In hindsight, going directly up against a movie that would ultimately go on to become the highest-grossing in the history of cinema was always doomed to fail, but Last Action Hero took a lot more flak than it deserved.
Trounced by critics and decried for trying too hard, the $85 million action epic couldn’t even reach $140 million at the global box office, flopping so hard it plunged Arnold Schwarzenegger into an abject state of misery that caused him to hide away from the world, although he does at least regard it as his most underrated film ever, and for very good reason.
Self-aware, meta, and fourth wall-breaking blockbusters are all the rage these days, but Last Action Hero was doing it 30 years ago, and doing it significantly better than the majority of its contemporaries thanks to the Hamlet scene alone, which is a mini masterpiece in and of itself. Arguably way too far ahead of its time, and nowhere near as bad as anybody claims it to be, dying on the hill of calling it a misunderstood cult classic and unpolished gem is one well worth falling on a sword for.
The good news is that streaming subscribers appear to be of the same opinion, at least the ones who’ve conspired to relaunch Last Action Hero back to prominence as one of the Top 20 most-watched titles on iTunes, per FlixPatrol. It’s very loud and even more stupid, but we’ll be damned if it doesn’t remain a joyous blast of tongue in cheek fun that holds up as well as it ever did.