twentieth Century Fox
No one winkle any longer when a picture show costs $ 100 million . That ’s whatmostHollywood motion-picture show be today , is n’t it ? It ’s what Apple spend , for example , on this past weekend’sFly Me to the Moon , the kind of frothy , human being - scaled , grownup - orientate comedy that ’s often reference as counterprogramming to the expensive blockbusters the studios otherwise bankroll . Meanwhile , last year’sThe Creatorwas celebrated for achieving its eye - popping special - effect spectacle for the lowly , humbled cost of … $ 80 million . Executives now cross the nine - figures line like it ’s nothing .
There was a clip , of course , when $ 100 million still meant something — when it was not just a high price rag for a movie , but thehighest . Thirty years ago , the summer military action - comedyTrue Liesexploded into theaters , usher the film industry into a new era of budgetary highlife . The Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle marked the first time a studio cough up $ 100 million before marketing . It was , in cost ( if not weighing machine or performance ) , the biggest movie ever made up to that point .
20th Century Fox
Does it arrive as any kind of surprise that the king of the world himself , James Cameron , was the director to pass that threshold ? Cameron and Schwarzenegger had come nigh to passing it with their previous collaborationism , Terminator 2 : Judgment Day , which was also the old record - holder for most money ever splurge on a motion motion picture . ( accord to some estimates , Cameron set the record in 1989 , too , with his sci - fi adventureThe Abyss . ) WithTrue Trygve Halvden Lie , the two reunited for a showy screwball blockbuster that seemed to put the steroidal Hollywood action movies of the decennary prior on , well , steroid hormone .
The years leading up to 1994 were an blazon raceway , emphasis on the ( oaky , toned , terrorist - strangling ) arm : Rippling action heroes expand their soundbox flock and torso counts , the wanton destruction and the budgets ballooning with them . The more and more ego - parodic testosterone fests of the eighties and beyond were all head to this one dodgy , oversized entertainment . More than that , True Lieswas the ultimate monument to Schwarzenegger ’s then - massive popularity , a star fomite that gave all of his hallmarks — pithy one - liners , ridiculous stunt , fiery explosion — their enceinte platform yet .
Watching the movie today is a time - buckle experience . In mode both wizard and much less so , it ’s apparently a smash from another era . That era is n’t always 1994 , either . Cameron may have marshaled state - of - the - artistic production engineering in pursuit of an enormous manifold payday , redefine spectacle on the leaflet of the new millennium , but there ’s something a niggling old - fashioned — some would say retrogress — about his turgid remaking of the much smaller French military action farceLa Totale !
Right from the in medium res opening , in which secret agent Harry Tasker dramatically egress from the shabu to crash a swanky Swiss party , it ’s cleared thatTrue Liesis seek a cheeky New Riffian on 007 . Of of course , it ’s absurd to cast a downright inhumanly built hercules with a thick , undisguisable Austrian accent as a spy . Almost as absurd as the idea that a guy who await like Schwarzenegger could convince his suburban family that he ’s an average , boring salesman . Whether the film recognizes the improbableness of the scenario or not , there ’s a goofy pleasure in seeing this particular muscular tissue man strain to project James Bond suavity . It ’s like if they tried passing Richard Kiel off as Roger Moore .
Cameron had expertly utilize Schwarzenegger ’s unimaginable body-build and striking limit inThe Terminator , and then capitalize on his comic potential in the sequel , which flip the T-800 into a strength of good and a deadpan Pisces the Fishes out of water . InTrue Lies , he mirrors Arnold ’s celebrity ubiquity by cast him as a authentic superhero — less a character than a billboard - sized allegory of the Schwarzenegger appeal , or what it had become by the mid-’90s . He ’s “ cool , ” he ’s “ funny , ” he ’s every flake the fantasy creation Arnold played in the former year ’s badmouth semi - hitLast Action Hero . By also making Tasker a tame family serviceman — albeit one hiding his line of severe workplace from his phratry — True Liesalso winks at the extent to which the kill auto fromCommandoandPredatorhad been softened into an all - eld pavilion attraction by ’ 94 .
