Hey everyone. I came across this interview with Michelle Joyner th-cam.com/video/FUkBMKSjehU/w-d-xo.html talking about filming this scene. It's really interesting. Thanks for watching my video! Dave
I love Cliffhanger, but I will admit, there's a bit in a later scene where Jesse describes Sarah as someone who could barely climb - and I remember thinking, even as a teen "if she could barely climb, then there's no way she could have climbed that mountain".
Maybe(?) that fall to a green screen looked better in the theater somehow? I remember being entertained by the movie as a whole, and John Lithgow chewing the scenery was enjoyable.
Silly or not I really enjoy this movie. As a kid I also wondered about Frank's grin, but I accepted when my mom said it was propably a stress smile. I really have to watch your video about Killing Eve, only seen the first season so far but I loved it.
As a kid this opening sequence really shocked me and I've remembered it ever since. So best opening ever for me after Die Hard 3 :p That it makes no sense.. I didn't care lol
Totally agree. Is the opening very flawed? Sure. But worst opening ever? No. I barely remember anything about that movie -- but the opening is memorable. And as a lover of movies, more so than be logically flawless (almost no movie is) I want you to be cinematically memorable.
I love your videos, your analysis is usually spot on. But this one just doesn't sit well somehow. Nitpicking a bunch of technical aspects in the intro seems to miss the point. Which was to draw the audiences emotional investment into the main character(s) through crisis. What was great about this was the way they reversed expectation. I mean, it's a Stallone movie, there's a pretty girl in danger and a physical threat to overcome. The rescue seems like a given. All the stupid jokes at the beginning, the ease with which the hero casually free solo's the mountain, and the way these kinds of stories usually unfold tricks the audience into thinking he will save the day and everything will be fine. But he doesn't. And it isn't. The actress they used was perfect. She really sold her terror. Her fall and his failure results in a crushing emotional blow that was supposed to leave the viewer on edge for the rest of the film, wondering what will happen. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is a cookie cutter 90's action movie. Basically 2 hrs of your life wasted. But aside from a few lapses in logical set up, I thought the intro was great.
Seems like that makes the intro a little worse, if it's not even an accurate introduction to the themes or characters of the story. It can be an interesting short film, given the right context, but as an intro for a 2 hour film that has to work with what it sets up? The intro for Die Hard isn't about Mcclane realizing his human limitations and giving the audience an emotional blow; what the intro sets up is what gets worked with the rest of the runtime.
Can’t think of a worse one. It was impossible to suspend disbelief given the ludicrous circumstances of the characters and the incredulous technical scenarios.
@@davescripted3796 i was thinking more like expert gymnast moves performed off camera. Like... the harness is around your legs. She would have had to pull her body up and out, or done a backflip.
I always thought that Hal said "I'm going to sit on my harness." meaning he was going to drop his weight below the doorway of the helicopter, and lower the line at his end, making Sara slide down the line toward him.
I never realized that line was from helicopter anchored to peak they were sitting. Whole scene is like from cartoon where physics does not work here and there on purpose like in looney toons. I do not know what to say, really that bad.
Dear Lord... A couple of years back i rewatched many movies i loved as a dumb kid/teen (10 to ~16). And while i still can enjoy a mindless action movie, especially from the 80s and 90s, internal logic, or any logic at all, seems completely non existent in the majority of these movies. I guess "Turn your brain off and enjoy it" was the get go for the script as well...
It was a long time ago, and I was looking for anything that remotely emulated Die Hard, but I felt this scene was completely unnecessary, except for showing Stallone, well, hanging from a cliff. Which was just what the movie promised
I forgot to mention in my previous comment. Something that was common knowledge here in Finland to those who saw Renny Harlin movies, is that he liked to hide the Finnish flag somewhere in his movies. Like in this one when the other young guy escapes from the robbers, his parachute has the colors of the flag. You can even see it anachronistically in the background during the carriage chase scene in Cutthroat Island. Too early to even be the similar flag of Neva Yacht Club.
I will admit it is not the best opening, but I have seen plenty worse. It has plenty of 90’s cheese, but man, Michelle really portrayed the sheer terror of someone about to fall to death so well, it stays with you.
Professionel female climber who can manage a peak mountain with the help of a guy but helpless girl if she is on her own. Make sense. Love it. -.- I can't believe how many stupid movies got filmed because of a guy with a name in the buisness.
It's just Renny Harlin's style. Most of his movies are over the top and filled with cheesy dialog, but I still enjoy them. Die Hard 2 is definitely my favorite.
Do Ghostbusters. Bill Murray shocking the kid. In and of itself, it's not a bad scene. it's like an SNL skit, but he's not a mean person in the movie. It didn't fit. I love a good, out of place, character introduction, and I loved the movie Ghostbusters - a light hearted, entertaining romp with bad CGI, but not bad for the time. It holds up today, but that opening scene. We forgive it, because it's Bill Murray but it's not a good introduction.
