Last Action Hero/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The Title of the Film

  • Random Troper: First off, why is this movie called The Last Action Hero? If it were established that, in universe, the whole action movie genre is considered 'tired' or 'old hat' (or even Deader Than Disco) and that the Jack Slater movies are the action movie genre's last gasp, then it'd make sense.
    • Another way the title would make sense is if Benedict were to go on a magic ticket-assisted killing spree during his time in 'the real world', summoning Captain Ersatz versions of action heroes to 'the real world' for the sole purpose of killing them instantly. By the time Slater and Daniel catch up to him, he's killed every other action hero in every movie copy in New York ... making Slater the last action hero. But we don't get either of these justifications for the title, and in fact no justification at all. There's no reason why we should consider Slater (or anyone else) the last action hero.
    • One possible reason is the Reverse Title Drop. As the class watches Hamlet, Laurence Olivier's role is described as "the first action hero". (By his widow, no less.) That and the implication at the end that Jack Slater gives up on action movie heroics, quits his job and drives off into the sunset... in film canon. Not really a logical explanation, but it tried.
    • It might also be poking fun at the sometimes inaccurate/overly dramatic aspects (like the title) of the action genre. Rather like the rest of the film.
    • If you change the definition of "last" here from "final" to "most recent" ("Remember the last time we (whatever)", it becomes a play on how very many action hero movies there are.
    • Conversely, you could argue that Schwarzenegger is meant to be the ultimate Action Hero. As in, don't bother looking for anyone better. So "last" might fit in that sense.


The Grim Reaper

  • Aside from the title, the only element that Just Bugs Me that I can think of right now is the Grim Reaper thing being left unresolved, which we covered in the What Happened to the Mouse? example. I'm wondering why the writers and directors chose to leave it unresolved. I'm not sure if those saying they wanted it to be a setup for a sequel are right about this, because it does seem a bit ... weird.
    • Maybe I'll need to watch the scene again, but did he actually kill that one guy on the street with his power? It seemed that when he touched him the man coughed and wobbled a little, indicating that the Grim Reaper's power was so weak in this world that he could only cause momentary illness and not death. Can any one clarify this moment for me?
    • I personally thought of it this way- the Reaper doesn't kill people who wouldn't have died anyway. He kills only people who were supposed to die. This is why he knows whether Jack or Daniel are supposed to be "on his list" because he represents nothing more than a visible face for Death, which in and of itself is inevitable in all universes.
      • He should be more careful about what he says. Now that he has stated that Danny dies a grandfather, what will happen if Danny tries to kill himself? A simple "not just yet" would have sufficed.
      • Danny doesn't seem the suicidal type, and it would take a complete lunatic to attempt suicide just because a future seer told you that you'd die some other way.
      • In a nutshell: why bother tempting fate if you know it won't work? In this case, it'll only make things worse.
    • What bothers me is that Danny now has some idea of when he's going to die. That's gotta make for some sleepless nights once your first grandkid is born...
      • Perhaps, but on the flipside, its kind of a given that most grandparents are old enough that their time is limited anyway once grandkids enter the picture.
        • Not necessarily. My great-grandmother on my dad's side didn't die until I was well into my teens.
        • And your great-grandmother was still technically a grandmother (just not to you).
      • Perhaps, but it'll also make you feel a hell of a lot safer before you get your first grandkid. And what if you choose not to have kids at all?
    • What really bugs me about the Reaper is that he clearly has magical powers, even though Slater and Benedict don't retain any special powers they had from their movie: Benedict is just an average shot in the real world, and Slater is no more Made of Iron than anyone else.
      • This troper didn't see anything to imply that Benedict's shooting became bad IRL. In fact Benedict missing Slater while shooting at him could have been part of his ruse to get Slater to come out in the open, in addition to leaving a chamber empty. It's possible he still was a surgical shot. Slater not being Made of Iron could likely be due to the fact that he doesn't have actually have any powers in the movies, not in the sense that Superman or Dracula do. If a Mook shoots Slater it's Only a Flesh Wound, but not because he's superhuman. It's due to improbable badass luck.
        • Slater's abilities in the movies are to be exceptionally tough, exceptionally strong, and exceptionally badass. It's just that in an action movie and in real life, "exceptionally" mean different things. Slater gets a likely fatal sucking chest wound from being shot by Benedict... but he lives for awhile. A lesser man might have been killed outright by that shot, dying in seconds rather than minutes, so Slater's obviously still way tougher than an average person. Also, since no other beyond human characters other than Death are brought out, we don't really know how they'd work. More importantly, it may be an equivalency thing... Death in the movie is a personification, but we also have death in the real world, which may be why the personification still has power and knowledge out of the movie. If, say, Sylvester Stallone in the world of Jack Slater was secretly Kryptonian and had superpowers, and they brought him to the real world, he might not have any more powers than the real world Sylvester Stallone. But since it's Death, he has the powers of death.

