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Where it all started
Greg and Joe go back to where their love of great bad movies began, 1993’s Cliffhanger, starring Sylvester Stallone. Learn how greatness and badness can coexist in a movie to make both perfect films and lifelong friendships. As with every episode, we have the conversation that needed to happen about this movie. Also: Drinking Games, Important Questions, Joe’s Back of the Box, and more.
Joe’s Back of the Box
Still processing a tragic death on a rescue mission eight months prior, Gabe (Sylvester Stallone) must push those feelings aside to save his friends who have fallen into the hands of a ruthless gang of thieves. He must race across a beautiful (but deadly) scenery, while fighting his inner demons and the bad guys at the same time. This movie will have you on the edge of your seat right up until the final, dare we say, Cliffhanger…
The REAL Back of the Box
This movie has it all:
- A tragic back story that the hero must overcome
- A tough but vulnerable helicopter pilot damsel in distress
- A best friend to win back who lost his girlfriend in the opening scene
- FRANK
- John Lithgow as the bad guy affecting some kind of accent
- Travers, who is only capable of yelling his lines and seems to be in a different movie than anyone else
Want more? Of course you do.
- Needless explosions
- Bad guys who are terrible shots
- Convoluted plot devices
- Shots of Sylvester Stallone in the snow and nothing but a t-shirt
- SURPRISE BATS
If you are still not interested in this movie, I don’t know what to say. Obviously you don’t like cool things or to have fun in your boring, gray, non-Cliffhanger-watching life.
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Greg: Hey, Joe, do you remember the first movie we went to?
Joe: I do, it was cliffhanger. It was amazing. In the theater with, like, a group of ten people.
Greg: Maybe we knew each other because we, went to the same daycare. The traffic stop in 1993, I was three. You were five.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: And, we decided to go to the movie theater with some friends. This was a brand new experience for both of us.
Joe: Because we annoyed everybody else in the theater by openly mocking this film constantly from start to finish.
Greg: The group we were with were enjoying the movie and laughing at it out loud in the theater. It was the first time I’d ever occurred to me that bad action movies could be laughed at. An entirely new world was opened up.
Joe: Yeah, it was pretty revelatory.
Greg: It was. It was a recognition that, when movies are great, obviously they’re great, but when movies are bad, they’re almost greater.
Joe: Those two things can coexist. Greatness and badness can both enhance each other. Because sometimes the worst, like you said, the worse the movie is, the better it become.
Greg: We’re talking about like a five star, two and a half star movies. Yeah, that’s our wheelhouse.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: All right, let’s let’s get to the show.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Greg: Everyone knows the ultimate thrill is worth waiting for.
Clip: Cliffhanger starts Friday.
Clip: The year is.
Greg: 1993. We’re talking about cliffhanger today. Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, Michael Rooker, Janine Turner, Paul Winfield who was probably cast nine months after they finished filming. That’s how shoehorned he is directed by one of my favorite great bad movie directors, Renny Harlin, Joe Skye Tucker. Why is cliffhanger great?
Joe: This movie has grown on me every time I’ve watched it. It is amazing to watch. It’s a fun story. So you have the the tragic opening scene, and then you have Sylvester Stallone as Gabe coming back to win over his girlfriend again, Janine Turner, and move on with his life. But right in the middle of that, you have a plane crash with bad guys on it.
Joe: It’s very convoluted. How do we even get to that point? And he is one of the only people that can climb up to save the day. And then chaos ensues. So in this peak, Sylvester Stallone, I was thinking about this a lot like this is him right on the cusp of probably his prime. You know, he’s got a couple more great movies in him.
Joe: Demolition man really specifically, that sticks in my mind. I feel like this is him at the zenith of his stardom, but he doesn’t realize it’s kind of close to the end of him being an amazing action hero. And it has the late 80s cornered. He’s giving way to Bruce Willis and some other folks coming up. You have a really beautiful film.
Joe: It’s shot on location. No real green screens, lots of explosion, lots of crazy, stupid action lines and all of that. So it’s a great movie. Why do you think this is a great movie?
Greg: This is one of those movies. I think I’ve seen it, what, 12 times, 15 times in my life. And each time I watch it, I like it more. It’s basically die hard on a mountain. They assume that you have to have walkie talkies with the bad guys, just like Die Hard. And so there’s so much work to get the walkie talkies in there.
Greg: They assume you shouldn’t say people’s names over the walkie talkies, just like in Die Hard, because then people.
Joe: Will know who they are.
Greg: There’s so many things in this movie that really are just die hard. And that is what I love about it. One of my favorite genres of movies is Die Hard in or something, right? And so Die Hard on a mountain. I’m entirely on board. This movie is directed by Renny Harlin, who directed Die Hard two. In fact, that’s why he turned down this movie, I think three times, because he said, no, I’ve already made a die Hard movie.
Greg: I don’t want to do this. This movie is great because Sylvester Stallone still has some gas in the tank.
Joe:
Greg: He’s still jumping off things. He’s still really rock climbing. But it’s also great because it’s Sylvester Stallone realizing he can’t quite do what he has done in the past. And he doesn’t say very many stupid one liners in this movie. And when he does, he he admits on camera that it was a dumb joke. And he understands that these are dumb lines.
Greg: John Lithgow, however, did not get that memo and he is just a quip machine. I feel like his part of the script was purchased at like the clip store, and he is. Sometimes they make no sense, but they just had an idea. Like, time is a killer, isn’t it? That makes no sense to what we’re talking about right now, but they just had another one of those laying around and they had to put it in.
Greg: This movie is great because John Lithgow is potentially the worst bad guy ever captured on film in the history of movies. I love how bad he is in this movie. I love John Lithgow. Don’t get me wrong, but.
Joe: Not in this movie so bad.
Greg: He’s speaking in this British accent, and if I were working on this movie, if John Lithgow walked up to me and said, even just started to say, what did you think about me doing this in a British accent, I would have cut him off halfway through and just went, no, no, don’t do it.
Joe: John.
Greg: Think about it. Don’t do it. So horrible. Michael Rooker, who’s been around, he’s been in 18 of the last 19 movies that were released in theaters. He’s everywhere still. He is just celebrating what it’s like to be in an overly dramatic action movie. He has some amazing slow motion, no moments that are just. Did we know it was this dumb back then?
Greg: I think grown ups probably did. We didn’t know.
Joe: It’s got so many great action movie tropes to it. Yeah, it has like the redemption story to it, the redemption angle. It has people like acting in different movies. So Sylvester Stallone and Michael Rooker feel like they’re acting in one movie. John Lithgow feels like he’s in a different one. And then you have Travers, who’s in a completely different one, where every line is screamed at the top of his lungs.
Joe: There are moments where they have slow motion violence, where you don’t hear the gunshots, when the when any of the good guys are shot in this movie, you don’t hear it. It’s just slow motion. With this, the score being turned up and, you know, sad reaction shots of the the other good guys. It’s awesome. Like, I feel like if you did it now, it would be like a wink to the camera of, you know, look what we’re doing.
