2. True Lies (1994)
You Know It As... That Arnie movie where he pilots a Harrier jet and fires a bad guy, clutching to a missile, into a building packed to the brim with his own subordinates. James Cameron's insane and rather underrated comedy/thriller/action movie
True Lies is certainly one of Schwarzenegger's most fun ventures, and thanks to a witty script and Cameron's willingness to go over the top at almost every turn, this is the kind of flick that demands to be viewed alongside pizza and beer. At the time of release,
Lies was one of the most expensive movies ever made ($100 million).
It's A Remake Of...La Totale! (1991), a French comedy movie directed by Claude Zidi, and starring Thierry Lhermitte in the Arnold Schwarzenegger role. Cameron nabbed the central premise from
La Totale! - a wife finds out that her boring husband is in fact an international spy - and transformed that slightly less explosive movie into an action tour de force. What remained were the original's inherent comedy elements, of which Cameron could have easily extracted, though his movie looks far better today in all its excessive ridiculous because it feels nicely self-aware.