You might think the only lesson in Schwarzenegger movies is “Don’t fight gigantic Austrians.” And that if you have to teach someone that, you’re not so much spreading morality as preventing natural selection. But we spent our childhoods watching him chew terrorists up and spit them out, usually while trying to pronounce words longer than one syllable, and now we want to claim that was educational.
“Little Billy got an A in marksmanship, but needs to work on his one-liners.”
So we watched his filmography to extract important moral lessons. That’s our excuse for rewatching Predator at work, and we’re sticking to it. (Important Moral Lessons For A Happy Life #s 1 & 2: play by your own rules, and rewatch Predator.)
Get Good At One Thing
They’re always telling us about the importance of being balanced individuals, because they want us all clustered in the middle where it’s easier to keep an eye on us. But it’s far better to be better than everyone else at one thing. Even when that thing is “exist in a human body” or “be a Mr.” Arnold punched into the public consciousness on the back of Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia titles. In his first movie he was credited as “Arnold Strong,” before he realized that if he could compress us into the shape of a grapefruit with his bare hands, the least we could do was learn how to say his name.
“I just squeeze people until the noises I want come out.” (Source: Universal Pictures)
He gained international fame based on the size of his muscles, which should have been obsolete when they invented forklifts. Then he took over an entire state based on the foundation of his fantastic strength. That tactic shouldn’t work on anything larger than a Viking longboat. Arnold Schwarzenegger flexed his way into people talking about his possible presidency.
Your ability to make amusing noises under your armpit might not elevate you to the same level of debate (although with the quality of recent political discussion, it might be a refreshing voice of competence), but having one thing you can do better than everyone else is a massive psychological advantage. Even if you’re just the guy who can always barbecue burgers just right, that’s something to be known for. And it means you’ll always be invited to barbecues. In fact, forget the weightlifting, that’s how to flesh your way to a finer life.
And preparing meat for consumption is still technically bodybuilding.
Share Your Life With Your Partner
True Lies is about a man who spends too much time at work, takes his wife for granted, she thinks about cheating, there’s a big crisis and then everything works out. It’s the first Lifetime movie to feature jump-jets and explosives.
The hero even manfully rides a horse (Source: 20th Century Fox)
It also tackles the worst gender stereotype in cinema: the idea that only men want to do fun things, and women only exist to stop them. The most blatant example of this is Grown Ups, but that’s because the blatant example of everything wrong with modern cinema is Grown Ups. True Lies taught men around the world that life is better with an equal partner. Share everything with your other half and you’ll be surprised what they’re capable of.
Which reminds us, we have to watch Trading Places again. (Source: 20th Century Fox)
If you think women are just wet blankets you can wrap around your genitals, neither of you are going to have a good time. And you can’t afford to be worse at women than any incarnation of Schwarzenegger. This is a man who couldn’t be bothered to leave his own home before cheating, and assumed his housekeeper could dispose of his gametes like any other sticky stain. If you can avoid actively impregnating other women in your own home, you’re already more of a man than Schwarzenegger.
Watch Admirable People
The Running Man was intended as a brutal dystopia of consumerist television, but compared to the reality TV we ended up getting it’s more aspirational than the Olympics. It’s a movie about watching professionals do what they’re great at as hard as possible. Buzzsaw is the world’s most popular lumberjack, Dynamo found a way to make the masses watch opera, and Sub-Zero gets a whole stadium to himself because he’s the last surviving member of the NHL.
With the greatest epitaph of all time. (Source: Braveworld Productions)
The crowd only started supporting Arnie when it turned out he was even better at killing people. The street scene shows a vibrant community scene built around a meritocracy, and taught them more math than most community colleges. Those people got up, got out, and ended up changing society as a result of that inspirational program. Compare that to the bored mental porridge resulting from a ten-hour marathon of Duck Dynasty.
So what’s the solution? Watch more Schwarzenegger movies. We’re not kidding: this could save the entire entertainment industry. Reality TV is how the networks use advanced technology to get better at getting worse. While movies have to spend millions of dollars exploding trained professionals, reality TV throws a handycam at non-union grunts filming Swamp Airboat Gasoline Suppliers and hopes for the best. These reality shows race to the lowest common denominator, because they know that that lowest number is one: one moment of being bored, one moment of laughing at idiots, one moment of not being bothered to change the channel, and the next thing you know you’ve wasted a day of your life watching people sell their toddler daughters not just on but to daytime TV.
To reduce depression, we use an image of a girl who probably won’t be memorialized in The Huffington Post.
Why waste your life watching people who can’t be bothered to make a proper program? We were blowing up petrol tankers in ’80s movies–we should we exploding at least one space station a week and new planets on Sundays. You know there are hundreds of awesome movies you’ve already seen, and hundreds more you haven’t gotten around to, so why would you watch Highlights of Idiot Asylum Security Camera 17. Why watch Chopped Hog Pimpers when you can watch Terminator? Why watch Non-Union Soap Opera when you can see Commando? Who, who on this earth would sit through an episode of Scavenging Dead People’s Belongings For Fame when they could watch True Lies, where each dead person is accorded the respect of several million dollars of missile technology each?
Of course, the best solution would be to enter every reality show cast into The Running Man. Which is also the best solution for the species. And it’ll be nice to have a popular show which doesn’t disappoint everyone with the final episode. Because when that show runs out of subjects, it’ll have made the world a better place.
Luke McKinney writes about games, drink, science, and everything else that makes life amazing. He’s a columnist on Cracked and writes for several beer magazines. He’s also available for hire. Follow him on Tumblr and Twitter @lukemckinney.
Luke dispensed some good life advice of his own in Pick Up @$$#()!%$: Don’t Call Them Artists.
There’s probably a right way to wear a fedora, but boy, you’d have to be James Bond to show people you aren’t part of the douche brigade.
