If Arnold Schwarzenegger has excelled at anything besides body-building and punching, it's kick-ass movie one-liners. He yelled "get to the chopper!" in Predator, "Hasta la vista, baby!" in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and "It's not a tumor!" in Kindergarten Cop—just to name a few. But his greatest line read of all time? The Terminator's "I'll be back."
According to Schwarzenegger, however, he originally didn't even like the line. Revealed in a new Netflix docuseries titled Arnold, the star says that he argued with director and writer James Cameron about the zinger. He thought it sounded "funny," wanting it to be more machine-like, a la, "I will be back." The original script for Terminator even had it written out as the more awkward "I'll come back." (I guess writing memorable one-liners is pretty hard.)
"It wasn't meant to be like a big moment at all," Cameron explains. "It was literally meant to be, on its face, No problem, I'll come back. For some reason, Arnold didn't say, I'll come back. I said, Well, just say 'I'll be back.' Keep it simple." This allegedly led to a heated exchange between Cameron and Schwarzenegger on set, which ended in Cameron yelling, "Are you the writer?'" Schwarzenegger recalls responding,"No," then Cameron clapped back with, "Well, don't tell me how to fucking write."
Now, Schwarzenegger agrees that Cameron was "absolutely right." The Terminator was a box office success and "I'll be back" became one of the most famous lines in movie history. They've even said it in every Terminator film since. "It became the most quoted movie line, I think, in the history of motion pictures," Schwarzenegger claims. "So this just shows to you who was right and who was wrong."
Josh Rosenberg is an Assistant Editor at Esquire, keeping a steady diet of one movie a day. His past work can be found at Spin, CBR, and on his personal blog at Roseandblog.com.
