Talk:Last Action Hero

Reviews

The article implies that Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic existed in 1993, but they didn't. It should be rephrased to reflect that those are current aggregates of reviews and not scores that were compiled in 1993. (I'd do it if I had the time.) -gohlkus (talk) 20:34, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Trivia

The following was removed from the main article, but could still be incorporated into the article eventually. --The_stuart (talk) 13:12, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Film references and connections

• 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.
• 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.
• Right before Benedict shoots Jack, he mentions multiple movie villans: "Think of villans, Jack. You want Dracula? DRA-CU-LA? Dracula, heh. I will bring you King Kong. We'll have a Nightmare with Freddy Kruger or a surprise party with Adolf Hitler, Hannibal Lecter can do the catering. Then, we'll all have a christening for Rosemary's baby".
• 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

• This was the first movie to use Sony's 8 channel digital sound format SDDS (Sony Dynamic Digital Sound).
• 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.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger was paid $15 million for his performance.
• 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.
• 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 McBain!"
• 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 movie has no title or opening credits.

It's Robert Prosky you assholes not Art Carney. You fucking losers didn't even check the guy out before putting him into the article. (SnakeEyesNinja (talk) 01:17, 19 October 2009 (UTC))

References

For the love of god...

Seriously... people... the repeated 'Schwarzchenegger' spelling is bad enough in that he's one of the most famous actors in the world AND the governator of California...

But whoever put this up had the picture right there too, with the name in big 3D block letters!

Please, at least TRY.

... its called a movie poster. The person posting didn't add the font.

For the love of god...

Seriously... people... the repeated 'Schwarzchenegger' spelling is bad enough in that he's one of the most famous actors in the world AND the governator of California...

But whoever put this up had the picture right there too, with the name in big 3D block letters!

Please, at least TRY.

... its called a movie poster. The person posting didn't add the font.

Whiskers

The article doesn't mention that at one point they are saved by a talking cartoon cat.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.54.110.182 (talk • contribs)

...probably because it isn't a significant enough point in the movie. I'd be fine listing all the "over the top" movie clichés the movie has, but it isn't important to the plot summary. EVula 19:48, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

tar pits

I don't remember tar pits in Jurassic Park (the DNA was taken from blood preserved in amber, not tar, which preserves only bones). How likely is it that LAH spoofs a movie released only one week before? —Tamfang 03:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

"Jack Slater III"

In response to this edit, it is the climax of the film; just a few minutes after the kid goes up to the projectionist's booth, the credits are rolling. Just a note (it happened to be on HBO just the other day). EVula 17:43, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Alan Rickman Vs William Atherton

If somebody has the novelisation of the film, can we put the debate to rest as to who the novel suggested was originally going to play Bennedict. I'm going to edit the trivia back to saying 'William Atherton' as putting in Alan Rickman makes the possible Ghostbusters connection in the trivia incorrect.

Mozart

Okay, there's nothing suggesting or supporting that Mozart doesn't exist in the Jack Slater universe... so what if he hasn't heard of him until that point? I'd bet some people today haven't heard of him. Kingpin1055 14:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I really don't interpret his "he killed Mozart" as meaning that, in-universe, Mozart was murdered and therefore unknown, more that the actor who plays the character also played a character who killed Mozart. Slater just hasn't heard any of Mozart's work because that's not the sort of thing he would listen to under normal circumstances (and leaving your fantasy world by way of a magic ticket certainly doesn't fall under "normal circumstances"). I removed the "all movies come from a common history" bit as that was pretty wild and fantastic speculation, without a single source. EVula 15:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah... It'd always been Danny trying to concvince Slater that John Practice was a bad guy because he was played by F. Murray Abraham. :) It was an interesting theory, but I think the guy went a bit wild with the speculation. Kingpin1055 19:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the non-existence of Mozart in Jack Slater's Universe is based on the fact that Action Movies don't use Classical Music in the soundtrack (and I was surprised that Mozart was *not* in the Last Action Hero CD!). The logic of the movie seems to imply that there is no Classical Music at all in that Universe.Albmont 00:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not that surprised about it not being included, film soundtracks are usually commercially released music... and I bet that the average person interested in Last Action Hero wouldn't buy the soundtrack for a Mozart piece. I think it is a bit if a leap to say, that because the film doesn't feature classical music... then it doesn't exist. If they'd intended such a thing I'm sure the filmmakers would've implied it anymore... a perfect opportunity being when Jack heard Mozart for the first time, asking "What kinda music is that?", etc etc. Kingpin1055 19:01, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I find myself in 100% agreement with Kingpin1055's response. Pretty much exactly what I would have said. :) EVula 19:18, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Trivia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus_(film)

This is where the Mozart ref comes in, F Murray Abraham's character... check the link

Film references and connections: "The black cop"

"After the explosion at Slater's favorite second cousin's house, the black cop 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." English is not my native language, but is it PC to phrase the sentence like that? --85.233.18.88 21:15, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

You're right. I've changed it to "black police officer." --70.142.37.178 13:54, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

???? There is, at least in America, big political correctness debates over the use of the word 'black' in referring to certain peoples. Lots42 (talk) 16:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

In the United States, it is politically correct to refer to certain peoples as "African-American" who have never been to Africa or the United States. — Val42 (talk) 15:28, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

WTF? This is badly worded:

Instead, the movie was given mixed reviews by critics, only earning a 34% rating on Rotten Tomatoes[1] and a 44 out of 100 on Metacritic,[2]

Neither of those websites existed when this movie was released, but the way it's worded it sounds like they're suggesting that they were. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.164.61.77 (talk) 06:11, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

"cult" vs. "occult"

If I may be so blunt, I think the intent in calling this a "cult" movie was nothing to do with religious themes or the occult whatsoever, but rather signifying this movie, despite the negative reviews and box-office failure enjoyed a rather cult following. It seems to be often reffered to as one of the most underrated Arnie flicks, or even 90s movies in general (ref: too many sources to quote, but I'd be happy to). To tell the truth I was expecting a "since then the film has achieved cult status through VHS rental" or another line of that sort, but the page lacks in that department. I may be biased. Damn, it's a helluva good flick :) Peace out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2788:22A:496:C963:C695:5354:81C6 (talk) 23:28, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

An anonymous contributor has been calling this a "cult film" in the first sentence of the lead. I don't know whether that's true or not, but cult status is usually mentioned separately from the film's genre, which in this case involves the supernatural. "action-comedy" needs to be followed by "occult" or some other wording indicating the presence of magic in the story. —Codrdan (talk) 22:58, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, the genre is "fantasy". —Codrdan (talk) 01:22, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Home Video Section Incorrect...

"The Blu-ray release presented the film original widescreen presentation, a first since the laserdisc release." This is simply not true. I have, in my immediate possession, a DVD of the film. Double-sided disc, 4:3 on one side, and the original 2.35:1 on the other. I've had it for a long time, so I can't recall exactly when I got it, let alone when it came out, but it is the official Columbia Pictures release, and I can provide photos for evidence if need be.

Do not claim "original research," as you're wont to do as a scapegoat for facts that make you uncomfortable, because this research was published by Columbia Pictures on DVD. Since this DVD exists, and I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt it exists, then there is public and verifiable evidence, not only that it exists, but when exactly it came out. Go find it and change your article accordingly.

EDIT: The ISBN is 0-8001-7797-5. Hope that helps your search. 50.168.176.243 (talk) 19:59, 19 July 2014 (UTC)