In 1993,
Last Action Herohit the big screen and promptly flopped. The film already had a dino-sized obstacle stacked against it: it opened a week after
Jurassic Park, and people wanted to watch
Jurassic Park over and over again. But there were other problems, too. The script was never where it needed to be, but studio execs were convinced audiences would show up for an
Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, regardless of quality. They were wrong. But in the years since
Last Action Hero‘s theatrical release, people have re-evaluated the action-comedy, and while it still has problems, it’s better than its reputation suggests. And now it’s getting a 4K Blu-ray release.
Last Action Hero is about the same subject as almost every other feature film ever made: The possibility of blurring the line between the audience and the screen. We go to the movies so that we can vicariously live the lives of the characters who loom so glamorously above us, and the movies know that. Every moment of every shot exists with the full consciousness of the fourth invisible wall dividing the characters from their watchers in the dark.
Early in Last Action Hero, a small boy is watching a movie when suddenly a bundle of dynamite comes bouncing out of the screen and lands near him in the theater. He runs for his life, but there is an explosion, and somehow he is catapulted through the membrane between the audience and the actors. He is in the movie. More exactly, he is in the back seat of a speeding car in a chase scene, and the driver is Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger), his hero.