Instead, the 1990s action genre saw the introduction of newer action heroes played by more traditional actors like the eternally badass Keanu Reeves, and (somehow) Nicolas Cage — with a couple of holdovers like Harrison Ford and Kurt Russell thrown in for good measure.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comments to Business Insider give a new meaning to the old phrase “It’s all politics,” don’t they?
The idea here seems to be the fact that the election of a Democrat in the form of Bill Clinton (in turn, the end of the conservative Reagan/Bush era) ushered out the quintessentially 1980s decade of musclebound Republican action heroes like Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone.
Viewed through that lens, the former Mr. Olympia thinks that Last Action Hero — a film in which he plays Jack Slater, the embodiment of a macho action hero — was set up to fail because of changing paradigms and early negative press about the film.