Giant Freakin Robot

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a true icon. There’s an obvious statement. He’s starred in a laundry list of blockbuster action, science fiction, and comedy films. Oh yeah, and he was the governor of California, and according to Demolition Man, he’ll be president one day. In a career full of iconic moments, none is more memorable than his line in Terminator: “I’ll be back.” But it almost didn’t happen.

Hawking his new memoir, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, Schwarzenegger stopped by Good Morning America. During the interview with George Stephanopoulos, the Governator told the story of how the line was almost something quite different. You can watch the clip below.

Have you ever wanted your own Endoskeleton Skull from the movie Terminator but didn’t want to pay so much for it? Well, this video is just what you’re looking for. James Bruton of Southampton, UK created his own Terminator EndoSkull with items he bought at a local dollar store. This is an impressive piece of craftsmanship, ingenuity and creativity to build something like this out of plastic bowls and cheap speakers.

In this age of 24-hour news networks, it’s hard for the little guy to get by. Viewers will still turn to their local news stations for stories that aren’t big enough to get national coverage, but how is any one station supposed to stand out from the pack? Should they rely on sweeps-week stunts? Attack-dog reporters sent to harass dishonest city councilmen? Perhaps run stories that tie into whatever pop-culture phenomenon precedes the nightly news, like my local channels used to do with The X-Files?

Or you could just let Skynet take over the station and let the unspoken threat of global nuclear annihilation drive your ratings through the roof. That seems to be the course settled upon by Tucson’s Channel 4, as announced by this billboard that assures residents that they can all sleep a little sounder now that Skynet is watching.

I remember, years ago, reading an interview with Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Brent Spiner where he said something to effect that he was limited in how much longer he could play Data, since androids don’t age, but he was continuing to. Apparently former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger comes from an entirely different school of acting when it comes to this area, because Moviehole is reporting the rumor that Arnie will appear in both the fifth and sixth Terminator films.

We might want to take this with a generous helping of salt, however. Moviehole’s report is based on a quote attributed to Schwarzenegger and originally published in the Action Effects blog…which has since been mysteriously pulled down. Here’s the quote (misspellings from original source):

I can’t say to much they want it held in secret if you know what I mean, but I will say that next year I will start filming it and it’s going to be one of the hardest films I have ever done I can tell you that already for sure… they have six months set aside just for filming, so I will be training and getting into the best physical shape I possibly can before filming starts.

It does follow Salvation although some of the producers and franchise owner were not to happy about the job McG did with it but they felt it was good enough to continue on and they want the fifth and sixth installments to be the closing of the franchise.