Joe: And then that they took it really seriously. So that makes it even better. Like when they don’t know that they’re in a great bad movie and they’re just in they’re all committed to it. It’s so good. I was never there in the snow, and I’m never quite sure how cold it is because. Right, some people are in coats.
Joe: Sylvester Stallone at one point is in his t shirt, although he is shivering a little bit. Then he puts on a sweater that he finds in an old.
Greg: It’s like a gift shop.
Joe: Yeah, it’s the warmest sweater ever invented. So he just as in that the rest of the movie in the middle of we’re good of Colorado. They’re really convoluted plot devices. Of it could easily be 20 minutes shorter if they cut out a couple few scenes here and there that just really don’t matter at all. But they are.
Greg: Disagree. I entirely disagree with what you just said.
Joe: Where’s the director’s cut on this? But we want the three hours.
Greg: Exactly, exactly. If so, Sylvester Stallone didn’t direct this movie, but if he had, he would probably be doing the director’s cut, just like you did with Rocky for the Rocky versus Drago. This movie opens in a way that is just legitimately amazing. Like, this has such a good opening scene. Should we walk through it? Should we walk through why?
Greg: It’s amazing.
Joe: Probably the best part of the movie is the opening scene. It is awesome and tense and and I have lots of questions about it too, so it’s even.
Greg: Better the kind of don’t make movies like this anymore. This is just a real old school movie made with real cameras and real helicopters flying through real mountains. Where are they flying to? Where? Where’s this red helicopter flying to? At the very beginning of this movie, Joe.
Joe: It is flying to rescue how? And Sarah, who are stranded at the top of the tower. Because Hal hurt himself climbing. They’re flying through, and then Sylvester Stallone is climbing up to them. He is clearly the world’s fastest mountain climber because he gets up there really fast. It basically beats the helicopter up there to them.
Greg: Beats the helicopter. It’s just the first of many times that this happens in this movie.
Joe: Another reason it’s a great movie. Yep. He gets up there to help rescue them. It looks and credibly difficult. And they make a comment that Sarah is not a very experienced climber. And it really raises the question of how the hell did she get up there in the first place?
Greg: Yeah, what a horrible date idea by the way. This is not something I would ever do on a date.
Joe: And then they make a comment that because of the winds they can’t do the normal kind of rescue. So they have to park the helicopter across on a different mountain or peak, right. And then run a line to them so that that’s, that’s the set up. Then how it goes across the line. No problem. And then Sarah is nervous and Sylvester Stallone, Gabe does his best to calm her down.
Joe: And then everything breaks on her harness at once. It’s like one little snap over here, and it’s like you see it going across her waist, across her chest, across her back, and then all of a sudden she’s dangling.
Greg: Probably a 16 point redundancy system. It goes entirely wrong at once. And so he has to go out on this line. The line that isn’t made for two people, Hal, for some reason, really doesn’t think he should. I don’t know, but how what’s he going to do?
Joe: He’s going to send his harness back.
Greg: Oh, I see, okay.
Joe: But she’s literally hanging by one hand at this point. Right on her harness. And Sylvester Stallone runs out there and grabs her hand, but then she slips and falls and that’s the opening scene.
Greg: Before they cross. Pretty good palling around between Sylvester Stallone and, hell, Michael Rooker. They kind of show that they have a lot of history. They joke around a lot. They’re talking to Janine Turner and old Frank in the helicopter, you know, across to the other park, and they’re all joking around on the radio. You know what? I’m on board with this gang.
Greg: I want, I want, I’m glad the gang’s together. And I want to see them go through some adventures. From the very first scene, how goes over. And when Sarah starts falling, she does everything she can to make it harder to save her. She is freaking out and shaking so much that, like, you can’t really hold on to her.
Greg: She’s doing everything that she possibly could to not get saved. I mean, her her stuffed bear falls and that’s when we realize there are some real stakes.
Joe: How insecure are you that you need a stuffed bear with you at all times? I think so.
Greg: So Sarah looks like a grown up, but it’s actually ten. It’s like a 13 going on 30 scenario. I don’t know that I will ever believe that Sylvester Stallone is believable as a Gabe, but Gabe drops, Sarah and, and that’s the end of the first ten minutes of this movie. We cut to eight months later and we’re we’re at the Denver Mint, right?
Greg: And, we meet, Rex Lynn, who plays Richard Travers in this movie. And he’s introduced to an FBI agent who is going to travel with Travers and team as they transport $100 million.
Joe: Yeah, $100 million.
Greg: In, like, $1,000 bills.
Joe: Only one person in the world can convert that. You know, or whatever it is, because they’re in such a large bills.
Greg: Right. If someone were to steal $100 million in $1,000 bill increments, there’s only one person on the planet who could actually get that and cash it in. It’s very much a fast and furious. There’s only there’s only one shop that sells that kind of oil in all of L.A.. It’s a perfect moment.
Joe: So they’re they’re taking this money to wherever. It doesn’t matter where they’re going. They’re flying from Denver to Atlanta or whatever. The conceit is that the FBI agent got a promotion, and they’re giving him a favor by flying him there to his new office location. Right. Everyone’s on board with that.
Greg: We’re introduced to the boss of the Denver mint, Paul Winfield, who is doing everything he can to bring some legitimacy to this movie. Throughout, the FBI agent is introduced to Richard Travers, and he says, hi, I’m Mr. Travers. He introduces himself as Mr. Travers. Who on earth introduces themselves that way? But then for the rest of the movie, he is only referred to as Travers, which I have to assume he was taking as an insult because was like I told you, it was Mr. Travers.
Greg: So these guys, get on, get on a flight. Seems like everything’s going to be okay. And then suddenly there’s another plane, and then it turns out that other plane that’s coming has John Lithgow and the rest of the bad guys on it.
Joe: The FBI agent is shot by Travers, and he shoots everybody else except for the pilot who’s in on it with him. But then, as they are, the cases are midway through the plane. The FBI agent wakes up, finds a gun, and shoots. Amazing. Like his accuracy is. He shoots the other plane, shoots the the pilot of the other plane.
Joe: Yeah. It’s amazing. And then the cases are lost, and then there’s a big plane crash into the Colorado mountains.
Greg: And they say hydraulics 47 times during the scene. We’ve lost hydraulics. He shot the hydraulics. The only thing they could have said after those two lines was, I can’t stop saying hydraulics.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: By the way, this. So, Travers. Mr. Travers, I’m sorry. And again, the disrespect to you, Mr. Travers, gets on the zip line and goes from one plane to the other plane mid-air. And this was a stunt that they actually did. They couldn’t film it in Europe, where they were filming the rest of the movie because it was illegal.
