Arnold Schwarzenegger explains how his ‘I’ll be back’ tagline was an 'accident'

Leo played it perfect tone which was, he's shivering. He could barely form the words, he knows he's gonna die. We've already seen that. He's made *** sacrifice for her. Of course, very controversial. You know, that he could have gotten on the, on the, the, the raft with her, but he saw that it would have compromised her safety and he kind of steps back. He did what the gentleman on the ship did. I was happy when I wrote that scene, I'll be back, I'll be back. So that, that's *** funny thing because in the script, it, it actually read, I think I'll come back and there was something about the way Arnold said it with his then quite thick Austrian accent. That didn't sound quite right. And so I said, well, just switch it to, I'll be back, you know, and he said, really? I said, yeah, and we just kind of, you know, made it up, made it up in the moment and of course, it became quite iconic. But here's the interesting thing about that line. You're watching the movie for the first time, you have no idea what's gonna happen next. And yet it still got *** laugh somehow people had gotten already. This guy was this bulldozer. You just get this innate sense of this guy as just this juggernaut. And when he says I'll be back, it's gonna be bad. So people laughed before they even knew they didn't even know what *** Terminator movie was at that point. Well, I think they were starting to figure it out. Come with me if you want to live. Terminator Two. That's the pivotal moment where Sarah has this stunning realization that the Terminator that's before her, her worst nightmare has turned into her savior and the savior of her son. And it was just *** fun moment to see how Linda would play that. We knew it was *** tough moment for her because her whole reality literally flips upside down. She played it beautifully. It's just *** nice piece of acting chicken. Oh, it's *** pure moment of exultation for him. He's just alive. He's in the moment he doesn't have *** penny in his pocket. He won the damn ticket in *** poker game. He's just living carefree fancy free. He's met Fabrizio and they're just having fun. It was an expression of life, his life spirit, which seems so unquenchable and so full of potential. Every time I'm aching by, I'm getting ready to do *** run. I'm, I'm talking to Leo on the radio. Ok. Howl, like *** wolf. You know, I got him howling like *** wolf. We tried it, you know, I don't know, 10 times and he looked great and his, his acting spirit was there, but we just couldn't quite find the right word and it just popped into my head. I said, just say, I'm the king of the world. I hear back on the lucky what I said, you gotta sell it, you gotta sell it. You know, just say I'm the king of the world and he did and he put his arms out and you feel that spirit and it became the focal point of the whole scene, the whole ship's energy, the pounding of the engines, the dolphins jumping and everything, all, you know, the sort of the beauty and the power and the majesty of it all culminated to his, his spirit at the, at the bow. Now I come along at the Academy Awards and make the classic mistake of assuming that just because we had won best picture or that, that I got be best director that everybody in the room loved the movie and would celebrate *** reference to the movie, but they weren't, not everybody voted for it, right? And the knives are always, they're, they're kind of always half drawn even when they're there to celebrate you. The knife is half out of the, out of the, the hilt. I mean out of the, the sheath, right? Yeah. So I put my foot in that one, Jack. I want you to draw me like one of your French girls, *** lot of people have, have kind of mocked and spoofed that line. But I think *** lot of people really like it. She's bold. She's taking the power. She's been robbed of power by her fiance, by her mother, by her social straitjacket. He's this devil may care, free spirit, artistic spirit, all the things that she wants to be and she just flips the script and tells him to do his thing. I think people celebrate her empowerment as *** character in, in that moment, it's also the promise of romance, the promise of sex. It's also this great liberation and it's my 40 something year old hand as Leo's 20 year old hand. But I do the, the picture and then Leo just made some head scratching, you know, while he was fiercely concentrating on, on her and pretending to draw. The only problem is I draw left handed and he was madly drawn way right handed. I should have made *** draw left handed. When you sketch, there's an arc that's formed by your wrist. So all my lines are arching in this direction. Now, I've got to do the drawing backwards. So if you look in the movie, I'm doing the outlining, but I'm not doing any of the shading. I'm doing the smudging cause I couldn't do it because the arcs were all the wrong, wrong direction. I don't know about you, but I intend to write *** strongly worded letter to the White Star line about all this. I just think people appreciate Jack's presence of mind to be taking the stress out of the situation for her by making *** joke. And Leo played it perfect tone which was, he's