Arnold Schwarzenegger Is The Ultimate Action Hero According To Science
Ever wonder who is the ultimate action movie star? Well now you have the answer with Arnold Schwarzenegger taking the top prize
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Arnold Schwarzenegger is known basically worldwide as being one of the faces of the action movie genre for decades now. It’s been a remarkable run for the actor who took a quick detour to be the Governator of California for a bit before returning to kicking ass on the big screen. There’s never been a question about whether he’s a big action star, but rather we could debate if he’s the *biggest* of them all. Well now one website is claiming to have crunched the numbers and they think Arnold Schwarzenegger is, in fact, the ultimate action hero.
The website that brought math into the mix when determining the greatest action star of all-time is BetVictor, a United Kingdom betting site. According to their calculations, Arnold Schwarzenegger comes out on top when factoring in all kinds of data points from movies. In fact, they even broke it down by percentages to get a total view of an actor’s work on screen in action movies. The breakdown looks like this:
Box Office Take – 12%
Rotten Tomatoes Score – 12%
Bad Guys Killed – 11%
Number of hits received – 11%
Number of fast cars driven – 11%
Number of times they’ve cheated death – 11%
Punches thrown – 11%
Number of weapons used – 11%
Number of catchphrases used – 11%
I supposed we could debate if one of these categories should count for more than others. Or did they take the correct approach with a more evenly-distributed method? I think I would have gone for the former with box office sales and critical reviews counting for a bit more than the others. I’d also have jumped “Bad Guys Killed” up a few percentage points if we are really nitpicking. But regardless, when the tally was in and the punches were counted, Arnold Schwarzenegger came out on top. Just the sheer amount of hours needed to have watched these films and come up with the score is a feat all its own.
When looking at his resume, it’s easy to see how Arnold Schwarzenegger finished pretty far ahead of his peers. With franchises like Conan the Barbarian early on and the addition of the (still ongoing) Terminator movies, he laid such a solid base of action films. But then there are all of the one-offs early on like Commando, Red Heat, and The Running Man that really help things. The late-career stuff is there as well with The Expendables and Escape Plan. The guy has just been doing this for 40 years now and is there a better catchphrase than, “I’ll be back.”?
Other actors on the list following Arnold Schwarzenegger were Jason Statham and Bruce Willis. The former has basically only been in action films and the latter has Die Hard carrying the mantle. Tom Cruise and Sylvester Stallone finished fifth and sixth respectively. A surprise was Jet-Li coming in fourth overall. The highest female on the list was Michelle Rodriguez who finished higher than her Fast & Furious co-star Vin Diesel. And where the heck is Keanu Reeves?
Take a look at BetVictor’s list. Do you agree with the findings? Is Arnold Schwarzenegger in fact the ultimate action star or should someone else have finished first?
