"the-terminator"

As producer/director Roger Corman once told me, movies are a kind of alchemy, an outcome of many complex elements. Bad movies can be forged from wrongheaded decisions, great ones can often be attributed to … plain dumb luck. The resulting concoction is all that counts. Of course, when you watch an amazing performance in a great film, it’s hard to envision how it could have been done any other way. Casting is crucial because most often we associate movies with the actors that star in them. But consider how differently a movie might have turned out if an alternate choice had been made. Just a tiny shift in the recipe can make a world of difference.  Here then is a list of 9 actual “what might have been” casting choices from some of our favorite films that prove my point. 

It boggles the mind that only a couple of generations back, women were sometimes referred to as “the weaker sex.” That’s not only sexist, but misleading.  Plenty of tough, cunning, even deadly female characters have graced the screen over the past six decades that prove this idiotic saying wrong.   Here are an even dozen.

It’s a bit of a mystery why lines like  “Do I feel lucky?” (“Dirty Harry,” 1971)  and “I’ll be back!” (“The Terminator,” 1984) enter the popular zeitgeist, but there’s no denying they do. And there’s more than a bit of magic to that.

“The Terminator” (1984) tells the story of a time-traveling android, or “Cybernetic Organism,” from a bleak future where self-aware robots wreak havoc against a limited human resistance.   Ah-nold Schwarznegger, the former Governator and Nanny Lover, turns monotone into an art in “Terminator,” dispatching stunt men and dislodging eyeballs with aplomb. It took James Cameron, a director whose weakness usually lies in the script department, to exploit Arnold’s limitations as an actor and spin it into gold. In fact, Arnold spoke only 58 words throughout the entire film. With more judicious editing, it could have been 48.   Anyway, it doesn’t take Shakespearean monologues to get the point across to Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton, the former long-suffering Mrs. Cameron) that her life is in danger, and suddenly she’s taking a crash-course in dodging murderous robots alongside her savior, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn).