Last Action Hero

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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
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.

1 Plot
2 Cast
- 2.1 Cameos
3 Reception
4 Background/Production
5 Film references and connections
6 Miscellaneous
7 Soundtrack
- 7.1 Music from the Motion Picture album
8 See also
9 References
10 External links

Plot

Last Action Hero follows the story of Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien), a boy whose love of action movies keeps him out of school and in trouble. Danny idolizes Arnold Schwarzenegger (who plays himself), particularly Schwarzenegger's character Jack Slater. ("Jack Slater" is a completely fictional character who appears within the films that exist in the actual movie.) Danny's obsession with television and movies leads him to befriend an old man named Nick, who runs a beat-up old cinema in downtown New York City. Nick offers Danny a private screening of the new Jack Slater film, Jack Slater IV. Nick then reveals a gold-plated ticket from his pocket and gives it to Danny. Nick tells Danny the ticket was given to him from Harry Houdini, and that it contains magic powers. Danny uses the ticket to enter his private screening, so the ticket is ripped in half with the other half put in a ticket booth. Danny excitedly begins watching Jack Slater IV During a car chase scene, the stub of the "magic ticket" begins to glow blue. Suddenly, the action from the movie spills into the theater, as there is a scene in the movie where bad guys throw dynamite at Slater & he shoots it and it goes through the screen & lands at Danny's feet he quickly runs and is thrust into the movie.

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

Danny ends up accompanying Slater, trying to convince him that he's a fictional character inside a movie. Slater is unconvinced. Eventually Danny uses his knowledge of the Jack Slater story line to help Slater solve mysteries in Jack Slater IV. The two run into Tony Vivaldi, the crime boss in Jack Slater IV, and his 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 obtains the magic ticket. He discovers its ability to allow him to travel to the real world, but he is reluctant to try it. Benedict double-crosses Vivaldi, killing him. Benedict awaits Slater's arrival at the mansion. When Slater arrives with Danny, Slater grabs Benedict and throws him at the butler, only to see them both vanish into a wall. Slater is puzzled. "Usually when I do that it leaves a hole," he muses. Danny guesses that Benedict has the ticket and is now in the real world, Danny's world. Danny convinces Slater that they need to go through and stop Benedict while the hole is still open. The pair step through to see Benedict escaping out of the theater. They give chase but Benedict escapes. Danny returns to his apartment, with Slater following, bewildered. Danny and Slater hunt for Benedict. Benedict, meanwhile, comes to understand the amoral and cruel nature of the real world and reasons that villains like him can win here, rather than being unrealistically beaten by the hero. Benedict discovers that if he can kill the real Arnold Schwarzenegger, Slater too will die. Benedict uses the ticket to enter other films, and collects "The Ripper", an antagonist from Slater's earlier films. The Ripper attempts to kill Schwarzenegger, but Danny and Slater foil him and the Ripper escapes to the roof. Slater and Danny pursue him; Slater eventually electrocutes the Ripper and saves Danny, but just as the duo think it's over, Benedict shows up and shoots Slater, giving him a mortal wound -- something impossible in the film world, and an apparent fate that Slater does not comprehend. Danny, distraught and infuriated, knocks Benedict's gun over to Slater. Earlier in the film, we learn that Benedict has a glass eye, and that in its stead he often uses cleverly concealed James Bond-like gadgets, such as timed explosives. Slater shoots Benedict's "bomb" glass eye, causing it to explode, killing Benedict. Seeing that Slater is actually dying from his bullet wound, Danny races to find the magic ticket so that he can return Slater to within Jack Slater IV. Meanwhile, the character of Death from The Seventh Seal, who was inadvertently freed by Benedict beforehand, appears. As Danny pleads him not to take him, Death assures him Slater is not 'on his list' and Danny dies a grandfather. Before leaving he suggests using the other half of the ticket. Danny finds the ticket and activates its magic, returning Slater back to his movie world where the fatal injury turns out to be "just a flesh wound". Slater's life is saved. Danny and Slater share a moment about believing in each other. Slater then returns to "his" world back on the job winding up his police chief by telling that the two of them are fictional and Slater wants to stop shooting people and blowing buildings up. The movie ends with Nick and Danny exiting the theatre. Behind them, on the cinema screen, is a parting shot of Slater riding into the sunset in his car, waving backward at the audience.

