Last Action Hero


Last Action Hero is a 1993 American fantasy action comedy film directed and produced by John McTiernan. It is a satire of the action genre and associated clichés, containing several parodies of action films in the form of films within the film. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Jack Slater, a Los Angeles police detective within the Jack Slater action film franchise, while Austin O'Brien co-stars as Danny Madigan, a boy magically transported into the Slater universe, and Charles Dance as Benedict, a ruthless assassin from the Slater universe who escapes to the real world. Schwarzenegger also served as the film's executive producer and plays himself as the actor portraying Jack Slater.
The film was both a critical and commercial disappointment. The film also features Art Carney's last appearance in a motion picture before his death in 2003.

Plot

Danny Madigan is a teenager living in a crime-ridden area of New York City with his widowed mother, Irene. Following his father's death, Danny takes comfort in watching action films, especially those featuring the indestructible Los Angeles cop Jack Slater, at his local movie theater owned by Nick, who also acts as the projectionist. Nick gives Danny a golden ticket once owned by Harry Houdini, to see an early preview of the latest Jack Slater film before its official release.
During the film, the ticket stub magically transports Danny inside the fictional world of the film, interrupting Slater in the middle of a car chase. After escaping their pursuers, Slater takes Danny to the LAPD headquarters, where Danny points out the fictional nature of the world, such as the presence of a cartoon cat detective named Whiskers, and that Slater's friend John Practice is played by the same actor who was the antagonist that killed Mozart from Amadeus and shouldn't be trusted; Slater takes these as part of Danny's wild imagination. Slater's supervisor, Lt. Dekker, assigns Danny as his new partner, and instructs them to investigate criminal activities related to mobster Tony Vivaldi.
Danny guides Slater to Vivaldi's mansion, having recognized its location from the start of the film. There, they meet Vivaldi and his henchman, Mr. Benedict. Danny explains the criminal deeds that the two had carried out from the film, but Slater has no evidence, and they are forced to leave; however, Benedict is curious as to how Danny knew of what transpired, and he and several hired guns follow Slater and Danny back to Slater's home. There, Slater, his daughter Whitney, and Danny thwart the attack, though Benedict ends up getting the ticket stub. He discovers its ability to transport him out of the film.
Slater learns of Vivaldi's plan to murder his rival mob by releasing a lethal gas during a funeral atop a skyscraper. He and Danny go to stop it, but are waylaid by Practice, who reveals that Danny was right as he was working for Vivaldi. Whiskers kills Practice, saving Slater and Danny, and the two manage to prevent any deaths by the gas release. Learning that Vivaldi's plan has failed, Benedict kills him, and uses the stub to escape into the real world, pursued by Slater and Danny.
Slater becomes despondent upon learning the truth, as well as his mortality in the real world, but cheers up after spending some time with Irene. Meanwhile, Benedict devises a plan to kill Arnold Schwarzenegger, the one portraying Slater in the film, from which he then can bring other villains from other films into the real world and take over. To help, Benedict brings the Ripper, the villain of the previous Jack Slater movie, to assassinate Schwarzenegger. Danny and Slater learn of this, and race to the premiere. Slater saves Schwarzenegger and electrocutes the Ripper. Benedict appears and shoots Slater, critically injuring him. Danny subdues and disarms Benedict, allowing Slater to grab his revolver and say:
"No sequel for you." to him and kill him by shooting his explosive glass eye; however, this also causes the stub to be lost. With Slater losing blood, Danny knows that the only way to save him is to return him to the fictional world, since he is indestructible there. The figure of Death from the film The Seventh Seal, who had previously escaped his film, appears before them. Danny holds Death at gunpoint, but Death merely suggests that he search for the other stub of the ticket. Danny finds the stub, and is able to take Slater back into the film, with his wounds instantly healing. Danny returns to the real world before the portal closes. A recovered Slater then enthusiastically embraces the true nature of his reality when he talks to Dekker about his new plan, appreciating the differences between it and the "real" world.

