Last Action Hero is now considered somewhat of a cult action movie. However, when it was released in 1993, the majority of audiences and critics could not get on board with its wacky yet unique premise. To that, it served as the first major box office dud for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Last Action Hero was Schwarzenegger’s first movie after the iconic, box office shattering Terminator 2: Judgement Day. So, it goes without saying that it had big shoes to fill. Although it failed to live up T2, this genre-bending flick led to Schwarzenegger’s next big hit, re-teaming with James Cameron for True Lies.
What Went So Wrong with Last Action Hero?
With it’s game-changing special effects, spectacular action scenes, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s huge salary, of its time, Terminator 2: Judgement Day was the most expensive movie ever made. However, the studio got back its money and then some as the film grossed around $520 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film of 1991 and one of the most successful sequels of all time. Last Action Hero, on the other hand, only grossed $137 million against its $85 million budget. Despite a huge promotional campaign, and the fact that Schwarzenegger was freshly riding the success of T2, this film could not get butts in seats, only bringing in $15 million in its opening weekend, compared to T2‘s staggering $31,765,506. So, what went so wrong?
First off, Last Action Hero did not test well before its release, with audiences failing to grasp its meta-narrative and playful deconstruction and critiques of the action movie genre. While this is now fairly common in action movies with films like Deadpool utilising this trait, in 1993, pretty much nobody was doing it. So, this put the film in bad footing early on as word of mouth quickly spread. Also, the trailer wasn’t hiding this playful tone at all, potentially leading many to skip the film altogether. Of course, the plethora of bad reviews didn’t help matters either. To make matters even worse, Last Action Hero was competing with Jurassic Park, and the longer Steven Spielberg‘s massive movie kept playing, Last Action Hero‘s numbers kept dropping and dropping.
How This Failure Led to True Lies
Last Action Hero wasn’t just Schwarzenegger’s follow up to T2, it was also a reunion with Predator director John McTiernan, who also directed the iconic Die Hard. So, of course, everyone involved was expecting big things. When the film flopped, Schwarzenegger had never experienced this kind of failure before, not just in movies, but in all of his life. In the Netflix series Arnold, the man himself lifted the lid on this experience and explained how he slipped into somewhat of a depression, saying: “I can’t tell you how angry I was. It hurts. It hurts your feelings. It’s embarrassing.” However, he was soon pulled out of his wallowing when he watched the french movie, La Totale!
This action comedy lit a fire in Schwarzenegger’s belly and he went to James Cameron to suggest that they remake it for Hollywood. At the time, Cameron was set to helm an R-rated Spider-Man movie with Leonardo DiCaprio in mind to play Peter Parker and Schwarzenegger to portray Doctor Octopus. While this would have been an exciting project had it ever come to fruition, Cameron watched La Totale! and saw Schwarzenegger’s vision. To that, they quickly got to work on True Lies, shooting the movie in 7 months, and enjoying a budget that was $10 million higher than the titan that was Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
True Lies saw Cameron and Schwarzenegger deliver the thrills that was expected of them in the action department, and an undertone of comedy was laced throughout. The result was a box office smash hit and an overall critically-accepted movie. True Lies lifted Schwarzenegger out of the slump that Last Action Hero put him in and his status as an action hero was back on top form. The film pulled in an impressive $25,869,770 in its opening weekend.
Is Last Action Hero Really That Bad?
While True Lies was considered much more of a return to form for Schwarzenegger, as the years have gone by, Last Action Hero has become a cult classic and is widely considered to be an underrated gem in his filmography. Of course, there are wacky, slapstick elements at play, and even bizarre cartoon characters thrown into the mix, but today, this is quite the beauty of it. The film was written by Zak Penn and Adam Leff, two young men fresh out of college who set out to write a satirical movie that pokes fun at the action genre, skewering the cliche by throwing an action movie fan into the heart of the action via a magic ticket. The plot may seem meek in the wide world of film today, but it was as mind-bending as a film could get at the time. Simply put, movie enthusiasts might not have been prepared to have their minds twisted just yet, particularly action fans who usually want straight-forward action.
The film was initially titled “Extremely Violent”, but Lethal Weapon writer Shane Black came on board to rewrite the screenplay and the name eventually changed. Ironically, Penn and Leff were actually spoofing Black’s earlier works in their script, and some of these elements still made it to the final product, meaning Black saw what the two young writers were working towards with their unique vision. And that’s exactly what this movie is – unique. Today, this kind of movie would likely be heavily lauded. Yes, it pokes fun at itself, and yes, it is over the top beyond belief, but that was the whole point.
So, in essence, audiences were simply not ready for satire. Last Action Hero is not a perfect movie, but it blends all of the right elements – action, comedy, slapstick, drama, fantasy, and mystery. Today, it’s mostly a movie that is nostalgic for people who were the same age as the central teenage character Danny, an action movie buff. And there’s no denying that despite its poor reception, its a spectacle of an action movie that lives up to today’s standards.
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