True Lies 1994 is James Cameron doing a Michael Bay movie

  Blender Dumbass
October 12, 2025

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1994 film True Lies feels like watching a James Cameron directed Michael Bay movie. It has explosions, check, it has outlandish set pieces, check, it has beautiful shots of the military, check, it has sexy ladies, check, it has teenagers with an attitude, check. It is a Michael Bay movie through and through. Yet it is a James Cameron movie, so what happened?

Well first of all, this movie was released before Michael Bay ever did a feature film. Or more like, it was released while Michael Bay was shooting his first feature film Bad Boys. Which means it was being filmed before Michael Bay could show the world his Bayhem! and therefor Cameron is not trying to imitate Bayhem! in this film. The Bayhem! Cameron goes for, is all from James Cameron himself.

Technically the film is a remake of a french movie La Totale! from 1991. Even some of the names like Helen and Simon are the same in both films. The plot seems to be the same. Yet I believe the French version is not as Bayhem! inducing as the Cameron version. The script for the remake was written by Cameron. And he knows how to write an action film.

Regardless of who came up with an idea, the film makes a very interesting social commentary. You have a woman who does something that she wants to keep secret from her husband. She is seeing somebody. And she is not even sleeping with that somebody. She is just seeing somebody. Yet her husband, learning the smallest amount of detail about that, immediately sets a full on surveillance machine onto his wife.

We often hear people say "I have nothing to hide" when it comes to privacy. As if law is the only problem out there. Of course in a lot of instances when privacy becomes a necessity it is because law itself becomes rather bad-shit crazy. And following the law becomes a problem in and of itself. Then privacy at least protects people that use their conscience to break bad laws. For example in Nazi Germany by law certain discrimination against certain groups was a necessity. And the law officials were using whatever means they had to find anybody who had the balls to break those laws. If you were hiding Jews from execution, you were breaking the law. But you were not a bad person to do so. Today we have plenty of bad laws, not as bad as in Nazi Germany, but bad enough, that makes following them kind of an ethical issue. From copyright to ageism laws, to the shit happening in a lot of places that might trigger some people, we have a lot to hide.

But let's assume you are a good citizen and let's assume you never break any laws, no matter how utterly fucking absurd they are. Do you still have something to hide? Well... this movie demonstrates that yes. For example you may be married and you maybe have an affair on the side. Cheating on your wife is not illegal per se. But you definitely don't want her to know. Yet the movie takes this a step further.

Helen ( Jamie Lee Curtis ) is not even cheating on her husband Harry ( Arnold Schwarzenegger ). She just has a friend that she wants to keep secret. First because the friend asked for it. And secondly because this might create tension in the family. So she keeps it a secret. Yet Harry hears a little about this guy. And he immediately goes ballistic about it.

Harry being a secret agent for the United States government, has access to a lot of surveillance technology, that the government is using to catch middle eastern terrorists. Yet hearing about his wife's friend, Harry immediately starts using all of the tech at his disposal for his personal affair. He breaks all the rules in the rule book, because he believes that what he is doing is important. Important for him. And he starts literally spying on his wife to get more info about this friend of hers.

Think about what this shows about the importance of privacy in the real world. You have so many dangers in this world. So many people that may want to hurt you. From your husband or wife that may want to hurt you for cheating with somebody, to literal serial killers and serial rapists. Now imagine if one of those serial rapists has access to your personal data somehow. Maybe he buys it from a data-broker. Maybe he works at a company which grants him access to your data. The rules say he can't use the data against you. Or even that he can't look at the data. But why would a serial rapist care about such rules? If a husband that learns something that might possibly indicate that maybe his wife is in theory cheating on him breaks those rules. And remember Schwarzenegger's character in this movie is a hero. He is a good guy. And he still goes and breaks the rules to spy on his wife. What would bad guys with bad intentions do?

You can even read deeper into this very subject with the ending of the film. The main bad guy Salim Abu Aziz ( Art Malik ) captures our hero at some point and looking through his stuff, finds a picture of him with his daughter Dana ( Eliza Dushku ). This prompts our bad guy to kidnap the child which sets up the stakes for the final set-piece of the film. If the information about his daughter was kept secret, if the privacy wasn't breached, the little girl would not have been in danger.

And yet as far as I want to believe that the movie is pro-privacy, the movie itself is weirdly on the side of Arnold's character throughout the whole ordeal about spying on his wife. It feels like while Cameron thought through the logic of it, he either didn't pick any sides on the matter, or picked the side of the surveillance.

In the end of the film, the little girl in danger ends up being not such a big deal after all, because her daddy Arnold Schwarzenegger flies in on a jet to save the day, says a one-liner to Abu Aziz, and kills him in such a hilarious manner that the movie literally becomes a parody of action cinema for a few moments.

