Arnold Schwarzenegger Used His Failed 1980’s Movie As a Punishment For His Kids

Summary:

• Arnold Schwarzenegger is now widely famous thanks to his iconic role in the Terminator ’s franchise, but back in the day he didn’t have a very good experience with one of his movies that turned out to be his biggest career flop.
• The film, released in 1985, earned much less of its initial budget and was totally crushed by critics, eventually ending up with only 21% on Rotten Tomatoes.
• Despite the utter failure, Schwarzenegger managed to find a beneficial use for the film while forcing his kids into watching it as a punishment.

Arnold Schwarzenegger may be mostly known as the unconquerable Terminator, but not all of his career choices were that great.

Back in 1985, one year after a successful launch of the Terminator franchise, Schwarzenegger starred in his biggest cinematic fiasco so far — an epic sword and sorcery film Red Sonja.

The movie eventually ended up being a total box office failure with only $6 million grossed (against $18 million of the initial budget) and an utter critical disappointment with a miserable 21% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Despite the fact that even Schwarzenegger couldn’t save the movie from being a 100% disaster, the actor doesn’t seem to take it personally — quite the contrary, he even used this career failure for educational purposes.

Thus, in one of his interviews Schwarzenegger admitted that he himself considers Red Sonja the worst film that he’s ever made, but yet at some point he found a way to make the film quite useful in another matter.

The actor revealed that he used to make his children watch Red Sonja 10 times in a row in their rooms when they were misbehaving — and since then, according to the actor, he “never had too much trouble with them”.

Apparently, Schwarzenegger himself detests the movie so much that even thinks about watching it as some kind of cruel punishment. Many of those who have watched it may even agree with the actor — Red Sonja was literally crushed by both critics and viewers for all the actors’ bad acting, a weird and senseless script, bad cinematography and even a seemingly lazy score written by legendary Ennio Morricone.

Thus, Schwarzenegger’s revelations may come as one more life-hack for a good parenting book — but it’s still not a reason for multiplying cinematic failures though.

Source: Far Out Magazine