Because we love a good action movie, and because we are feeling nostalgic, here is a complete ranking of all of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movies from worst to best. Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it seems, so before we get started, here is how we arrived at this completely unscientific and quite subjective list.

First of all, we decided to only rank the movies that Mr. Schwarzenegger (who will only be referred to as “Arnold” from now on) made during a certain time frame, namely from his breakthrough role in Conan The Barbarian, to the start of his career as a politician after Around the World in 80 Days. This is what we can more or less refer to as Arnold’s prime, or his golden age if you will. This is the time where he could do no wrong, and even his objectively terrible starring roles were welcomed by the movie-going public who was craving that trademark Austrian charm.

Second, though Arnold is more well-known for his action movies, we still included his comedies and tried to rate them on an equal footing. We thought it would be hard, but Arnold’s physical charisma transcends simple stunts and fights, and can often carry him through movies that require him to talk a lot.

Finally, although it is how the general public became aware of Arnold’s awesome presence, we excluded Pumping Iron because it is a documentary, no matter how entertaining the man can be as himself.

On to the list!

24 Arnold Goes To The Well One Time Too Many

Arnold’s Conan series was extremely successful and put him on the map as an actor. This is not one of those movies, because they are actually entertaining, and will thus appear much later in the list. This is Red Sonja. The movie was made in 1985, after directors figured that he was so good as Conan that they could just put Arnold in any fantasy setting and watch the money flow. Red Sonja proves this theory wrong in many ways.

First of all, Arnold plays Lord Kalidor, who is nothing more than a sidekick to Brigitte Nielsen’s Red Sonja. The movie focuses on a revenge story, kinda like every other Conan lookalike of that day. To make things even more confusing, the story is set in the same land as the Conan movies, but Arnold’s character is a completely different man, even though he dresses similarly and carries pretty much the same sword. The easy way to differentiate the movies, however, is that the characters in this one are only half as interesting, and the story is about twice as slow. It’s also incredibly archaic and questionable in its moral values. If you think I am being too hard on the movie, just know that Arnold himself has declared it to be the worst movie he ever made.

23 Arnold Has An Accident

The theory that something will work a second time because it was successful once was applied to Red Sonja, but it also affected Arnold’s comedy work. Junior is what happens when director Ivan Reitman thinks that Arnold and Danny Devito can make magic out of anything just because Twins was a decent movie. This time around, the two plays a geneticist and a doctor who decide to get Arnold’s character pregnant because they cannot find a willing subject to test out a drug which is supposed to prevent miscarriage.

The “comedy” comes from Arnold going through every single stereotypes one might ever have had about pregnant women, such as weird cravings and heightened emotions. He also develops an interest in massages and self-care, and he sometimes has a good cry while watching commercials on television.

It’s like a second-rate improv team’s idea of what pregnancy is like.

What really disappoints is that the movie is full of extremely capable and funny actors, such as Emma Thompson and Pamela Reed, but the material they are given is so terrible that they sink with the movie. You would think that watching Arnold go to an expecting mothers’ retreat in drag would be funny, at least for the overacting and the faces he makes, but Junior can’t even make that work.

22 Arnold Stops Armageddon

In End of Days, Arnold stars as Jericho Cane, a New York police officer, and his partner is Bobby Chicago, and together, they are the most ridiculously named cop duo in the history of action movies. This is the least of the movie’s worries, however, as it is terribly acted, directed, and written. Strangely, the project could have been very different, with names such as Guillermo Del Toro, Tom Cruise, Kate Winslet and Liv Tyler being attached to it at various points during production, but instead, we ended up with this.

The movie takes place right at the turn of the 21^st century, and Arnold must stop Satan himself from getting a woman pregnant before the new millennium starts, for it would bring forth the end of the world or something like that. End of Days tries to convince you of how bad this would be with gratuitous bloodletting, but even Gabriel Byrne at his sleaziest cannot manage to make Satan interesting. As for Arnold, he obviously wasn’t feeling it in this one. His character is supposed to be chronically depressed after having lost his family to a hitman, but all he can manage is puppy dog eyes and the occasional frown. The only way you can tell his character is sad is because he doesn’t shave. By the midpoint of this film, you’ll be begging for the apocalypse to end your suffering.

21 Arnold Catches A Cold

Despite the movie’s well-earned reputation, Batman & Robin is surprisingly not the worst movie of Arnold’s career! Still, it is without a doubt the worst Batman movie ever made. George Clooney is miscast as the Dark Knight, and the story finishes what Batman Forever started by completely abandoning, then taking to the woodshed and burying in the ground, the moody world and atmosphere built by Tim Burton in the first movie of the series. This article is about Arnold however, so how did he fare?

Obviously, he did not know that the film would turn out the way it did. Arnold nearly brings up the movie to his enthusiasm level, with sheer campiness and a strong helping of cold-based pun. As an 80s action movies veteran, Arnold has a lot of experience with stupid puns, and the script here is giving him all he can handle. There’s a wonderful montage of all the one-liners his Mister Freeze utters being played one after the other, and it makes you think that this might be a wonderfully silly little film. Unfortunately, Batman & Robin is longer than 4 minutes, and the rest of the cast isn’t trying half as hard as Arnold. If everyone had embraced the ridiculousness as much as he did, it might have been watchable despite the senseless script.

20 Arnold Will Only Be Here For A Short While

Around the World in 80 Days is the last movie Arnold made in his prime before he took his political hiatus. Unfortunately, it’s little more than a glorified cameo, even though the publicity for the movie tried to make you believe that he had a much bigger role. As a retelling of Jules Verne’s classic book, it takes many liberties with the story, to the point where the only thing it has in common with the source material is the name of the characters and the general premise. Everything that happens in between is designed to give Jackie Chan’s character, who in the original story is merely a sidekick, a lot more to chew on.

As for Arnold, he plays the role of Prince Hapi, a monarch who appears on screen for a few minutes as a minor villain when the main characters make a short stop in Turkey.

He hams it up for the camera, but there’s only so much he can do in ten minutes.

It also feels slightly weird for a man with a strong Austrian accent to be playing a Turkish Prince, because you can’t suspend your disbelief. While I am usually willing to accept whatever Arnold’s role is supposed to be, here, he just looks like regular Arnold in a community theater costume.

19 Arnold Takes Down An Entire Country (Then Saves Another One)

Seeing Collateral Damage for the first time, I thought we were going to see a different side of Arnold. He is almost touching at the start of the movie, as he does real acting and shows real emotions. His character is a simple fireman (not an ex-spy, or a commando, or a one-man wrecking crew) who has lost his family in a terrorist attack. Unlike in End of the Days, he actually emotes in a way that is proper for someone who has suffered at length. We might really be on to something here!

And then, the fireman decides to take matters into his own hands. At that point, the movie degenerates into the worst stereotypes of the rest of Arnold’s filmography. He travels to a tropical setting, and takes down the bad guy’s base single-handedly, and also saves a couple of innocents along the way. It’s all extremely predictable. And then, because the movie tries to prove me wrong, there’s a twist near the ending where we learn that the real villain was the very same innocent he saved! The way it is presented makes it obvious that the movie thought it was really clever, but it’s not enough to make the previous hour and a half any more interesting.

18 Arnold Avenges A Good Friend

After watching Raw Deal, you will feel like you have seen Arnold do that movie many times before, but you would be wrong. The movie is not as well-known or as popular as the rest of his filmography, but it was one of the first to employ the formula. Released in 1986, it has some really good action and some brutal fights, and I can officially say that it is the first movie in this list which I would deem “tolerable”. However, it doesn’t mean that it is without flaws.

Raw Deal is a classic revenge story, although by proxy. Arnold must avenge an elderly ex-FBI agent who has lost his son to a mob hit. It’s convoluted, but whatever sends Arnold in any direction to start kicking butts works for me. What doesn’t work as well is the weird secondary characters and unnecessary additions. These drag the story down. For example, did we really need the backstory with Arnold being demoted to being a small town sheriff and his alcoholic wife who doesn’t cope well with the new life? Couldn’t he just avenge his friend while being a regular, loyal friend who didn’t have problems of his own? It’s like they tacked on half of a Hallmark Channel movie’s script on top of their usual “Arnold beats up people who wronged him” story.

17 Arnold Is Russian Now

Red Heat is definitely a product of its time, but it still works despite the dated jokes and obvious changes to the political landscape. Arnold is pretty funny as the straight-faced Moscow cop stuck in the US back when the USSR was still a thing, and the movie has all the makings of a classic buddy cop comedy. Unfortunately, his partner in this is James Belushi.

This is “prime” James Belushi, if there ever was such a thing, so his “anger management issues” act had not gotten old yet.

However, if you are watching this years later, after too many episodes of According to Jim, you might want to avoid this.

Red Heat really plays to Arnold’s strengths by putting him in a role which is a role tailor-made for the early part of his career. The strong accent actually adds to the character! When it is not busy overindulging Belushi’s loudmouth police officer, the movie focuses on good action and solid car chases. The final chase, where the good guys and the villain each have their own Greyhound bus, is worth the price of admission by itself. It’s not a highlight of American cinema by any means, but there’s more than enough here to keep you entertained all the way through.

16 Arnold Learns A Valuable Lesson About The Spirit Of Christmas

Objectively, Jingle All The Way is a pretty terrible movie. However, I do have a soft spot for it because I catch it every other year on television around Christmas time and it has become an expected and comforting presence.

If we focus on the bad parts, we have to start with Sinbad, who is particularly insufferable. He plays a mailman who loses his grip on reality because his son wants an action figure of Turbo Man. Arnold kinda does the same if we’re being honest, he’s just a lot more likable. Actually, the more I think about it, the more it seems like everyone has lost their mind in this movie. These people are willing to make fake bomb threats, kidnap kids, break into their neighbour’s home and beat each other up over an action figure. So why is this movie not ranked any lower?

Other than the previously mentioned Arnold charm, the real star of this movie is Phil Hartman. He is hilarious as the annoying neighbour, the perfect storm of smarminess and class, with just a touch of sleaziness on top of it all. It’s one of the few movies on this list where Arnold gets the spotlight stolen from him, and Hartman's performance saves the movie.

15 Arnold Stars As Arnold Schwarzenegger

Last Action Hero is a hard movie to pin down. It was marketed towards kids at the time of its release, but it also has a surprising amount of violence for something supposed to be family-friendly. It also has a very interesting premise: a child can move back and forth between the real world and the movie world with the help of a golden ticket stub, and he uses it to help his favourite movie character apprehend bad guys. That hero is Jack Slater, a cop obviously played by Arnold.

The movie honestly starts out great, and it’s a lot of fun to watch the kid help Arnold figure out how his own movie work. However, it jumps the shark around the time where the movie-within-a-movie’s henchman steals the ticket and tries to assemble a team of fictional supervillains to take over the real world. At this point, Arnold plays both himself and Jack Slater, and the lines start to blur. If Last Action Hero had stayed about the kid helping Arnold to figure out the ins and outs of his universe, it could have been a fun satire. Instead, I was honestly confused by the end, and judging by everyone’s performance, I wasn’t the only one.

14 Arnold Wants To Meet His Long Lost Brother

Before Junior forced them to play out one of the worst scenarios ever put to paper on a giant screen, Twins actually did really well for itself by exploiting Arnold and Danny Devito’s respective forces. The two are a really funny comedy duo when they are not saddled with embarrassing jokes and are allowed to be themselves. Therefore, Twins casts Arnold as a genetic freak and Devito as a sleazy character with a good heart, a role which he would excel at over the course of his career.

The story of Twins is ridiculous enough to make everyone understand that it is supposed to be a comedy, and not just ridiculous in a “brainless action movie” way. Those high-concept comedies from the 80s can be hard to sum up, but let’s try: Arnold and Devito are twins who were separated at birth, the result of a genetic experiment gone wrong.

One is freakishly tall while the other is, well, Danny Devito.

When they finally meet, they try to meet their unknown mother while escaping from loan sharks. It sounds stupid, but the chemistry between the two actors help the movie rise above what it would have been otherwise: an average film stuck somewhere between an action movie and a family drama. The movie gets rated near the halfway point simply because of the stunt where the car is driving on two wheels, which I thought was the coolest thing ever as a kid.

13 Arnold Meets Arnold

I remembered hating The 6^th Day when it came out, but upon rewatching it, I found it to be a surprisingly deep science-fiction movie about cloning and the rights of said clones. The movie does lose some points when Arnold teams up with his own clone to save the day, because it’s something everyone saw coming the minute they learned that Arnold was in a movie about clones. Then, the movie wins the points right back because, well, it’s Arnold interacting with himself and acting against someone who was obviously not there at the time of filming, and it’s strangely entertaining.

How we get there doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you stop too long to think about it. Arnold’s boss perishes in an accident, so he gets cloned back to life. However, because cloning human is illegal, it means that everyone who was there gets taken out so they can be cloned back too, but without the memory of the illegal cloning. Seriously, if you turn your brain off just for that part, the rest of the story makes a good point about how we should treat clones in the future, if such a situation ever arises. You also get some solid action sequences too, because Arnold is always at his best when he is a man who was wronged and is only trying to get his life back.

12 Arnold Crushes His Enemies, Etc.

As the oldest movie of this ranking, Conan The Barbarian holds up surprisingly well when it comes to action and set pieces. However, it also shows its age in many places. Ultimately, it is still a good movie, even though I did not remember the insanely long down times between the action sequences. In some parts, Arnold just wanders the wilderness looking for nothing in particular for what seems like hours before stumbling onto the next character that will finally make the plot progress.

The story is incredibly misogynistic at times, since it seems like all the women in this movie are either treacherous witches or helpless weaklings waiting for Arnold to help. The sequel would thankfully take care of that somewhat (more on that later in this article!). This movie also takes itself way too seriously, which is rich coming from something which features Max Von Sydow and James Earl Jones in the campiest performances of their respective careers. Every line of dialogue, as inane as they are, is played as if it was written by Shakespeare himself. The movie still ranks highly because Arnold saves it through pure charisma despite a role which gives him little in the way of dialogue. Considering the absurdity of his few lines, one could say that it’s exactly why he's doing so good in this film.

11 Arnold Is The King Of Witness Protection

When it came out, I thought Eraser was the coolest thing because of the way it portrayed the near future, with slight technological advances which looked plausible enough to maybe one day become true. The problem is that the film was made in 1996, so the technology now seems outdated, particularly the part where Vanessa Williams’ character has to hack through the evil company’s mainframe to retrieve sensitive information. At least, the concerns about the protection of one’s private life and identity still hold true today.

Eraser is definitely second tier compared to some of Arnold’s better action movies, but it’s still very enjoyable.

The villain is sufficiently scummy to make his eventual downfall satisfying, and the action is more than entertaining enough to make what happens in-between enjoyable. The real star of the movie is, of course, the rail gun, a fictional weapon where someone can aim straight at your beating heart through walls and furniture, and then eliminate you before you realize what’s going on. If you have never seen the movie before, think of Perfect Dark’s Farsight Gun minus the funky color effects, and you’ve got something close. It’s those little parts that make it more memorable than some of Arnold’s lesser movies.

10 Arnold Goes Back To School

I’ve read some unflattering critics of Kindergarten Cop over at Rotten Tomatoes in preparation for this article, and it seems like not everyone will agree with me on this one. Kindergarten Cop is my jam. Arnold is legit funny as a crazy looking cop who’s out for revenge and has to control himself in front of a class room. I don’t know if he intended it like that, but he plays Detective John Kimble as if he was ready to snap on these kids at the slightest provocation. The role allows Arnold to use his comedy chops fully, and as a bonus, the kids are surprisingly good actors too!

A movie is often only as good as its villain, and thankfully, Kindergarten Cop delivers on that front. The bad guy is a complete jerk: not only is he a deadbeat dad who tries to blame his ex-wife for keeping her son away from his demented criminal of a father, he also has one of those sleazy-looking slick 90s ponytails and a cheap suit to match. It’s a combination of those things which makes it so satisfying when Arnold finally beats him senseless all over the deserted school. The movie doesn’t really do that much, but what it does, it does perfectly.

9 Arnold Tries To Save The World (And Fails)

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a pretty solid movie, even though it doesn’t even come close to touching the first two entries in the series. Its biggest flaw is that it has the worst John Connor in the history of Terminator, and then it spends the majority of its run time focusing on him. Apparently, Edward Furlong was going through some substance abuse issues at the time and couldn’t reprise his role. That’s unfortunate, as I am sure the movie would have improved tremendously. As it is, the movie is still enjoyable, but it is despite John Connor instead of because of him.

Arnold is, of course, just as good as ever as the Terminator. He had the recipe down by then, to the point where he almost makes Terminator Genisys watchable over a decade later. This movie has plenty of scenes where Arnold does Arnold things, like punching out walls, driving cars real fast, and battling robots which by all indications should be beating him handily, and it’s just as fun as ever. His opponent this time around is the TX Terminator, which is basically the T1000 except that it can also reprogram other machines. Still, the movie has plenty of chases and fights to keep you busy, even though the bleak ending is a bit of a let down.

