Last Action Hero

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Last Action Hero
Directed by John McTiernan
Produced by John McTiernan
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Written by Zak Penn
Adam Leff
Shane Black
David Arnott
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
F. Murray Abraham
Charles Dance
Music by Michael Kamen
Cinematography Dean Semler
Editing by Richard A. Harris
John Wright
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date(s) June 18, 1993
Running time 130 min
Language English
Budget $85,000,000
Gross revenue Worldwide $137,298,489[1]
IMDb profile

Last Action Hero is a 1993 action comedy directed by John McTiernan. The film is a satire of the action genre and its clichés. The film includes within it several parodies of action films, in the form of films within the film.

The film tells the story of Danny, a young boy who likes action movies, particularly those featuring action hero Jack Slater. It is established within the film that Slater is portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays himself as well as portraying Slater. Thanks to a "magic ticket", the lines between reality and the movie world blur as Danny is catapulted into Jack Slater IV.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien), is a boy whose love of action movies (especially those of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is played by himself) keeps him out of school and in trouble. His favorite movie franchise is the fictional Jack Slater series, which is preparing for the release of its fourth installment.

On the day before the premier of Jack Slater IV, Danny visits his friend Nick, an old man who runs a run-down movie theater in downtown New York City. He offers Danny a private screening of the film, an offer which Danny is quick to accept, especially when Nick offers him a gold-plated ticket which he claims was given to him by Harry Houdini.

Several minutes into the movie, the stub of the ticket begins to glow blue, and suddenly some dynamite from within the movie lands in the theater, putting Danny into shock. Before he can escape, the dynamite explodes, and Danny vanishes.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, as Jack Slater, and Austin O'Brien as young Danny Madigan
Arnold Schwarzenegger, as Jack Slater, and Austin O'Brien as young Danny Madigan

Confused, Danny awakens in a moving vehicle, which he quickly discovers is driven by his "action hero", Jack Slater. He soon realizes that he was somehow transported into the film, and begs Slater to help him find his way back to the real world. Slater, however, refuses to help, not believing that HIS world is just a movie.

After Danny's attempts to convince Slater of his true nature (including pointing out that Slater is unable to swear even when trying to) repeatedly fail, he suddenly recognizes a mansion from the film's introduction, and, knowing that it is where the "bad guys" are, convinces Slater to check it out. The two find there Tony Vivaldi, the crime boss advertised as the villain for Jack Slater IV, and his English henchman Mr. Benedict (Charles Dance). Benedict overhears Danny discussing his knowledge of Benedict's role in the movie, and — like Slater, not understanding he himself is in a movie — is intrigued to find out how Danny could come about such information.

Benedict double-crosses Vivaldi, killing him, and awaits Slater's arrival at the mansion. When Slater arrives with Danny, Benedict manages to obtain the ticket stub which Danny still has, and vanishes into the real world before Slater's eyes. Puzzled, Slater follows Danny back through the portal into the real world, where the battle continues.

Both Slater and Benedict become acquainted with the nature of the real world; Slater, with the help of Danny's mother, realizes that there are more important things in the world than action, and decides that he would not return to the world that he considers a lie. Meanwhile, Benedict continues with his evil ways, especially when realizing that in the real world it is possible for the "bad guys" to win, and hatches a plan to kill Arnold Schwarzenegger at the premier of Jack Slater IV, thereby causing Jack Slater to cease to exist. Discovering this plan, Danny convinces Slater to go with him to the premier. There, Slater encounters "The Ripper", a villain from an earlier Jack Slater film. Slater kills the Ripper by electrocuting him, but is shot in the chest by Benedict, who has now begun to plan world domination, but Slater gets Benedict's gun, and shoots him in the eye, causing the bomb in his glass-eye to detonate, blowing Benedict to smithereens, destroying the ticket in the process. Slater was fatally shot, something impossible in the film world. Heading back to the movie theater, they find The Seventh Seal's Death, who, before returning to his movie, suggests using the other half of the ticket.

