I also loved Last Action Hero. I wanted to see it when was a little kid, but the adults around me said it got bad reviews and was therefore bad. I saw it when it came out on cable or whatever and loved it. I would watch it right now.
even to this day, I still remember the way the Arnold plays his IRL self as this effusive, shameless promoter of Planet Hollywood, a recent acquisition of his at the time, while he is meant to be on the red carpet promoting the movie and it has Maria chastizing him later in private for being tacky. its so hilariously self aware.
I also liked how grim it portrayed real life compared to the movies, with Charles Dance's antagonist learning "the bad guys can win" after blowing away some rando in an alley, as a test, and nobody wants to get involved.
I like flicks that have that kind of goofy vibe going on, but can take a dark turn and raise the stakes.
The one major criticism I have of Last Action Hero is that the tone is inconsistent, it clearly wants to be a kids' movie with the child sidekick and the magic ticket premise, but at the same time most of the humor isn't really aimed at kids. The reason the video games weren't allowed to have guns was also because Arnold was trying to cultivate a more kid-friendly image, which seems like a weird pivot in hindsight. It's not like most of Schwarzenegger's movies were kid-friendly at all, although Terminator 2 toys and video games were very successful, so I can see how they could've seen this panning out.
I also loved Last Action Hero. I wanted to see it when was a little kid, but the adults around me said it got bad reviews and was therefore bad. I saw it when it came out on cable or whatever and loved it. I would watch it right now.
even to this day, I still remember the way the Arnold plays his IRL self as this effusive, shameless promoter of Planet Hollywood, a recent acquisition of his at the time, while he is meant to be on the red carpet promoting the movie and it has Maria chastizing him later in private for being tacky. its so hilariously self aware.
I also liked how grim it portrayed real life compared to the movies, with Charles Dance's antagonist learning "the bad guys can win" after blowing away some rando in an alley, as a test, and nobody wants to get involved.
I like flicks that have that kind of goofy vibe going on, but can take a dark turn and raise the stakes.
The one major criticism I have of Last Action Hero is that the tone is inconsistent, it clearly wants to be a kids' movie with the child sidekick and the magic ticket premise, but at the same time most of the humor isn't really aimed at kids. The reason the video games weren't allowed to have guns was also because Arnold was trying to cultivate a more kid-friendly image, which seems like a weird pivot in hindsight. It's not like most of Schwarzenegger's movies were kid-friendly at all, although Terminator 2 toys and video games were very successful, so I can see how they could've seen this panning out.