8 Arnold Comes Back For More

Conan The Destroyer is not as well liked as Conan The Barbarian, but I beg to differ. I would argue that it is better because it doesn’t take itself as seriously as its predecessor. The problem with Conan The Barbarian is that it tries to play everything as straight as possible.

Conan The Destroyer realizes that Arnold is swinging a sword at witches, warriors and monsters while wearing little more than a loincloth.

It is ridiculous, it knows it, and it embraces it. Purists will tell you that it toned down the violence too much. I think that it serves the movie well, as the first one was graphic and bloody that it almost felt like a parody at times.

Arnold is still as convincing as ever as a barbarian who doesn’t talk much. This time, he shares the screen with a trio of unexpected actors which make the movie feel more grandiose than the first one. When you have Grace Jones and Wilt Chamberlain, two very recognizable superstars who look like they are having the time of their life doing their thing on screen, your movie automatically goes up a notch. Add in Andre The Giant, totally unrecognizable as the monster Dagoth, and you’ve got yourself a heck of a cast. With more energy and less down times, Conan The Destroyer improves on the formula.

7 Arnold Takes Down The System

The Running Man really shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it’s a great example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a movie about a future where there’s apparently only one show on television, and it’s about total nobodies trying to fight state-sponsored maniacs and often losing their life in the process. Of course, we eventually realize that the participants are not as willing as they seem, and that the whole system is corrupt. Hmmm, maybe Arnold can do something about this?

The dystopian world is bleak, but funny in a campy 80s way. It means that there are still neon lights everywhere, and that even when the government is busy holding its people down, it still finds time to name its population-culling machines “Professor Subzero” or “Captain Freedom”. Arnold does a good job taking them down in creative ways, and his sidekicks are memorable. The main bad guy is the ex host of Family Feud, playing a weird take on his game show host persona, and he’s absolutely hilarious doing it. I really can’t find anything to dislike here. I probably would have taken more themed mini-bosses if anything, just to see if the writers could come up with something even more ridiculous than an electric-powered opera singer.

6 Arnold Will Be Back

Here’s the truth: The Terminator is still one of the best science-fiction movies of all-time. From the very first time the character appears on screen, it’s easy to see how Arnold became a superstar. He has very little dialogue, but he makes the most of it. Every line becomes a classic, and he carries the rest of the movie with a combination of charisma and physical presence. He is so intimidating that we buy him as a menace even when he’s not wielding a shotgun. He strikes fear in the heart of the audience just by putting on sunglasses.

The entire sequence in the police station, from “I’ll be back” to Sarah and Kyle’s escape, is one of the craziest and most terrifying scene ever put to film. As he rampages through the precinct, Arnold is not even on screen at all time. The one constant is the screams of his victims as everything falls down around Sarah Connor. The anticipation that he might be right around the corner is more legitimately scary than most slasher films. I really did not remember the movie being this stressful, but by the time The Terminator is finally crushed for good, I felt relief like I was actually the one to take him down. When’s the last time you could say you were that invested in a movie?

5 Arnold Saves The World (And His Marriage)

While many movie in Arnold’s filmography will let him show his funnier side, these comedies are usually lighter on action to make place for the jokes. True Lies decides to have it all and presents the perfect mix of comedy Arnold and action Arnold. The opening sequence is a perfect example. One minute he’s awkwardly dancing a tango with Tia Carrere, and the next one he’s fighting his walking away from an explosion while fighting guards on snowmobiles.

The movie also performs the feat of making Tom Arnold tolerable.

He is the surprising voice of reason through some of the movie’s weirdest tendencies, trying to steer the other Arnold in the right direction.

Though extremely entertaining, the movie does lose some point because of its extremely 90s point of views which don’t hold up as well these days. Specifically, there’s the stereotypical portrayal of the bad guys, as well as the weird misogynistic vibe you get from a dude torturing his wife into thinking that she has been abducted and forced to strip for a criminal. If you can get those less savory parts, there’s some great performances from all the actors involved, and the chase over the bridge to Florida, involving limousines and helicopters, is one for the ages.