Fallout-NL
Member
I don't know, but these have got to be up there.
People who have never even seen the movies know this scene.
Openings people, openings.
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Is the intro to Last Action Hero the greatest scene in motion picture history?
- Thread starter SpaceWolf
- Start date
Openings people, openings.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
The scene in which Charles Dance gets his dogs to do stuff is the best scene.
That does not infer we're only talking about intros
EDIT> Actually that doesn't even state "action" scene
Fallout-NL
Member
I'm also partial to the scene where he shoots someone in real New York and starts shouting about it.
Hey, true. Though it would make more sense for a thread subject... it being a little less broad.
Ocarina_117
Banned
Ride, ride for ruin and the worlds ending!
DEATH!
Ride of rohirrim, my good man.
DEATH!
Ride of rohirrim, my good man.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
This movie had the biggest cocktease ever when they imply the villain is going to release all the greatest fictional monsters and evils into the real world (including Bram Stoker's Dracula), and then in the end all we see is the guy who killed Jack Slater's son and Ingmar Bergman's Death.
Rktk
Member
Couldn't agree more.
This is my favourite moment (in the opening) where he crushes the radio and pulls out the desert eagle.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
It certainly is the most personal for the director, considering it's both reproducing Die Hard and also a comment on what it did to action movies and people's expectations. And on 'movie magic' that people fall in love with.
On rewatch it's also pretty apparent it's basically the trail run for The Nice Guys (2016).
On rewatch it's also pretty apparent it's basically the trail run for The Nice Guys (2016).
Inceptional
Member
My personal favorite scene: https://youtu.be/hwTf9WurF4U
GarthVaderUK
Banned
Loved this scene in LAH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMxY0Lxo_ow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMxY0Lxo_ow
Fallout-NL
Member
Yeah, that's the one, fantastic.
SlipperyFishes
Banned
No lies here.
SaviourMK2
Member
You clearly have not seen "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
I mean I hear what you're saying but; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds3jXtzIIos
Not do? It was a critical and commercial disappointment
Noisepurge
Member
It has actually gotten a lot better with time. I recently bought the bluray for 4$ and had a blast. The practical effects and action scenes now look and feel so much better than the CGI infested shakycam with 200 cuts per second movies, and it's funny and original too.
Back when it came out, it flopped and signaled the end of Arnold's action career
People didn't get it and found it stupid. Lie imagine somebody going to see The Other Guys with will Ferrell and mark wahlberg and expecting a gritty buddy cop movie and bthat ing dissapoijted. Maybe it was the advertising of the time
This and Josie and the Pussy cats were 2 movies that just weren't received well because expectations weren't set correctly or marketing wasn't done right. The Josie and the oussycats trailer gives no indication that it's going to parody boy bands and pop culture
The movie clueless also had the same issue with how it was marketed but it ended up being a hit still
It was a typo, I meant to ask why did it not do well and was a critical and commercial failure.
Josie and the Pussycats is actually a pretty good example.The marketing gave no indication it was a parody and the movie never breaks character and stays with it the whole way through. Outside of quality of the writing/etc, the audience wasn't primed at all for what it was and a lot of people slammed it for the stuff it was trying to make fun of.
I think if you released those two movies today with all the meta comedy being around, they'd do a lot better.
But also today like it kinda would've been spoiled and all of the suprise would be gone.
In a perfect world a person would go to the theater expecting X and b given Y( a well done parody) and be suprised and delighted as they left the theater. In reality they get angry that they are mislead and if the marketing shows all of their hand, the magic is lost and you have articles deconstructing the entire movie before you go to see it
I'll give an example. Superbad was kind of marketed as aa raunchy teen comedy that you might compare to American pie or an 80's movie. But not until you get into the movie do you see tht this is a smarter, well written comedy that goes into Seth and Evans friendship on a deeper level. It's suprising and very good. But you would be incredibly disappointed if you wanted a teen sex romp
Bits N Pieces
Member
Nope, best intro to a film ever is The Other Guys.
Samuel L and The Rock just having a ball.
Just perfect!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9eJuqaeJIYo&time_continue=14
Samuel L and The Rock just having a ball.
Just perfect!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9eJuqaeJIYo&time_continue=14
dl77
Member
If you're asking why it did so poorly at the box office the simplest reason is that it came out about a week after the release of Jurassic Park. JP was the juggernaut film of the year and had massive buzz around it all year due to the promise of photoreal dinosaurs and the fact that the marketing was very careful not to give any good shots of the creatures. There was no way any film wasn't going to get creamed if they released immediately after Spielberg's movie.
But this was also Arnold. More than one film can coexist at the box office. It didn't have to be a massive hit. The reviews and poor word of mouth killed any chance against jurassic park
Raptomex
Member
You should watch Eraser that came out in '96. Another underrated Arnie action film.It has actually gotten a lot better with time. I recently bought the bluray for 4$ and had a blast. The practical effects and action scenes now look and feel so much better than the CGI infested shakycam with 200 cuts per second movies, and it's funny and original too.
Back when it came out, it flopped and signaled the end of Arnold's action career
Chuckie
Member
Oh God....Bridgette <3
bengraven
Member
I don't think there's a single human being alive, whether it's a reviewer or a film historian or even some Joe Schmoe that would disagree with you.
Every human being I have ever talk to says that the intro to last action hero is a masterpiece of modern film.
As someone who owns 10 copies of the criterion collection DVD I cannot disagree.
Every human being I have ever talk to says that the intro to last action hero is a masterpiece of modern film.
As someone who owns 10 copies of the criterion collection DVD I cannot disagree.
God this movie was ripped to shreds when it came out. People literally thought it was the biggest disappointment in modern history and thought this was the end of Arnold's career. There wasn't a single person I knew that didn't talk about how it was literally the dumbest thing that ever seen and there was no redeeming qualities. Gaming magazines called the game edition the worst game based on a shit movie since Hudson Hawk. I think what really helped this was being shown on HBO and later other movie channels. I didn't like the movie the first time I saw it on VHS, but after it was re-run on HBO for months I have actually learned to like it.
dl77
Member
I'm not saying that going up against JP was the sole reason for it's failure but it was certainly a cause. Up until the release of Titanic in '97 Jurassic Park was the biggest film of the decade. Hell, I was a big Arnie fan back then but I remember JP was the film everyone was excited about in school.
This. 1993 was a different time for movies in theaters. Multiplexes had 8 screens max, but most theaters were still 1-4 screens - many of which weren't part of national chains like they are today. When Jurassic Park came out, I saw it at a theater called GCC Northeast in Philadelphia, which had 4 screens. They were running it on all of them at a schedule that could best be described as pretty much as fast as they could fill, empty, and fill an auditorium all day and night for opening weekend. Even if the demand for Last Action Hero was big, there was no way they were cutting back on JP, which was printing money at that point, especially not one weekend later. I imagine it was a similar situation in a lot of theaters.
Obviously, many other aspects went into the disappointing box office of LAH - a lot of which were due to overhype on the part of the studio. There was the standard merch, like clothes, fast food, video games, etc, but, and I don't know if this ever actually panned out, the producers were said to have spent 100 million dollars to send a Last Action Hero rocket or satellite or something to that effect into space. I don't know why - extraterrestrial advertisement? Perhaps trying to make First Contact happen by showing how awesome our movies could be?
Either way, the movie was great and I'm glad that it has obtained a larger appreciation over the years. It was way ahead of its time and fell victim to scheduling and inflated expectations, but it was still a very enjoyable time.
Also, the soundtrack is god tier.
dl77
Member
The club scene in Goodfellas is a masterpiece, the farm opening to Inglourious Basterds is a masterpiece, the T-rex attack in JP is a masterpiece. I really like TLAH but I think the word masterpiece is a gross overstatement for the film's intro.
