Last
Action Hero --
directed by John McTiernan and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger -- was supposed
to be the “big ticket” movie of the summer of 1993, but fate had other plans.
That
title eventually went to Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993)
instead, and today Last Action Hero is widely remembered as a misfire; a bomb. The
film grossed little more than fifty million dollars at the American box office,
and earned many negative reviews. I saw the film in the theater in 1993
(long-time Arnie fan, here…) and felt it was disappointing, if not downright
awful.
But
the purpose of this blog is (at least sometimes…) to re-examine those works of
art that have been dismissed, overlooked, or forgotten.
So
I wondered: is Last Action Hero worth a second look in 2018? Has it aged well?
Or,
conversely, have I changed as a viewer since 1993, and come to better see what
the film was attempting to achieve?
First,
let’s focus on the negative aspects of the film and get that out of the way.
More
than twenty years later, one can detect the reasons why Last Action Hero so often
fails. At two-hours and eleven minutes
in duration, it is simply too long for a film featuring, essentially, a lark as
a premise: a real life boy ending up the
sidekick of a movie world action hero.
There’s
just too much baggage -- to much detritus -- weighing down those light bones.
This
movie should be -- like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) -- no
more than 105 minutes in running time.
Why?
Any
longer than that, and one is bound to start asking questions about the
inconsistencies in the premise, and the universe the film creates.
Any
longer than that, and the jokes start to repeat, and the performances begin to
flat-line from the repetition. Watching
the film becomes a tiresome process by the third act because Last
Action Hero doesn’t always seem to know where it is headed.
Secondly,
the pace and tone of these two hours and eleven minutes might best be described
as leaden. There are plenty of action sequences, certainly, but the plot moves
at a snail’s place, and never settles on a consistent tone.
To
wit: sometimes the film is a weird and wacky catch-all or satire; an Airplane
(1980) type film. But then there are also those moments when viewers
are supposed to feel invested in the details of the story, and in following the
plot logically from point A to point B. The two approaches collide and the result
is an unsatisfying mishmash. If we are
constantly being told that events don’t matter, or that this is all “just a
movie,” it becomes ever-more difficult to invest in the plot details.
These
facts established, Last Action Hero possesses many good ideas, and even a
compelling thematic through-line that I hope to enumerate. That through-line
ties into the jokes about Shakespeare’s Hamlet
and a movie version of the play starring Schwarzenegger (perhaps the best scene
in the film…). It also ties into the
characters of Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien) and Jack Slater. All three heroes contend with the same “to be
or not to be” existential dilemma.
In
short, Last Action Hero is actually about Danny learning what it means
to really live life, and to be the hero of his own lie. First, he learns that lesson in a world with
the training wheels on (the movie world) and then he learns it in the real world, where Jack Slater --
his role model and surrogate father -- must learn it beside him.
And
what does Danny learn in the real world?
That unlike the movie world, real world virtues include not expert
gunplay, but compassion, loyalty, and love.
It
is rewarding and admirable that Last Action Hero tells this story,
but after twenty years, it is obvious that the film doesn’t tell it with
anything approaching consistency or coherence.
So
what audiences end up with is a sweet, likable film that, despite those
qualities, is also often dull and tiresome.
It
makes me sad too. I want to like this
movie more than I do.
“Here,
in this world, the bad guys can win.”
Young
Danny Madigan (O’Brien) avoids his real life problems (including an apartment
in a bad neighborhood and the death of his father) by cutting school and
hanging out at the movies with a kindly old projectionist, Nick (Robert
Prosky).
His
favorite movies are those involving a larger-than-life action hero named Jack
Slater (Schwarzenegger) and his exploits as an L.A. cop.
With
Slater IV due in theaters, Nick
invites Danny to an advance screening of the sequel late one night. He also
gives Danny a golden ticket given to him years earlier by Harry Houdini.
As
Danny discovers, that ticket possesses magic powers, and can open a bridge
between the movie universe and the real universe. Danny is swept across this bridge, and meets
his hero, Jack Slater, in a movie-version of Los Angeles.
