Despite directing three undeniable action-thriller classics (Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October) and offering a sterling filmography that includes blockbusters – such as Die Hard with a Vengeance and a remake of The Thomas Crown Affair – director John McTiernan still remains relatively anonymous. Alongside his major hits, McTiernan also directed a few high-profile bombs, the most notorious being Last Action Hero. His life and career took a dramatic turn when he became involved in a legal scandal that led to his imprisonment (thus halting any new work; he hasn’t made a movie in years). Despite these notable highs and lows, McTiernan’s name is somehow virtually unknown in the popular culture, nostalgic Gen Xers aside.
His 1986 debut feature, Nomads, landed with a soft thud, but it caught the attention of an important collaborator: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Back then, Schwarzenegger had just recently transitioned from being a seven-time Mr. Olympia bodybuilding winner to a genuine movie star. With hits like Terminator, Commando, and the Conan films under his belt, he was looking for the next breakout role. Predator (1987) became that massive new IP, boosting Schwarzenegger’s career and helping him achieve true mega-stardom in the 1990s.
Predator, a god-tier action extravaganza, was the first of two collaborations between Schwarzenegger and McTiernan. The second was Last Action Hero, which didn’t fare so well, marred by negative buzz even before its release. The press, and audiences, were primed to be dismissive of the film for myriad reasons. A few were valid, most were not. Last Action Hero is still remembered as a catastrophe, mostly due to poor timing and stiff competition from Jurassic Park, which was released a week earlier and dominated the box office. A rushed production schedule led to a lack of polish and coherence (and, thus, calamitous test screenings). The film’s blend of action, comedy and satire confused general audiences (not the brightest of bulbs, often). Marketing set high expectations for a traditional Arnold Schwarzenegger action film, which the movie’s arch tone actively eschewed. (Additionally, in 1993, Schwarzenegger’s juiciest action pics were behind him, something audiences sensed, if not marketers.) Multiple script rewrites resulted in a relative lack of focus (compared to the taut perfection of Die Hard) and mixed-to-negative reviews from critics further dampened enthusiasm.
The overhyped premise of a boy entering the movie world of a marquee hero led to something like a negative fait accompli, one that harmonized with the widespread derision of other misunderstood flops like Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate. To be clear, Last Action Hero totally rules. That it’s become a shorthand for a cinematic disaster is not a fault of the movie itself – which is wonderful – but with the business of Hollywood at the time of its release. Last Action Hero can be shaggy here and there, but it’s a savvy (and loving) interrogation of the kind of routine bombast we don’t get anymore.
For such a fantastical premise, the plot of Last Action Hero is pretty straightforward, supercharged and fun. Danny Madigan (the perfectly capable Austin O’Brien) – a teenager who loves movies, especially those featuring his favorite hero, Jack Slater (Schwarzenegger) – often escapes his troubled reality in a crime-ravaged Times Square by visiting a local movie theater owned by his friend Nick (Robert Prosky). One day, Nick gives Danny a magical golden ticket that once belonged to the famous magician Harry Houdini. With this ticket, Danny gets to watch an advance screening of the latest Jack Slater movie, the generically named Jack Slater IV.
During the screening, the ticket lights up, and Danny is sucked into the very cinematic environment he so loves. Once inside the film’s landscape, Danny meets Jack and tries to convince him that they are encountering one winking trope after another. Initially skeptical, Jack eventually believes Danny as they confront numerous action-movie clichés. Together, they face off against the picture’s villains, including the ruthless assassin Benedict (played by the always wonderful Charles Dance). He, of course, gets his hands on the enchanted ticket and shifts the action from make-believe into the real world. That’s when everything goes to bombastic hell.
Last Action Hero is a meta-movie, and a great one at that. It arrived on the heels of the fabulous Who Framed Roger Rabbit. (There’s a running gag, where a cartoon cat detective, voiced by Danny DeVito, drops in, here and there, seemingly visiting from another picture.) It’s a movie about the rules of genre flicks, which subsequent classics such as Scream and Galaxy Quest and Wreck-It Ralph would further exploit and expand on. Last Action Hero is part of that lineage, a progenitor, an imaginative genre movie that comments on action movies writ large. It’s self-reflexive and explosive. [Last Action Hero delivers the goods, and it delights in giving us the very things its lampooning and simultaneously honoring. Here’s a great action film about dumb action movies, by the man responsible for some of Hollywood’s finest action pictures. It’s too bad it didn’t prove popular enough to achieve the cliche-killing power it was clearly aiming for, but its failure did mark a kind of conclusion. If, unsurprisingly, it was not the last action picture, it did mark the definitive end of the cartoonish 1980s action-hero era — at least for a little while.
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