My Review of "Arnold (2023)"

Arnold (2023) is the latest exclusive documentary series released by Netflix. This series is based on the life and times of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's not a very surprising one if you think about it. He is one of the most interesting people on the planet. It only makes sense to build a series on him since there are now a lot of people that have grown up not knowing where he came from.

This series is separated into three episodes. Each of the episodes explores a different chapter in Arnold's life. It kind of blows my mind that he's now in his mid 70s because I always remember Arnold from the blockbuster movies that he made in the 90s. Even then he was in the second phase of his life.

The first episode explores the first phase of his life and that's his upbringing and how he got into the sport of body building. This was very early on when body building wasn't really well known. People thought he was crazy but still he showed passion for the sport. He was eager and he had a vision for where he wanted to go.

Vision is a primary theme throughout the three episodes. It's meant to be an inspirational mini series for people to strive toward their dreams because Arnold was able to. He goes on to explain all of the trials and tribulations that he had to endure over the years. Some of these reveals are truly fascinating. Arnold himself unapologetically narrates everything in this series. It's more reassuring to hear from the man himself rather than a third party. There's just something a little more authentic about it.

The flow of the show is quite smooth and stays relatively chronological so that the viewer doesn't really fall out of place while watching. They even sprinkle a few nuggets in episodes so that we can catch onto significance of certain things later on in his life. That was quite well done.

Though the footage and images taken for the first two episodes are taken from a long time ago I'm very surprised at the quality it shows up on the show. It's like they were pristinely remastered for the show. They did a really good job in touching up old footage and pictures to fit the high definition look of the rest of the show.

The second episode discusses the second phase of his life. It consists of his acting career and his blossoming family life. This is the part where I was quite familiar with but yet there were a few tidbits here and there that surprised me. I'm sure many fans of his movies are going to love this portion of the series because he was never supposed to succeed in this area.

Then again the third episode goes into an even wilder third phase of his life. This is the time period when he gets into politics. It's probably the last thing that anyone thought he was going to fall into and yet he succeeded for the most part. I'm glad they went into some of the scandals that he got caught in. They definitely downplayed them but if you're watching the series you probably would downplay them as well.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable mini-series on a very fascinating person. They reveal him flaws and all but they cover up many of the flaws much like his political career. I wasn't totally surprised with that especially since he was narrating this whole show. It's still an inspirational story that will have a lot of people pumped up by the end. I have to give this series a 7 out of 10. It is very entertaining and I would recommend this to any fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger.