INTRO: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s follow-up to the incredible success of Terminator 2, Last Action Hero was supposed to be something special. A movie that would add another awesome action spectacle to Schwarzenegger’s filmography, while also evoking the wonder of kid-friendly classics like E.T. and The Wizard of Oz. Instead, it was a bomb, best remembered for its messy development process, bad marketing decisions, and squandered potential. But is Last Action Hero really a bad movie? Let’s dig into it and find out with this episode of Revisited.
SET-UP: Zak Penn and Adam Leff were fresh out of college when they sat down to write a screenplay called Extremely Violent. A satire of the action genre, their script skewered the clichés by dropping an action movie fan into the middle of the mayhem. Imagine if the Randy character from Scream had found himself inside one of his favorite horror movies instead of being attacked by a slasher in his own reality. Extremely Violent centered on a young kid named Danny, who is grieving the death of his father. But rather than face his pain, he tries to push it aside and distract himself through entertainment. When he goes to see a special screening of a new action movie called Extremely Violent, he escapes into a movie in a more literal way than he ever imagined. He finds himself transported into the film, becoming the action hero’s sidekick. Dodging bullets and riding shotgun during chase scenes. And since he is so familiar with the formula of action movies, he’s always several steps ahead of the story and the hero. Speaking with Empire magazine, Penn confirmed that he and Leff did their homework, making sure their movie-within-a-movie would play just like the action flicks that could be found in the nearest video store. He said, “We rented every action movie we could think of and made a checklist. Does the second-most evil bad guy die before or after the most evil bad guy? Does the hero have a Vietnam buddy? It was fun, although watching Steven Seagal movies one after another can be soul-crushing.”
Once the script was complete, they got it into the hands of agent Chris Moore, who would go on to be a major producer himself. You might have seen him on Project Greenlight. Moore thought the Extremely Violent script was great. A modern day version of The Wizard of Oz, with the kid going into an action movie instead of going to the land of Oz. A bidding war broke out between the studios, they all wanted that script. But Columbia Pictures came out the winner with a bid of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Penn and Leff wrote the script with one particular action hero in mind. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Their inspiration is obvious in the name they gave the action hero: Arno Slater. They didn’t really expect that their script would get made into a movie that would star Schwarzenegger… But then Schwarzenegger actually signed on to the project. Unfortunately for them, the movie that ended up being made with their ideal star in the lead isn’t what Penn and Leff wrote. The title was changed to Last Action Hero and the hero’s name was changed to Jack Slater. And nearly everything else was changed along the way. Last Action Hero only resembles Extremely Violent in the basics: it is about a kid named Danny, who has lost his dad and is a fan of action movies, getting pulled into a movie and becoming a sidekick to his favorite hero. But from the explanation for how Danny gets into the movie to the adventure he and Jack Slater go on, it’s all different from what Penn and Leff wrote.
Schwarzenegger felt the Extremely Violent script was too violent. And why wouldn’t it be? Violence was promised right there in the name. He also felt the script wasn’t written on a professional level. Which could make sense from his perspective, since he was used to seeing scripts from Hollywood’s top writers and this one was written by two beginners. So Columbia Pictures hired one of those top writers to revise the script: Shane Black, who had written Lethal Weapon and recently sold the script for The Last Boy Scout for just under two million dollars. Penn and Leff found it amusing that the writer of some of the action movies that had given them moments to satirize in their script was now reworking their script. Black was aided by his friend David Arnott while doing the revisions. And Black and Arnott changed the script so substantially, they ended up earning the screenplay credit on the finished film, while Penn and Leff only receive story credit.
Last Action Hero isn’t exactly what Black and Arnott wrote, either. More writers worked on the script after they were finished. Which is somewhat surprising, given that John McTiernan, who had worked with both Schwarzenegger and Black on Predator, signed on to direct Last Action Hero. McTiernan was such a fan of Black’s writing, he had given Black an acting role in Predator in hopes that he would touch up the script while they were on set. Something Black has said he didn’t actually do. But he wasn’t quite satisfied with what Black and Arnott had written for Last Action Hero. So he called in some other script doctors. Like Larry Ferguson, who he had worked with on The Hunt for Red October. The script was polished by Star Wars star and Postcards from the Edge writer Carrie Fisher, who did a lot of script doctor work in the ‘90s. And William Goldman, the Oscar winning writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men, was paid one million dollars to tinker with the script for four weeks.
Despite all the changes that were being made and the money that was being spent, it was clear that Last Action Hero wasn’t shaping up to be what anyone was hoping it would be. After extensive rewrites had been done, Black was even asked to come back and work on the script some more. He declined. McTiernan was running out of time to worry about the script anyway. Columbia Pictures had already announced a June 18, 1993 release for Last Action Hero – a date that was just nine and a half months away from when they gave the film a greenlight. Now McTiernan just had to get this thing done and ready for its premiere. The release date Columbia chose was one week after Universal was going to release Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. But the studio wasn’t concerned. Spielberg’s previous movie had been the critical and financial disappointment Hook. (Which Carrie Fisher also worked on as a script doctor.) They took Hook’s reception as a sign that the days of Spielberg movies being a big deal were over. They believed that Last Action Hero was going to be a juggernaut that would easily crush Jurassic Park. They were mistaken.