In
the movie world, Jack is tangling with an evil hitman named Benedict (Charles
Dance) and his mob boss, Tony Vivaldi (Anthony Quinn). Danny helps Slater defeat
the bad guys, and also reckon with the fact that he is actually living inside a
movie.
Later
Benedict gets ahold of the magic ticket stub, and moves into the real world.
There, the villain realizes that bad guys can win, and with the help of the
villain of Slater III, The Ripper (Tom Noonan), decides to set off on a
reign of terror at the world premiere of Slater IV, where star Arnold
Schwarzenegger is schedule to appear…
Now Danny and Jack must stop Benedict and the
Ripper, and Jack must come face-to-face with his celebrity alter-ego.
“You
can’t die until the grosses go down.”
There’s
an amusing moment of allusion in Last Action Hero involving Charles
Dance’s character, Benedict. This
assassin has stolen the magical golden ticket, and discovered that it opens the
doorway to another dimension; to the real world.
As
Benedict’s hand lightly brushes the portal to that universe, a TV on in the
background plays the opening narration and theme to Rod Serling’s The
Twilight Zone (1959-1964). This detail is an intriguing point of
connection between productions. Like
those visiting The Twilight Zone, Benedict can now travel to another
dimension.
Yet,
by the same token, The Twilight Zone signifies something else significant: economy of storytelling.
Each
episode of the series (except for those airing in the fourth season) are just a
half-hour in length. They vet their wild
tales, offer a few surprises, and then finish with astonishing rapidity and
grace…often before too many questions can be asked.
Last
Action Hero
alludes to The Twilight Zone in this scene, but takes a faulty creative approach
by comparison. The film is too long, too
big, and too byzantine, and it lingers on details of a whimsical story that,
simply don’t stand up to scrutiny.
For
instance, if Jack (and all movie heroes) are bullet-proof in the movie world,
essentially, then from what source should the movie’s tension arise? If bad guys literally can’t win in the movie
world (as Benedict verbally indicates) then why and how are we supposed to feel
anxiety when Jack or Danny is imperiled by them?
This
criticism is not meant to indicate that the movie doesn’t have fun with this
idea of the movie universe, at least at points.
“You know, tar actually sticks to
some people,” Danny tells Slater after he falls into tar pits,
unscathed. His status as indestructible
is appropriately funny, but it also eliminates some aspects of immediacy from
the story.
Somewhere
in Last
Action Hero, a really good
movie is buried, and it attempts to surface several times.
For
instance, the movie uses Hamlet as a kind of base-line for
action heroes and action hero behavior.
A high school teacher describes Denmark’s prince as the first such action hero, actually. Yet Hamlet is paralyzed and defined by his
inability to act, to do something; to defeat his enemies.
Humorously,
the McTiernan film proposes an alternative to this hesitating, melancholy
prince: a cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy starring Arnold
Schwarzenegger. Chomping a cigar and blowing enemies away with automatic
weapons, this Hamlet has no problems acting with terminal force, or intensity. There is nothing diffident about him at all.
The
“Trailer” for the Schwarzenegger Hamlet is uproariously funny, and
strikes the exact right note of absurdity. But more to the point, it is used,
thematically, to let us know that Danny is -- like Hamlet -- unable to act
forcefully, which is the very reason he looks up to substitute father-figure
Jack Slater.
When
a burglar breaks into Danny’s apartment, he gives Danny every opportunity to
take his weapon, a knife, and fight him.
But Danny -- like Hamlet -- does nothing. He can’t will himself to act.
And while watching Hamlet on TV in school, Danny becomes invested in the action
(or lack of action). He urges Olivier’s Hamlet to “stop talking” and “do
something.” Clearly, this is something personal for Danny. Although he aspires to be a Jack Slater, we
learn that he sees himself as a Hamlet.
He is paralyzed over his father’s death (a death he shares in common
with the prince from Denmark), and does not yet know how to act, or how to
survive in this dangerous “real” world.
