Is it time to remake LAST ACTION HERO?

Reassessing summer of 1993’s most notorious film.

Just a note — we’re bumping this week’s Summer of ‘93 entry up a few days so that on Friday I can have a new release to write about. Enjoy!

Just as you can’t talk about the movies of summer 1993 without mentioning Jurassic Park, the conversation isn’t complete without delving into the drama of Last Action Hero.

The latest Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle – his first since 1991’s smash hit Terminator 2: Judgment Day – was all many film lovers could talk about that summer, and they didn’t have much good to say. The John McTiernan-directed action-comedy had a notoriously troubled production, with rewrites softening a script that was reportedly edgier on first draft, a massive budget and the bad luck to be put up against Spielberg’s behemoth, which opened a week earlier (Schwarzenegger apparently tried to get Sony to push back the release a few weeks, but they refused). 

The result was a movie that quickly became a punchline, ridiculed by critics (it has a dismal 40% on Rotten Tomatoes) and bringing in only $50 million at the domestic box office; not great on an $85 million budget, nor considering that Schwarzenegger’s last film grossed four times that amount in the United States. And while it’s gotten enough of a reappraisal to be considered a cult favorite these days, it’s still shorthand for Hollywood fiascos and one of the most notorious bombs of its decade. 

I hadn’t seen Last Action Hero since its theatrical release 30 years ago and recently caught up with it again on Netflix (if you want to watch it, hurry; it leaves July 1). And while I don’t think it’s a great film, I also don’t think it’s bad. It’s enjoyable, at least. McTiernan directs some solid action sequences, including a fun car chase early on and a spectacular shoot-out/escape from atop an L.A. skyscraper. Some of the meta gags work and there are several genuine laughs. I think Arnold Schwarzenegger is really good; few action heroes have ever known the power of their iconography as well as he does and fewer have been able to exploit it for both action and comedy. The problem is that the film is hampered by a child actor who’s just too young and green to handle the meta lifting, and a script whose many cooks muddied the world-building. Last Action Hero is a mess, but it’s also kind of fun. It’s perfectly adequate – which, admittedly, is not what audiences want from a summer blockbuster. 

As I was watching, the thought occurred to me that Last Action Hero would be an interesting candidate for a remake. I’ve always believed that studios shoot themselves in the foot by remaking classic films instead of trying to take a second stab at something that didn’t quite work the first time. Last Action Hero is a classic “almost film,” with a premise that was just a bit ahead of its time that provides a wonderful skewering of our IP-addicted culture. But, can anyone fill Arnie’s snakeskin boots? 

A more meta-friendly time 

Last Action Hero is about a kid named Danny (Austin O’ Brien), whose only escape from his small apartment and the scuzzy New York neighborhood he lives in are the times spent at his local, run-down movie theater, where he’s friends with the projectionist (Robert Prosky) and obsessed with action films – particularly the Jack Slater franchise starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. One night, a magic ticket sends Danny through the screen and into the movie, where his knowledge of action movie tropes and clichés helps a baffled Jack take on a ruthless henchman with a glass eye (Charles Dance). But when the villain gets the ticket for himself and crosses into our world, Slater has to confront the reality of his fictional existence to try and bring him down. 

It’s a fun idea, one I’m sure many kids have dreamed of – how much fun would it be to be sucked into your favorite movie, TV show or video game and help the hero save the day? By the early ‘90s, big-budget action flicks had saturated multiplexes for a decade, growing in scale and ridiculousness to the point where they were their own self-parodies. You could take a checklist into any shoot ‘em up or cop movie and tick down the tropes, which Last Action Hero does several times. There’s the police captain eager to chew out our hero, although he really admires him; there’s the overly elaborate and sinister henchman; the cop who always has a plentiful supply of guns and ammunition hidden on his person and a ready arsenal of puns to toss out when he dispatches a baddie. Heck, Last Action Hero was pointing out “monologuing” 12 years before The Incredibles gave it a name. 

Maybe it was just a bit too ahead of its time and audiences weren’t quite ready for the meta concept just yet. But they were close. The next year, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare would pull Freddy Krueger into the real world and, two years after that, Craven would refine the concept with Scream. These days, movies and TV are constantly both parodying and celebrating genre, sometimes at the same time, be it the horror movie with Cabin in the Woods and Shaun of the Dead, or the action genre with Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright is particularly good at this). Perhaps if Last Action Hero were remade today, audiences would be more open to its unique take on the blow ‘em up movie. 

It comes close to being a good mixture of both a genre parody and just a good action movie. McTiernan’s no slouch when it comes to the latter; the man behind Die Hard and Predator knows his way around car chases, shoot outs and explosions. And the script, credited to Lethal Weapon scribe Shane Black and David Arnott (who scripted some middling fare in the ‘80s and ‘90s, including a TV remake of Christmas in Connecticut, directed by…Arnold Schwarzenegger), understands the tropes that are ripe for parody. I’ve mentioned some of them, but I also had fun with the way the movie lets Danny poke holes in Jack Slater’s universe by pointing out the super-hotness of every single person and the fact that every phone number starts with 555; there’s also a great gag involving who would star in Arnold’s biggest hit in this alternate universe. 