Greg: So they came back to America and filmed it in America. Sylvester Stallone said that he would take a million less dollars. No, he paid the stuntman $1 million to do this stunt. And then all the logistics of the shoot and whatever was also taken out of Sylvester Stallone’s pay so that the stunt could be in the movie and it is underwhelming.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Not worth it. I feel like Sylvester Stallone. It’s kind of poorly shot. The stunt guy who’s going from one place to another is pretty lifeless. It kind of could have been a dummy.
Joe:
Greg: What I was thinking when I was watching this is, you know, when stuntmen jump off a building and like their arms and their legs keep going, like they’re still running mid-air and they’re just like really animated. This must have been before that was invented because this guy just lifelessly goes from one plane to the other, and then the three bags are behind him.
Greg: Long story short, for some reason they put a bomb on that first plane that blows up. Now the baggage is hanging from the bad guy plane. The baggage drops into the Colorado mountains, and, and then the plane crashes and the plane crash is legitimate. The plane crash is great.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Also, just like shades of Die Hard two everywhere in this plane crash.
Joe: Yeah, I was in on that. It was fun. Almost goes off a cliff. Some of the bad guys die, and they get hurt. Right. It was perfect. It was everything you’d want it to be.
Greg: It’s the moment where it kind of, like, goes over the the cliff. But then stops. And the majority of the plane is on the mountain and not. So it’s not about to fall. And then when they cut to this plane again, like immediately it is not dangling off the cliff anymore. It’s on a soundstage someplace, and it’s so obvious that it’s not hanging off a cliff.
Greg: And that made me just adore this thing even more. So we used to go rent things at blockbuster movies. We used to actually walk down hallways and read the back of a DVD box, and it would give a synopsis of the movie.
Joe: Here is the back of the box. You’re looking at it. You’re going, should I should I rent this movie or not?
Joe: It’s the back of the box still processing a tragic death on a rescue mission eight months prior. Gabe, Sylvester Stallone must push those feelings aside to save his friends who have fallen into the hands of a ruthless gang of thieves. He must race across a beautiful but deadly scenery while fighting his inner demons and the bad guys at the same time.
Joe: This movie will have you on the edge of your seat right up until the final, dare we say, cliffhanger. Dot dot dot.
Greg: I’m going to rent it.
Joe: Yeah. So this is the real synopsis to me. Okay. All right. This movie has it all a tragic backstory that the hero must overcome a tough but vulnerable helicopter pilot damsel in distress, her best friend to win back who lost his girlfriend in the opening scene. Frank. It has John Lithgow as the bad guy, affecting some kind of accent.
Joe: Travers, who is only capable of yelling his lines and seems to be in a different movie than anyone else. Want more? Of course you do. Needless explosions. Bad guys who are terrible, who are terrible shot. Convoluted plot devices. Shots of Sylvester Stallone in the snow and nothing but a t shirt and surprise bats. If you are still not interested in this movie, I don’t know what to say.
Joe: Obviously you don’t like cool things or to have fun in your boring gray non cliffhanger watching life. But that’s the real synopsis.
Greg: I love that you included Frank in there that way because we need to talk about Frank for a second. There’s old Frank. He was a guy who was on the show The Waltons back in the day. Ralph. Wait, did something occur to you right when you saw Frank in this movie? Or. Right when they called him old Frank.
Greg: And you see him in the helicopter?
Joe: My thought was, how is this guy going to die in this movie? That was the first thing I thought.
Greg: Exactly what I thought, too. There’s no way this dude lives. Yeah, there’s a lot of really sweet moments with with Frank in the movie, but when they call him old Frank and they show him, he’s like, well, that guy’s not going to make it.
Joe: Yeah, he’s dead.
Greg: All right, so we then cut from this harrowing plane crash to Sylvester Stallone driving back to, I don’t know, wherever this movie takes place.
Joe: Yeah, in Colorado, somewhere.
Greg: I think it’s somewhere in a mountain. It seems like he’s driving back up the mountain. And we’re told this by these two kind of snowboard stoner types who somehow see that Gabe is back 18 miles down the road. They just immediately like Gabe, that’s Gabe. Gabe is back. I don’t know how they could see that it was him.
Greg: Yeah, I couldn’t tell that it was him. But then they have the the the moment where they, they kind of floor it away from this gas station that they’re at, and they do the thing in the movie where they have like a kind of regular conversation, despite the fact that they’re driving 65 miles an hour down a freeway and they’re talking in regular voice with their windows open and they can somehow hear each other.
Joe: You got a lot out of that. They’re going to do some base jumping is what we learn. They clearly don’t like work. He’s been in Denver for the last eight months just working. And they’re like, oh, don’t say that. It’s awesome. And it is. They all they’re all speaking as if they’re just in a normal car talking like the windows rolled up.
Joe: It’s it’s amazing.
Greg: I hate work even when it’s someone else doing it. I think, is the line that one of those guys says, all right, so Stallone goes back in and is reunited with Jess, played by Janine Turner from Northern Exposure fame, who I’m not sure what happened to Janine Turner. She was beloved. Everyone was on board with Janine Turner and then she just kind of wasn’t cast anymore and stuff.
Greg: Hopefully this was her call, but they show up for some very Rocky and Adrian scenes.
Joe:
Greg: It kind of feels like it’s kind of out of that blueprint. She has short dark hair and so she basically is playing the Adriana smoothie guy. Stallone comes back and it’s been eight months and I really don’t understand the scene other than it just feels like I think probably a soap opera writer wrote the scene where they’re talking about things emotionally that kind of don’t make any sense, but it somehow feels like it should be emotional, so we go along with it.
Joe: It’s one of those scenes as I’ve watched it, I appreciate the scene even more. I feel like it’s I like it. And the last time I saw I was like, this is actually a really good scene. We’re really getting into it. It’s like, this shows how in the tank I am for this movie.
Greg: I think that means your personal bar is lowering and I’m into it.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Stallone says so many things during the scene that for whatever reason, they don’t really get into. Like he says, a lot of things fell apart on that ledge, I guess, when Sarah dropped and he says, I don’t think you know how much. And then she talks about something else and he just says, I really don’t think you understand.
Greg: And then she talks about something else, and I think she says, like, I’m the only one who understands. But he just keeps saying, I don’t think you understand where I’m coming from. And yet she never says, well, where are you coming from?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: What are you talking about? What don’t you understand? They never get around to it. That’s what makes it a soap opera.
Joe: I mean, this movie really is a parable about untreated trauma if are really getting into it, so.
Greg: Oh. That’s interesting. Yeah, exactly.
Joe: Except I don’t think that they realized that that was what it was when they wrote it. So can you really call it that?
Greg: It’s a happy accident.
Joe: Yeah. The mountains are the mountains inside ourselves as we try to get over and resolve drama. I don’t know, I’m stretching here for that.
Greg: So he’s come back to get some of his stuff. Not because he’s moving back in with her, but because he’s just going to grab his stuff and then and then get out and by grabbing his stuff, I mean the most obscenely large green baseball hat I’ve ever seen in my life that he wears for a while in this movie.