Following Death's advice, Danny returns Slater to the movie, where his fatal injury turns out to be "just a flesh wound". Accepting his reality for what it really is, Slater drives off into the sunlight, renouncing his old ways.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Cameos

[edit] Reception

Last Action Hero was billed at the time as "the next great summer action movie"[citation needed] and many movie insiders predicted the film to be a huge blockbuster, especially following the success of Schwarzenegger's previous film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.[1]

Instead, the movie was panned by critics but grossed $50 million in the United States and an additional $87 million worldwide, totaling US$137 million. In an A&E biography of Schwarzenegger, the actor (who was also the film's executive producer) says that the film could have done even better, but due to bad timing, since it came out a week after Jurassic Park, the biggest movie phenomenon of that year. Schwarzenegger states that he tried to persuade his co-producers to postpone the film's June 18 release in the US by four weeks, but they turned a deaf ear on the grounds that the movie would have lost millions of dollars in revenue for every weekend of the summer it ended up missing.

Linda Norman, a well respected movie critic, claimed that it was the only movie she ever saw in theaters and actually fell asleep during.

Years after LAH's release, it was the subject of a scathing chapter called "How They Built The Bomb", in the book Hit and Run which detailed misadventures at Sony Pictures in the early-to-mid 1990s. Among the details presented in this chapter were:

  • Arnold Schwarzenegger selected LAH as his next project in a close race against another Sony property, a comedy about a modern Tooth Fairy called SWEET TOOTH, which remains unproduced as of 2007.
  • Universal moved Jurassic Park to June 11, 1993 well after Sony had decided on a June 18 release date for LAH.
  • The movie was rumoured to be the first advertisement placed on a space-going rocket. As negative reviews came in from pre-screenings, the idea was quickly scrapped.
  • The film was capsized by a wave of negative publicity after a rough cut of it was shown to a preview audience on May Day. Sony then destroyed the test cards and the word-of-mouth proved to be catastrophic for the film.
  • The shooting and editing schedule were so demanding and so smashed against the June 18 release date that after the movie's failure, a source close to the film said "We shouldn't have had Siskel and Ebert telling us the movie is 10 minutes too long".
  • Sony was even more humiliated the weekend after LAH opened, when the movie A) lost 47% of its opening-weekend audience and B) saw TriStar's Sleepless In Seattle open #1 at the box office.
  • The final declared financial loss for the film was $26 million.

[edit] Background/Production

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. Zak Penn noted himself that it was ironic that the studio then had Shane 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 Zak Penn and Adam Leff were eventually credited with the story of the film but not the screenplay, which is noted as being unusual for a film based on an original screenplay.[2]

[edit] Soundtrack

[edit] Music from the Motion Picture album

Last Action Hero: Music From The Original Motion Picture
Last Action Hero: Music From The Original Motion Picture cover
Soundtrack by Various Artists
Released June 8, 1993 (1993-06-08)
Genre Rock
Alternative
Heavy metal
Length 54:19
Label Columbia Records
Professional reviews
  1. "Big Gun" - (AC/DC) – 4:24
  2. "What the Hell Have I - (Alice in Chains) – 3:58
  3. "Angry Again" - (Megadeth) – 3:47
  4. "Real World" - (Queensrÿche) – 4:21
  5. "Two Steps Behind" - (Def Leppard) – 4:19
  6. "Poison My Eyes" - (Anthrax) – 7:04
  7. "Dream On" - (Aerosmith) – 5:42
  8. "A Little Bitter" - (Alice in Chains) – 3:53
  9. "Cock the Hammer" - (Cypress Hill) – 4:11
  10. "Swim" - (Fishbone) – 4:13
  11. "Last Action Hero" - (Tesla) – 5:44
  12. "Jack the Ripper" - Michael Kamen with Buckethead – 3:43

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Tinseltown hopeful - Arnie'll be back, also Eddie and dinosaurs - Los Angeles, California's motion picture industry; Arnold Schwarzenegger; Eddie Murphy - Special Report: Forecast 1993 - Industry Overview | Los Angeles Business Journal | Find Articles at BNET.com
  2. ^ Creative Screenwriting X-Men 3 Q&A Podcast with Zakk Penn and Simon Kinberg. Retrieved on 2006-09-20.

[edit] External links