It’s a clever idea, but the script also lacks a clear focus. It’s not sure whether it’s just parodying a certain type of movie or the idea of movies in general. If the goal is to poke fun at Arnold’s career, why have Jack Slater be just a cop, when the actor was most famous for playing commandos and giant robots (Willis, Stallone and Mel Gibson were the ones who regularly played cops)? The plot has Danny pulled into a Jack Slater movie, but there are characters from other films – including an animated cat and Humphrey Bogart. Does this magic ticket only pull Danny into one movie where these characters all show up, or does every movie character live in the same universe – and if so, shouldn’t the movie go crazy with that concept (the biggest letdown is that the villain, once in the real world, talks about bringing Dracula and Freddy Kreuger out to fight Jack, but the best we get is the ax-wielder from Jack Slater III)? At times, it feels less like Danny is pulled into an action movie and more like he’s pulled into a Naked Gun-type parody of an action movie, where trained guard dogs can also form cheerleader pyramids (a dumb gag, but I laughed) and steam pours from the captain’s ears when he gets really mad. And any screenwriter writing a parody of an action movie should know that these violent movies were released with an R rating, so the scene where Danny tries to get Jack to say the f-word but can’t because it’s a PG-13 movie falls flat. 

The script’s a mess and its world-building makes no sense, possibly because of the many hands involved in the script. Black and Arnott get credit, but the original script was drafted by Zak Penn and Adam Leff (with the much-better title, Extremely Violent); there was also script doctoring by Carrie Fisher and William Goldman. And while there are jokes and lines that work, the overall reality of the film is muddled. For a parody to work, it needs to have a laser focus on its target, and Last Action Hero’s script tries to take on all of Hollywood. It’s a parody of macho action movies that also tries to be a sweet-hearted Amblin film. It never quite wraps its arms around what a Jack Slater movie is, although McTiernan captures the glossy, uber-sleek designs of these films, which is a nice contrast to the dirty, rain-strewn reality Danny comes from. It’s actually sharper at skewering Hollywood culture in its back half, where the film has a delightful collision with the “real-life” Jack Slater premiere and involves Arnold playing himself (then-wife Maria Shriver scolding him for mentioning his Planet Hollywood restaurant because it’s tacky is really funny).  

The script’s lack of focus is its biggest flaw. And maybe much of it is due to the many cooks trying to pull off a hit. But it’s also possible that they were trying to figure out just how to pull off this meta concept, when today, Hollywood has already proven that it’s possible to take this idea and make it good. I’d love to see Edgar Wright or the team of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein take a crack at this material; I think it could be a ton of fun, and the ideas are still relevant. 

A remake for our IP age 

But, of course, the biggest challenge for redoing Last Action Hero is The Austrian Oak himself. Because who could pull off this role better than Arnold? 

And Schwarzenegger is really fun here; I honestly think it’s one of his best performances from this period. He, of course, has the swagger to pull off Jack Slater as an action hero, and he does it with gusto. But he’s also willing to go very silly and skewer his image. And while I’m sure Willis or Stallone could have fronted a similar movie, I don’t think they ever had Schwarzenegger’s comedic chops. They could deliver funny lines, but they weren’t silly and they didn’t have a great track record with pure comedies. He’s willing to make fun of his name, spout inane dialogue, poke fun at “I’ll be back” and his penchant for bad puns. And he looks like he’s having a good time doing it. 

Plus, Schwarzenegger was iconic, an actor whose presence provides a shorthand for the type of movie the filmmakers are parodying. As soon as he stomps onscreen in his T-shirt and snakeskin boots, chomping on a giant cigar, you know what type of movie he’s in. And Schwarzenegger was huge with all audiences; even if they hadn’t seen all of his movies, people could get one glimpse at him or hear his voice and know “okay, I got it; Predator, Terminator. I know this dude.” Theoretically, this is a movie that could work with anyone playing an action star, but the fact that it’s Arnold – and he’s playing himself – is what really sells the joke. 

And I don’t know who we have today who would be comparable. Yes, you could just re-do it with Arnold, but he’s not as prolific these days (Netflix shows notwithstanding) and his most iconic work is 30-40 years in the past, whereas the fun of him in Last Action Hero is him parodying who he was at that moment. True, you could get a big action star like Dwayne Johnson, but he doesn’t have the box office receipts for the satire to land, nor is he really willing to poke fun at himself like Arnold was (he’s done it, but the joke has always been he’s still badass). I could see John Cena, Jason Momoa or Dave Bautista, but they’re not nearly as iconic as Arnold at his prime. Keanu Reeves perhaps, although his persona would almost require an entirely different type of action movie. 

But maybe the key wouldn’t be the star; maybe it would be the character. After all, Last Action Hero is about a kid obsessed with Jack Slater. It’s not just that he loves Arnold Schwarzenegger; it’s that he loves this particular piece of IP. And we just so happen to live in an age where IP is king and in desperate need of having its bubble burst a bit. 

A kid being sucked into a Marvel movie, trying to explain to Captain America or Iron Man that this universe is all connected to a bunch of different movies? Maybe there’s something to that (although I concede that Deadpool and She-Hulk already tried to take some of the starch out of the MCU, with mixed results). Maybe James Gunn could find a way to make that work in his new DCEU; hell, cars have already been to space – would having a golden ticket suck a kid into the Fast and Furious universe be that much of a stretch? Or make a deal to have Freddy and Jason team up again for a weird meta romp. 

You know what…maybe this is a bad idea. 

Arnold’s expressed interest in a Last Action Hero sequel. Maybe that could work. But maybe our culture is just too savvy these days and too aware and in love with all of our own tropes and clichés to really need this joke anymore. Maybe Last Action Hero will always just be a solid “almost movie” with some clever jokes, solid action sequences and a great lead performance. Maybe we should just put down the golden ticket and back slowly away from the IP.