Greg: I just don’t understand this hat. Either he has a small head or this hat is so large. Something about Sylvester Stallone’s ego in the size of this hat seemed to kind of tie up for me.
Joe: He is trying to get her to go with him wherever that is, but she doesn’t want to go because her life is here and she’s got to go. So he is going to pack up his stuff. She goes back to the office, right? And then the distress call comes in from the bad guys saying they need to be rescued.
Joe: Can you get up here? But the winds are too high to get a helicopter up there.
Greg: Storm coming in?
Joe: Yeah, storms coming in. And so how is going to climb up to them. And then Janine Turner just comes back and Sylvester Stallone is just leaving and he’s she says we need you. You can beat Hal to wherever it is that they’re going and help out because you know these mountains better than anybody else. And he says, no, but drives off.
Joe: And then cut to the next scene where Hal is climbing up and Sylvester Stallone is waiting for him right at whatever spot, which seems just like a random spot. Yeah. Like we’re led to believe it’s like somewhere that you would know, but it’s just a little bit of a ledge as where they end up, so there’s nothing really distinct about it.
Joe: And then they confront each other and they have their, you know, you didn’t get to look in her eyes that she dropped, and you shouldn’t have been out on that line. And I never forgive you, but let’s go.
Greg: My favorite thing about this scene, well, there’s so much to love about this scene, but Sylvester Stallone says, I’m just going to do this one last job, and then I’m. And then I’m out. We get the one last job trope that is needed for any movie like this. The only thing he could say that would one up. This is, and I’m going to get the gang back together to do it.
Greg: Otherwise this is still perfection, even though he doesn’t get the game back together and then how it holds him over the, the ledge. And it gives us the moment where Sylvester Stallone throws his bag on the ground and he says, go ahead. You want to do it? Do it. In this moment, I expected him to say, no, you weren’t worth it.
Greg: That just seems like what he should have said. But this is 1993. We’re done with all those tropes.
Joe:
Greg: And so he says, no, you live with it. Which, you know what? Pretty good line, if I remember, right? Also, they’re whispering to each other on this super windy mountain ledge.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. Apparently everyone has great hearing in this movie.
Greg: The Nonverbals really communicate what they’re trying to say so they don’t.
Joe: Have to hear it.
Greg: So they go to the crash site and they go, they’re going to the crash site because, the bad guys have radioed in when the bad guys radioed in. Caroline Goodall, crystal, who’s kind of like John Lithgow’s girlfriend in this movie. She makes up that. I think it’s like Billy or Bobby is out of insulin. Please bring insulin.
Greg: And so these guys are going there, I’m assuming, with insulin in their bags to help out this crew. And if you were on a rescue team showing up with insulin for Bobby, what’s the first thing you would say to the crew when you got there?
Joe: Where’s Bobby.
Greg: Where’s Bobby? Are you guys okay? But the scene starts with Stallone and Hal just running in. Insulin goes, what the hell’s going on? That’s. That’s his bedside manner.
Joe: There’s something so.
Greg: False about the scene, and, but just immediately, John Lithgow puts, like, a gun to somebody’s head and just immediately starts threatening them and says, we’ve got to find this money. And either you guys help us or we’re going to kill you.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: We’ve got ourselves a movie right there.
Joe: I thought it could have gone 1 or 2 ways. When they get up there, either the the bad guys could have lied and tried to get rescued and pretended for a little while before they realized, or they just went right in with, where are the bad guys? And now take us to the money, which is what they did.
Joe: So I was fine either way if they wanted to do it that way. But, the other piece of it is that Travers, Mr. Travers IQ has a device that can locate the cases that only he has the code to, And they make a really big point about, you know, 10,000 variations and 15 minute intervals, and then it shows you the graphics of what he’s looking at.
Joe: And it looks like you’re playing some Atari 2600 video game in 1984 before.
Greg: No it’s 70s. It’s late. He’s playing pong on this thing.
Joe: And the best part about it is they show where the first case is. And then and they are able to recognize where the case is based on.
Greg: It’s based on a triangle on a screen.
Joe: Yeah. Like oh yeah, it’s between whatever and whatever. I know where.
Greg: The whole there’s 10,000 different combinations. That whole speech is basically line for line from a scene from Die Hard two, by the way, with the radius.
Joe: Awesome. Yeah.
Greg: I don’t know if that was in the script. If it was, they copy Die Hard two. If it wasn’t, Renny Harlan was like, I got this. I’ve I’ve dealt with this before.
Joe: Didn’t you just take that script and then just like, scribble out in crayon, Die Hard two and put cliffhanger on it?
Greg: Why don’t more people do that? To be honest, I had to. Not as bad as people think. Yeah, so they go to this mountain and they realize that they’re right underneath one of the suitcases, and they’re going to send Sylvester Stallone climbing up a rock face to go get it. At this point, this is the beginning of what happens a few times in this movie where they they go for a metaphor and then just pound it to death for way too long.
Greg: John Lithgow says. The suitcases up there, and then he just yells fetch to him. And then they continue with the dog metaphor 14 more times than they need to in the scene. It just keeps happening. They’re just like beating a dead horse. But also John Lithgow, the way he says fetch it somehow starts with,
Joe: H.
Greg: I don’t know how to explain this, but he just goes fetch. He says in this way that for some reason I started thinking about John Lithgow said, oh, you want to pay me that amount of money? I need a little bit more if you want me to do this movie. And I said, well, the only way we’ll pay you that much more money is if you don’t just act in this movie.
Greg: But overact in this movie. And it’s like, deal.
Joe: It felt like they wrote the scene 20 minutes before they filmed it. And so they were like, oh, how do we do this? Oh, we’ll just we’ll just use every dog metaphor we can.
Greg: But this also, I think, starts at the beginning of Hal Rooker, I’m sorry, of Michael Rooker yelling run! They’re going to kill you. He does this about 73 times in the movie, which also gets other people killed because he just for whatever reasons they’re saying run. These guys are bad. And then the bad guys start shooting everybody because he’s exposed that they’re bad.
Greg: But, Sylvester Stallone is able to cut the leash with his crampons, and then they are shooting up this mountain so much to him that they start an avalanche, and.
Joe: An avalanche comes.
Greg: Down, and so does the money. And the money floats through the air, just like the end of Die Hard, when the bonds are floating down or whatever it is, one of the bad guys falls off the ledge because of this avalanche. Sylvester Stallone holds the suitcase above his head, and that’s why the avalanche doesn’t affect him somehow. It’s ridiculous.
Joe: Yeah, I don’t.
Greg: Nobody else died from an avalanche.
Joe: Going down. It’s just.
Greg: So amazing. So anyways, he climbs up, he gets to some sort of gift shop at the top, and Janine Turner is in there, so we’re good.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: She tells Frank. I’m going to go there and you know, you can come get me. My night. Fallen will be all right. And that whole plan of how, Frank is going to come pick her up before nightfall is just entirely abandoned. There’s no mention of him. Frank never comes. And, we’re off to the races with Janine Turner and Sylvester Stallone.
