Arnold Schwarzenegger's underrated '90s action masterpiece required 3 key scenes, says director

By 1996, Arnold Schwarzenegger had already done it all, from battling predators to terminating liquid-metal assassins and even totally recalling his past lives on Mars. So when director Chuck Russell stepped behind the camera for Eraser, just a year or so after the mega hit of True Lies, he knew delivering another standard Arnold vehicle wouldn’t be enough.

Russell had originally been developing a very different project with Schwarzenegger: a swashbuckling take on Captain Blood. But as that movie lingered in development, Schwarzenegger brought him the script for Eraser, a Warner Bros. thriller that was ready to go. Russell saw the opportunity immediately. “Eraser was a wonderful script,” he told Polygon on the occasion of the movie’s 30th anniversary and its remastered 4K Blu-ray release. “All I did was make sure we had a few things I’d never seen before in an Arnold movie.”

Russell says Schwarzenegger sought him out after becoming a fan of The Mask, believing the filmmaker could bring a bigger visual imagination to his next action movie. Russell, meanwhile, saw an opportunity to emphasize a different side of the star, a protector rather than a destroyer. He also had three ideas for wacky action catnip that he thought would take the movie to the next level. In my humble opinion, he was absolutely right. Here’s how he did it.

A railgun worthy of Perfect Dark

Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures

Long before railguns became a favorite topic of military-tech headlines and first-person shooters, Russell was fascinated by the nascent technology. The filmmaker learned while researching Eraser that railguns already existed, but only as massive weapons mounted on naval vessels. His cinematic leap was simple.

“My concept was: What if they were miniaturized to the point where a single man could carry a weapon that destructive?” Russell said. “And then Arnold could carry two of them in the movie’s final climax.”

For all its roots in reality, the director wasn’t making a friggin’ documentary. So he pushed the design into what he calls “hyper-reality,” creating glowing projectile trails that sliced through the air and gave the weapon a science-fiction edge. Still, Russell admitted he later received a quiet compliment from someone connected to Naval Intelligence telling him he’d gotten the technology surprisingly right.

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The alligator attack that could only happen in an Arnold movie

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

If your big bad weapon of choice exists in “hyper-reality” most of the rest of your movie is bound to follow. Thus, Russell’s second big idea was also off-the-wall and one-of-a-kind.

As a fan of True Lies, the director remembered how surprising it was to see Schwarzenegger suddenly riding a horse through the middle of that movie. Looking for a similarly unexpected moment, he landed on a simple question: What if an action-movie shootout happened in a zoo?

The answer became Eraser’s infamous alligator sequence.

“It’s a wild scene,” he said with a grin. “I have no apologies for it. It was just fun to do.”

Eraser features brutal betrayals and shocking violence, but it’s never afraid to embrace a crowd-pleasing laugh. Russell points to Schwarzenegger’s defeat of the alligator, who chomps a baddie before receiving a bullet to the mouth. “You’re luggage” goes the one-liner.

Perfection. The pithy Freddy Krueger of Russell’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 would be proud.

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The third piece of Russell’s pitch may have aged best.

Eraser’s climactic parachute sequence is a rush even today because you can tell so much of it is actually happening. Russell credits a world-class parachuting team, including cameramen who literally jumped alongside stunt performers while carrying 35mm cameras through freefall.

Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures

“People forget there’s a cameraman pacing him the whole time when you’re actually both falling,” Russell said. “There is CGI, but what you see is what we did. 90% of it.”

Even Schwarzenegger got involved directly, performing a carefully designed descent on a rope rig that made it appear he was leaping from a Boeing 747. On the green screen front, the action star was more than willing to dangle like a fool in the name of one (literal) perfect shot. “There’s a lot of stuntcraft in there,” he said. “I think you can sense that people were really falling.”

A new 4K Blu-ray of Eraser is out now.