Few pieces of dialogue are more iconic than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s classic line from The Terminator: “I’ll be back.” First said in the original 1984 film, where Schwarzenegger played a murderous robot sent from the future, it’s been repeated in every subsequent installment in one form another, as well as by generations of fans.
But as it turns out, that line almost wasn’t even originally in the movie, and was the subject of a brief but heated exchange between the actor and Terminator director James Cameron.
This revelation comes from Netflix’s new three-part documentary Arnold, which covers the life and career of Arnold Schwarzenegger across the worlds of weight-lifting, acting and politics. Schwarzenegger has had quite a life. During the documentary, he and Cameron both recalled how “I’ll be back” made it into Terminator.
James Cameron told Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Don’t tell me how to f***ing write”
“Sometime in the middle of the shoot, we’re doing this police station scene. The line is, ‘I’ll come back.’ It wasn’t meant to be like a big moment at all,” Cameron said. “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.'”
However, “I’ll be back” sounded a little too human for Schwarzenegger. He thought it sounded “funny,” and instead wanted a more “machine-like” line: “I will be back,” because obviously machines do not like conjugations.
“‘And he says, ‘Are you the writer?'” Schwarzenegger recalled Cameron asking him. “And I said, ‘No,’ and he said, ‘Well, don’t tell me how to fucking write.'”
Cameron’s mercurial attitude on set is the stuff of Hollywood legend, so it’s no huge surprise that there was an interaction like this on the set of The Terminator. That was still in the early days of Cameron’s career, but considering that he went on to direct three of the highest grossing films of all time with Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water and Titanic, he clearly knows what’s what. The Terminator was a smash success as well, bringing in $78 million at the box office on a mere $6.4 million budget and launching a franchise which continues to this day.
Schwarzenegger laughs about the situation now, admitting that Cameron was “absolutely right.”
"It became the most quoted movie line, I think, in the history of motion pictures. So this just shows to you who was right and who was wrong."
Arnold is streaming now on Netflix.
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h/t Insider