What if there was a magic ticket that transported you into your favourite movie? It is something I’ve been thinking about since watching Last Action Hero for the umpteenth time.

In John McTiernan’s film, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a popular reoccurring character named Jack Slater in a film franchise that has become a favourite of teenager Danny Madigan. Danny, in the real world, regularly sneaks into the local cinema to watch Jack Slater re-runs. When his friend and theatre-owner gives him a magic ticket that was once the property of renowned magician Harry Houdini, Danny is transported into Jack Slater’s latest cinematic outing. There he helps Slater solve the crime, telling him exactly where the killer is hiding thanks to seeing an earlier part of the movie he now inhabits. It is all a lot of fun. Danny quickly realises that things in the movie world are quite different from the real one – bullets never seem to harm the action star, for instance, and all the women are stunningly beautiful.

That got me thinking how great it would be to actually spend time with my favourite characters. To be able to step into their world and enjoy the adventures with them. But then I thought – what if you couldn’t control Houdini’s magic ticket. In Last Action Hero it is blind luck that Danny is watching his favourite action star. What if he was watching The Exorcist?

A film I would love to be magically transported into:

The Goonies – a perilous journey but one great adventure.

A film I would hate to be magically transported into:

Alien – there are few films are terrifying as this one. I can’t imagine the fear of being trapped on the huge spaceship Nostromo with the alien picking crew members off one at a time.

What film(s) would you love to be magically transported into? And what films would you give anything to avoid being thrown into?