In Defence Of Last Action Hero

8. The Trouble With Expectations

Any big-budget movie starring an A-list action star is going to bring with it a certain set of expectations, and with Last Action Hero being Arnold Schwarzenegger's immediate follow-up to 1991's mega-hit Terminator 2: Judgment Day, his fans were basically expecting another balls-to-the-wall action flick.

The marketing certainly didn't help, downplaying the movie-within-a-movie premise and the presence of a kid sidekick (Austin O'Brien), while Columbia firmly put the cart before the horse by suffocating the film with outrageous paid product tie-ins.

Burger King paid $12 million for brand recognition alongside the movie, Mattel spent $5 million on toys, and more than two-dozen other companies also got in on what they assumed would be another monster hit from Arnie. The movie was merchandised in just about every way a tentpole film can, which in retrospect given the movie's tone, seems totally inappropriate.

Even more ludicrous in retrospect is the fact that it was pitted up against Jurassic Park, releasing just a week later as though it had a realistic prospect of surviving the onslaught of a Spielberg movie (even with Spielberg's prior film Hook underperforming at the box office).

Columbia head Mark Canton refused to delay the movie despite even original writer Zak Penn telling him he wanted to see Jurassic Park more than Last Action Hero, resulting in a game of chicken that, in ironic echoes of a scene from Last Action Hero itself, didn't go well for the instigating party.

Bad marketing and stubborn studio decisions have been the death knell of many great movies, and had Columbia not so insistently set such misplaced expectations for Last Action Hero, it probably could've succeeded given the profitability of Arnie's other comedy movies (Kindgergarten Cop made $202 million, for Pete's sake).

It wasn't just the movie's release that proved problematic, however, with the fast-tracked production ending up quite the nightmare itself...