by Jonathan Fedee, Contributing Writer
Welcome to Another Person’s Treasure. In this series, we discuss films that aren’t considered great by critics or audience scores, but are considered great by the writer.
Released in 1993, the Arnold Schwarzenegger-led, John McTiernan-directed self-referential action film, Last Action Hero, is a meta-action movie about action movies. I find that most people have never heard of it before, and for those who have actually seen it, they only remember it as being a huge disappointment. Though I’m convinced had it been released in 2022, it would’ve been a runaway hit with audiences and critics alike, or at the very least not reviled. The movie follows a young film enthusiast named Danny (Austin O’Brien), who is gifted a magic ticket, granting him the ability to step from the real world into his favorite action movie franchise, Jack Slater. Schwarzenegger plays the titular Jack Slater, and once Danny unexpectedly drops into the backseat of Jack’s convertible during the very movie he was only moments before watching on the big screen, it’s his expertise of the Slater franchise and action movie tropes in general that allows the young film buff to investigate a new, in-universe assassin named Benedict (Charles Dance) alongside his favorite hero. As Benedict comes to understand Danny’s true origin, he recognizes the power one could wield with a such a magical ticket, which he steals for himself to travel into Danny’s real world to amass other nightmarish villains from other franchises to run amuck, and to more specifically kill the real-world actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Benedict’s reasoning is that if the real-world actor is killed, he can no longer portray the hero of the film world from which Benedict escaped, leaving the assassin to carry out his dastardly deeds unimpeded.
It was a complex premise in the early ‘90s, only two years after Schwarzenegger became the biggest star in the world starring in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and most audiences simply couldn’t grasp the nuance. I strongly suspect that pre-internet audiences were expecting a regular action movie, and when Last Action Hero proved to be anything but, filmgoers and critics responded in kind. The movie works incredibly well once Danny gets transported into Jack Slater IV, with him immediately onboard with his circumstance. He’s quick to point out all of Slater’s catchphrases and uses his extensive knowledge of the franchise to navigate obstacles in genuinely enjoyable ways. At one point early in their paring, Danny and Jack take a trip to Blockbuster (which admittedly dates the movie), and it’s revealed that the aforementioned Terminator 2: Judgement Day exists in this film world, but to Danny’s dismay, it’s Sylvester Stallone who plays the T-800, not Schwarzenegger. Then when the unlikely duo winds up at a hyper-stylized police station, Danny is shocked to brush by the T-1000 from Terminator 2, cameoed by Robert Patrick himself, and Sharon Stone as her character from Basic Instinct, which always makes me smile. Audiences today are familiar with movies like Ready Player One, Space Jam: A New Legacy, and even the most recently released Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, but in the early ‘90s, the slamming together of wildly different IP’s and genres was virtually incomprehensible, save for Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
It’s also worth noting the tonal shift that occurs between the film world and the real world. Slater’s movie world is bright and colorful, set under the sunny skies of Los Angeles, while Danny’s real world is set in the dark and rainy streets of New York City. In the movie world, serious bullet wounds are viewed as superficial flesh wounds, while in the real world, bullets can and often do kill people, a stark contrast for Jack because he is usually the invincible hero of his own story. The reality that bones can be broken and Jack can actually be killed in Danny’s world immediately raises the stakes for them both when they have to cross over out of the film in pursuit of Benedict. Jack also becomes despondent upon learning the existential truth of his reality — that everything, his career, his heroism, even the painful death of his young son, murdered by a nemesis in an earlier film, all of it that seemed so real to him was in fact scripted by Hollywood. This shift in tone ultimately leads to the character of Jack Slater to being in the same room with Arnold Schwarzenegger as an attempt is made on the actor’s life. To Schwarzenegger’s credit, he delivers two distinct performances here — one as an action hero saving a life, and the other as an out-of-touch celebrity, who believes the proceedings to be an elaborate stunt to help promote the latest Jack Slater movie.
So how did the premise that followed a kid going into his favorite movie not work for audiences in 1993? Perhaps filmgoers found themselves hung up on the logistics of it all, something I don’t believe they’d even bat an eye at today. More than anything, I firmly believe it was simply a film a few decades before its time. Last Action Hero is not a regular action movie; it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger at the height of his stardom leading a movie making fun of Schwarzenegger movies while maintaining a balance as a love letter to the genre. It’s a treasured time capsule that I enjoyed as a kid almost 30 years ago, and I still enjoy today.