REVIEW: A lot has been said over the decades about the rewrites ruining Last Action Hero, but some of the changes were actually improvements. In the original script, Danny ends up inside the movie because he’s being toyed with by a demon. The projectionist in the theatre is an ancient evil being who is trying to manipulate the kid into becoming a vengeful killer. The point of putting him through the action movie scenario is to get Danny to shoot the projectionist when he returns to his own reality. And then, supposedly, the demon would claim his soul. The rewrites turned the reality-bending adventure into something that’s just fun. There’s emotional weight to Danny and Jack’s interactions and of course they both learn lessons from the time spent with each other. But there are no demons and no souls at stake. Danny ends up in the movie, the latest entry in his beloved Jack Slater franchise, because he has a magic ticket. A ticket given to him by the friendly old projectionist Nick, played by Robert Prosky. This ticket has passed through the hands of the world’s greatest magicians, and was given to Nick by Harry Houdini. It was said to be a passport to another world… and that turns out to be true.
Penn and Leff were fans of McTiernan’s previous work, but felt he was an odd choice for Last Action Hero because there had been no indication that he had the right sensibility for the material. He was a maker of serious action movies, not genre-skewering parodies. They had imagined someone like The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London director John Landis directing the film. Or Robert Zemeckis, the director of Used Cars, Romancing the Stone, and Back to the Future. Someone they knew would have fun deconstructing action clichés. As Penn said, “It’s easier for someone from the outside to mock the conventions of action movies than it is for the people who created them in the first place.”
McTiernan has admitted that his movie struggles to find the right tone. He wanted it to be a mixture of action and the heartwarming feeling of E.T. But he had trouble achieving that. The movie’s struggle with tone is clear in the scenes set in the world of Jack Slater 4. The idea had been that Danny would be in a straightforward action movie along the lines of Lethal Weapon, and the action movie would then become comedic because the kid knows so much about the genre. Instead, McTiernan and the script doctors sent Danny into a world that’s already a parody of Hollywood films. The movie world comes off like a live-action cartoon… and it’s not even entirely live-action, because one of Jack’s fellow police officers is an animated cat. Whiskers, voiced by Danny DeVito. The characters aren’t just inside one movie, it’s like they’re living in the world of every major studio film that had ever been released.
There are some cute jokes along the way, the most popular being when Danny realizes that Sylvester Stallone starred in Terminator 2 in the world of Jack Slater 4. And the movie still remembers to make a mockery of some action movie clichés. Like Jack’s always angry and screaming superior Dekker, played by Frank McRae. And the traitorous friend, played by F. Murray Abraham. But the humor goes so far over-the-top, you can tell the filmmakers strayed from the point along the way. The action is fun, but in a ridiculous way. There’s even a sequence built around the funeral of a gangster called Leo the Fart. Whose corpse has been packed full of nerve gas, ensuring he’ll be exiting the world with a deadly case of flatulence. That was a Shane Black addition. There’s never a serious element to the action sequences in the Jack Slater 4 reality, there’s no danger. Jack Slater is supernaturally strong and capable. But he loses some of his ability when he enters Danny’s reality in the second half of the film. In that world, he can get hurt.
Here’s where the magic ticket brings more entertainment into the movie, as he ends up in the hands of an assassin called Mister Benedict. A William Goldman addition, brought to the screen through a scenery-chewing, fourth wall breaking performance from Charles Dance. Benedict realizes he can use the ticket to pass into another world. One where he can get away with more evil deeds, as they go unnoticed in Danny’s harsh reality. His first scheme is to assassinate Arnold Schwarzenegger at the Jack Slater 4 premiere. To pull this off, he pulls another villain out of the Jack Slater franchise. The Ripper, an axe-wielding serial killer who was played by Tom Noonan in Jack Slater 3. A character who even managed to kill Jack’s young son in that film’s tragic ending. Noonan plays a great creep, and the fact that Jack lost a son brings an interesting dynamic to his dealings with Danny, who lost his dad. McTiernan and the writers could have played up the surrogate father and son element more than they did.
For a movie that gets so absurd at times, Last Action Hero becomes surprisingly grounded in the end. While Benedict toys with the idea of bringing cinematic icons like Dracula, King Kong, and Freddy Krueger into Danny’s world… and something like that did happen in some drafts of the script… he doesn’t go ahead with it. We can only imagine what could have been. The movie wraps up simply, with two rooftop confrontations back-to-back. Jack faces off with The Ripper, then he faces off with Benedict. There’s not much to it. But we do see Jack succeed in saving Danny’s life in a situation just like the one where he failed to save his son’s life. And it’s harrowing enough to leave Jack seriously wounded. So it works.