Whiskers the Cop

  • The presence of Whiskers doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Not because there's a cartoon cat cop in a movie, but because there's no in-universe explanation for it. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Bonkers and Cool World actually explained why toons coexist and featured multiple examples of their minority. This movie doesn't. It can't be standard for the series, either, or else series buff Daniel wouldn't have reacted like he did.
    • That whole scene was an extended sendup of They Fight Crime. It seems that Daniel wasn't just transported into Jack Slater-verse, but rather, cheesy cop movie-verse.
      • But I'm pretty sure they established multiple times in the movie that he got sucked into Jack Slater-verse. And while getting sucked into a movie itself doesn't make sense, if the kid got sucked into "Rush Hour", I don't think he'd run into anything like a cartoon cat, because that would look weird, even in "Rush Hour". So in short, it still doesn't make any sense.
    • I'm thinking it's probably more like an action-movie universe, which is a slightly broader genre than just the buddy cop films. Also, I'm thinking the quality of the movies featuring the characters in this universe varies quite a bit. Whereas Jack Slater is from a series of well-made (if somewhat silly) buddy cop action films, Whiskers is probably from one of the early attempts at making a live-action movie with CGIed cartoon characters that failed miserably, something like the live-action Rocky & Bullwinkle movie. That Jack Slater would be used to such glaring inconsistencies in his world makes sense if you consider that his own movies probably contain occasional continuity errors and other inconsistencies that, being a movie character, he simply doesn't notice because the script says he doesn't. If he's incapable of Fridge Logic, he can surely overlook how ridiculously out-of-place Whiskers is in his world.
    • Personal theory: Danny's seeing all the stuff the audience wouldn't actually see, and Jack Slater's universe is made up of all the potential ideas that have been tossed around by meddling executives, writers while they were tired/blocked/high, directors who thought they'd make an artistic piece out of the movie if only those damn studio suits would quit butting in... so you get stuff like a cartoon buddy to boost family appeal, crossovers with other action films, Jack in a black and white noir movie with a digital recreation of Bogart, etc. Since all those were ideas that people in power could have theoretically applied to Jack's world, they can potentially exist in Jack's world, and therefore do.

Kids Watching Action Movies

  • Why is the kid allowed to see Jack Slater movies at all? He looks barely 12, and 80's - early 90's action movies used to have copious amounts of violence and profanity, with an almost inevitable R rating.
    • Jack Slater films are established to be PG-13, as proven when Jack won't say something Daniel writes on a card.
      • Yeah, but PG means parental guidance. Shouldn't he be accompanied by an adult? He seems to be going to the movies alone...
        • Compared to cutting class and heading directly from police questioning to the theater... his mother put it best when she called Nick an accessory.
        • Amd he's friends with the old guy who runs the theatre. Presumably he cuts him some slack, and/or considers himself the responsible adult capable of deciding that the kid is allowed to watch the film.
        • Technically, Danny should only have been carded if the movie were rated R ("Children not admitted without parent or guardian," after all). Some theaters may deny kids admission to PG-13-rated movies, but it's not automatic. Plus, maybe Nick just figures that Danny's better off in his theater than on the street.
          • This troper was a film projectionist for several years, and contrary to common belief PG-13 is not age restricted at all. It states "Parents strongly cautioned — Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13". Officially anyone of any age can buy a ticket. So if the theater denies kids entrance to PG-13 they are not following MPAA rules. Although when this happens it's usually due to poorly trained and/or misinformed teenagers working the box office, not any moral decision by theater management.
    • Where do you tropers live that they actually CARD kids at the movies? Besides,the automated ticket vending machines make carding useless.
      • I don't think most theaters had automated ticket kiosks in the early 90's. Certainly not Nick's theater; you'll recall that all of the tickets were big gold-paper things, not just the magic ticket, and unlikely to be dispensed electronically.
      • They carded young adults (myself included) going to see District 9 in Charlotte, NC when I went to see it with my Dad. Which is strange considering I was 20 and he was 50 (and looked it), and we were clearly seeing the movie together.
      • This troper's local theaters have the R-rating restrictions plastered all over the place and no automated kiosks at all.
        • How strict or lax a theater is on carding tends to wax and wane depending on the popularity of the film and expected audience. If the film is likely to attract lots of young adults/teenagers and is popular (Say South Park or Jackass) they'll likely crack down. If you're buying a ticket to Shakespeare in Love or the King's Speech, they likely won't bother. This troper and friends were not carded for 28 Days Later, but carded with scrutiny for Terminator 3, at the same theater a week apart. YM-Will-Always-V.
    • The kid is good enough friends with the projectionist that he gets a private screening, all by himself, days before the movie's release. I think that, if the projectionist is going to bend that many rules, he won't have any problem bending the rating. After all, it's not like it's law (in the US, anyway).