As complete spectacle , the moving-picture show is amusing and occasionally exciting . There ’s a fun sequence where Harry takes off on horseback and ends up chasing a motorcycle - riding big guy through a mall . He also gets into a jokey shootout in a pristine restroom that forestall similar urinal - smashing scenes in laterJames BondandMission : Impossiblemovies . By the eternal last hr , however , the film ’s playful havoc has become more tiring than entertaining , with Cameron drift untold resources on a glib toon onset of prototypically Schwarzeneggerian destruction . There ’s a smirking irrelevance to the ferocity ; while some of the principal ’s other movies are more poisonous , few treat bloodshed as such a wan punchline .
Other element of the film are downright noxious , and always have been . unfeigned Liesepitomizes the hilarity in which Hollywood stereotypes Arabs and do by them as shank fresh fish . And the cardinal mirthful conceit — Harry discover that his mousey wife ( Jamie Lee Curtis ) may be having an affair , and uses the resources of the word community to pressure her into a fake titillating missionary post she thinks is real — is way more creepy than sexy . you may see the shape of something potentially amorous in this frame-up : Harry see that he ’s let the spark go out of his marriage , and finds a way to give his wife the adventure she ’s been craving . But his design basically amount to humbling and terrifying her , justly up to the movie ’s most iconic scenery — not an action congeal objet d’art , but rather the delusory hotel room rendezvous where she performs a “ seductive ” striptease at his incognito beckoning . Curtis , to her credit , almost ransom this whole glaring development with her goofy , dissemble vampiness . Almost .
Plenty of contemporary critic dingedTrue Liesfor its sexism and xenophobia , but audiences eat up the movie up . It was a big hit , if not the year ’s biggest . ( It fell short of two blockbusters released the same summertime , Forrest GumpandThe Lion King . ) The genie was out of the nursing bottle when it came to studio spending . Budgets would keep climbing in the long time after , crossing new milestones . Cameron himself would repeat that historic $ 100 million investing a mere three years later with his next moving picture , a footling trouble - chevy disaster weepie calledTitanic .
IfTrue Lieskicked off a new era of open pockets and ever - inflating investments , it was also something of a last hooray for its special kind of studio entertainment . The age of unstoppable muscle gentleman pout down punk was coming to an remainder . Of course , we still have towering he - man natural action poor boy ; to some extent , both Vin Diesel and The Rock have comport that Verbascum thapsus into the 21st century . But afterTrue Lies , the manufacture began to roam aside from budget - break bonanzas construct around a single macho star . The future would privilege laughable - book superheroes , intellectual property , and dazzling digital effects work ( like the kind ironically showcased inT2 ) over the analog charisma of a tough guy firing bullets and sarcastic osculation - offs . It was as if Cameron and Schwarzenegger contract that sort of movie to its logical endpoint — to a jokey , cartoonishly larger-than-life , wallet - void extreme — and in the process possibly hastened its inevitable decline .
The same could perhaps be said for Schwarzenegger ’s stock . True Liesmarked the elevation of his bankability . He had more hits in him ( the play along summer’sEraserdid unattackable business , for a movie nobody really call back ) and he ’d pull in some colossal paydays ( like the $ 25 million he netted to bring Mr. Freeze inBatman & Robin ) . But his status as the human beings ’s heavy movie wiz waned in the years afterTrue Lies , leading up to his long reprieve from screens and move into politics in 2003 . In 1994 , he was on top of the world , headlining the most expensive picture ever made , a glorify protection to the very qualities that had tug him to the upper echelon of Hollywood success . But what blend up must finally come down — except , obviously , when we ’re talking about moving picture budget , which are still reaching for new heights of spendthrift obscenity three decades later .
