As Arnold Schwarzenegger’s FUBAR, the actor’s first leading role in a scripted series, soon arrives on Netflix, the icon has a huge career of movie roles to look back fondly on. From True Lies and the first Predator, to Total Recall and, of course, the Terminator franchise, which he recently shaded when talking about sequels, Schwarzenegger has had a lot of hits over the years. But there’s one of his movies that bombed at the box office that he named his “most underrated role.”
His answer is completely right. It was his follow-up to arguably his most beloved movie of all time, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and yet it was not embraced as such. Here is Schwarzenegger’s pick in his own words:
Last Action Hero. It was slaughtered before anybody saw it. It was literally a political attack because I was campaigning for [former President George H.W. Bush], but Bill Clinton won. 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?
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger shared his love for Last Action Hero, which was met with negative reviews and lost money with its box office numbers. Despite the actor's own thoughts on its failure, the movie did open the week after 1993's Jurassic Park, which became the highest grossing movie of that year.
As the actor shared, it wasn’t necessarily among Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 10 best movies he’s ever made, but it didn’t deserve its reception. Last Action Hero is a gem in Schwarzenegger’s career that, yes, was definitely cheesy, but also a really clever spin on the action movie genre and went in for a clever and meta commentary that was perfect for him to lead.
Last Action Hero follows a 10-year-old boy named Danny (Austin O’Brien), who is obsessed with the fictional movie character Jack Slater (Schwarzenegger). Danny gets magically transported into Jack’s world via a ticket stub to one of his movies, and there he becomes Jack’s new partner. If you’re inspired to either watch it for the first time or revisit it, the Last Action Hero is currently available to stream with a Hulu or Netflix subscription.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s next on-screen adventure is FUBAR, a spy series where the actor plays a CIA operative who finds out his daughter (Monica Barbaro) is also a CIA operative. Ahead of the series arriving to Netflix later this month, the 75-year-old has gotten real about his family treating him ‘like an old man’ during filming amidst the crazy long days of filming.
That being said, Schwarzenegger shows no signs of slowing down in the business, especially considering he recently signed on to another action movie called Breakout. FUBAR lands on Netflix on May 25. As we get excited for more action from the actor, it’s great to see Last Action Hero getting a positive shoutout from its leading man as it soon celebrates its 30th anniversary this June.