Murder in New York

  • Maybe it's just unfamiliarity with run-down neighborhoods, but are there really areas in New York City where a man can shoot another man dead in plain view and elicit no reaction, aside from a guy yelling at him to shut up? There's far more unsolved crime in Real Life than in film, yes, but this may be erring a little too far in the opposite direction. (To be fair, anyone calling the cops would be smart enough to stay out of sight while doing it.)
    • Before Giulliani cleaned up New York, this was the stereotypical view -- that New York was a hideously decrepit and violent place, and people generally kept their heads down and minded their own business when they weren't being rude. Now that things have gotten a bit better, the stereotype has moved on to Detroit.
    • Why do you think it takes so many Marvel superheroes to keep the peace?
    • It's not entirely a stereotype. There is much Truth in Television to it. Believe me, I've been to New York many times. I know someone who was actually in Grand Central Station when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. They could hear the BOOM. Very audibly. You ask me their reaction to this practically deafening, explosion-like noise from the street? What reaction?? I wasn't there. But that's how he told it to me. Believe me, it's not hard to swallow. (EDIT: I feel I should mention that they did react when someone ran down the steps announcing what had happened, but only then. Not when they heard a booming noise that would probably have made people from any other city jump out of their skins.)
      • This troper saw a person getting mugged in front of the Port Authority on a very crowded Eighth Avenue on a Friday afternoon in 1988. I told a nearby, very annoyed cop about and he didn't really seem to care,although he did go over to question the victim. And nobody else stopped or helped teh victim. So ,yes, the shooting depicted could happen in some parts of NYC, at night and get the reaction that it did,IMHO.
    • Kitty Genovese. That is all. That one incident (and the exaggerated view of it supported by inaccurate reporting) pretty much cemented the view of "New Yorkers as indifferent to suffering" stereotype that persists today.


Rules of the Ticket

  • What would happen if you took the ticket to a documentary?
    • My best guess is that you would end up inside an alternate universe where any errors or exaggerations made by the documentary are accurate.
    • That, or you'd effectively have a time machine which would take you to the time period the doco was focused on.
  • What if you used the ticket to enter the movie world, and then went to a movie theater INSIDE the movie world?
  • What would happen if you were to enter a film during the end credits using the ticket?
    • More plausible answer: the ticket just won't work during the closing credits, since the movie, as a window into an alternate world, has ended by that point (it'd probably work if you tried it during The Stinger, though, since the stinger reopens the story for a few seconds). More Fridge Horror answer: it'd work, but you'd end up trapped forever inside the movie's version of The Nothing After Death.
  • Does the ticket work on TV shows as well, or just movies?
    • Probably just movies, since it's a magic movie ticket. Dunno how it'd work if you're watching a movie on TV.
  • What happens if you used the Magic Movie Ticket to enter an Anime Movie OVA? Would you turn animated or have Anime Hair?
    • Since people inside the movie are subject to the the movie's logic, I'd say yep, you'd turn into your anime counterpart, complete with Anime Hair. Like Strong Bad said, You Gotta Have Blue Hair! Then again, Whiskers the Cat somehow coexisted in Slater's world...
  • Is there a different universe for each copy of the movie or each movie in general? Danny took Slater out of Slater IV, but could he for instance have put on copies of Slater I, II and III and had four Slaters from different time periods fighting Benedict? Or if that wouldn't work and there's one universe for each film, then how is anyone supposed to watch Slater IV now that Danny essentially broke the fourth wall of that film? And what about what happens with extended/directors cuts? Deleted scenes?
    • The "one universe" theory cannot be true. Benedict pulled the third movie's villain out, by definition before he died, but he and Slater still remember the events of the third movie. Thus, the events must have happened intact, and the copy theory makes sense. Danny probably could have done the multiple Slater thing if, you know, they had the ticket. But they didn't, and never got it until after the conflict was over.
      • I think there is some sort semi-universal moviverse. I've obviously never seen Jack Slater 1-3 but Jack's non-chalance aside I don't think there were any cartoon cats in those first three movies. Snagging the Ripper from III probably constituted time travel but I'm highly skeptical you could start collecting Jack Slaters.


