Do you remember the first time? Jurassic World may be the fourth film in the franchise, but its marketing campaign has gone to enormous lengths to invoke the spirit of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original. It hasn’t been that difficult, since Colin Trevorrow’s movie is a checklist of familiar Jurassic Park elements – a return to Isla Nublar, poppets in peril, raptors, tacky in-world merchandise, Muldoon (except he’s Chris Pratt now) – all juiced and goosed to meet the perceived appetites of 21st-century cinemagoers. That it simultaneously preaches about the dire consequences of profit-hungry executives attempting to increase the wow factor by tampering with a magnificent original is just the usual Hollywood obliviousness.
So far, it looks as if audiences might not have much of a problem with going to see an amped-up, Skrillex-style remix of Jurassic Park. But when the producers were rummaging through the blockbusters of June 1993 in search of leathery old dinosaurs to revivify, I wish they’d also considered Arnold Schwarzenegger. Last Action Hero, which had the misfortune to open the week after Jurassic Park, might still be perceived as one of Arnie’s most high-profile flops, but its status as a notorious bomb was at least partly caused by box office blowback from Spielberg’s dino might. (From an estimated production budget of $85m, Last Action Hero eventually made $50m in the US; Jurassic Park took $47m in its opening weekend.)
Strange as it might seem looking back, there was no clear indication that Jurassic Park would become a stirring cinematic touchstone beloved by successive generations while Schwarzenegger’s pump-action satire, where he plays both fictional movie supercop Jack Slater and an exaggerated, mercantile version of “Arnold Schwarzenegger”, would internally combust. Both were heavily marketed, highly anticipated entertainments rolling off a production line. In the years since, the hubris-filled development and disastrous delivery of Last Action Hero has been pored over in such detail – this is a particularly gruesome autopsy – that it exists more vividly in the public imagination as a cautionary tale than an actual movie, despite some recent, tentative attempts to reposition it as an overlooked classic.
Last Action Hero is, charitably, an uneven experience: overblown, tonally chaotic, goofy yet often leaden. Its fantastical premise – a golden ticket that allows young Danny (Austin O’Brien) to physically enter the world of movies – should be magical. But instead of hymning the transportive wonder of cinema, it’s more interested in expensively blowing up action-movie cliches and facilitating a series of star cameos that, despite being fun, chip away at an already slippery premise. Basically, it’s a bad movie, and everyone who has heard of it knows it’s a bad movie. But thanks to the meta concepts baked into the brand, that wouldn’t necessarily mean it would spawn a bad sequel. Just make the awareness of its horrible origin story part of the plot.
The key building blocks to make Last Action Hero 2 happen are already floating around the blockbuster ether. Let’s say Jurassic World is proof-of-concept for making a sequel to a 1993 blockbuster. The imminent Entourage is an insider satire about the movie business, exposing the callous, mercenary nature of Hollywood and featuring real-life stars playing exaggerated, mostly unpleasant versions of themselves. And then there’s Terminator Genisys, with Schwarzenegger gamely trying to resuscitate an ailing franchise. Take a leaf out of Jurassic World’s In-Gen playbook and genetically engineer those elements together. Squint and Last Action Hero 2 practically exists already.
To paraphrase Jack Slater’s Hamlet, it’s probably not to be. But I genuinely hope Arnie might at least consider it. He was at his bulletproof peak in 1993, able to coast on one-liners and monumental self-belief. And yet Last Action Hero contains some of the most interesting acting of his career, as the supposedly one-dimensional Slater tears down the whole concept of “Arnold Schwarzenegger”, convincingly repelled by this smarmy, self-obsessed actor who won’t stop plugging his chain of fast-food restaurants. To see a rapprochement between these two characters – with Jack Slater materialising through an Imax screen to help an older, humbler Arnie break down the necessary story beats of Last Action Hero 2 – would actually restore some of my faith in the magic of movies.