Danny
then travels into the movie world, where Slater -- an action hero -- acts without
thinking, without hesitation, and without deadly consequence. Slater can’t
lose, and apparently can’t feel fear, so he always wins the day. But the universe itself is stacked in his
favor. Danny takes baby steps towards growth and survival in this universe, attempting
a game of chicken against a speeding car, and learning to operate a dangerous
crane. In other words, he begins “acting”
the role of hero. He emulates Jack, but does so in a safe environment; one
where the good guys always win and he is no physical danger.
Then,
in the movie’s final act, Danny and Slater pursue Benedict to the real world, a
place with absolutely real danger, and where the bad guys can win. In this
world, Slater is the child, playing by a set of rules he doesn’t understand,
and therefore Danny learns the necessity of pro-active behaviors or action. He must save his friend, who is badly wounded
after a confrontation with Benedict. When Slater is shot, Danny realizes that
the qualities he always had inside -- compassion,
loyalty, and love -- are the very things that impel him to act decisively;
to be a hero. He overcomes his Hamlet dilemma and becomes the hero of his own
life.
All
of this material fits together in Last Action Hero, and Slater even
comments at one point that “the world is
what you make of it, Danny.” This is
simply another way of expressing the idea that we can re-shape the world in a
way to our liking if only we act, and act intelligently. That’s the film’s dedicated leitmotif, and Last
Action Hero is sweet because it is about a boy who thinks he needs a
father figure but then -- through his interactions with that “idol” -- realizes
that he can be the person he wants to be, and needs to be, all under his own
steam.
Without
being disrespectful, I would assert merely that Last Action Hero could
tell this story -- and make this point -- more efficiently, and with greater
discipline. The celebrity cameos are fun, the knocks-against movies are funny,
and the explorations of tropes (like the wrong-headed, screaming police
superior) are on target, but in some sense they are all but noise that
ultimately takes away from the through-line I mentioned above.
I’m
a huge admirer of McTiernan’s work in film, and his serious, grounded, approach
to action but he doesn’t boast a very good “light” or “whimsical” touch
on this project. This feels like a film tailor made for Steven Spielberg or Robert
Zemeckis, and I feel that McTiernan expends too much time and energy on the
bells and whistles -- the fights, the chases, and the pyrotechnics -- when what
he really needs to focus on, front and center, is the shifting relationship
between Danny and Slater, and the way the Hamlet story illuminates Danny’s
story.
Tar
doesn’t stick to Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he was back in 1994 in the
triumphant True Lies, but one can see why he was drawn to this script and
this project. Somewhere, deep down, Last Action Hero is all about the
way young children build-up “heroes” of the silver screen, but fail to take
into account the fact that they thrive in a world unlike our own; one of
different rules.
Schwarzenegger
is terrific as Slater, a man who starts to realize that all his success may not
be due to his own skills, but the nature of reality itself. There’s a great
scene here in which Slater questions his life, and he reasons that it has
gotten so weird lately. Danny
sympathizes and tells him it’s a matter of the rules. “These
are the sequels. They gotta get hard…”
The
fickle Gods of film, right?
They
give, and they take away. Even Slater’s boy was taken away from him so that he
could have a “tragic past” to overcome.
Watching
Last
Action Hero again twenty-one years later, I knew what to expect, and so
didn’t feel the same disappointment that I did in 1993.
But,
oppositely, I feel that this film has so much of value to say, but is lazy and
disjointed in the expression of its valid and intriguing messages. Last Action Hero demanded a light
touch -- a director who would fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee -- but instead
the film is played with the seriousness of a project like Predator (1987), Die
Hard (1988) or Hunt for Red October (1988).
The
result? “No sequel” for action hero
Slater.
And
honestly, that makes me a bit sad. The
character is great, and deserved a better vehicle for his movie debut. At the very least, Last Action Hero’s heart
is in the right spot.
It’s
just too bad the rest of the movie is all over the place.
