Last Action Hero (1993)
Directed by John McTiernan
Written by Shane Black, David Arnott
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dylan O'Brien, Charles Dance, Anthony Quinn, Mercedes Ruehl, Tom Noonan
Release Date June 18th, 1993
Published June 19th 2023
In the history of Hollywood debacles, Last Action Hero has quite a reputation. With massive budget overruns and egotistical executives pushing for an extremely misguided schedule and release date, Last Action Hero was a doomed production. Having began life as a parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger style action movies, the film had to be radically retrofitted when Schwarzenegger chose to star in the film. No longer could the star be the subject of the jokes, he was now the one making the jokes. With Schwarzenegger aboard, the original screenwriters were booted in favor of Shane Black and David Arnott who were tasked with solving a tricky tone of meta-humor and action movie tropes.
That a movie vaguely watchable came out of the mishmash or rewrites and revisions, that included something like 7 writers, including rewrites by William Goldman and Carrie Fisher, on top of the original duo of Zak Penn and Adam Leff. Both the director and star each offered insight on the script and well, you know what they say about Too Many Cooks? Yeah, way too many cooks took their turn in trying to boil up a workable version of Last Action Hero and the result is a bland, tasteless, pile of gruel, a little salty thanks to Schwarzenegger's star power, but mostly a forgettable and moderately distasteful meal.
The concept is really the only thing anyone seemed to like about Last Action Hero. In the plot, a 12 year old boy named Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien), receives a magical movie ticket as a gift from his friend, Nick the Projectionist (Robert Prosky), who has gifted Danny a preview showing of the new Jack Slater movie, Jack Slater 5. Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger), is an action movie hero in an action movie universe where he's an indestructible action machine who kills bad guys and cuts mad quips at their expense, all while rock music plays on a loop.
It's everything an adrenalin fueled 12 year old could want, bullets, babes, bad guys, and our hero always wins in the end. This Jack Slater adventure however, is going to be a little different. Thanks to Danny's magic ticket, Danny is transported inside the movie. After dynamite seemingly blows up the movie theater, Danny wakes up in the back of Jack Slater's car, mid-car chase and shootout. Slater is as surprised as Danny to find a young boy in his back set, but that doesn't stop him from finishing off the bad guys and finishing the action scene.
From there we explore the world of Jack Slater with Danny as our audience surrogate. All the while, Danny tries to convince Jack that they are in a movie in a series of jokes that diminish in comic returns each time. When Danny starts telling Jack that he saw the bad guys set up Jack's favorite second cousin Frank (Art Carney), Jack starts to take Danny seriously, a little bit. Things ramp up when the baddies realize Danny is on to them and the evil Mr. Benedict comes into possession of Danny's magic movie ticket and takes the chance to escape into the real world.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media