Greg: No running from the bad guys looking for the next. The second suitcase out of three.
Joe: Right? And the first suitcase. We get all the puns about money. And John Lithgow says after the after he thinks Sylvester Stallone has died as your friend just had the most expensive funeral in history. That’s all we get. And then we’re just overloaded with awesome puns, money puns about it. Yep. Coming up, there’s a scene with Sylvester Stallone and Johnny Turner when they get the second case and they’re burning it and said, I never was good at saving or something like that, or, you know.
Greg: Cost a fortune to heat this.
Joe: Place. Yeah, that’s what it was.
Greg: This is something that really cracked me up while I was watching it this time. So he is in his t shirt, still in. He’s climbed up to the top and he’s doing something that, he really dialed in for this performance, which is, I guess I’ll just call it wheeze acting. He just wheezes a lot.
Joe:
Greg: He’s just exasperated, so he bursts into this cabin that she’s in and she thinks, I think Hal is going to be there. I don’t think it’s actually following what’s happening here. They did a pretty good job of sewing it all up with kind of voice over at certain times, or just like exposition where they don’t show the person on the camera saying it, but they say it somehow in the scene just, you know, they’re like sneaking in plot fixes, but, he needs a sweater.
Greg: And so instead of, like, opening up a drawer at this gift shop to get a sweater out that’s in this display case, she just breaks the glass above it and then grabs it out that way and then gives it to him. And so now he’s putting on this sweater that is covered in glass.
Joe: I’m guessing not a problem.
Greg: No, no big deal at all. So they go off to find the second suitcase, and, now it’s kind of nighttime, and, there’s just mysterious lights just in the air, just past the horizon. There’s, like, massive floodlights. Yeah. For some reason, on this mountain behind everybody.
Joe: Like, there’s a movie being shot there.
Greg: And it looks beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: What are we supposed to. What is that? Moonlight? What are we supposed to assume? That massive floodlight is from Mr. Travers in this movie says everything. At least 20% more intensely than he needs to, usually with profanity. But it really, resonated with me because I’m pretty sure that’s my parenting style as well. All right. So we’ve been talking about why this movie is great.
Joe:
Greg: Joe, why is this movie bad?
Joe: At the end of this movie, the main guy from From the Treasury is coming flying in on a helicopter. They have tracked it down and they say we’re eight minutes out from wherever the beacon is. Within that eight minutes, like four fight scenes happen and Sylvester Stallone climbs like 400ft twice.
Greg: To the highest point.
Joe: To the highest point. They throw everything into this movie. There’s a fight where Sylvester Stallone is underwater when he kills Travers, and he, Travers is killed with, a gun that puts bolts into the mountain when you’re climbing. And then he’s freezing cold, and then Hal gets there, and then he’s in new clothes instantly. I don’t know where those clothes came from.
Joe: So there’s just lots of those little moments that just make this movie so perfect. There’s a scene with one of the henchmen and how when they have their fight, where all of a sudden he’s talking about soccer and he’s talking about his position and kicking him and talking about all of that, did not need that at all.
Greg: No, just like the dog thing. They just exhausted it way more than they needed to.
Joe: There’s a scene with, when they go into the caves and he’s going to it’s like, I’m going to ask you three times where this money is. And he’s like, every time, wrong answer. What? Someone who’s coming to kill you give you three chances. Really? And then it’s just so hilariously dumb and amazing at the same time.
Greg: He’s holding this massive knife in his hand. And yet he just punches Sylvester Stallone with like the butt of the knife. Doesn’t kill him, just punches them. Like what. You would have killed him right there. Why didn’t you just you’re have the knife in your hand. It takes place in this ice cave. They bought it at the set piece store.
Greg: It’s like it’s clearly a soundstage. By the way, any henchman in this movie, if, while they were living their life, they noticed that they walked into something that totally looked like a soundstage, that probably means they’re about to die. Because I have a few times in the movie like, oh, this looks fake. Oh no, he’s gonna die on the spot.
Greg: Okay, great. Yeah, but if I was in that fight with Leon, I would have just been like, language. He just kept saying, like the B-word. Just. What’s going on over here, guys?
Joe: There’s another scene where they’re running across a bridge and they find the trip wire, and then they run back. It’s really all to set up the explosion that has Sylvester Stallone diving to the end. And and hanging on. It doesn’t stop them from catching up to the bad guy at all. Like that would be the whole point of that.
Joe: But no.
Greg: But it looks amazing.
Joe: Yeah, that was all it was. It was a beautiful explosion. Real explosion that they did.
Greg: Speaking of real explosion. And they don’t make movies like this anymore. There’s a story from the making of this movie where some, some of the stuntmen were climbing up a rock face and they, they had kind of wires connected to him in a harness so that they wouldn’t like, fall off this massive cliff. And Renny Harlin complained that you could see the wires in the shot.
Greg: And of course, now you would just brush that out, you know, in post-production. But this is 1992 and they’re making this probably and that’s maybe not an option. This is the same summer Jurassic Park came out and kind of changed everything. But, but he complained that you could see the wire. So the stuntman took off the wires and climbed up this face.
Greg: Without it, they just. That would just never happen anymore.
Joe:
Greg: Joe, this movie was well-received by the public. Nowadays, on Rotten Tomatoes it’s not as well liked. It has a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is about right for me. Honestly. It really is pretty good.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Audience score has 52% though.
Joe: It’s interesting. Usually our movies that we like the best are are reversed from that. Right? I feel like the critics got it right and the audience is missing out on this one, quite frankly.
Greg: So yeah. So the 67%, based on 55 reviews, the 52% based on more than 100,000 ratings from users. But listen to some of this press that happened. Janet Maslin of The New York Times said, cliffhanger, the new high altitude thriller starring Sylvester Stallone, wastes no time in establishing its first priority, that of sending its audience into a cold sweat.
Greg: Four out of five solid.
Joe: Yeah, that’s a good review.
Greg: Seattle Times a little harsher on this film. The fact that so much money was lavished on such a thick headed project represents the height of fiscal ineptitude, but this is the kind of roller coaster ride for which eager audiences will gladly check their brains at the turnstiles. So go figure.
Joe: I mean, I feel like it’s a little harsh, but, you know. Yeah.
Greg: So he’s acknowledging that, you know, they spent a lot of money on this thing, but people will probably go see it. And he was right. This movie cost $70 million. It made $255 million. There’s a big hit. A lot of people saw this movie. All right. Should we get to drinking games?
Joe: All right. We have our standard drinking game questions. Does this movie have a silent helicopter in it?
Greg: It doesn’t. Silent helicopter out of nowhere that they should have heard flying just below that ridge the whole time.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That honestly kind of shocking.
Joe:
Greg: That that didn’t happen.
Joe: There is the world’s slowest helicopter though. Oh does that count.