Rocky, First Blood, & Copland are'nt just vastly superior movies to ones like Demolition Man, Cliffhanger, and Judge Dredd, But they're great movies when compared to something other than just Stallone's filmography. There is even an interview from when Copland came out where Stallone didn't realize he'd become a meme until he started work on it.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 - I remember watching this with my parents in the 90's when I was a kid, and I distinctly remember my mother sitting there watching this scene rolling her eyes, saying "Oh brother, this is awful!" and laughing at the absolute stupidity. She left the room and stopped watching after that scene; deciding not to waste any more time. I foolishly kept watching. 🤣
If you cut out the opening sequence entirely, the idea you get about Gabe is that he's a daredevil and a hard case, from that exchange with Hal. Also, we'd get less "happy go-lucky insane free soloing for fun", which should increase the tension of what Gabe does. I think you have a "winner", in that there's a high likelihood the movie would be just plain better without it. Perhaps intersperse parts of it as "flashbacks" in key moments, but don't use the whole thing, and don't lead with it.
Is this video a joke? Cliffhanger is an awesome movie with one of the best opening sequences ever. This guy is clearly just a hater trying to get views. Horrible take.
disagree. the opening is perfect for the type of movie this is. after watching almost all your videos i can confidently say you are the type of person who should watch movies alone. a killjoy. you suck the happiness and fun out of a room lolll.
Hey everyone. I came across this interview with Michelle Joyner th-cam.com/video/FUkBMKSjehU/w-d-xo.html
talking about filming this scene. It's really interesting.
Thanks for watching my video!
Dave
I love Cliffhanger, but I will admit, there's a bit in a later scene where Jesse describes Sarah as someone who could barely climb - and I remember thinking, even as a teen "if she could barely climb, then there's no way she could have climbed that mountain".
That is why "Nobody's dropping anyone!!!"
Is my go to Stallone impression😂
6:00 You can also CLEARLY see that the wind is perfectly calm due to the smoke gently blowing away.
IKR
Sorry to defuse your end gag, Stylone also wrote Rocky
He did indeed. Gotta give credit where credit is due.
YES THANK YOU Frank's grin always bugged the hell out of me and no one ever talks about it. Even when Sarah falls he's still grinning
Sarah is 120, tops. Which makes it even more curious that her harness broke. Maybe creepy Frank sabotaged it.
So that's why he was so happy! Mystery solved after all these years!
Creepy Frank 😂
That grinning fool is too good 😂.
That Creepy Frank's smile lmao
Your channel is an absolute gem I somehow found and now binge watch
🙏😃!!!
This movie was fun entertainment. The opening was great, loved it, I really did and whole bunch of my friends as well.
This opening sequence literally traumatized me as a kid. It was effective in a way just not in the way it needed to be.
13:08 Dude, Frank is still smiling as she's falling to her death
hes not even just grinning hes full on laughing
Ol' Frank was grinning like a maniac because he had rigged the equipment to fail. He was just enjoying the fruits of his labour.
Maybe(?) that fall to a green screen looked better in the theater somehow? I remember being entertained by the movie as a whole, and John Lithgow chewing the scenery was enjoyable.
13:06 Gabe is devastated, Hal is devastated, _Frank is enjoying every freaking second of it._
Ol' Frank was grinning like a maniac because he had rigged the equipment to fail. He was just enjoying the fruits of his labour.
Silly or not I really enjoy this movie. As a kid I also wondered about Frank's grin, but I accepted when my mom said it was propably a stress smile.
I really have to watch your video about Killing Eve, only seen the first season so far but I loved it.
Frank's expression is just plain nightmare fuel - if you peer into the darkness and THAT peers back - run like bloody hell!
He could have injured his knee as soon as he began the climb down. That would make sense given he's just let it cool down at the top.
As a kid this opening sequence really shocked me and I've remembered it ever since. So best opening ever for me after Die Hard 3 :p
That it makes no sense.. I didn't care lol
Totally agree. Is the opening very flawed? Sure. But worst opening ever? No. I barely remember anything about that movie -- but the opening is memorable. And as a lover of movies, more so than be logically flawless (almost no movie is) I want you to be cinematically memorable.
You have to suspend belief in order to enjoy these 90’s action movies but boy does this video shred this apart 😂.
