Get to da White House!
How bonkers ’80s action spoof Kung Fury 2 finally allowed Arnold Schwarzenegger to become President — and take on the most Arnie role ever
President schwarzenegger. it’s got a ring to it, hasn’t it? the former governator has made no secret of his Oval Office ambitions, and plenty of films, from Demolition Man to The Simpsons Movie, have toyed with the prospect. But Kung Fury 2 is the first film to go all in and make the austrian Oak the actual leader of the free world.
“i think he was very happy with the part,” says the film’s writer/director/star, david sandberg. and not just because he finally gets to be President. there’s another long-held dream realised here. “when they shot Commando, he wanted to shoot a scene where he rips off the arm of a soldier and beats him with his own arm,” recalls sandberg. “they didn’t allow him to do that. i was like, ‘i’m going to allow you to do this in my movie!’”
Kung Fury 2, as you may have gathered, is not a weighty, serious political opus. it’s a feature-length follow-up to the Kickstarterbacked 2015 short Kung Fury, an insane 30-minute explosion of ’80s references, martial arts, violent action, wild VFX, dinosaurs, Vikings, nazis, time travel, and a policeman called ‘triceracop’. sandberg plays the titular Kung Fury, “the best cop in the world”, one with mystical kung fu powers and a taste for terrible one-liners (choice line: “tank you!”, after crushing two nazis with, yep, a tank).
speaking to Empire in his mellow native swedish lilt, rather than the gruff american action-hero voice he adopts in the film, sandberg promises that schwarzenegger — who he describes as a “childhood hero” — will not be stuck behind a desk in the oval office. “it’s all the stuff i wanted to see arnold do,” he says. “i thought of the role as combining all of the characters that he’s done into one badass President.” he notes that among an assorted arsenal, schwarzenegger at one point wields a giant sword, à la conan the Barbarian.
also appearing in the film will be david hasselhof, Michael Fassbender, and Jorma taccone (of the comedy trio the Lonely island), reprising his role from the short film as adolf hitler — aka the ‘Kung Führer’. sandberg is staying coy about whether arnie and adolf, two icons of austrian good and evil, will face off in the film, but promises more of the time travel, ridiculous action comedy, and affectionate ’80s styling of the original, albeit with a slightly different approach. “On the short, we were degrading the footage so much to make it look like old Vhs. [But] it doesn’t hold up as well on a big screen. this will look more like it was shot on old film. it’s still gonna have that retro vibe.”
the experience for sandberg — whose background is in VFX and directing commercials — with this, his feature debut, has been pure giddy wish fulfilment. “it was so surreal standing by the monitor,” he recalls. “it feels like you’re watching a movie. But [schwarzenegger] is right there! Like, 20 metres away from you! and i can just walk into the movie and direct it! it was so cool.” and it’s wish fulfilment for arnie, too: the last action hero getting the role he always wanted. to rip a man’s arm off and beat him up with it. Kung Fury 2 is currently in post-production with a release date yet to be confirmed