The Helicopter

  • Why did it land on Slater's car? Despite unloading his Desert Eagle at it, it does not appear that he kills the pilots or even damages the helicopter in any way. No bulletholes in the windshield and neither pilot seems injured. When it turns away it honestly looks like the pilots are just veering off to avoid his gunfire.
    • they lost control of it due to the crane and they were being shot at. when a helicopter is spiraling out of control it's generally assumed it's gonna crash
      • It's a movie

in a movie.


Bendedict's Plan

  • Where did Benedict get the idea, that when he kills Arnie, Slater automatically dies with him? If an actor dies, it doesn't change the movies in which he appears. At the end it's even shown that his plan wouldn't have worked: Bengt Ekerot, who played Death in The Seventh Seal, was long dead when they produced Last Action Hero.
    • Maybe he thought that, given the "differentness" of the real world from his own, and the fact that his world is contingent on our world, that a change in our world would result in a change in his. That, or because as a Card-Carrying Villain (by his own admission), killing Schwarzenegger is just the most natural thing for him to do.
    • Also theoretically, it was a gambit to get Slater to come stop him, so he could actually torment and kill Slater.
  • Why would Benedict intentionally start collecting villian who's goals differed from his own and whom (assuming the came through powers intact) would have been impossible for him to control? Of the villians he listed he could perhaps have kept pace with Hannibal Lector but Dracula? Even Hitler would (if he could prove he was who he was) would have resources available to him that Benedict wouldn't. And King Kong? Really? I'm fairly certain 50 foot gorillas don't make deals with cyclopses.
    • He might not have necessarily actually gone and collected those actual villains, he's just trying to illustrate the massive sort of power he has and the nightmarish things he could do with it... he's trying to make it sound as horrible as possible.
    • The above is likely accurate, but also remember that Benedict, despite all his canniness and genre savvy, is still a movie villain. Hubris and biting off more than he can chew is an essential part of his makeup. Likely, if he did recruit all those villains, he had it in mind to lord his control of the ticket over them. "I took you out right before your death scene, and I can put you back!"

Danny's Actions in the Last Act

  • So, Danny hijacks an ambulance by threatening its personnel with a gun, drives like crazy, and crashes it into a theater, and the patient -- an unidentified Jack Slater cosplayer -- will be nowhere to be found. And he does all this in his own world. With the presumed charges on him, maybe he really would be better off following Slater...
    • Maybe the cops would have busted him if they hadn't been too busy answering calls from a bunch of hysterical movie theater patrons claiming Death just walked off the screen and came after them with his scythe, and gathering evidence at the scene of a crazy assassination attempt on Arnold Schwartzenegger. After a night of that kind of mass insanity, they might just assume the kid got a case of whatever got into everyone else and give him the same break they gave the others.
    • Danny's not the most unique looking individual in the world. Here's what would happen: The guys in the ambulance would say they picked up a guy who looked like an Arnold Schwarzenegger who had a bullet wound and was dying. A Caucasian male, age eleven to fourteen, brown hair, jeans and t-shirt, no identifying marks, started rambling nonsense and then pulled a gun on them, drove away in ambulance. Ambulance later recovered at (address), no sign of suspects. The police would probably spend some time looking for this Schwarzenegger-lookalike in connection with the attempt on Schwarzenegger's life, but wouldn't much bother looking for a kid with a description that generic.

If Stallone is The Terminator

  • Then who plays Rambo?
    • Who says he can't play both?
    • Bruce Willis.
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