Greg: Movies throughout the 80s and early 90s it just wasn’t a real movie unless unless there was like a low flying helicopter. This movie just kind of decides we’re just going to have a helicopter throughout, which I’m on board with the bad guys, get the helicopter. So should have been able to hide just under a peek.
Joe: And then,
Greg: Flown above it. I don’t know, I don’t think it counts.
Joe: Yeah, I don’t think so either.
Greg: We should say that these are just lifelong drinking games that we play as people. Yeah. If we’re watching something and this happens, it doesn’t have to be alcoholic. It could be some tea. It could be anything in front of you. But you just have to market by taking a drink.
Joe: Yeah, maybe a little. Cheers to the camera.
Greg: Exactly, exactly. And my number one. This all started because the silent helicopter, out of nowhere, a moment like it is the greatest thing that can happen when you’re watching something. That was my first lifelong drinking game that happened.
Joe: What about push in and and enhance?
Greg: Oh, the, they’re watching footage and they zoom in and then suddenly it’s not pixelated anymore after they’ve enhanced. Yeah, this movie doesn’t have it. Didn’t need it, in my opinion.
Joe: They could have thrown it in there if they wanted to, but, they didn’t they didn’t do it.
Greg: So, and so really not a lot of drinking opportunities so far.
Joe: Yeah. So far for us, when two people share a slow motion look in the middle of chaos, usually after a bomb explosion, that really we have kind of the, something similar where we have when the bad guys kill good guys with guns. You just have the score, right? You see, the reaction, but you don’t hear any of it.
Joe: You just see her. And so that’s kind of in a whole other category. And by itself.
Greg: Yeah, I think is there a slow motion actor yelling, no, as something horrible is happening? And not only does that happen once, it’s the moment so nice. They gave it to us twice without yelling. Yeah, in slow motion. So I think that counts. I think if how does that you have to take a drink.
Joe: And he he’s the only one that does that. So it’s like, yeah, you get it. An explosion with silent suffering and ringing in the ears. Kind of similar when you share the look, sometimes they pair them together. We didn’t really get that in this one missed opportunity. Opening scene, credits scene do that. Does the title lock into place with a sound?
Greg: No, it doesn’t, but the score does swell and kind of crescendo. And I want to say there’s even like a big cymbal crash when cliffhanger hits the screen. Yeah. So kind of a soft yes on this one.
Joe: We’ll take it.
Greg: Yeah. But it’s not overly serious. It’s like triumphant music at the time. And what we’re trying to get at there is like when Die Hard goes together, those two words and then like, boom, there’s like a serious thing.
Joe: Yeah, out of nowhere does it. Flash back to dialog two minutes ago.
Greg: It doesn’t, does it?
Joe: No. There’s no real flashbacks on this at all, which this movie could have. Right. I I’m surprised it didn’t have ten different shots of Sarah falling at different moments when Sylvester Stallone needed him. A moment of motivation. I mean, that’s a missed opportunity.
Greg: To learn to direct this movie. It would have this, in my mind, was not invented, but perfected by Rocky. Four and so, you know, maybe Renny Harlin said, Sylvester Stallone has done this enough. I’m not going to do it in this movie. There should have been, I guess if they had ever fallen asleep in this movie, we could have had kind of a nightmare sequence where Sylvester Stallone is haunted by Sarah falling.
Greg: By the way, when Sarah fell at the beginning of this movie, it looked a lot like Hans Gruber falling at the end of Die Hard.
Joe: Agreed. I feel like this ever since you said Die hard on a mountain out, that’s all I could think about. It’s so perfect.
Greg: Ridiculous slo mo throughout this entire movie, especially when the helicopter is there and then suddenly the propeller is going in slow motion.
Joe: Yeah,
Greg: Very slowly around, and it’s like whoosh, whoosh, appropriately so in my mind.
Joe: Yeah. I was all in on that I love that okay.
Greg: So additional drinking games. Let’s say you’re getting together with your friends and you’d like to assign a drinking game, a unique drinking game to all of the people in the room. And so when that happens in the movie, you look to the person and say, hey, your thing just happened. You have to take a drink. I’m going to say anytime they say hydraulics.
Joe: Oh, that’s a good one.
Greg: Anytime they say John Lithgow’s last name in this movie, Kaitlyn, you have to take a drink because they say his name incessantly. Yeah. Any time Travers is overly emotional, this is for the person in the room that you really kind of don’t like, because they are not going to be feeling well at the end of this movie any time they use the fake rock bolt gun thing that they made up for this movie.
Greg: That is the most controversial thing amongst, real rock climbers.
Joe:
Greg: Any time the bad guys are upset this slice alone is still alive. This is a trope that happens in every Sylvester Stallone, every Steven Seagal movie.
Joe: Every,
Greg: Bruce Willis movie. Yeah, exactly. And associated with this, they also know the protagonist’s last name by heart really early in the film, like in Under Siege two, they are yelling Ryback all the time when they’re talking about Steven Seagal. And I don’t even remember that this guy’s name is Casey Ryback, but the bad guys dealing Ryback that didn’t quite happen in this movie.
Greg: Anyways, how about you drinking games for you.
Joe: Any time Gabe needlessly climb somewhere that there was another form of transportation or anything or and or climbs at the speed of light? Apparently.
Greg: So yeah.
Joe: I have the sliced alone myself shot. So just like need like there’s no point to it. Like when he’s holding the briefcase over his head, right? There’s a couple others where he is. He’s climbing over the top of the, the cliff face, and it’s just bicep shot. I’m like, yep, that’s awesome. Any time he is cold or should be cold and isn’t should be in this as well.
Joe: That I have also like needlessly complex plot devices. So the plane hijacking plot or the plan to rescue Sarah and how it feels needlessly complex, right. All right, I didn’t I didn’t buy that they were that those at heart. And then I also have Travers being over the top. And then I have any time John Lithgow says something pithy like an air quotes.
Joe: Oh my gosh, he has on so many of those. If like, you kill a couple people and you’re a monster, you kill a couple thousand, then you’re a conqueror or something like that, you know? Yeah. And then when he kills his girlfriend, it’s like, you know what the true what true love is. Sacrifice. And he kills it like so many stupid lines like that that are totally so amazing, though.
Greg: And the person who has this assigned to them really should just be drinking beer from Utah, where it’s like 3.2%. Were you surprised that there wasn’t the moment in this movie where John Lithgow and his girlfriend kind of made out at a disturbing moment? You know how this happens in in movies where, like, the bad guy kisses his girlfriend at the just the weirdest time to show that they’re disturbing people.
Greg: Yeah. And I was surprised that they kind of strayed away from that. And this one, it seemed like they would get there.
Joe: I agree, lots of missed opportunities. He could have done it when he killed her as well.
Greg: Speaking of Kaitlyn, there are there were a lot of different names that kind of, were thrown around for the bad guy in this movie. They wanted David Bowie, the lead singer of Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry, was also considered for Quinlan. They actually cast Christopher Walken to be the bad guy in this movie, and then he dropped out right before they started shooting.