shivering. He can barely form the words. He knows he's gonna die. We've already seen that he's made *** sacrifice for her, of course, very controversial. You know, that he could have gotten on the, on the, the, the raft with her, but he saw that it would have compromised her safety and he kind of steps back. He did what the gentleman on the ship did when they stepped back from the life boats to save the women and Children first because that was honor and duty. I was happy when I wrote that scene. Get away from her. You ***. That's *** great uh iconic moment. The moment we knew we had them was then they just burst into wild applause on that line. They loved it. So we knew the movie had had landed. And then you realize this movie is about two females of different species, protecting their young and it's on, it was just the right line at the right time in that movie. And then the audience response to it reminded me why you do this. I was *** marine. Hey, yeah, *** warrior of the jarhead clan. My brother Dave uh was *** marine. He died recently and you go your whole life as *** marine. Jake doesn't matter where he goes in the universe if he was *** US marine at some point, he's *** marine. Only *** marine can call himself *** jarhead unless they're *** marine. In which case it's ok. So that was just *** little inside kind of marine corps reference. I put ***, I put *** few of them in, you know, kind of for my brother Dave who's *** guy that I really loved and admired. I see here, I see you, I see you as *** very important line. It resonates for people *** lot just popped into my head while I was writing the treatment in 95. And it's like, what would *** navy greeting be? You're walking towards somebody and I see you, you know, I basically kind of the simplicity of it, right? And then it started to take on various layers of meaning as I thought, well, what do people really want? They want to be seen? They want to be acknowledged, they want to be recognized, they want to be respected, they wanna be loved seeing it. It took on *** deeper meaning. Jake's kind of struggling with the idea. But of course, the whole movie is about that. The movie starts with him opening his eyes and it ends with him opening, he has woken up to *** greater experience of the world to *** deeper understanding. He's the only human that's ever truly understood the navi from their perspective and he inhabits as his avatar, he inhabits their world. And of course, he's learning from this woman that he's falling in love with. I think you're never more open than when you're falling in love with somebody that can teach you something. And so I see you took on many meanings. You know, I understand you, I acknowledge you, I respect you, I love you. There's the top layer of the movie which is plot and character. And then there's the second layer of the movie, which is thematic, right? Which is about themes of indigenous culture and human civilization, kind of at war with itself, you know, pulling us away from our connection to nature and all those, all those things. But there's another layer, there's *** tertiary layer which is mystical. If we don't service that layer as well, then we're not really doing *** worthy sequel or worthy Sequels to the first film. It continues to be important to ask the audience to see kind of with better eyes, some of the things that are, you know, our problems and our world. I mean, Avatar doesn't pretend to have some great solution. It's just saying, you know, our our our human journey is is very troubled right now. This is our whole, this is our family, this is our fortress. I question it. As I go along spending five years on essentially one ip one, you know, it's, it's 2.5 movies that we've been working on over the last last five years. You know, I question it and then I start seeing the results and then it's *** no brainer at that point. Then it just all comes to life and that world comes to life and you see the characters come to life. It's kind of magical. You know, sometimes I have to pinch myself when I see the end result of the process. So you just have to have faith in the process as you, as you go along. I knew I wanted to tell *** family story. I wanted to as an artist express some of the, the things, the ideas, the feelings that I had as *** parent and that I had observed in my kids and I'd done sort of parent child stories in the past, even all the way back to, to aliens and uh Terminator Two, but I hadn't lived it. There was *** lot of uh sort of great dramatic grist for the mill there uh around the dysfunction of families. But how there's *** strength at the core of families that helps get people through times are all in this highly angst ridden, highly anxious time. Right now. I wanted to within *** fantasy world show, special to *** young audience. It's ok even in even, you know, 200 years from now on *** distant planet, you know, kids are still gonna feel anxious or, or, or depressed or, or unseen, it's ok. You know, I'm just not only channeling my experience as *** parent, but my experience as *** teenager myself. And I just thought that that foundation of universal human experience put into the most far flung fantasy environment that you can imagine grounds it emotionally.