When it comes to parting shots — both verbal and bullet-related — Arnold Schwarzenegger has plenty to choose from. From “Hasta la vista, baby” to “Consider that a divorce,” the action icon is as quick with a quip as he is with an oversized weapon. But one could argue that he never topped the exit line delivered to a rampaging crocodile just moments before sending the beast to that great pet cemetery in the sky three decades ago: “You’re luggage.”
That line comes midway through Eraser, director Chuck Russell‘s muscular action vehicle that arrived in theaters on June 21, 1996. Even at the time, the film felt like a throwback to an earlier age, dropped into multiplexes that were filled with exciting variations on traditional summer blockbusters like Brian DePalma’s inaugural Mission: Impossible outing, Jan de Bont’s disaster movie Twister, and Roland Emmerich’s apocalyptic extravaganza Independence Day.
Seen anew on a just-released 4K UHD disc from Warner Bros., Eraser definitely represents a kind of last hurrah for one phase of Schwarzenegger’s career; the very next summer, he suited up as Mr. Freeze and squared off against George Clooney’s Dark Knight in the ill-fated Batman & Robin — a movie packed with one-liners that were chillingly cringe-inducing. Gold Derby spoke with Russell, whose other credits include A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, The Mask, and The Scorpion King, for this as-told-to account that breaks down two of the movie’s signature set-pieces.
New York Croc City
When your hero is a lean, mean killing machine like U.S. Marshal John Kruger, you’ve got to make sure he enters into every battle with a proverbial arm tied behind his back. In the case of this extended sequence inside the Reptile House at the New York City Zoo, Russell decided that Schwarzenegger would only have two bullets left in the chamber when he rolled up to protect the movie’s leading lady, Vanessa Williams, from the army of goons eager to erase her. He uses one of those bullets to shoot the glass keeping the crocodiles in their tanks, gushing H20 everywhere — not unlike a similar scene involving Ethan Hunt.
As a director, I’m very hands-on with the script, and there were three things that I specifically needed to say yes to doing Eraser and Arnold helped me get them. They original script was pretty straightforward and tried to be realistic — Arnold only had a handgun and his fists, which was interesting, but he’d done that before. So I came up with as wild as concepts as I could that would support the tone of the film while also pushing the envelope and going hyper-real.
With stars like Arnold and Dwayne Johnson, part of the problem is that you need to level the playing field or they could just walk through a wall. So in the case of the zoo scene, we gave Arnold only two bullets and three bad guys to kill.
All I can say about the Mission: Impossible connection is that great minds think alike! [Laughs] Tom Cruise is a friend — I executive produced Collateral —and that movie was shooting at the same time we were, so we were aware of what they were doing. The tones of the two films are very different, so I don’t think they bumped into each other that much — both were good, fun films that pleased the audience.
There were real crocodiles on the set on the first day of shooting. I love working with animals, and I didn’t want to restrain them in ways that were painful or unusual. The other thing I wouldn’t do is put a completely unpredictable animal near my cast. I wish I had footage of the first croc they showed me because it was a 14-foot grandfather crocodile and there were trainers with huge pieces of plywood and shovels like they were holding a dinosaur back. I told them: “He’s beautiful, but do not bring him onto a my set. I know they’re not trainable animals.”
We ultimately relied on a mixture of mechanical crocs and CGI crocs, with some real crocs in the background of a couple of shots. The CGI crocs are a real riot; I knew they didn’t have to look cartoon-y based on what Steven Spielberg was doing with Jurassic Park, but it was all very last-minute. The studio wanted to use mechanical and real crocs for whatever reason, but I knew the mechanical ones wouldn’t work, and they did not. We ran out of time on delivering the film, and had to use CGI. They’re not my favorite CGI critters, but the slight cartoonishness works. I mean, Arnold’s punchline is “You’re luggage!” so I’ve gotten over that issue. [Laughs]
And can I tell you something? I wrote that punchline. I’m not bragging; some of the Freddie Krueger one-liners from Nightmare on Elm Street 3 are also mine. There was no way it was ever going to change because it was Arnold’s one of his favorite lines. In fact, I think he was trolling me a little bit because he kept asking me, “Chucky, tell me the line again.” He would occasionally tease me about it, but we both knew it was good stuff for Arnold. He liked the one-liners a little too much. He would come up to me with new ideas, and I’m like, “Arnold, we’re at our max! We can’t do one for every scene.”
I never thought about having Arnold fight the crocs with his bare hands, because that would have been too much like Blazing Saddles where the guy knocks out the horse. I like humor in my films, but there’s a limit! [Laughs] The most comedically risky moments in Eraser are the bit where Arnold kicks at the crocodile, and the part in the airplane sequence where he’s parachuting to the ground and Jimmy Caan’s bad guy is in the cockpit telling the pilot, “Turn around and kill that guy.” Those things are part of the hyper-reality, some of which is expected if you’ve got Arnold in a straight-up action movie.
Plane dreams
Since Russell brought it up, the movie’s 11-minute airplane sequence serves as Eraser’s showcase centerpiece, starting with hand-to-hand combat and ending with a full-on skydive that mixes actual stunt falls with the kind of old-school matte compositing seen in Superman: The Movie.
My goal with all of the movie’s action sequences was to make a promise to the audience. With the airplane sequence, Arnold specifically says to Jimmy at the top of the scene, “Drop the gun or I will kill you.” He’s just been drugged, he’s unarmed, and he’s got all these goons around him. That gives the audience a moment to think, “There’s no way that he’ll get out of this.” That’s my promise to the audience — here’s the set-up, now give me a chance to show you how it plays out.
So first of all, he’s got that knife belt that we saw in the main titles and he uses that to earn his escape. Then he’s hanging on the side of the airplane like Tom Cruise in that fifth Mission: Impossible movie. And when Arnold’s coming out of the plane, that’s Arnold. He’s the real thing; Tom Cruise is the real thing; and Dwayne Johnson is the real thing. They’re surrounded by helpers, but those guys are really doing it, and I’ve seen them put themselves at some risk for their performances.
Same with the stunt teams; the Eraser stunt team was incredible. Jeff Jones designed that sequence for us and Guy Manos did all the parachute stunts, and he’s world-class. I’d scripted it so that Arnold’s character would tangled up in the parachute silk, and we had a breakaway silk, but Guy was diving at such a velocity that the breakaway silk wasn’t breaking away. There’s a very memorable where Kruger appears to be struggling with the silk and it looks exaggerated, but Guy was really trying to get out! Fortunately it only lasted a couple of seconds and everyone was really safe.
Arnold didn’t do the skydiving, but he was on a descender rig for the close-ups, and he was against a matte painting-looking greenscreen. He dropped at least 50 feet on that rig from the highest soundstage ceiling at Warner Bros. That rig was brand new at the time, and you’d get to free-fall speed, but there was a breaking system that stopped you without getting you killed. Arnold was athletic enough to do it, so you’ve got the practical element of the film’s star as well as the incredible stunt team.
I like to compare that scene to the James Bond pictures, which have a lot more money and resources and time to do these things. But prior to Eraser, the Bond movies had not done a scene like that. I think Pierce Brosnan might’ve done something on a single-engine Cessna, but really nothing at that scale we did. And since then I’ve seen things that are almost an homage to it! I was looking for new territory for me to explore in an action film, and we put a lot of our time and money into that sequence. Those were the tools we had in the ’90s, and I sound like I’m bragging, but I was amazed to see how well it worked 30 years later.
This interview has been edited and condensed
