Last Action Hero
Or: The Movie That Taught Me Everything About Everything
As Chronicled by Orson Shakespeare McSeinfeld
By Mason Absher
ORSON SHAKESPEARE McSEINFELD
I need to tell you about Last Action Hero.
Not just tell you about it.
Defend it.
Evangelize for it.
Make the case that this movie—this critically panned, commercially failed, Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle from 1993—
is one of the most important films ever made.
[Beat.]
I'm serious.
THE DISCOVERY
I was eleven years old.
Summer.
The movie had just come out.
And everyone—everyone—hated it.
Critics hated it.
Audiences hated it.
It was supposed to be the blockbuster of the summer.
Arnold Schwarzenegger at the height of his powers.
A movie about movies.
Action and comedy and meta-commentary.
It bombed.
Spectacularly.
People called it confusing.
Bloated.
Too clever for its own good.
A mess.
[Beat.]
I saw it three times in theaters.
THE PREMISE
Here's what Last Action Hero is about:
There's a kid. Danny. He's obsessed with action movies.
Specifically, a franchise called Jack Slater.
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Jack Slater, the ultimate action hero.
Explosions. One-liners. Impossible stunts.
Pure, distilled, 1980s action movie excellence.
[Beat.]
Danny gets a magic ticket.
A golden ticket—literally—that transports him into the movie.
Into Jack Slater's world.
Where the rules of reality don't apply.
Where you can fall from a building and walk away.
Where every woman is beautiful and every villain is evil.
Where everything makes sense because it's a movie.
[Pause.]
And then—
And then—
The villain escapes.
Gets the magic ticket.
Comes into the real world.
Where there are no rules.
Where bad guys can win.
Where action heroes are just actors.
Where Arnold Schwarzenegger is not Jack Slater—
He's Arnold Schwarzenegger.
An actor.
Playing a character.
[Beat.]
Do you understand what that means?
Arnold Schwarzenegger—in the movie—meets Arnold Schwarzenegger—the actor.
The character confronts his own fictional nature.
The movie eats itself.
WHY EVERYONE HATED IT
People didn't get it.
They thought it was supposed to be a straightforward action movie.
With some jokes.
But it wasn't.
It was a deconstruction.
A meditation on storytelling.
On the difference between fiction and reality.
On what we want from movies versus what we get from life.
[Beat.]
It asked questions:
What if the hero learned he wasn't real?
What if the villain discovered there are no consequences?
What if a kid who loved movies more than life realized that movies lie?
That the good guy doesn't always win.
That people die and stay dead.
That there are no second takes.
[Beat.]
And audiences in 1993—who just wanted Arnold to blow things up and say funny lines—
Said: "This is too much. Too confusing. Too weird."
They were wrong.
WHY I LOVED IT
I was eleven.
And I understood it.
Not intellectually.
Not in a "I can explain the themes" way.
But instinctively.
Because I lived in two worlds too.
[He stands, starts pacing.]
There was the real world.
Where I was small.
Where I didn't fit in.
Where kickball was violence.
Where Freedom Christian School was a prison.
Where I was perpetually wrong, perpetually behind, perpetually other.
[Beat.]
And then there were movies.
VHS tapes from Phar-Mor.
Where I could be anyone.
Where stories made sense.
Where there were rules and narratives and meaning.
[He stops.]
Last Action Hero understood this.
It understood that we escape into fiction because reality is hard.
But it also understood that fiction lies to us.
It makes promises it can't keep.
It tells us the hero always wins.
That good triumphs over evil.
That everything works out in the end.
[Beat.]
And sometimes—
sometimes—
we need to learn that life doesn't work that way.
THE SCENE
There's a scene.
The most important scene in the movie.
Danny and Jack Slater are in the real world.
And Jack is struggling.
Because in the real world, he's not invincible.
In the real world, bullets hurt.
In the real world, the bad guy might win.
And Danny—this kid who brought Jack into reality—
realizes what he's done.
He's taken his hero out of the place where heroes can exist.
[Beat.]
And Jack says—and I'm paraphrasing, but the sentiment is exact:
"In my world, the bad guys lose. They always lose. Here? I don't know the rules."
[He sits back down.]
That line.
That line.
It broke something in me.
At eleven years old.
Because I realized:
I was doing the same thing.
I was trying to live in Jack Slater's world.
Where everything made sense.
Where there were heroes and villains.
Where I could be the protagonist.
[Beat.]
But I lived in the real world.
Where there are no magic tickets.
Where the rules are unclear.
Where sometimes—
often—
the bad guys don't lose.
THE LESSON
Last Action Hero taught me that fiction is beautiful.
Necessary, even.
We need stories.
We need escapes.
We need to believe—at least for ninety minutes—
that the world can be simpler than it is.
[He stands.]
But it also taught me that you can't live there.
You can't stay in Jack Slater's world.
You have to come back.
To reality.
