McTiernan was the wrong choice for director here

This could've been an all-time action parody classic, but one of the things that holds it back (along with its uneven script) is McTiernan's direction. John is a good director for serious action films like Die Hard and Predator, but he seems ill equipped to handle a film like this.

For starters, his visual direction in this film was very sloppy in places. Lots of shots felt overly cluttered and lacking in clarity in framing/motion. One scene that stood out as being particularly badly directed was the first police station scene inside the movie. For some reason, McTiernan felt the need to insert a TV with shots of lightning flashing onscreen in the background in Dekker's office, which was honestly incredibly distracting and unnecessary. To make things worse, when the kid gets interrogated by Slater and Dekker a minute later, McTiernan, for some reason, felt the need to film it with harsh light pointed directly at the camera (making for an ugly and assaulting scene on the senses).

Another scene he screws up on is the video store scene. That scene is probably the most famous part of the movie and it's a great gag but even then, McTiernan's directing lets it down a bit by having the reveal of Stallone as the Terminator be filmed in such a nonchalant, undramatic way. Rather than filming it to build up any sort of anticipation or surprise, he just films it in a long Steadicam shot the whole time as though it's no big deal. It's still a good scene but imagine how much better it could've been had if it was filmed to emphasize a reaction more.

There's loads of other examples like this but suffice it to say, McTiernan did not bring his A game here. Outside of his poor visual directing choices at times, the world he creates of the movie inside the movie felt very random and poorly put together. I understand he was trying to make fun of the overabundance of buddy cop comedies that were being made at the time but things like the cartoon cat and the digital Humphrey Bogart (of whom they weirdly refer to as the digitalization of Humphrey Bogart in the actual film) felt so out of place with the world he creates here.

That kind of thing may have worked in more of a Ready Player One, Wreck-It-Ralph kinda world, but the movie isn't really set in that kind of reality. He was transported to one specific movie (Jack Slater IV), so why are those there? That'd be like if the scene of Arnold in Hamlet had Bugs Bunny show up for no reason. It's just random.

That joke about there being no unattractive women in the Jack Slater movie also made no sense (when was that a thing in action movies?). Again, I know it's a parody, but it's not funny when it comes off so random and seemingly has no basis in reality. A better joke would've been having an overabundance of women randomly appearing in little-to-no clothes in the middle of an action scene, which was sort of a cliche in action movies during that time (they sorta did that, but it would've been better as a recurring joke).

Who's with me here? This could've been an all-time action parody classic but it's held back largely by McTiernan's awkward direction. Someone like a Robert Zemeckis or a Steven Spielberg probably could've done a bang up job with this.