It’s ironic that Arnold Schwarzenegger found himself front-and-center in a $100 million blockbuster that sought to capitalize on the CGI revolution when Eraser released in the summer of 1996 when he was facing accusations at the time of being an outdated relic, while he played a huge part in kicking the doors off the craze to begin with in James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
Some of the movie’s digital creations definitely hold up better than others – with the airplane sequence in particular feeling as though it’s ripped from an entirely different project than the horrendously dated battle against crocodile – but Eraser nonetheless delivered enough big, dumb, loud, and ridiculous fun to hoover up a stellar $242 million at the box office.
Reviews weren’t particularly kind, though, and even now more than a full quarter of a century after its release, the madcap adventure only boasts a Rotten Tomatoes audience approval rating of 39 percent from upwards of 100,000 votes, in addition to a Reddit thread deeming it one of Schwarzenegger’s best further hammering home the notion that Eraser is a true opinion-splitter.
Some love it and laud it as a cheesy gem that deserved to spawn a franchise, while others refuse to acknowledge it as even being capable of flirting with the top tier of the Austrian Oak’s filmography. One thing everyone can agree on is that it should never have been rebooted, with bargain basement do-over Eraser: Reborn proving to be just as pointlessly predictable and unanimously panned as everyone was expecting.
Just to think; Arnold’s follow-up film was Batman & Robin, so if Eraser had caught fire, he might not have seen his star power wane so dramatically towards the turn of the millennium.