It's entertaining enough but it's a fairly simplistic play on the 'good cop who doesn't play by the rules' trope. I genuinely can't think of anyone I know who, if asked for the greatest scenes in cinema, would say the intro to The Last Action Hero!
dl77
Member
Ha, yeah. I know someone who worked in a cinema and I think he grew to loathe the theme from Jurassic Park. Not from the film but because cinemas still seem to constantly play the thing!
admiraltaftbar
Member
Nope the movie could have reviewed better and it still probably would've still been a box office disappointment. Jurassic Park coming to theaters was/still is one of the biggest events in movie history because of the climate of theater goers in 1993. Anything going up against it was doomed.
cr0w
Old Member
Yes. Warms my heart that people are finally seeing just how fucking brilliant it really is.
NealMcCauley
Member
I watched a few minutes of this over the weekend. Sill good, but it was a shitty 16x9 version off Hulu. LAH is a love letter to anamorphic lenses and deserves better.
In terms of 1993 reception Sony hyping the hell out of LAH like it was the second coming of Christ didn't help with anything.
In terms of 1993 reception Sony hyping the hell out of LAH like it was the second coming of Christ didn't help with anything.
Captain Skeleton
Member
The greatest scene in an action movie ever probably comes from Terminator 2
It pisses me off we never really got a Terminator Future War movie in the style of T2. Where it seems that the survivors have organised and gotten uniforms. Instead they fell back on post apocalypses tropes.
Spring-Loaded
Member
Where does it say that in the title?
dl77
Member
If memory serves I'm sure there'd been a lot of bad word of mouth about the film before it even released. Obviously we're used to that now with internet leaks and preview reviews popping up online but it was pretty unusual at the time for that to permeate out into the public so widely.
Probably a case of tall poppy syndrome as well given that Arnie had just come off a roll of huge films; Twins, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop and Terminator 2. John McTiernan as well had had a good run prior to it. Medicine Man aside his previous films were Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October.
Probably a case of tall poppy syndrome as well given that Arnie had just come off a roll of huge films; Twins, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop and Terminator 2. John McTiernan as well had had a good run prior to it. Medicine Man aside his previous films were Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October.
dl77
Member
Slightly OT but I'm always impressed that John McTiernan released two films in 87/88 there were opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of action heroes.
On one side you've got Predator which is literally the most masculine, testosterone ridden, 80's film that'll ever likely be made. You've got characters shrugging off bullet wounds, men literally attacking a forest with a mini-gun and grenade launchers, someone killing a huge wild boar with a knife and bare-hands and someone outrunning a nuclear blast!
On the other side you've got Die Hard, generally accepted as the birth of the modern day action hero. Someone who's an everyman, someone who's filled with self-doubt, every injury causes great pain, regularly gets the crap kicked out of them, struggles to reconnect with his wife.
I think it's amazing that he not only made successive films with such different views as to what constitutes an action star but to actually make them both bona-fide classics and release them one year after the next is astounding!
On one side you've got Predator which is literally the most masculine, testosterone ridden, 80's film that'll ever likely be made. You've got characters shrugging off bullet wounds, men literally attacking a forest with a mini-gun and grenade launchers, someone killing a huge wild boar with a knife and bare-hands and someone outrunning a nuclear blast!
On the other side you've got Die Hard, generally accepted as the birth of the modern day action hero. Someone who's an everyman, someone who's filled with self-doubt, every injury causes great pain, regularly gets the crap kicked out of them, struggles to reconnect with his wife.
I think it's amazing that he not only made successive films with such different views as to what constitutes an action star but to actually make them both bona-fide classics and release them one year after the next is astounding!
hogendaz85
Member
Agreed but I think it's the scene near the end. The night time high way semi truck chaseThe greatest scene in an action movie ever probably comes from Terminator 2
Edit: Look at this gif people this is 1991!!
Goat Action director, only J.Cameron can compare.
This and the opening scene with Trinity it blew me away, still get chills watching it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb6bA4J1Gbg
DiipuSurotu
Banned
What ever happened to Bridgette Wilson anyway. I only remember her in Mortal Kombat, Last Action Hero, and... Just Visiting.
cant watch the video, what is this joke you talk about?
Baron Von Beans
Member
When kid me saw this movie, I hated it. Corny, terrible everything, cheesy gun fights.
Adult me absolutely loves this movie.
Adult me absolutely loves this movie.