Which kind of begs the question: why Arnold Schwarzenegger? Whats the point? James Cameron is a good director. And even by 1994 he already established himself as a master. Schwarzenegger as the Terminator makes a lot of sense. His heavy accent and wooden performance works well when it comes to portraying a killer robot. And all the heavy acting in those movies were done by actors that aren't just simply action-stars. Arnold also works in his other, rather hilariously B-movie-like action films. Those are supposedly unserious action comedies, in which Arnold's tendency for one-liners and his other quarks make for some enjoyable time in the cinema. But here we have a serious filmmaker putting Arnold in what seems to be a rather dramatic role.

Yes, obviously Harry is something of a James Bond knockoff. And Arnold's charisma is perfect for the scenes where he needs to be this cool ass spy character. Even his one-liners perfectly fit the character. But then there is the whole meet of the plot. The spying on the wife. The realization that she might be cheating on him. The heart-break. The plan for revenge. All of that requires a real actor that is not just a walking meme factory.

That I think is where James Cameron pulls another Michael Bay trick. As we all know until Benny Safdie decided to take this title from Michael Bay, Michael Bay made a movie with the best performance by Dwayne Johnson. Another supper masculine action-star meme factory of an actor. With True Lies, James Cameron ( a person that by that point knew Arny well ) pulls out of Schwarzenegger a rather good performance. Yes it is comedic for the most part. Even in the most depressed moments. But the character works with all the quarks.

It is as if the whole project was James Cameron looking at the dumb fucking Arnold Schwarzenegger action films and thinking to himself: I can make that actually work, I think. And that is why the movie has a very Arny style of execution. The whole movie is basically one giant flex of Cameron directing muscle, to show that he can make a dumb Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, where Schwarzenegger plays a human character, actually really work. This is the reason for all the Bayhem! and for all the one-liners. That is the reason the movie goes full Rambo and ends on Arny flying a jet plane to save his little girl. It was kind of a parody of dumb action movies from that time. Yet because we have James Cameron shooting. It also looks way better than any of those dumb action movies from the time.

If you think about it, the film is somehow very conservative. And it comes from a director of things like Avatar that are stupidly progressive. How both films come out from the same writer / director? In True Lies the bad guys are literal middle eastern terrorists. Yet in Avatar the bad guys is the corporation that destroys a forest and kills indigenous people. If anything this is a contradiction.

You could argue that Cameron had a change of mind on the subject, but Aliens ( his 1986 film ) pretty much agrees with Avatar on the subject of greedy corporations. So what the fuck is going on? Why in between of Aliens and Avatar ( or in between of Aliens and Titanic ) Cameron makes such an outrageous right-wing propaganda piece?

I think the analogy between Cameron and Bay can explain this conundrum a little bit. Michael Bay loves the military. Like a lot. He really fucking respects the guys and gals that do the hard jobs. Cameron seems to be of a similar meet. In Aliens the good guys ( apart from Ripley ) are the space-marines. The main hero character in Avatar is a marine. And in Titanic he shows immense respect to the people in charge to trying to take the sinking of the ship under control. While showing his distaste toward the elite that dictates everything. Like in Michael Bay films, the good guys are the guys with the gun, while the bad guys are the guys with the suit. Similar messages often appear in James Cameron work as well.

So how can we read True Lies now given this framework? Harry is a guy with the gun. He literally goes into the heat of the action and survives through a barrage of bullets, as his daily job. Therefor he is a hero. But who's the villain? Terrorists? Well kind of yes. There are middle eastern terrorists. But there is also Juno Skinner ( Tia Carrere ) who is a suit-wearing lady that smuggles weapons. And there is also Simon ( Bill Paxton ) a lame car salesman that pretends to be a spy to try to get laid.

With Bill Paxton we see the suit vs hard worker theme very clearly. Harry literally gets nearly killed every day on his job, while this cocksucker Simon pretends to be one like Harry, while doing absolutely nothing like it. Simon is literally a businessman. An unsuccessful one, but a businessman. And a businessman that is also a fucking liar. While Harry is kind of a real hero. Or at the very least he risks his life just enough to be taken seriously. Even if what he risks his life for might be somewhat strange. And even if Schwarzenegger's performance makes it feel like he doesn't even care that he is risking his life.

Juno Skinner is a businesswoman. The same thing as Simon. Except she is actually somewhat successful at making money. Now she is a complicated character. She pretends to be this benevolent diplomat that is doing great work to create piece between the middle east and USA. Yet she quickly states that this act of a diplomat is only needed because of her desire to sell ancient artifacts from ancient Persia ( current Iran, Iraq and Syria ) to wealthy people in the USA. To get access to which she needs to pretend as an ambassador for good.

In a way this mirrors the views Cameron later bashes the audience with completely not-subtly in Avatar. The humans need something, on top of which the Na'vi are literally living. The minerals they want to dig out of the ground require displacing of the population. And they try to pretend that they are diplomats first. Later to simply declare war with the Na'vi, to kill them off, to get the minerals.

But then True Lies does something weird. This business lady appears to be working with a middle eastern terrorist organization. Who are such obvious bad guys, the film disposes of them in a slapstick fashion. There is a scene where Arny shoots like a dozen of them at once with a machine gun. Some brutal, fucked up shit. Yet it is treated with humor, like if it is a joke. And then in the end the main bad guy Abu Aziz dies in the most hilarious of fashions.

Digging back for clues from Michael Bay, a movie he did in 2019 comes to mind. In Bay's 6 Underground the bad guys were middle eastern. Yet the good guys were also middle eastern ( to some extent ). Like okay... the good guys were Europeans and Americans. Obviously. But they were saving middle eastern people from their middle eastern dictator. Which meant killing a lot of bad middle eastern motherfuckers.

Michael Bay sees the difference between say, the citizens of Gaza and the Hamas. He sees the difference between the people of Lebanon and Hezbollah. He sees the difference between the dictators / terrorists and the normal people that live under their oppression.

While True Lies portrays a fictional "Crimson Jihad", the group of terrorists is undeniably a group of terrorists. And because of the earlier comments from business lady, it is safe to assume that the movie is actively distinguishes between a militant Jihad, and a general population of middle east. Portraying as the bad guys only the Jihad.

From a certain perspective it is still not enough. No actual middle eastern people ( apart from maybe that one guy who works for the good guys ) are shown to be the good guys. No oppressed middle eastern people are being shown. Nothing to suggest that Cameron is making that distinction apart from a few lines of dialogue he wrote for this obviously villainous businesswoman.

But we have to take into account the circumstances in which this movie is made. First of all we have Arnold Schwarzenegger attached to the project. The same Arnold Schwarzenegger that is also a conservative politician himself. And who might not agree with the film if the film was not ( at least to him ) conservative enough. Cameron had to carefully thread the needle to make this movie work.

And then the film was released in 1994, the same year as Forrest Gump, that is wildly criticized today for being way too conservative. And yet from the filmmakers ( that appear not to be so conservative ) we learn that the film was designed to be appealing to the entire population of the United States. Half of which are pretty conservative.

Back in 1994, there was no trend to release the movies globally. Blockbusters were concerned with domestic numbers. And foreign markets were just starting to gain interest of studio-heads. There was no big requirement to ponder for the Chinese, or the Europeans, to make big buck in their markets. The goal was to get Americans to pay the ticket price for an American movie. And since a lot of Americans are conservative, making too bold of a progressive statement meant risking a lot of money.

True Lies is the first movie in history to cross the $100 million budget mark. This meant that a lot pressure was on making the movie as appealing as possible to as many people as possible. Which meant having rather vague politics in it. The film is obviously going to be political when it is about spies ( that deal with terrorism ). But Cameron did the best he could to walk the fine line of not tripping anybody's alarms. Not on the left and not on the right. At least when it comes to 1994. In 2025, the film does trip some alarms. Yet as I just explained Cameron secretly used his genius to make the movie actually mean something else than what you think it means when you watch it. Brilliant con, Mr. Cameron.

That explains a lot. That explains why there is an openly gay couple in Bay's Ambulance. That explains why Bay was the choice of Jerry Bruckheimer to direct a Titanic rip-off, Pearl Harbor. That explains why Cameron approached Bay with his 3D-camera technology for his last 3 Transformers films. That explains why Digital Domain ( a VFX company ) that was first established by Cameron was then owned by Bay. That explains the casting of Ed Harris and Michael Biehn in The Rock and the casting of Danny Nucci in Titanic. Cameron and Bay are kind of like brothers. They are different in how serious they are about little detail. About how messy they shoot things. But something inside of them is the same.

If anything, Cameron seems like the older brother. The one that thinks more about what he is saying. The one that shoots more carefully. While Bay seems like the younger kid version of Cameron. One with explosive energy and a tendency for spontaneity. And this explains why Michael Bay was imitating Tony Scott in the beginning of his career. While James Cameron made a sequel to Tony's older and more methodical bother Ripley Scott's film Alien. Everything just falls into place when you think about it.

Happy Hacking!!!

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c:0 @Troler
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  Troler c:0


The revelation at the end blew me away. All this building, all these examples just made me respect is James Cameron and Michael Bay even more.

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