Box office The film grossed approximately $1.1 million in previews on the evening of Thursday, June 17, 1993, and opened at number two at the US box office, behind
Jurassic Parks second weekend, grossing $15,338,241 in its opening weekend, from 2,306 theaters, averaging $6,651 per theater. It ended its run with $50,016,394 in the United States and Canada. The film was released in the United Kingdom on July 30, 1993, on 266 screens and again opened at number two behind
Jurassic Park (on 435 screens) with a gross of $1.34 million for the weekend. In France it opened at number one with a gross of 21 million
French franc ($3.6 million) in its opening week. It grossed $87,202,095 overseas, for a worldwide total of $137,298,489. In an
A&E biography of Schwarzenegger, the actor said that the film could have done better if not for bad timing, since it came out a week after
Jurassic Park which went on to break box-office records as one of the top-grossing films of all time. Schwarzenegger states that he tried to persuade his coproducers to postpone the film's June 18 release in the United States by four weeks, but they turned a deaf ear on the grounds that the film would have lost millions of dollars in revenue for every weekend of the summer it ended up missing, also fearing that delaying the release would create negative publicity. He told the authors of
Hit And Run that while everyone involved with the production had given their best effort, their attempt to appeal to both action and comedy fans resulted in a film that appealed to neither audience and ultimately succumbed to heavy competition.
Critical response Last Action Hero received mixed reviews from critics. On
Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 42% based on 55 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, "
Last Action Hero has most of the right ingredients for a big-budget action spoof, but its scattershot tone and uneven structure only add up to a confused, chaotic mess." On
Metacritic, the film has a
weighted average score of 44 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4, writing that despite some entertaining moments,
Last Action Hero "plays more like a bright idea than like a movie that was thought through. It doesn't evoke the mystery of the barrier between audience and screen the way Woody Allen did in
The Purple Rose of Cairo, and a lot of the time it simply seems to be standing around commenting on itself."
Vincent Canby likened the film to "a two-hour
Saturday Night Live sketch" and called it "something of a mess, but a frequently enjoyable one".
Owen Gleiberman of
Entertainment Weekly wrote: "
Last Action Hero makes such a strenuous show of winking at the audience (and itself) that it seems to be celebrating nothing so much as its own awfulness. In a sense, the movie's incipient commercial failure completes it aesthetically."
Variety called it "a joyless, soulless machine of a movie, an $80 million-plus mishmash of fantasy, industry in-jokes, self-referential parody, film-buff gags and too-big action set-pieces." ''
Halliwell's Film Guide described it as "a film that tries to have it both ways, simultaneously mocking and celebrating the conventions of action movies, which leaves audiences, as well as the actors and director, in a state of bewildered confusion". John Ferguson of Radio Times'' was more positive, awarding it four stars out of five and stating, "An Arnold Schwarzenegger backlash had been on the cards for some time and when this extravaganza was released the knives were well and truly out. It was actually all a little unfair, because this is a smart, funny blockbuster [...] Schwarzenegger has rarely been better and he is backed up by a never-ending stream of star names in cameo roles [...] And, although McTiernan has fun spoofing the conventions of the action genre, he still manages to slip in some spectacular set pieces."
Legacy About the film's failure and critical response, John McTiernan said: Initially, it was a wonderful
Cinderella story with a nine-year-old boy. We had a pretty good script by Bill Goldman, charming. And this ludicrous hype machine got hold of it, and it got buried under bullshit. It was so overwhelmed with baggage. And then it was whipped out unedited, practically assembled right out of the camera. It was in the theater five or six weeks after I finished shooting. It was kamikaze, stupid, no good reason for it. And then to open the week after
Jurassic Park—God! To get to the depth of bad judgment involved in that, you'd need a snorkel. Later Schwarzenegger blamed the film's poor performance on bad press and the election of
Democratic president
Bill Clinton, which he said influenced audiences to see 1980s action film stars as lowbrow. In 2017, he said
streaming services gave the film its chance to reach new audiences unencumbered by the bad press. In Netflix's three-part docuseries
Arnold (released in 2023), the actor recalled how the movie's failure affected him. "When
Last Action Hero came out I had reached my peak after
Terminator 2, having the most successful movie of the year worldwide, I cannot tell you how upset that I was [about the negative
Last Action Hero reviews]. It hurts you. It hurts your feelings. It's embarrassing. I didn't want to see anyone for a week, but you keep plodding along." Director
James Cameron said that he had called Schwarzenegger the weekend after
Last Action Hero opened and recalled that it was the only time he's "ever heard him down." Cameron continued, "He took it as a deep blow to his brand. I think it really shook him." Shane Black was very critical of the movie: "It was a mess. There was a movie in there, struggling to emerge, which would have pleased me. But what they'd made was a jarring, random collection of scenes." --> •
Universal moved
Jurassic Park to June 11, 1993, well after Sony had decided on a June 18 release date for
Last Action Hero. • The movie was reportedly the first to have an advertisement placed on a space-going rocket, which cost an additional $500,000. • A rough cut, screened in May, was reviewed negatively; Sony destroyed the review cards, and the film's word-of-mouth would prove to be catastrophic, earning a "C+" CinemaScore grade. • The shooting and editing schedules were so demanding and so close to the June 18 release date that after the movie's release, a source close to the film said that they "shouldn't have had Gene Siskel|[Gene] Siskel and Roger Ebert|[Roger] Ebert telling us the movie is 10 minutes too long". • With
Jurassic Park continuing to top the box office,
Last Action Hero dropped 47% on its
second weekend, dropping to fourth behind two newcomers:
Sleepless in Seattle of Sony subsidiary
TriStar Pictures, and
Dennis the Menace. •
Last Action Hero was the first film to be released using
Sony Dynamic Digital Sound. Still, only a few theaters were set up for the new format, and many of those experienced technical problems. Insiders at
Paramount reportedly referred to it as "Still Doesn't Do Shit". • The final declared financial loss for the film was $26 million. In the years since the release of
Last Action Hero, the film has developed a strong cult following. Schwarzenegger singled out that movie as his most underrated: "
Last Action Hero was great – it wasn't fantastic, but it was underrated. Now, more and more people are seeing it and saying, "I love this movie." I'm getting the residual checks, so I know it's true. It made money – that's always an important thing for me. Because it's show business, right?" Later, Charles Dance said: "I think they just didn't time the release very well. It came out more or less at the same time as something very big", referring to
Jurassic Park. "But it was fun to do." He also praised Schwarzenegger: "Arnold is a very smart man, oh yes. Very definitely. And very funny, and very aware."
Accolades The film was nominated for six
Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst New Star (Austin O'Brien), and Worst Original Song ("Big Gun"), but it did not win any. At the 1993
Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film received two nominations without wins: Worst Picture and Worst Actor (Schwarzenegger). The film was also nominated for seven
Saturn Awards for Best Fantasy Film, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Writing, Best Performance by a Young Actor, Best Costume, and Best Special Effects, again winning nothing. ==Video games==