10 Movies The Critics Were Wrong About
5. Last Action Hero
If any film on this list were truly ahead of its time, it's surely Last Action Hero - the gloriously meta action-comedy in which Arnold Schwarzenegger portrays not only the protagonist of an action movie franchise within the film, but also a version of himself.
Even ignoring that the movie had to fend off months of negative pre-release PR and suffered through the misfortune of releasing a week after Jurassic Park, it truly feels like the audiences of 1993 just weren't ready for this one.
That'd certainly explain the rancid 42% Tomatometer score despite the fact that Last Action Hero is one of the most ambitious and ludicrously entertaining action-comedies of its entire decade.
Arnie gives a wonderfully self-deprecating performance, Charles Dance is a killer villain, and it's absolutely jam-packed with both smart gags and cartoonish action.
Where else can one see a man get impaled in the head with an ice cream cone?
If Last Action Hero was a confounding experience for critics and general audiences three decades ago, it's easy to see why it's become such a studiously defended cult classic in a post-Deadpool era, where viewers are decidedly more au fait with fourth wall-breaking storytelling.