The T-800’s most iconic line in The Terminator, “I’ll be back,” was almost changed for the worse at the behest of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Austrian Oak’s acting career is full of memorable roles, but probably the one he’s most associated with is the titular cybernetic organism in The Terminator and its follow-ups. As much grief as Schwarzenegger often gets for his lack of acting range, he turned out to be the perfect performer to play this role, first as a remorseless killer and later as a machine capable of learning empathy and compassion.
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So closely identified with the Terminator franchise is Schwarzenegger that despite all the series’ multiple reboots and reinventions, not a single entry has been completely free of the actor. Even Terminator: Salvation, while not featuring Schwarzenegger directly, saw his face CGIed onto a younger Terminator body. It’s hard to imagine the Terminator franchise ever fully cutting Schwarzenegger out of the picture, at least as long as he’s alive to contribute.
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Of all the great moments Schwarzenegger’s Terminator models have in the movie series, his most enduring is definitely the moment in the original film when the T-800 informs a policeman that he’ll be back. It’s a line that’s gone on to feature in every Terminator movie to date, usually said by Schwarzenegger himself, but not always. Yet, it almost didn’t happen as originally intended.
Terminator: Schwarzenegger Rewrite Almost Ruined An Iconic Line
![James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Terminator](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/James-Cameron-and-Arnold-Schwarzenegger-as-Terminator.jpg)
As first revealed by Arnold Schwarzenegger himself in interviews, when the soon to be legendary action star first read the script for The Terminator after accepting the title role, the “I’ll be back” line gave him pause as an actor. Schwarzenegger didn’t feel that a machine would contract “I will” to the more informal “I’ll,” and made his concerns known to director and co-writer James Cameron. The two men went back and forth a bit, eventually leading to an argument involving expletives.
While Cameron and Schwarzenegger would go to become great friends, and are still close today, this was their first time working together, and Cameron didn’t exactly appreciate his writing being critiqued. Eventually, Cameron blew up at Schwarzenegger, demanding he say “I’ll be back” like the script said, and insisting that he didn’t tell Schwarzenegger how to act, so the actor shouldn’t be telling him how to write. Just with a few more four letter words involved. Schwarzenegger said the line as written, and an immortal catchphrase was born. While changing “I’ll” to “I will” isn’t a huge alteration on the surface, it definitely wouldn’t sound quite as cool and confident coming out of The Terminator’s mouth.
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