Cast

Development and writing

Last Action Hero was an original screenplay by Zak Penn and Adam Leff, meant to parody typical action-film screenplays of writers such as Shane Black. Penn noted himself that the studio ironically then had Black rewrite the script. The original screenplay differs heavily from the finished film and is widely available to read online. Although it was still a parody of Hollywood action films, it was set almost entirely in the film world and focused largely on the futile cycle of violence displayed by the hero and the effect it had on people around him. Due to the radical changes, Penn and Leff were eventually credited with the story of the film, but not the screenplay, which is unusual for a film based on an original screenplay.
Several script doctors did uncredited work on the script, including Carrie Fisher, Larry Ferguson, and William Goldman. Penn and Leff disliked various parts of the final film, including the idea of a magic golden ticket. In their draft, the story would not explain how Danny got transported into the film world.
Schwarzenegger received a salary of $15 million for his role in the film. Some scenes were filmed in a dome adjacent to the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California.
Years after its release, the film was the subject of a scathing chapter called "How They Built The Bomb", in the Nancy Griffin book Hit and Run which detailed misadventures at Sony Pictures in the early to mid-1990s. Among the details presented in this chapter were:

Soundtrack

The film was scored by composer Michael Kamen, and peaked at No. 7 on The Billboard 200 chart. The album, which was positively received by active rock radio outlets, was certified platinum on August 24, 1993.

Track listing

Release

At the time of its release, the film was billed as "the next great summer action movie" and many movie insiders predicted it would be a huge blockbuster, especially following the success of Schwarzenegger's previous film, . The film premiered in Westwood, Los Angeles on June 13, 1993, and entered general release in the United States five days later.

Box office

The film opened at number two at the weekend box-office behind Jurassic Park and grossed US$15,338,241 on its opening weekend, for an average of $6,651 from 2,306 theaters, and ended its run with $50,016,394 in the United States, and an additional $87,202,095 overseas, for a total of $137,298,489 worldwide. In an A&E biography of Schwarzenegger, the actor says that the film could have done better if not for bad timing, since it came out a week after Jurassic Park which went on to break box-office records as one of the top-grossing films of all time.
Schwarzenegger states that he tried to persuade his coproducers to postpone the film's June 18 release in the United States by four weeks, but they turned a deaf ear on the grounds that the movie would have lost millions of dollars in revenue for every weekend of the summer it ended up missing, also fearing that delaying the release would create negative publicity. He told the authors of Hit And Run that while everyone involved with the production had given their best effort, their attempt to appeal to both action and comedy fans resulted in a film that appealed to neither audience and ultimately succumbed to heavy competition.
The film was released in the United Kingdom on July 30, 1993, and opened at number three, behind Jurassic Park and Dennis. The next weekend, the film moved up one place, before falling down to number 10 by August 13, 1993.

Critical reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 36% based on 47 reviews, with an average rating of 4.86/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Last Action Hero has most of the right ingredients for a big-budget action spoof, but its scattershot tone and uneven structure only add up to a confused, chaotic mess." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 44 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.
Vincent Canby likened the film to "a two-hour 'Saturday Night Live' sketch" and called it "something of a mess, but a frequently enjoyable one".
Roger Ebert gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4, writing that despite some entertaining moments, Last Action Hero "plays more like a bright idea than like a movie that was thought through. It doesn't evoke the mystery of the barrier between audience and screen the way Woody Allen did in The Purple Rose of Cairo, and a lot of the time it simply seems to be standing around commenting on itself."
About the film's failure and critical response, John McTiernan said: "Initially, it was a wonderful Cinderella story with a nine-year-old boy. We had a pretty good script by Bill Goldman, charming. And this ludicrous hype machine got hold of it, and it got buried under bullshit. It was so overwhelmed with baggage. And then it was whipped out unedited, practically assembled right out of the camera. It was in the theater five or six weeks after I finished shooting. It was kamikaze, stupid, no good reason for it. And then to open the week after Jurassic Park--God! To get to the depth of bad judgment involved in that you'd need a snorkel." Schwarzenegger blamed the film's poor performance on bad press and the election of a Democratic president, which he said influenced audiences to see 1980s action film stars as lowbrow. He said streaming services gave the film its chance to reach new audiences unencumbered by the bad press.

Accolades

The film was nominated for six Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Picture, Worst Actor, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst New Star, and Worst Original Song, but it did not win any. At the 1993 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the movie received two nominations without wins: Worst Picture and Worst Actor. However, the film was also nominated for six Saturn Awards for Best Fantasy Film, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Performance by a Young Actor, Best Costume, and Best Special Effects.

Home media

On VHS, the film generated in revenue from home video rentals.
On February 3, 2009, Last Action Hero was reissued on DVD by Sony Pictures Entertainment in a double-feature set with the 1986 film Iron Eagle. It was released on the high-definition Blu-ray Disc format on January 12, 2010. The Blu-ray release presented the film in its original widescreen format for the first time in the United States since the LaserDisc release.