The new series FUBAR is a trash fest with laughs and disappointments

Arnold Schwarzenegger is not sexy. By that I don’t mean the physical aging of a lifelong bodybuilder, but rather his reputation with action fans. Schwarzenegger’s genre merits are undisputed, but he’s considered a boomer hero. 80’s class reunions like the Expendables series only reinforce this impression. The Terminator series is dying a slow death. So how good can Arnie’s series FUBAR be on Netflix, with which he returns as an action hero four years after Terminator: Dark Fate? Anyway, she surprised me. FUBAR on Netflix: This is what Arnold Schwarzenegger’s action series is all about

The FUBAR story doesn’t shine with originality at first. Nearing retirement, CIA veteran Luke Brunner (Schwarzenegger) is excited to finally be able to spend more time with ex-wife Tally (Fabiana Udenio) and adult daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro). They have no idea of ​​his top-secret agent missions and have thought him a boring businessman for 40 years.

Then the bomb bursts during Brunner’s last mission: his hitherto innocent daughter turns out to be his CIA contact and an experienced agent. The shock and breach of trust is great for both of them, but there is little time for quarrels: crime boss Boro (Gabriel Luna) threatens the world with annihilation. The Brunners go on a mission together.

FUBAR is a disappointment for action fans

To get straight to the point: FUBAR will disappoint action fans. Schwarzenegger is now 75 years old and simply too slow as a credible one-man army. That’s to be expected, a bit mean, and won’t anger a true fan, though it’s still irritating. The fight scenes are not badly staged, but far from the virtuoso choreographies that currently amaze John Wick: Chapter 4.

Also, the series looks terrible. FUBAR is illuminated like the ARD morning magazine and the cheap CGI doesn’t make it any better. Details such as muzzle flashes sometimes seem so artificial, as if they had sprung from a Photoshop experiment by the trash manufacturer The Asylum, which is known to us for the Sharknado films.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is having more fun in FUBAR than he has in a long time

But in the end, none of that matters much, and here are the reasons. Schwarzenegger is out anyway. His fans won’t expect a physical effort like Chris Hemsworth did in Tyler Rake: Extraction 2. He’s doing well for his age, and if need be, younger performers like Monica Barbaro will step in to fight. In short, the Action could be better, but it’s not boring. This should pacify the greatest genre purists.

What captured my heart with the series is its meta-charm and humor. Arnie is long retired and has never been the best actor. So what? Didn’t anyone know that? Not despite, but precisely because of these obvious weaknesses, the series is so charming. Schwarzenegger’s accent has never been broader, his acting more wooden, but the person behind the run-of-the-mill role Brunner emerges with such joy and passion that you would like to hug him.

Schwarzenegger is keen and everyone else is keen on him. That’s the vibe of FUBAR, to put it crudely. What supports this impression immensely is the sometimes really masterly use of humour.

FUBAR takes apart the action heroes of the 80s brilliantly

Luke Brunner is an infinitely confident, though completely unrealistic tramp, who wants to get his ex-wife back 15 years after the divorce, agent’s daughter Emma forbids swearing and doesn’t like her boyfriend because he can’t repair his car himself. For this, the one-man army is constantly being screwed by their environment.

Above all, his grandiose assistant duo Roo (Fortune Feimster) and Aldon (Travis Van Winkle) shot at him. The chemistry between comedy talent Feimster and Van Winkle (Transformers) is the show’s best, and when they grill Brunner’s retirement dreams and illusion of the perfect daughter over an open fire, it brings tears of laughter to my eyes.

But the nicest thing for me as a fan is that Schwarzenegger is on board with all the well-intentioned malice for his role. He pulls the caricature of his 80s action figures with great willingness through the cocoa and takes away a lot of the macho attitude, that they have always transported.

When Brunner cocky “A real man can fix his car himself!“ trumpeted after showing up to his ex-wife in a Hawaiian shirt and giving his daughter a blender, I just like Arnie’s self-irony.

For the first time since the great Last Action Hero Schwarzenegger relishes deconstructing his own larger-than-life persona. FUBAR is a swan song like the Expendables series, which hides a large portion of nostalgia behind all the winks.

The series takes Emma’s boyfriend seriously, even if he’s a scrawny nerd scared of escape rooms. Rather, it’s the muscular superhero that’s being targeted here, and Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have been waiting for this opportunity. The result has so much charisma that FUBAR’s weaknesses fade in front of it. Arnold Schwarzenegger is sexy.

The basis for the opinion text were the first two episodes of the series.

Podcast MCU: 6 Marvel characters who finally need their own series

The MCU continues to grow and has long ceased to focus solely on blockbuster movies. Disney+ alone currently has over a dozen Marvel series you can stream. But what does the future of the series MCU look like? For which character do we want a series spinoff and what could that look like?

In the new episode of our podcast Streamgegeför, editor-in-chief Lisa Ludwig invites colleagues from the Moviepilot and Filmstarts editorial team to discuss exactly that. And everything from the true star of the Iron Man series to a detective series in space and a Marvel version of Buffy is included.

*. . .