Should Arnold Schwarzenegger come back?

As Arnold Schwarzenegger's career as the Governator draws to a close, will the Arnie-shaped hole in movies be filled again? And might it be best left gaping?
Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Badly missed … Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

The easiest way to evaluate the achievement of one Arnold Schwarzenegger, the son of a Styrian police chief who went on to become the world's beefiest movie star and governor of California, is to note the travails of those who tried to emulate him. Dolph Lundgren's acting career has barely kept beating after a succession of vapid straight-to-DVD action flicks, while Jean Claude van Damme's most notable recent performance was playing himself in the confessional JCVD, in which he pitifully reflects on his desperate fall from grace in a six-minute single take. Steven Seagal, meanwhile, finds himself in a similar position to Lundgren. Although, unlike the Swede, he has become so out of shape that a stunt double does the honours in many of his fight sequences.

None of the above can honestly be said to be in any huge demand, although Lundgren may be set for a brief comeback in Sylvester Stallone's forthcoming action romp The Expendables. Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, is so badly missed in the movies since his shift into politics that the producers of the latest in the Terminator franchise felt the need to shoehorn a CGI version of him into their film. Meanwhile, recent comments in the New York Times from the Governator's friend and former colleague Tom Arnold suggesting that a new film featuring Schwarzenegger is being planned have been immediately seized upon by eager bloggers hoping to see an Arnie comeback.

It's easy to see why. Between 1982 and 1994, Schwarzenegger succeeded in inventing himself as an entirely new type of movie star, a Herculean figure perfectly positioned to stride the Hollywood stage in the larger-than-life 80s, an era in which the action movie reached its zenith (and arguably, its nadir). Never a fabulous actor, Arnie, like Clint Eastwood before him, cruised along almost wholly on the strength of a captivating screen presence. For fantastical fare such as Conan the Barbarian or Total Recall, his unlikely physical proportions and idiosyncratic, cheeky charisma combined to allow audiences to suspend their disbelief: once they had accepted that an 18-stone, 6ft 2in behemoth could make a decent leading man, gaping plotholes seemed to wither into insignifance.

Since Schwarzenegger - who, don't forget, won the Mr Olympia contest seven times - exited, there have been attempts to cook up a worthy replacement, with little success. The Rock, aka Dwayne Johnson, emerging from the equally unlikely field of professional wrestling, and Vin Diesel, a former bouncer, both made claims to the Austrian Oak's action hero crown, but each seemed to zoom through remarkably short-lived purple patches and move straight to the sort of family-orientated comedic roles that Schwarzenegger took in later years, playing babysitters and, in Johnson's case, the Tooth Fairy.

Schwarzenegger is currently ineligible to run for president, as he was not born in the US. He must step down as California governor after two terms later this year. While there remains the possibility that he could run for the US Senate in 2010, Arnold's suggestion that his friend might be up for a True Lies-style action tale with James Cameron on board as director does not sound too far-fetched.

Arnie would no doubt find himself in some considerable demand, but a return to action fare at the age of 62 might be inadvisable. On the other hand, Harrison Ford, 67, recently enjoyed considerable box office success in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, while Sylvester Stallone, 63, is enjoying something of a comeback following a return to the roles of Rocky and Rambo.

If Schwarzenegger does return to acting, expect him to make wise choices. The actor has always been an astute picker, and worked hard in his mid-period to ensure that he was involved with the right people. It was he who got hold of the rights to the Philip K Dick novellette We Can Remember It for You Wholesale and brought Paul Verhoeven in to direct it as Total Recall in 1990. And he was bright enough to realise that a move into comedy might prove a wise move in the latter part of the 1980s, long before his physical prowess really began to fade.

Even so, there is the risk that a comeback might prove to be the first serious mistake of Schwarzenegger's career. Trading off past glories is never a wise move, and he would risk becoming a caricature of himself if he chose the wrong roles. It's also arguable that Arnie was long past his peak period as an acting star by the time he replaced recalled Democratic governor Gray Davis in 2003. True Lies is probably the last of his films that won plaudits from the critics, and that was way back in 1994 (though it's still getting people talking).

What's your view on a potential Schwarzenegger comeback? Would you love to see him return to the screen to show Christian Bale and Daniel Craig how it really ought to be done? Or would you rather be left with memories of bombastic 80s and 90s classics such as Predator, Total Recall and the two Terminator films? If he does return, what sort of films do you think late-period Arnie would be suited for?