Imho, it was too intelligent for the audience it was aimed at. I straddle the line: I like both Shakespeare and Jean Claude Van Damme. If you have an audience that would appreciate a “pull my finger” joke, that audience would not get the irony in Arnie saying to Arnie: You cause me nothing but pain, nor the humor in the deconstruction of action films.
Imho, it was the Watchmen of action films.
I thought Watchmen was the Watchmen of action films. Tho I haven’t seen it.
Nah the Watchman movie was a typical action film. In the comic, the Owl and Silhouette were near 40 and out of shape. The only character that actually could still fight was Ozymandius, and he kicked Rorsarch’s ass.
I went back to the Nostalgia Critic episode for this movie because of this thread. He’s funny as he always is with his rantings, but some of them seem misplaced. It’s supposed to be goofy and absurd when the kid is in the Movie World, but he insists on holding it to a different standard.
I kind of liked it when it came out - the main problem was (as it is without exception in films like this) the damn kid! Grrr.
Marketing, working on the cheap.
An example of the ways in which the distributors/producers lost dollars by saving pennies:
In Spain it is customary to “assign” voice actors, so that for example the same guy dubbed Groucho Marx in all his movies; the dubbed voice may or may not be similar to the original but it is consistant. Schwarzenegger had hit the jackpot of voiceover actors: Constantino Romero, whose voice is pretty much a guarantee that the character will be considered atractive, someone to imitate, a leader… (there has been at least one PhD thesis on the effect of CR’s voice on box office results).
By not using CR, the producers gave the main character a voice which “sounded strange”, and one which was, pretty much by definition, less attractive than the Governator’s usual voice. People knew “Schwarzie’s performance” was “off”, but the immense majority couldn’t figure out why, all they could tell their friends was that it was off.
If the same was done in other dubbing markets (a weak publicity campaign, followed by a clusterfuck like that on the voices)…
If I’m channelsurfing, and this movie shows up, then I’ll probably end up watching it. It’s not my FAVORITE movie, but it’s one of my favorites.
However, I’d never have chosen to watch it from that trailer. The trailer should have made it clear from the beginning what the movie was about. Generally, I don’t watch action movies, with a few exceptions. I would have dismissed the movie as just another buttkicking movie, and avoided it. I think the marketing department can take all the blame for the box office flop.
Yeah, the kid was obnoxious, but the story needed him to be that way, in order for Slater to react to him. As a general rule, I hate kids in movies*, and especially bratty/obnoxious kids who get away with their misbehavior. But in this case, the kid needed to be obnoxious, because the story needed him to aggravate the hell out of almost everyone.
I love Arnold in comic roles, and I wish he’d done more of them. I particularly enjoyed seeing him play himself in this one. And I love the whole meta thing. But as a general rule, I’m a bit more demanding of movies than the general movie-going public, because I want movies to make sense, internally. I want them to follow their own rules. For instance, in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Roger was able to slip out of handcuffs, but when Eddie asked, indignantly, whether Roger could have done that at any time, Roger says no, he could only do it when it was funny. That’s a prime example of a movie following its internal logic.
*I generally hate kids in real life, too.
Have any of you seen the DVD for it, by the way? We got it from Netflix not too long ago and it looks like something your little brother made. There are buttons that aren’t used on the menu. The chapter titles are hilariously stupid. It doesn’t even come up to the level of “bargain basement”. It’s accidentally part of the humor, actually.
I liked it, and thought the kid was fine. I could see how someone looking for a straight-up action flick might have been nonplussed.
I, too, liked the movie. I thought everyone did.
I did not realise that this movie tanked.
“Not to be!”
Arnie is pretty good in comic roles, Last Action Hero maybe fell through the cracks for marketing and expectation reasons. Good film, IMO.
The fantasy police station alone is worth the price of admission, after the movie had already shown you what a real police station looks like.
I’m not sure why it bombed, but the answers above sound about right. The advance information I had heard about it (movie action-hero comes to real life) made it sound like something I would like, so I was disappointed that I missed it at the theatre, but last year, I noticed it was on a non-commercial cable channel, and recorded it - and I enjoyed it, just as I had expected (particularly the “partnering up” scene at the fantasy police station)
I think peoplemiss the entire point of the second half: that’s when the movie really goes into deconstruction overdrive. It’s less outright funny, but the slow boil of tension and the utter absurdity of the whole situation are insanely hilarious. This is a movie where we
See the villain kill a guy, and then call out, “I’ve just shot a man!” to the public and wait for the police. And people tell him to shut up so they can get to sleep! (After we’ve seen the insanely quick movie-police and gotten used to convenient insanity. Movie Death shows up, and we find he’s the same as regular Death. Arnold completely mocks himself and has a blast doing it.
Yeah, I’ve always felt Ah-nuld was underrated as a comedy actor. Just think of all the great one-liners he’s delivered throughout his career. You could tell he was just having a blast making this and sending up his own image.
You think it was a comedy? I thought it was very sad. As someone mentioned earlier, it marked the end of an era.
I thought it was a comedy with lots of sad bits, not because of it marking the end of an era, but because poor old Arnie’s character realising he’s not real.
That trailer makes it clear to me that it’s a parody. I know that’s with the benefit of hindsight, but hell, they have the kid in a movie cinema being given a magic ticket and everything.
I keep asking – what era?
the era of 80s action flicks
I don’t hate it. I love that “Inside Baseball” Hollywood stuff and meta humor. At the time I didn’t like it because it was released right around the time as Jurassic Park and it seemed at the time there were two camps, you were either for JP or LAH and I like dinosaurs. Sue me 