“Despised and rejected by humanity, he is a man of sorrows, one who knows infirmity. And we hid our faces from him as he was someone we despised and who we thought little” (Isaiah 53.3).
Last Action Hero was released 18 June 1993. It starred Arnold Schwarzenegger (his second appearance here this summer), F. Murray Abraham, and Anthony Quinn. It was directed by John McTiernan, who at this point had directed Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt for Red October. The script was co-written by Shane Black who wrote Lethal Weapon. And it was a box office and critical disappointment.
In the film, ten-year-old Danny Madigan lives in a New York apartment with his widowed mother. Having befriended an old projectionist at a nearby theater, he gets the chance to see an advance showing of Jack Slater IV, the latest featuring his hero. During the course of the movie (with some help from a magic ticket) Danny finds himself in the world of Jack Slater—a brightly-colored, over-the-top, and absurdly-plotted action sequel.
Last Action Hero, despite its appearance, is satire, a send up of the action movie genre that made Schwarzenegger famous. It was, I think, ahead of its time. Movies like Scream would come out just a few years later doing something similar—calling out genre tropes as they’re happening on-screen. But, in 1993, audiences weren’t quite ready for that.
They also weren’t ready for the film’s third act where Danny and Jack Slater pursue a villain into our world, the real world—the one where the magic of cinema doesn’t work, good guys can get hurt, and the bad guys sometimes win. Suddenly, the violence was no longer played for laughs, which was not what anyone had paid their money to see. But that was exactly its appeal to me: there’s something bold when someone dares to confront people’s expectations. It’s what we see throughout the Gospels.
Messianic expectations were complicated, as were people’s feelings around them. Beneath the militant hand of Rome, people longed and waited for one who would come in strength and violence to set them free. Their expectations were for a mighty ruler who would be their champion. What they got was Jesus, and he had a habit of doing and saying things quite the opposite of that expectation. And people didn’t like that.
In fact, people still don’t like it. We still want someone who will punch our enemies rather than turn the other cheek, or lead us into battle instead of telling us to put away our swords. But Jesus and, to an extent, Last Action Hero shows us that the image we want to cheer is nothing but a facade, a fantasy.
Which is why Jesus’ actions were, like Last Action Hero, a disappointment to many. He dared to challenge what everyone wanted, and showed us that doing so is not the means to success and accolades. It might even get us into Big Trouble, as Jack Slater would say.
But it also may reveal to us a world much different than we know.
Jesus help me see the world as you see it, understand as you understand, and dare to challenge our own expectations.