Or it’s the best part, depending on whether you accept the movie’s goofy tone or not. 

True Lies walked so The Long Kiss Goodnight could run slowly limp.

Again I see this as a problem with the whole site and commenters relationship with films: they are either the best or a horrible problematic thing and usually the change from one to the other is a traumatic incident that makes it to a very life changing wake up call.

I can’t really relate, and it’s stereotyping, sure, I get that, but to me it comes off a bit like “Why do all the German characters in movies set from 1940 onwards always have to be the bad guy?”

It’s also right after the first Gulf War, and with the Beirut bombing in recent memory... And Libya and Iran were seen as threats through the previous decade in real life news as well as film (remember who Doc Brown was selling plutonium to)

I think you may have missed that the movie is a farce.

I think there were far fewer non-terrorist portrayals of Muslims or Arabs in media at the time. Nowadays it seems like a quaint complaint about True Lies, since there are a lot of depictions of those demographics that are something other than terrorists.

The purpose of the hotel scene was for him to come clean about what he does for a living. He was completely unprepared for her dance routine and probably expected something closer to what she started with, then to tell her the truth. That was a stab at marital communication from a guy already proven to be somewhat…

You do kinda think there’s a certain limit, as goofy the movie is, for the cartoon stuff, but then Charlton Heston rocks up as their boss and he’s got a goddamn eyepatch, and a healthy apetite for the scenery.

Is it xenophobic to depict terrorists as being Arab/Muslim? The movie came out in 1994, two years after al-Qaeda terrorists killed six people trying to destroy the World Trade Center using a car bomb, and four years after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole killed 17. Of course, in 1994, the most striking examples of…

Plus Season 2 of 24, where the bad guys were three Middle Eastern countries...and that’s literally all we know because the crew was clearly terrified of naming any actual countries so they’re always just referred to as “the three countries.”

Personally I don’t think they should cater to people who don’t follow their cinematic universe. They want to get as much money as possible though.

I love how you can plot such things. For example, the Red Dawn reboot absolutely marks the endpoint of China being the villain, because they had to spend millions in post-production to change everything to North Korea.

I have the exact opposite take - it was a wake-up call for a neglectful husband who thought everything he did was global life and death, and what she did was zero stakes (e.g. her going with the made-up copier excuse for why she was leaving the office when unbeknowst to her he stopped by). He was completely caught…

Eastern Europeans were also really easy since the collapse of the Soviet Union left the region a geopolitical mess and most Americans couldn’t pick one country on a map.

I can’t speak for his real-life personality (certainly having an affair, and child, with his maid, whom he had power over, wasn’t cool), but Arnold always had a pretty good comic sensibility. Not just here, but in Last Action Hero, Twins, and Kindergarten Cop, for example.

“How significant would it be if Cameron indeed made room for something like True Lies again, written and designed for this side of the 21st century?”

I don't see the abuse of Dushku as something the viewer has to deal with. I'd bet most people aren't even aware.

bill paxton describing jamie lee curtis as having ‘an ass like a 10 year old boy’ remains the craziest thing in this movie.

In other words, films that didn’t require a hefty amount of pre-viewing homework like so many movie universes demand today.