Arnold Schwarzenegger’s life after leaving politics, as not
been an easy one; it came out that he had an affair with his family’s maid and
that he inadvertently fathered a child with her, which resulted in the end of
his marriage by divorce. In 2012, his tell all memoir Total Recall was published. In order to help promote the book,
Arnold did an interview for CBS’s 60
Minutes. As part of the interview, his affair was brought up and Arnold
brought up deep regret over it, hoping one day to reconcile with his wife even
they are in divorce. The same goes with his children. At the same time he
refuses to answer certain questions such as do his kids have a relationship
with their recently revealed half-brother, as he does not wish them to cause any
more pain then he already has. It also came out that he begged the maid not to
tell her family about the affair fearing that how’s it would leak. In short,
Arnold is trying to do damage control. His image of “New Age” Guy has been
shattered and his current image is of a man who has made a horrible mistake,
accepts he made it, and now his hoping for forgiveness (60 Minutes).
Since leaving politics a few years
ago he has returned to film, and his choices suggest an attempt to try and
rebuild his image to what it was before he entered politics. The three films he
has made that have been released are The
Expendables (2010), The Expendables 2 (2012), and The Last Stand (2013). His future films
include returning to his most famous and indeed iconic roles: the Terminator
and Conan the Barbarian (Movieweb). Obviously Arnold is doing his best to the
put the scandal behind him, but the question is he going the right way about
it? Naturally he would return to action films as part of his post political
life, but announcing he return to not one, but both of his iconic film roles
suggest he is hoping that his on screen persona will overshadow his activities
off screen. Keep in mind that his most famous role of the Terminator, went from
being a cold killing machine into a parental substitute, coinciding with his
own growing family that he started back in the 1990’s. Now that his family life
is in shatters, how will this affect the Terminator when he eventually comes
back for the fifth film in the series? Will he playing a Terminator, who has
been disgraced and is now looking for redemption and forgiveness? Of course
this is all mere speculation. But there is one post-scandal film that ties in
very well with the intextuality of Arnold’s screen and private life, The Last Stand, as pointed out in a
review on the website Film School Rejects.
In The Last Stand, Arnold plays a
small town sheriff who used to be a member of the LAPYD, before career related
injuries made him rethink his life, and became a sheriff in a border town in
Arizona, echoing in way Arnold’s choice to leave the glamour of Hollywood to be
a public servant in the form of California’s governor. In the film Arnold’s
character when asked why he would ever leave LA for a sleepy Arizona town, he
admits when he was a younger man he “wanted to be part of the action … but now,
thinking back, I feel differently.” Arnold himself as gone on record that during
his time as governor of California, he didn’t miss acting at all he even said
so during the promotional campaign for the film. After doing a film like that mirrors his personal life, one
wonders why his next projects are return to his glory days. Obviously Arnold’s
been out of the acting game for roughly a decade, and his film appearances have
been low-key, or at least have not generated that much attention as once would
expect (his baby scandal might have a hand in that). Arnold is hardly the first
celebrity to be embroiled in scandal: Roman Polanski, Robert Downey Jr, and
Woody Allen come to mind. But the main question is how he can overcome it. Obviously, he did the smart thing and
didn’t try to hide, or deny it (although it wasn’t enough to salvage his
marriage), and he is sincerely repentant about it, which e professed publicly
in interviews. He’s on the right track to rebuild his image, now his future
films and time will have to do the rest. Going back to Terminator and Conan are
his attempts to regain “trust” with the public, as these are his most famous
characters and he can build a better connection using these characters than
being in some average Hollywood action film.
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