An Arnold Schwarzenegger '90s Flop Bought Ad Space On The Space Shuttle's Exterior

As someone once said, space is the final frontier. For the last couple decades, the American government and its chief branch of space exploration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (aka NASA if you're nasty), has slowed the country's efforts to continue venturing into that final frontier. Within the last week, however, that seems to be changing, as the launch of the Artemis II is a big step forward on behalf of the space program to get humans back to the moon, with the long-term goal of eventually establishing a base on the satellite planet. While various authorities have had wildly bizarre ideas about what the future of space exploration holds for humanity, one possibility which seems more likely than most is the idea of advertising in space. After all, "Ad Astra" did Paul Verhoeven one better by including a bunch of garish ad materials for actual real-life brands in the film's scenes on the moon, giving us a glimpse of what such a future might look like.

However, if things had gone as planned back in 1993, we might've seen a version of this future a lot sooner. As part of the frankly insane marketing blitz surrounding the June release of John McTiernan's "Last Action Hero," Columbia Pictures sought to try and get the film promoted on the side of a NASA rocket that was due to be launched around the movie's release. The eventual failure of this ambitious idea summed up the fate of "Last Action Hero" in a nutshell, as the movie turned out to be the first flop at the box office for star Arnold Schwarzenegger. For such a meta action-comedy, this incident ironically became the movie's best joke.

"Last Action Hero" began life as a full-blown parody of '80s action films and their writers, like Shane Black. It then mutated, and not only ended up indulging in various excesses perpetuated by the genre, but was even rewritten by Black himself. As "Last Action Hero" got bigger, Columbia Pictures saw Arnold Schwarzenegger's stellar track record as a near-guarantee for a hit, and tripled down on the marketing campaign. In We Minored in Film's oral history, Schwarzenegger gave a detailed rundown of the film's ad blitz, including the space shuttle idea:

"Besides the action toys, we licensed seven kinds of video games, a $20 million promotion with Burger King, a $36 million "ride film" to go into amusement parks, and – this was my favorite – NASA picked us to be the first-ever paid advertisement in outer space. We painted 'Last Action Hero' and 'Arnold Schwarzenegger' on the sides of the rocket and then held a national sweepstakes whose winners would get to push the launch button."

When that plan to advertise the movie on a rocket was first reported in the Los Angeles Times, the chairman of Columbia demonstrated some incredible mental gymnastics, tying the idea ever so loosely to the movie's premise of a magic ticket which allows characters to travel between the real world and movie worlds:

"Columbia Pictures Chairman Mark Canton said 'Last Action Hero' is about 'stepping into different worlds,' and as such is a 'perfect' theme for a rocket launch. 'We're always trying to find original and unique ways to promote our movies. And this is unique. In this case, people around the world watching the TV launch will see it.'"

It would've been one thing if "Last Action Hero" simply underperformed. While the film certainly made money, the studio needed the movie to reach $80 million domestically to break even, and it only garnered $50 million. However, despite the enthusiasm of Mark Canton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the insult added to the movie's box office injury is that the planned launch with the "Last Action Hero" ad ended up never taking place. In May of 1993, a month before the movie and the launch were due to happen, NASA announced that the launch was postponed until August, which would've been a little too late to help the movie's box office take. Eventually, the launch was canceled outright. One wonders what happened to that sweepstakes winner meant to press the launch button, as Arnold mentioned (if there even was a winner, that is).

Ultimately, the debacle surrounding "Last Action Hero" helped wake Hollywood (as well as Schwarzenegger) up a bit from its period of excess and hubris. In hindsight, this wasn't a full awakening; after all, the filmmaking career of Michael "Bayhem" Bay was just around the corner, and Schwarzenegger pivoted from a steadily dwindling movie star career into a successful campaign for governor of California. Despite all the excesses which have followed in cinema in the wake of "Last Action Hero," however, no one has made such a grandiose attempt to advertise in space again. Perhaps we can at least wait until there are some people in the cosmos to advertise to.