10 Movies Released At The Wrong Time

Last Action Hero is a brilliantly clever movie, vastly unappreciated in its own time. Had it come out ten or even five years after its 1993 release date, it would surely have done much better.

With Arnold Schwarzenegger fresh off Terminator 2 and having built up momentum from Predator, Total Recall and the first Terminator, audiences were expecting another shoot ‘em up, action epic. Instead, Last Action Hero deconstructed those movies before audiences’ eyes, serving up meta well before the mass market was ready for it.

Those who might have liked it stayed away, and those who went were left confused and frustrated. It’s since become a cult classic, but it definitely tried a bit too much too soon in 1993. Pulp Fiction, released one year later, seemed to shift the groundwork for more postmodern movies to follow.

There’s also the small matter of Jurassic Park. Spielberg’s mega hit came out around the same time as Last Action Hero, and proved to be a vacuum for ticket sales.

While folks crammed themselves into theatres to see the dinosaurs brought to life, Schwarzenegger’s intelligent deconstruction of action tropes wasted away, petering out with a gross profit of just $50 million.