan Barbarian 13/Predator 14/2nd one for Terminator 2 15/The Terminator [one]
My own pick of the STILLS 1/Red Myrna 2/ Dr Freeze 3/out-acting Stallone! 4/Conan Destroyer 5/End of Days 6/Kindergarten Cop 7/lobby card for The Running Man 8/Last Action Hero 9/Eraser 10/Expendables 2 11/Stay Hungry 12/Conan Barbarian 13/Total Recall 14/Terminator [One] and 15/16 two with Jamie Lee – I enjoyed watching Arnie and her together and in that film I thought they made as good a husband-and-wife team as the Cogersons obviously do in real life.
In my book this is another 99%-rated video from you. I can’t remember you presenting us with such a run of vertiginous-rated presentations before, and when one thinks that most of them were made when I was on holiday maybe the lesson is that when you get me out of the road and not bothering you, your very best work emerges!
I suppose though that [at least in my opinion] whilst action stars like Johnson, Statham, Hulk Hogan, Van Damme and Seagal are largely incapable of giving even a passable performance and the likes of Gibson, Eastwood and Wills are a cut well above most of the rest, one thing that all the action icons have in common is that the content of their films is such that it can lend itself to the most stunning posters imaginable. Therefore you as the presenter of pictorials have no reason for the aversion to many of them that I have, and if you like their films into the bargain that’s a bonus – the icing on the cake – for you
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia and comparison, much appreciated. Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Arnold has a new Terminator movie coming out in November, and Stallone has another Rambo film out next month. Arnie is 72 and Stallone 73. Harrison Ford will be 79 when or if the ‘Untitled Indiana Jones Project’ gets released in 2021.
Action superstars of the 30s and 40s like Flynn, Power and Ladd were dead by the age of 50. John Wayne was 69 when he shot his last bad guy on screen. And 88 year old Clint Eastwood gets beaten up a Mexican drug cartel in his latest movie – The Mule. 🙂
Two films scored 10 out of 10 in Arnie’s filmography – Terminator 1 & 2. There are no 9s, eight films scored 8 out of 10 including Total Recall, Predator and True Lies.
No.1 Arnie film at IMDB is Terminator 2, and Terminator 1 is tops at Rotten Tomatoes.
Good to see Bruce and I have the same top 6 films in our charts in slightly different order. The same no.1 too. (critics chart).
Arnold at the 2004 Republican National Convention – “Speaking of acting, one of my movies was called True Lies. It’s what the Democrats should have called their convention.”
Arnold on Stallone – “It is a great inspiration for people to see someone at his age still at the top of his game — acting, writing, directing, doing his own stunts and fight scenes — I mean, what an amazing talent. And for him to still be so athletic and be able to rip off his shirt and have a six-pack is just unbelievable.”
“Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America.”
“I went from being the Terminator to being the governator.”
“If my life was a movie, no one would believe it.”
Added Steve’s Arnold Video to the this page. Our thoughts found on Steve’s You Tube Channel.
“Arnold getting some Top 10 Charts attention…I like it. I have seen 34 of the 35 movies listed here. Only Stay Hungry (#9) has escaped me. I have even seen Aftermath and Maggie…two movies that proved Arnold’s box office clout days are long over. Favorites would include #4 Predator, #2 T2, #1 Terminator, #13 Last Action Hero…a bomb but I have always enjoyed, and #11 Expendables 2….love the finale…seeing Bruce, Arnold and Sly in the same action scene. Arnold is now 72….thinking his latest Terminator movie has to be his last…than again Harrison Ford seems determined to play Indy at 80. Good video. Voted up and shared.”
Hi Bruce, I was going to wait till the new Terminator movie came out before doing an Arnie video but decided he belonged in this current wave of videos with Sly and Willis. I hope the new film is an improvement on the previous one. I didn’t include Expendables 1 in Arnie’s video because it was just a cameo, ditto Willis.
Your tally 34 out of 35 and I’ve seen 30. Thanks for the comment, vote and share, always appreciated. Enjoy your holiday!
Happy birthday to a legend
Hey Wayne A…..I agree 100%….Happy Birthday To A Legend…hard to believe Arnold is 72 now…time freaking flies.
“May 10, 2019 at 9:45 pm –
Hey Bob….thanks for the follow up comment. Always glad when you give Joel some love”
Bruce Cogerson
“I am the love that dare not speak its name.”
Lord Alfred Douglas – poem Two Loves [1896]
You are welcome Bob.