In the 1993 movie ‘Last Action Hero’, the audience goes on a magical journey into the world of Hollywood movies with a young boy and movie fan called Danny Madigan, who uses movies as a form of escapism after his father’s death.
Danny’s favorite movies are Jack Slater movies; a character played by none-other-than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Danny is transported through the theater screen, and into the world of Jack Slater, when presented with a magical golden ticket by his local theater owner (the ticket having once belonged to Harry Houdini).
The movie was executive produced by Arnold and he played, not only the role of Jack Slater but also, himself.
Last Action Hero was deemed as a critical failure but it was a fun experience and resonated with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s core fans. Arnold Schwarzenegger also participated in arranging cameos, such as asking Robert Patrick to reprise his role as The T-1000, Sharon Stone (who had previously worked with Arnold on Total Recall) also made an appearence as her character Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct, even Twins co-star Danny DeVito played the role of an animated detective cat in the vein of Who Framed Roger Rabbit among other fun cameos.
Schwarzenegger, not being afraid to poke fun at himself (or his friend and movie rival Sylvester Stallone) allowed Terminator Fans to see, just for a moment, what Terminator 2 would have looked like with Sylvester Stallone in the lead role – in the form of a movie poster in Jack Slater’s local Blockbuster Video Store. All these years on, these small nods and easter eggs still live on within the fanbase and are appreciated with great fondness.
Trivia: The clerk behind the kiosk at the video store in Last Action Hero, is model and actress; Angie Everhart – she would later go on to become Slyvester Stallone’s fiance two years after the movie’s 1993 release.
A year ago, at the peak of popularity of the deep fake trend, deep fake extraordinaire ‘Ctrl Shift Face’ face-swapped Stallone into scenes from Terminator 2, managing to amass more than 4 million views to date.
Would you have liked to have seen a Last Action Hero 2?
What Stallone movie role do you think would have been interesting for Arnold to play?
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