To complexity.
To a world where heroes are just people.
And people are flawed.
And stories don't always have endings.
[Beat.]
And somehow—
somehow—
that's okay.
THE META-NARRATIVE
Here's the thing about Last Action Hero:
It's a movie about movies.
But it's also a movie about believing in movies.
Even when you know they're lies.
[He paces again.]
At the end—spoiler alert for a thirty-year-old movie—
Danny goes back to the real world.
Jack Slater stays in his world.
Where he belongs.
Where he can be a hero.
And Danny?
Danny goes to the movies.
Because he still loves them.
Even knowing they're not real.
Especially knowing they're not real.
[He stops, looks at audience.]
That's the point.
The movie doesn't say "grow up and stop believing in stories."
It says "understand what stories are, and love them anyway."
[Beat.]
Fiction is a lie that tells the truth.
And we need both.
The lie and the truth.
THE DEFENSE
People say Last Action Hero failed because it was too smart.
Too meta.
Too self-aware.
[He shakes his head.]
I think it failed because it was honest.
It told audiences something they didn't want to hear:
The movies you love are manipulating you.
And that's okay.
[Beat.]
Critics wanted it to be either a straight action movie or a straight comedy.
It was neither.
It was a tragedy disguised as an action film.
It was a love letter to cinema that also admitted cinema is a liar.
[He sits.]
And in 1993, people weren't ready for that.
But I was.
At eleven years old.
Sitting in a theater.
Watching Arnold Schwarzenegger play a character who discovers he's not real.
I was ready.
THE OBSESSION
I've seen Last Action Hero forty-three times.
I own it on VHS.
On DVD.
On Blu-ray.
Digitally.
[Beat.]
I have shown it to every person I've ever dated.
Most of them didn't understand why I loved it.
One person—one person—got it.
[He smiles slightly.]
I married her.
[Beat.]
Not because she loved the movie.
But because she understood why I loved it.
She understood that this ridiculous, flawed, over-ambitious Arnold Schwarzenegger film from 1993—
Was about me.
About how I see the world.
About the tension between wanting life to be a story—
And knowing it isn't.
THE PARALLELS
Every story I tell.
Every adventure in every storefront.
Every observation about gas stations and grocery stores and customer service.
It's all Last Action Hero.
[He stands, animated now.]
When I catastrophize in an oil change waiting room—
I'm Danny in Jack Slater's world, trying to figure out the rules.
When I returned everything and convinced myself it was fine—
I was living in a fictional world where actions don't have consequences.
When I argued about the Volstead Act while holding cured meats—
I was a character who didn't know he was wrong until reality corrected him.
[Beat.]
Last Action Hero taught me that we're all living in two worlds:
The world as we want it to be.
And the world as it is.
[He sits back down.]
And the trick—
the trick—
is knowing which one you're in.
THE VINDICATION
Here's the beautiful thing:
Last Action Hero has been vindicated.
Not commercially.
It still flopped.
But culturally.
Critically.
[He leans forward.]
People who were kids when it came out—
People like me—
We grew up.
And we realized:
That movie was ahead of its time.
It was doing meta-commentary before meta-commentary was cool.
It was deconstructing genre before deconstruction was a thing.
It was The Matrix before The Matrix.
It was Deadpool before Deadpool.
[Beat.]
Except it did it with more heart.
More sincerity.
Because Last Action Hero doesn't mock action movies.
It loves them.
Even while admitting they're ridiculous.
[He stands for the final time.]
And that's why it matters.
That's why I've seen it forty-three times.
That's why I will defend it until I die.
Because it taught me how to love something—
Completely—
While understanding exactly what it is.
THE CONCLUSION
Last Action Hero is about a kid who learns that movies aren't real.
But it's also about a kid who keeps watching them anyway.
Because even though they're not real—
they matter.
[Beat.]
Stories matter.
Fiction matters.
The lies we tell ourselves—
they matter.
[He looks at audience.]
Not because they're true.
But because they help us survive the truth.
[Beat.]
And that's what I do.
In every blog post.
In every story.
In every theatrical, verbose, over-the-top observation about fountain sodas and Valentine's Day cards.
I'm telling lies that tell the truth.
[Beat.]
Just like Last Action Hero.
Just like Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a character who discovers he's a character.
Just like a magic ticket that transports a kid into a world where everything makes sense—
Before teaching him that nothing makes sense.
And that's okay.
[Long beat.]
I am Orson Shakespeare McSeinfeld.
And I learned everything I know—
About storytelling.
About reality.
About the necessary fiction of daily life.
From a critically panned, commercially failed, Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from 1993.
[He smiles.]
And I wouldn't have it any other way.
[Beat.]
Thank you.
End Transmission.
(Orson exits. Somewhere, a VHS tape of Last Action Hero sits on a shelf, waiting. The magic ticket may not be real. But the movie is. And for Orson, that's always been enough.)