The magic ticket shenanigans allow for a fun moment where Jack Slater and Arnold Schwarzenegger come face-to-face. And Jack makes it clear that he’s not fond of the actor who has put him through hell just by making movies. Better than that, the magic ticket brings Death out of the Ingmar Bergman film The Seventh Seal, just as Jack is on the verge of dying. Danny and Jack get to talk to Death, and it’s a great cameo for Ian McKellen.
Shane Black has said that the casting of Danny in Last Action Hero was “one of the absolute misfires of Western culture”, but child actor Austin O’Brien actually did well with the material he was given. Danny is a good stand-in for members of the generation of kids who grew up watching the action movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s. If you’re a movie fan of a certain age, you might see some of yourself reflected in this character. A kid who would prefer a Schwarzenegger version of Hamlet over a faithful adaptation.
Last Action Hero features some good supporting turns from Anthony Quinn as Benedict’s boss. Who isn’t nearly the threat his henchman is. Art Carney, in his final film role, as Jack’s ill-fated cousin. Mercedes Ruehl as Danny’s mother. Who bonds with Jack when he follows Danny home. And an underused Bridgette Wilson as Jack’s daughter Whitney. It’s also nice to see Professor Toru Tanaka in there as a villainous bodyguard.
Screenwriter Zak Penn earned his Screen Actors Guild membership when he was offered a small role as a police officer. But you probably won’t spot him in the movie. He had been on set for a couple weeks before he realized that he was being positioned outside of the frame for all of his scenes. The film does feature an onslaught of largely unnecessary and pointless cameos from the likes of Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, Little Richard, Tina Turner, Jim Belushi, and Damon Wayans. Jean-Claude Van Damme gets a moment. Chevy Chase shows up just long enough to almost get knocked down. But other than Ian McKellen as Death, the best cameo in the film is the appearance by Schwarzenegger’s then-wife Maria Shriver. Who is embarrassed to see her husband promote Planet Hollywood on the red carpet.
LEGACY/NOW: Post-production on Last Action Hero was a rushed process that was made even more complicated when a test screening was held. The audience’s reaction was so negative, it was considered a disaster. The decision was made to reshoot the ending. And by the time the additional photography was finished, they were only three weeks away from the release date Columbia refused to budge from. They were going to take on Jurassic Park – and attempted to do so by hyping Last Action Hero as the greatest action movie ever made. Studio chairman Mark Canton called the film the best thing he had ever done. Schwarzenegger was confident he had made another summer blockbuster. A promotional tie-in with Burger King was secured. A toy line was created – and Schwarzenegger insisted that the Jack Slater action figure not have a weapon. A soundtrack was assembled that featured the likes of AC/DC, Anthrax, Megadeth, Alice in Chains, Def Leppard, Aerosmith, Cypress Hill, Fishbone, Queensryche, Tesla, and Buckethead. For no reason other than extravagance, the studio paid to have the title of the movie painted on the side of an unmanned rocket that NASA was launching into space. Due to a glitch, that rocket didn’t even get off the ground until months after the movie was released. Columbia also placed a seventy-five foot tall balloon of Schwarzenegger holding dynamite in the middle of Times Square. Given that this was immediately after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the dynamite was considered to be in poor taste. So that balloon was quickly deflated. None of this helped the troubled production overcome the allure of Spielberg’s dinosaur movie.
Jurassic Park reached theatres on June 11th and the movie – which had a sixty-three million dollar budget – earned around fifty million over its opening weekend. As we all know, it was a massive hit that made nine hundred and seventy million at the global box office that year. Those are 1993 dollars. Last Action Hero hit the big screen on June 18th… and had an opening weekend of just fifteen-point-three million. Just barely enough to cover the fifteen million Schwarzenegger had been given to star in the movie. With a budget in the eighty-five million dollar range, the film ended up pulling in a total of one hundred and thirty-seven million dollars at the global box office. Considering the budget, the star power, and the money and effort Columbia put into hyping it, it was a total misfire.
But the film has found an appreciative audience… and many of its fans are the viewers who were around Danny’s age when it was first released. The kids who watched all the same movies he had seen. Who were experts on R-rated action flicks before they even reached their teens. When they watched Last Action Hero, they could enjoy seeing someone like them go on an adventure with Arnold Schwarzenegger. And they were still young enough to find some of the sillier humor amusing. For viewers who have been enjoying the movie since the beginning, it now has nostalgia working in its favor as well. But it’s also easier for new viewers to enjoy Last Action Hero these days, since we’re far removed from the excessive hype, the unmet expectations, and the negativity about the project. Now you can just take it in for what it is: something that turned out to be a fun piece of entertainment despite all the questionable decisions that went into it. It’s not the greatest action movie ever made. It’s more like an intriguing curiosity. But it’s not a bad way to spend two hours, and ranks up there as one of the most expensive cult movies ever made.
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