You can never have enough Arnold Schwarzenegger on a list of the best action movies. Call it a difference of opinion, call it correcting the record — either way, we think the Looper web site got a few things wrong on their list of the best action movies.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00What's up everybody, Grippy here. Today I thought we could talk about my friends over
00:04at Looper and their list, the 108 best action movies of all time, and how I had me screaming
00:10in agony as my eyes bulged out of my head like I was stuck on the surface of Mars.
00:14How in the hell did The Hunger Games make this list? How is there only one Sylvester
00:19Stallone movie? And it's sad Rambo, not muscle-bound mom haircut Rambo.
00:23The most glaring omission on this list has to be Total Recall. Total Recall to me is
00:28an easy top 10 greatest action movie of all time. Sorry Looper, you got this wrong.
00:35Do you think this is the real Quaid? It is.
00:41Now Arnold is undeniably the king of the action movie to me. If you're doing pantheon Arnold
00:46movies, right, every single one of them should be in the top 50 on this list. Conan the Barbarian,
00:51Predator, True Lies. He made possibly the greatest action movie of all time, Terminator
00:552, but not far behind that has to be Total Recall. He picks action movies that have the
01:01heft and support of another genre. So a lot of his movies lean heavily on fantasy, science
01:07fiction, maybe even some horror tropes. That gives these movies extra weight. Total Recall
01:13is an incredible science fiction story on its own, which lets the kind of beat-em-up,
01:18muscle-bound storytelling feel bigger and more impressive than it might be.
01:22Another thing that we need in every single Arnold movie is amazing one-liners. From drilling
01:27a hole into the side of an excavating machine and yelling, to when asked what he's feeding
01:35that python and he says, blondes. There are great one-liners all the way through this
01:40movie, right? These are the kind of things that has made Arnold the meme king of the
01:46action genre. Arnold's not afraid to look like a buffoon on screen. He's not afraid
01:54to scream and make hideous faces with his horse teeth hanging out as he's strapped
01:58into various chairs and machines in this movie. In a world where we have movies where The
02:02Rock and Vin Diesel ride into their contracts, they cannot lose fights, to watch Arnold pretty
02:07much get his ass kicked by his wife Sharon Stone, that's all you need to know. And Arnold's
02:13absolute, I don't give a shit how stupid I look attitude is the reason we loved him
02:18so much. As the movies get more bizarre and zany, Arnold never shied away from going there
02:24and looking like a buffoon. The fact that the audiences of the time were not turned
02:30off by how weird and sci-fi this movie was, is a wonderful testament to how charismatic
02:35and powerful Arnold was at the time.
02:37What's in the two-week package?
02:39First of all, Doug, let me tell you, when you go recall, you get nothing but first-class
02:43memories.
02:44The story centers around a business called Recall, which for a way cheaper cost than
02:48an actual intergalactic vacation, you can go and have memories implanted in your mind
02:53that are indistinguishable from the actual memories you would get on a normal vacation
02:58without all the muss and fuss. This is such a cool idea to start a movie on. And it's
03:04the kind of movie that's aging with us. All we do now is talk about how none of us live
03:08in the same reality. None of us know what's true anymore. This movie takes that and makes
03:12it fun and not scary like our day-to-day lives. This is a guy who watches the news every day
03:16and sees the troubles on Mars and wants to go there as his wife's constantly annoyingly
03:22distracting him with, you know, sex. What a hard life this guy leads, right? We get
03:27amazing set pieces like Arnold walking through an x-ray machine. He clearly has a gun and
03:32he leaps through right at us, the audience. Who could ever forget the first time Arnold
03:36tries to go through customs disguised as a gigantic ginger lady? Do you like dicks? How
03:42about three of them? This is just watching meathead wish fulfillment. His fantasies are
03:46to beat up and murder his wife violently, right? Consider that a divorce. We see that
03:51his co-worker who constantly is giving him life advice, Arnold kills him, right? We are
03:56watching a really in-depth and kind of personal array of what these bodybuilder types want.
04:02And it works as this kind of beautiful way to make fun of the action movie while totally
04:08reminding us of why we love these movies so much. It's an incredible balancing act, this
04:13movie finds.
04:14Kiss me quick before you wake up.
04:22A lot of this movie centers around this big theory, right? Is the movie we watch an implanted
04:28memory from Rekall? Or did Rekall accidentally unwire his brain to where he knows the truth
04:35and that he was actually this freedom fighter on Mars? Here's what I'll say. Who cares?
04:40Action movies are one of the least realistic and silly things we ever watch. People cannot
04:45punch other people in the face 200 times in a row without gloves on and not shatter their
04:50hands into soup. Have you seen a Fast and the Furious movie? They fly cars in space
04:55and punch missiles now.
04:57Alright Looper, here's a much more respectable top five. We're pulling out Crouching Tiger,
05:01Hidden Dragon because people kind of just float by each other. There's very little action.
05:05At three we have Speed. I will never say a bad word about Speed other than to say it's
05:10not a top ten action movie of all time.
05:12At number four we have Raiders of the Lost Ark. If that makes your top ten, I get it.
05:16It doesn't for me because of the hammy cartoon sound effects on every punch. That's just
05:21a personal flavor thing that movie rules.
05:23Five is The Dark Knight. I can hear the Nolan fanboys getting mad at me. You are out of
05:28your mind if you think that is a top 20 action movie. Almost no superhero movie should be
05:34on this list. Daredevil season one with the hallway fight can be on this list. Maybe Blade.
05:39That's it. The rest of you are kicked out. I agree with you. Die hard maybe number one.
05:44Then you go Terminator 2. Then you go The Matrix. Then you go Total Recall. Then I would
05:49put hard-boiled maybe honorable mention The Raid Redemption. Do better.
05:54See you at the party Richter.
05:56Looper you clearly got this wrong. How dare you not put respect on Total Recall and the
06:01king of action Arnold. I'm going to go right down to Recall and get a memory implant into
06:05a world where the Incredibles could never make a list of best action movies.