Cast

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Jack Slater / Himself
Austin O'Brien as Danny Madigan
Charles Dance as Benedict
Robert Prosky as Nick
Tom Noonan as the Ripper / Himself
Joan Plowright as Danny's Schoolteacher
Frank McRae as Lieutenant Dekker
Anthony Quinn as Tony Vivaldi
Bridgette Wilson as Whitney Slater / actress Meredith Caprice
F. Murray Abraham as John Practice
Mercedes Ruehl as Irene Madigan
Art Carney, in his last film role, as Frank
Sir Ian McKellen as Death
Charles Kalani, Jr. as Tough Asian Man

Cameos

Tina Turner makes a cameo appearance at the climax of Jack Slater III as the mayor of Los Angeles; she tries to convince Slater not to enter a hostage situation.
When Danny and Slater arrive at LAPD headquarters, Sharon Stone is near the door lighting a cigarette, dressed as her character in Basic Instinct (1992). Stone had also recently played Schwarzenegger's wife in Total Recall (1990).
Immediately following Sharon Stone's cameo, Robert Patrick strides past the two heroes, in character, as the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).
The animated cat named Whiskers was voiced by an uncredited Danny DeVito.
During the premiere of Jack Slater IV in the real world, a number of celebrities make cameo appearances as themselves, including: Maria Shriver (Schwarzenegger's real-life wife), Little Richard, Entertainment Tonight host Leeza Gibbons, James Belushi, Damon Wayans, Chevy Chase, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Timothy Dalton.

Reception

Last Action Hero was billed at the time as "the next great summer action movie" 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. Some in the film industry believe that the movie would have been successful (or at least recovered its production costs) if it had been released in mid-July, at the peak of summer. Linda Norman, a well respected movie critic, claimed that it was the only movie she ever saw in theaters and actually fell asleep during. Another theory has suggested that the poor reaction to the movie was partly due to a belief that the general public did not understand the theme, expecting a serious action epic but instead getting a film laced with a large amount of comedy. Whether this is true or not remains unknown. However, public reaction to the similarly comic but less cartoony True Lies has appeared to be more favorable. Despite its box office failure, the movie has become somewhat of a sleeper cult hit, and is also regarded in some quarters as a very cerebral science fiction film, which explores the concepts of alternate reality in a meaningful way. The movie has also gained some admiration as a satire on the action genre , as it intentionally parodies almost every action movie cliché. 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 18th release date for LAH.
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 18th 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.

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]

Film references and connections

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

At the beginning of Jack Slater IV, a credit reads "A Franco Columbu Film". Franco Columbu was Schwarzenegger's long time friend and training partner when the two were bodybuilding and competing in the Mr. Olympia competition.
After the explosion at Slater's favorite second cousin's house, the black police officer is heard saying, "Two days 'til retirement," quoting Danny Glover's character in Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) along with a saxophone riff imitating the signature music of the Lethal Weapon series.
When Danny is trying to convince Slater that he is in a film, he tries to find a Schwarzenegger film in a video store. He finds a poster for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but to his surprise, the poster shows Sylvester Stallone as the Terminator. Stallone's image on the poster even matches the theatrical poster for Judgement Day, albeit with Stallone's head in place of Schwarzenegger's.
In the novelization of the film, Danny warns Schwarzenegger to be wary of Benedict because he "almost took out Bruce Willis and Bill Murray". This line may suggest that the role of Benedict was originally intended for William Atherton, who played the role of "Richard Thornburg" in Die Hard (1988) and against Bill Murray as "Walter Peck" in Ghostbusters (1984), albeit as a comic foil rather than a true villain.
Several games of chicken are played throughout the film, with progressively deteriorating outcomes. The first shows Slater in the film world, easily following the "rules" of action movies and offing the bad guys. In the second, Danny attempts to ride a bicycle at the villains' oncoming car, before exclaiming at the last moment that he is not the hero but, in fact, the comic sidekick in Jack Slater IV, and swerves out of the way. (Briefly airborne, Danny and his bicycle are silhouetted against the moon, in allusion to E.T. (1982).) In the real world, Slater attempts to play chicken against Benedict, but as the "rules" of the film world do not apply, he ends up in a head-on collision with Benedict's car.
After the second 'chicken' scene, Danny and Slater argue over whether Benedict is dead, during which Danny references a character in Die Hard; the Die Hard theme is then heard in the background. Later in the film, when Slater is trying to rescue Danny while he is hanging from a ledge, Slater says "Please, God, don't let me die." which was also said by Bruce Willis' character in Die Hard.
While in the movie world, Danny warns Slater that his friend John Practice (F. Murray Abraham) killed Mozart (which Slater interprets as "Moe Zart"), a reference to the film Amadeus (1984), in which Abraham played Antonio Salieri. In a later scene in Danny's apartment, when his mom is talking to Slater, Mozart's overture to The Marriage of Figaro (audio file) is played and discussed.
Frank McRae is seen as Slater's superior officer, in a similar role to the one he portrayed in 48 Hrs.
The movie posters for Bram Stoker's Dracula can be seen in the movie rental store and in the newspaper.
Joan Plowright, as Danny's English teacher, shows her class the 1948 film of Hamlet, which starred her real-life husband Laurence Olivier. Humorously, she acknowledges the students' ignorance of the legendary British actor, musing that they may remember him from Clash of the Titans, an undistinguished yet relatively-recent film in Olivier's career, where he played the god Zeus.

