Jack Slater may be the Last Action Hero, but he’s first in the heart of the man that played him — Arnold Schwarzenegger. “That was a really fun movie to do,” the Austrian action star raved about the 1993 meta-comedy during a recent interview for his Netflix series FUBAR. Helmed by Die Hard maestro John McTiernan, the film follows 10-year-old movie buff Danny (Austin O’Brien) as he lives out his blockbuster dreams when he’s magically transported onto the big screen alongside his favorite hero, Jack. “McTiernan did a great job with that movie,” Schwarzenegger says now.
Released 30 years ago this month mere weeks after Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park chewed up the box office, Last Action Hero was Schwarzenegger’s first pricey Hollywood flop after a string of era-defining hits bookended by The Terminator and Terminator 2.
“I cannot tell you how upset I was,” he remarks in Arnold. “It hurts you. It hurts your feelings. It’s embarrassing. … I didn’t want to see anyone for a week. But you keep plodding along. My mother-in-law also said this all the time: ‘Let’s just move forward.’ It’s a great message.”
Three decades after it slunk out of theaters, Last Action Hero is a streaming-age favorite among the initially silent minority that loved it during its theatrical run and younger viewers who have discovered it either on DVD or on its current home on Netflix. And those latter-day fans include some of Schwarzenegger’s own FUBAR co-stars like Travis Van Winkle.
