The 1993 Schwarzenegger flick which bombed at the box office. I’ve never quite gotten why it’s so maligned. I’ve always thought it was an entertaining and spot-on send up of the action genre.
I figure part of the problem was the way it was marketed. I don’t recall the trailers giving the impression that it was anything other than just a standard “blow shit up real good” action flick. I expect a lot of people went in expecting that, only to be disappointed when they discovered that it was actually a parody.
So any other fans of the film here care to weigh in?
I have no idea. I don’t know why everyone goes straight to that film as an example of a terrible action film or a terrible Schwarzenegger film. I thought it was great!
Part of it was the marketing of the movie. It was a semi-spoof that was marketed as a straight up action movie. Audiences hate being fooled about the type of movie they’re going to see. As well, action fans of the time weren’t really used to the idea of the genre being worn out and ripe for parody, so even those that knew what they were getting into were put off by it.
I know I saw one TV review that either the reviewer slept through the movie, or just phoned in the review based on the trailer. :rolleyes:
Anyway, I saw the movie the first weekend it was out, and I loved it.
I don’t get the hate either.
I liked the film, too, but I’m a sucker for metafiction. It’s a great satire of both the action film and the cliches of moviemaking (in some ways, it was like the recent trend of “reference comedies” like Scary Movie, except that it was played far less broadly).
Well it did come at the tail end of the Schwarzenegger-Willis-Stallone golden age. Yeah those guys made plenty of movies after that, but none of them really lived up to their previous work.
I saw it and loved it when it came out and was baffled at the fact that it wasn’t a huge hit. All I can figure is the audience that would have enjoyed the satire thought it was just a dumb action movie and the ones who wanted a dumb action movie were confused by the satire.
Missed the edit, but should mention that something changed in the action genre in the mid-90s. That was about the time that Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay hijacked the genre and instituted a lot of rapid fire, music video style editing.
If you look back at a lot of the great action movies of the '80s - “First Blood,” “Predator,” “Die Hard” - yeah, they were over the top, but they were almost contemplative compared to what came later. You actually cared about what was happening in the action scene, you cared about why the guys were shooting at each other. And you actually cared about the outcomes. You got the sense that the filmmakers really put some thought into crafting them, instead of just throwing forth a bunch of CGI explosions. Can you really say that about “Armageddon” for example.
Now get off my lawn.
It was pretty mediocre. The kid was obnoxious and so was the man who owned the movie theater with the “magic ticket”. The only funny bits were Ah-nold spoofing “Hamlet” (“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and Hamlet is taking out the trash”) and the scene with Maria Shriver telling Ah-nold not to plug his restaurant because it is tacky-and he does. One reviewer said it best: Ah-nold struggling mightily in the La Brea tar pits just about sums the film up.
Before it came out I read how the producers watched all kinds of action films so they would know what worked. Maybe that was the problem-instead of finding something that worked on its own.
There are tons and tons of action hero movies since 1993, many of them very successful. Here’s a list from Wiki of 90’s action films, and another list since 2000. Is that the genre that has ended?
Or perhaps the genre is “action hero parodies” – honestly, I’m not entirely sure that genre ever began.
An action movie spoof shouldn’t use someone who is already an action movie star as the main character parodying the role. They should find some unknown who can play the “I’m a big dumb hero” character.
Arnold wasn’t just parodying action heroes, he was parodying himself, which sort of works better now, many years after his heyday*, but it didn’t at the time when he was still riding his peak.
Plus, the second half is too dark, and too long; and the kid is just annoying.
*I think this should be spelled “heydey” but the internet only barely agrees with me.
I dunno. I could argue that True Lies is an action hero parody, and IIRC that was a pretty big hit, and Arnold was right there. I liked it and The Last Action Hero quite a lot.