Last Action Hero (1993)
Last Action Hero is a 1993 American action comedy film directed and produced by John McTiernan and co-written by Shane Black and David Arnott. 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 Mr.
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.
Last Action Hero failed to meet the studio’s expectations at the box office, and was both a critical and commercial disappointment. The film later found commercial success with its VHS release, establishing itself as a cult classic. The film was also Art Carney’s last appearance in a motion picture before his death in 2003.
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Plot.
Danny Madigan is a ten-year-old boy 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 movies, especially a series 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 screening of Jack Slater IV before its official release. During the film, the ticket stub magically transports Danny into the fictional world, interrupting Slater in the middle of a car chase. After escaping from their pursuers, Slater takes Danny to the LAPD headquarters,
where Danny points out evidence of the fictional nature of Slater’s world, such as the presence of numerous beautiful women and a cartoon cat detective named Whiskers, and says that Slater’s friend John Practice should not be trusted as he “killed Mozart” (since he is played by the same actor as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus). Though Slater accepts all of this as part of Danny’s wild imagination, Slater’s supervisor, Lieutenant Dekker, assigns Danny as his new partner, and instructs them to investigate criminal activities related to mafia boss Tony Vivaldi.
Danny guides Slater to Vivaldi’s mansion, recognizing its location from the start of the movie.
There, they meet Vivaldi’s henchman, Mr. Benedict. Danny later claims that Vivaldi and Benedict were the ones who killed Slater’s second cousin, but Slater has no evidence, and they are forced to leave; however, Benedict is curious as to how Danny knew, 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 and into the real world.
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 himself noted 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. 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. The exterior of the film’s Pandora Theater was the Empire Theater on 42nd Street in New York. The interiors were filmed at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles.
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:
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Theatrical.
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, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The film premiered in Westwood, Los Angeles on June 13, 1993, and entered general release in the United States five days later.
Home media.
Last Action Hero was released on VHS and LaserDisc by Columbia TriStar Home Video on August 29, 1994, and on DVD on October 7, 1997. On February 3, 2009, Last Action Hero was reissued on DVD by Sony Pictures Home 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 film double-featured with Hudson Hawk on Blu-ray and released by Umbrella Entertainment on September 4, 2019, in Australia only. An Ultra HD Blu-ray restored version was released on May 18, 2021, and featured a director’s commentary track, deleted scenes, an alternative ending, and the original theatrical trailer, all in 4K. The film was re-released with Cliffhanger in a 2-Movie Collection Blu-ray pack on November 2, 2021.