Miscellaneous

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

In the scene leading up to the climax of "Jack Slater III", Jack contemptuously dismisses the Lieutenant Governor with a punch to the face and the line "When the Governor gets here, call me". Taken in conjunction with the fact that Slater lives in California, this has become something of an example of life imitating art.
This was the first movie to use Sony's 8 channel digital sound format SDDS (Sony Dynamic Digital Sound). ^[3]
The film featured Art Carney's final film appearance.
Steven Spielberg was offered the chance to direct the film, but he turned it down in order to make Schindler's List instead. ^[3]
Arnold Schwarzenegger was paid $15 million for his performance. ^[3]
It was the first film to be advertised in space. An unmanned NASA rocket, launched by Schwarzenegger, had the film's title graffitied onto its side, costing $50,000. ^[3]
It is said that Last Action Hero didn't fare as well as it could have because competition from Jurassic Park; this was parodied in a Disney Adventures comic strip. The January 1994 issue featured Mr. Hamhead's "Drastic Park" where dinosaur toys and merchandise came to life to attack Drs. Rant, Prattler, and Iam Malcontent; grandchildren Dim and Lax; and lawyer Don Generic. They were saved by the Last Action Figure who promptly destroyed the toy dinosaurs with blowtorches, saying "MELT, sauroid competitive merchandise! Summer vas supposed to be MINE!"
The song "Two Steps behind" by Def Leppard was changed for the movie to include an orchestra in the background. The original version of the song is acoustic.
Alice in Chains boasted that the movie would be the top box-office seller of all time prior to the film's release, having written the songs "What the Hell Have I" and "A Little Bitter" for the film's soundtrack.
The Simpsons episode "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" pokes fun at the film's poor showing, by Chief Wiggum remarking to action movie star Rainier Wolfcastle (a caricature of Schwarzenegger), "Magic ticket, my ass!"
The Married... with Children episode "Banking on Marcy" also makes fun of the film's poor reception when Marcy says that her job at the bank is in jeopardy because they provided funding for LAH (later on, a bank executive says not to give up on the film because it still has release dates in Albania and Zimbabwe; along the same lines, Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on Jay Leno after LAH was released and got a big laugh by saying LAH did very well in Zaire). They are making fun of themselves, as Married with Children and Last Action Hero are both owned by Columbia Pictures.
The Critic pokes fun at the movie when a trained seal that reviews movies is tamed by being threatened to being forced to watch "Last Action Hero."
This was Bridgette Wilson's first movie role. She insisted on performing all of her own stunts, refusing to use a double, because "I wanted to be fully in touch with my character; otherwise, it wouldn't have felt real for me." Later, Bridgette was openly disappointed that all but two of her scenes were cut from the movie; most of Wilson's better footage, according to herself, was left on the cutting room floor.

Soundtrack

Music from the Motion Picture album

Last Action Hero: Music From The Original Motion Picture

Soundtrack by Various Artists
Released	June 8, 1993 (1993-06-08)
Genre	Rock Alternative Heavy Metal
Length	54:19
Label	Columbia Records
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link