Greg: And so they got John Lithgow at the very last minute, which checks out when you watch John Lithgow in this movie. He thought about this for five minutes, and that was basically all the character work he needed to do.
Joe: Yep.
Greg: There’s a moment where he turns and kind of looks at Travers in kind of a sinister way, and it is the least threatening thing. It’s like a dad is angry that a kid dripped some ice cream in the back of his car. That’s what this shot looks like.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Who do you think should have been Caitlin?
Joe: I really like Christopher Walken. Yeah. I think it’s really weird to think of David Bowie in this. In this role? Yeah. I just could not picture him playing this. It’s too mainstream. I think at this time, who is a good bad guy back that I mean, I would have been totally all in with Alan Rickman coming in to play the bad guy that just like, no, no soft cover about this being die hard on a mountain anymore.
Greg: Was that what if they went with another kind of muscle guy? What if it was Dolph Lundgren? What if it was Drago?
Joe: Yeah, I’m in on that too.
Greg: You’re in on that. Okay, so, yeah, there’s a bunch of guys who could have been in that kind of that moment.
Joe: Yeah, the unexpected bad guy. Yeah.
Greg: Who’s a great, unexpected bad guy that heard tried this a few times. Timothy Olyphant die hard for not bad.
Joe: What if they did, like, Mel Gibson as the bad guy? Although that was before he was playing bad guys, so.
Greg: Right. He was the bad guy in Expendables three. McNulty.
Joe: Oh, that would have been a good hold up.
Greg: Gary Busey.
Joe: Yeah. Then we have the Lethal Weapon crossover. So you have kind of Lethal Weapon slash Die Hard on a mountain.
Greg: Oh, Danny Glover.
Joe: That would be totally unexpected.
Greg: National treasure, Danny Glover. How can you hate this guy? Oh, geez. It seems like a pretty bad guy.
Joe: I mean, let’s do it.
Greg: Don’t change anything about your amazing self, Danny Glover. Just be the bad guy.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Who also was disappointed about his age related to the job that he’s doing. Yeah. He might be too old for this.
Joe: Yeah. He’s like 30. He lost all of it.
Greg: I’ve got some trivia here. That stuffed puppy that falls was actually purchased by Renny Harlin. He liked the dog so much that he bought it so that the audience would have a clear idea of what would happen and how horrific the fall would be. In the original cut shown to test audiences, there was a 40ft jump from one cliff to another that Sylvester Stallone performs.
Greg: The scene appears in the theatrical trailer of the film. It was cut because a test audience laughed out loud when they saw it, and thought it was totally impossible.
Joe: So.
Greg: They use that jump for what happens towards the end of the movie, where he just kind of jumps down a little bit.
Joe: I like that every other action sequence and stunt in this movie was totally believable, though. Yeah.
Greg: Although a large cliff to cliff jump was later done in Vertical Limit, which, by the way, of course we’re going to get to vertical limit. Are you kidding.
Joe: Me?
Greg: Dana Delaney was originally offered the role of Jesse.
Joe: Not Janine Turner into that.
Greg: The Denver Mint featured in the film as the producer of the cash stolen by Quinlan. And, his peoples actually only produces coins. So $100 million from the Denver Mint would actually weigh about 2500 tons.
Greg: Good luck with that. Guys. This is really interesting. So before this movie was made, Stallone had actually connected with Renny Harlin to make a film called Gale force, which featured an ex-Navy Seal dealing with a band of pirates during the onset of a major hurricane. It soon became clear that the film would be too expensive to produce, at which point it was dropped.
Greg: So that was what they were working on, and they were kind of like, I don’t know, maybe this thing over here. Instead. All right. Sylvester Stallone said he partly took on this project to help him conquer his fear of heights.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: Joe, did you know that there was going to be a sequel to this movie?
Joe: I didn’t, but I also don’t understand why there aren’t a thousand sequels to this movie.
Greg: It’s a great point. This movie, should be a fast and furious vein of action movies where they get amazing by the fifth one. In 1994, the year after this movie came out, they planned a sequel called The Dam, which was described as Die Hard in a dam and would have Sylvester Stallone’s character from the movie fighting terrorists who took over the Hoover Dam but never went beyond the developmental stage.
Greg: But Sylvester Stallone being Sylvester Stallone, he tried to resurrect the project again in 2008, but it never happened.
Joe: I’m 100% in on Die Hard in a dam.
Greg: I think we should make a movie called Die Hard and a Die Hard, where the set of a Die Hard sequel gets taken over by terrorists and they’re locked in like a soundstage.
Joe: I have a couple other questions for us. Okay, we kind of talked about it, but how hard do they sell the bad guy? He is the only one in the world who can convert this currency, on the black market. So they do their that job. They don’t really sell the good guy in this very much. He does.
Joe: No, you know, no need. They don’t need to. Yeah. Why is there romance in this movie?
Greg: It’s a great question. It never really seems like they’re actually a couple now as, as they’re going through this movie. That’s not how I see them at all. It seems like they’ve broken up another friends. That’s kind of the vibe that these two actors, given this performance.
Joe: Is trying to win her back. I am totally acceptable with the level of romance in this movie, but at all. Sure, excessive or even really relevant.
Greg: Are we bad people for loving this movie?
Joe: Yes, we’re bad people for loving this movie. You probably not the worst people, but just like you know, maybe cuts you off in a grocery store or leaves a cart, like right in the middle of the of the of the lane, like that’s the kind of level of bad people we are. Did it hold up then?
Greg: Maybe.
Joe: I really didn’t. For me.
Greg: I don’t think anybody walked into this movie and thought, this is going to be a masterpiece. And I for sure think when people walked out, they were like, well, it wasn’t a masterpiece, but I enjoyed it.
Joe: Does it hold up now for you 100%?
Greg: I love this movie. Now, this.
Joe: Is like a fine wine. It has only gotten better with age.
Greg: Because there aren’t movies like this anymore, so I appreciate it more than I did back then. And also like wonders, I was just watching Die Hard two with the director’s commentary on which is Renny Harlin, and he was kind of commenting about how Bloody Die Hard two is and how he and for some reason it’s, oh, in this commentary is like ten years after it came out, he just said, wow, I really like things a lot bloodier back then than I do now.
Greg: Cliffhanger is 5 or 6 years after die or two, I think maybe just like 3 or 4 years after. Actually, it’s pretty bloody, but it’s not as bloody as as dire two, but it definitely feels like a movie from that time.
Joe: Does it deserve a sequel? Yes. Yeah. I can’t believe we’re not. There are at least two more of these and some iteration of this character.
Greg: Total on.
Joe: This conceit. Yeah.
Greg: And this is the kind of movie now where there would be sequels, but they wouldn’t actually be released in any sort of way that we would notice. They’re kind of like them. The deep, deep DirecTV video sequel, somehow they’ve staved off people making that. As far as I know, there’s like 83 time cop movies. There’s only one cliffhanger.
Joe: I don’t want to live in this kind of world anymore. Does it deserve a prequel?
Greg: Where do you stand on this?
Joe: I am always anti-people, like 99.9% of the time, and I’m no exception. In this.
Greg: Case. Okay.
Joe: There’s no there’s no need for one in this.
Greg: This time, when I was watching it, right. When Sylvester Stallone gets to the tower to save Hal and Sarah, I thought this really good rapport here. I would love there to be a prequel to this movie, so we can kind of see how this crew got so tight. I’m going to say it should be in the form of like an old TV series like Love Boat or Fantasy Island that has like an adventure of the week.
Greg: You know, new people are coming in to take tours of the mountains and, and, you know, it could be like a mystery or a musical or an action adventure or a drama or a comedy like, depending on who shows up. Maybe it’s like Dom Delos and it’s like a comedy that week, you know? So I could see I could see a prequel TV show that’s kind of an adventure of the week kind of deal, for this.
Greg: But I also think in every episode there’s a moment where Sarah falls as like a little inside joke.
Joe: Okay, all right, I’m in on that.
Greg: Okay. Okay. Great.
Joe: Who should be in the remake if they made one?
Greg: So I Google this and there’s a remake in the works.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: It’s from Neil Moritz, who produced most of the Fast and Furious movies. I think he might have cashed out or been forced out at some point. And Aquaman star Jason Momoa is in talks for a key cameo. Where can you have a key cameo and cliffhanger? Is that the Paul Winfield.
Joe: Role or Sarah?
Greg: He plays Sarah, obviously.
Joe: Okay, yeah, great. I’m wondering I’m trying to cast it now. I think I want Letty in this role.
Greg: Michelle Rodriguez.
Joe: No, no. Maddie, please. Yeah.
Greg: Here’s why I’m laughing. Because when I read Neil Moritz was was making this, I was like, well, why don’t we just cast it from Fast and Furious?
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Maybe even that. That playing their characters.
Joe: Yeah. There’s no reason they can’t live in the same universe.
Greg: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah obviously. So Letty is the protagonist. The bad guy is which Shaw brother.
Joe: Is the bad guy Luke Shaw.
Greg: Luke Shaw okay.
Joe: Because he’s not really in the. And the next one very much are in the and the 10th ninth one. He can be the bad guy.
Greg: Can I just respectfully push back and say it should be Luke Shaw’s mom, Helen Mirren.
Joe: Now, I, I’m, any time we can get Helen Mirren in anything, I’m all in, so.
Greg: Yes. Okay. Hold up. Maybe the bad guys are just the extended Shaw family. Because we’ve got the sister from Hobbs and Shaw. We’ve got what’s his name? Deckard Shaw. Is that what Statham’s name?
Joe: Yes.
Greg: And, and his brother, Luke Evans, who is. I need Luke Evans in every movie that I watch. Okay. So awesome. And who plays old Frank, a digitally aged the Rock?
Joe: I was going to go darker. I go with Paul Walker since he does. Where are they? So let’s go with your answer so that I don’t get in trouble.
Greg: You know, another idea I had for if this thing was going to be remade was, for some reason, whenever I hear Cliff hanger, I think it’s going to be a movie about Cliff Clavin, the mailman from the show. Cheers. John Ratzenberger.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Who’s the voice of everybody in all the Pixar movies? Yeah, but he’s playing Cliff Clavin. And so the whole movie is him just going. It’s a little known fact that, and he’s just he’s just like, talking about facts the whole time.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: Neil Moritz has a lot of different directions. He can go. Yeah, depending on who’s available.
Joe: Hopefully Michelle Rodriguez, buddy. It can do it though.
Greg: Do you think she’s busy? Well, there’s like four more avatar movies coming out, so there’s a chance Letty might be a little hard to line up.
Joe: Didn’t her character die, though, in the avatar movie? I think. I mean, that doesn’t mean anything and anything because she died and that’s in the fear is for sure she is.
Greg: Spoilers. Jeez. Well, we’ll get to avatar.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So we we have this idea of a question. When you look at cliffhanger as a movie, is there an album that represents this movie? What album is it?
Joe: So I came up with Metallica, load, which came out around this time, but to me is a similar album for Metallica that it is for Sylvester Stallone as them at the end of their prime. So they’re still making albums and still, I guess, relevant within the hard rock heavy metal world. But that was I feel like their last big album that I was kind of aware of, I know they put out other stuff but that feels like that was like their relevance as like being a massive band.
Greg: So that was exactly the lane that I was going for as well. But I was I was leaning more on how records were made and how they are now, around the time that movies became very digital. That’s also when record recording went from tape to digital movies were overtaken by computer effects. The summer of this came out with Jurassic Park.
Greg: So in thinking about what album this was, it needs to be on tape, not in Pro Tools or on a computer. And also Stallone has already peaked, but he’s also showing like, hey, I still got some muscles, I’ve still got some acting chops. I can still pass for a Gabe on screen, but I think this is second tier Stallone.
Greg: I think this movie is not the Bon Jovi album that had livin on a Prayer and You Give Love a Bad Name, Wanted Dead or Alive or Never Say Goodbye. Cliffhanger is the follow up album to that album, which is called new Jersey, and it has songs like Bad Medicine, I’ll Be There for you, Lay Your Hands on Me, Born to Be My Baby, a record that isn’t amazing.
Greg: In fact, when it debuted, it debuted at number eight, but it was actually so good. People loved it. Like, oh my gosh, Bon Jovi is still good that it eventually went to number one.
Joe: I’m in on that.
Greg: We have one last question, Joe, who are you in this movie? What character did you relate with the most?
Joe: I’m Frank, I’m old Frank.
Greg: You’re just doing some paintings. It’s not a monkey eating a banana. It’s a banana eating a monkey. He’s an.
Joe: Artist. Yeah, I’m an artist. I misunderstood, lived a good life a little simple. That was me and that movie.
Greg: Saving snowboarders after they’ve jumped off cliffs and had a rough parachute.
Joe: All right, so, Greg, who are you in this movie?
Greg: I’m pretty sure I’m Sarah, who just does everything she possibly can to not be saved and then just falls at the very beginning.
Joe: That you die, like ten minutes in and I die like, 60 minutes in.
Greg: Listen,
Joe: That seems about right.
Greg: You can never take the fact that I’m not really a hiker yet. I got to the top of the tower away from me. I want to be remembered for that.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: All right, well, Joe, episode one. We did it.
Joe: We did it. Nailed it. We have the conversation that needed to be had about cliffhanger. I don’t feel like anybody else should say anything. We nailed it.
Greg: It’s downhill from here.
Joe: This is it.
Greg: All right, well, this is this has been great, but I got to go get in the chopper and help out Hal. He’s on top of the tower again with another woman who can’t really climb.
Joe: Awesome. I got to go paint a picture of an apple eating worm, so I’m done too.
Greg: Okay, perfect.
Joe: See you soon.
Greg: All right. See you soon.