@@mattsolik The Room = better movie than Night Swim
I love your videos, your analysis is usually spot on. But this one just doesn't sit well somehow. Nitpicking a bunch of technical aspects in the intro seems to miss the point. Which was to draw the audiences emotional investment into the main character(s) through crisis. What was great about this was the way they reversed expectation. I mean, it's a Stallone movie, there's a pretty girl in danger and a physical threat to overcome. The rescue seems like a given. All the stupid jokes at the beginning, the ease with which the hero casually free solo's the mountain, and the way these kinds of stories usually unfold tricks the audience into thinking he will save the day and everything will be fine. But he doesn't. And it isn't. The actress they used was perfect. She really sold her terror. Her fall and his failure results in a crushing emotional blow that was supposed to leave the viewer on edge for the rest of the film, wondering what will happen. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is a cookie cutter 90's action movie. Basically 2 hrs of your life wasted. But aside from a few lapses in logical set up, I thought the intro was great.
Seems like that makes the intro a little worse, if it's not even an accurate introduction to the themes or characters of the story. It can be an interesting short film, given the right context, but as an intro for a 2 hour film that has to work with what it sets up? The intro for Die Hard isn't about Mcclane realizing his human limitations and giving the audience an emotional blow; what the intro sets up is what gets worked with the rest of the runtime.
I agree. If this intro doesn't serve the rest of the movie, that's a failure of the rest of the movie. Not of this intro.
The intro itself misses the point. How does a woman who is so nervous climb that high to begin with?
This was hilarious! Frank's weird smiling will now forever ruin this for me. Very good break down of things we just let pass😂
You should compare this scene to the spoof of it in Ace Ventura 2.
LOL How did I fail to mention that here? Total face palm
@@davescripted3796 How could you fail?! 😩
@@davescripted3796 This is also spoofed in Spy Hard. Do a review video of both spoofs of Cliffhanger in Ace Ventura and Spyhard.
Can’t think of a worse one. It was impossible to suspend disbelief given the ludicrous circumstances of the characters and the incredulous technical scenarios.
I'm sure there's worse...this is just in the front of your mind bc you watched a long breakdown.
Heh “suspend” disbelief in Cliffhanger
How did sara get conplety out of her harness
faulty equipment??
@@davescripted3796 i was thinking more like expert gymnast moves performed off camera. Like... the harness is around your legs. She would have had to pull her body up and out, or done a backflip.
She also played the sick Mom in Outbreak
I always thought that Hal said "I'm going to sit on my harness." meaning he was going to drop his weight below the doorway of the helicopter, and lower the line at his end, making Sara slide down the line toward him.
...That would make sense, actually.
I never realized that line was from helicopter anchored to peak they were sitting. Whole scene is like from cartoon where physics does not work here and there on purpose like in looney toons. I do not know what to say, really that bad.
Dear Lord... A couple of years back i rewatched many movies i loved as a dumb kid/teen (10 to ~16). And while i still can enjoy a mindless action movie, especially from the 80s and 90s, internal logic, or any logic at all, seems completely non existent in the majority of these movies.
I guess "Turn your brain off and enjoy it" was the get go for the script as well...
It's a bit sloppy but gets the job done for a set-up.
It was a long time ago, and I was looking for anything that remotely emulated Die Hard, but I felt this scene was completely unnecessary, except for showing Stallone, well, hanging from a cliff. Which was just what the movie promised
I think Frank is grimacing rather than smiling? 😬
I forgot to mention in my previous comment. Something that was common knowledge here in Finland to those who saw Renny Harlin movies, is that he liked to hide the Finnish flag somewhere in his movies. Like in this one when the other young guy escapes from the robbers, his parachute has the colors of the flag. You can even see it anachronistically in the background during the carriage chase scene in Cutthroat Island. Too early to even be the similar flag of Neva Yacht Club.
I totally missed that. And I'm actually like a quarter Finnish!
This was on TV1 in Australia every 3-6 months and It's a great mid day TV movie I love it
I thought the intro from the original script (which I read when working at Orion in the early 90s) was pretty good.
I will admit it is not the best opening, but I have seen plenty worse. It has plenty of 90’s cheese, but man, Michelle really portrayed the sheer terror of someone about to fall to death so well, it stays with you.
agreed. she was great
Professionel female climber who can manage a peak mountain with the help of a guy but helpless girl if she is on her own. Make sense. Love it. -.-
I can't believe how many stupid movies got filmed because of a guy with a name in the buisness.
she wasn't a professional female climber, they make reference to her being a complete novice later in the movie.
The original Money Plane. If only Lithgow went by The Rumble.
Frank 😬
Cliffhanger is the most 80s movie... and it didn't even come out in the 80s
Just discovered this channel and love it,keep up the great work!
🙏😃
It's just Renny Harlin's style. Most of his movies are over the top and filled with cheesy dialog, but I still enjoy them. Die Hard 2 is definitely my favorite.
It's a fun popcorn movie, cheap entertainment. I like it.
Enjoy a movie without being defensive when someone criticizes it, difficulty level "TH-cam Comments"
As much as I love them, a lot of 90s action sequences did require a lot of suspension of belief.
So many ridiculous climbing scenes in this movie.
Got to be one of the most memorable opening sequences, if that counts for anything.
How did you not mention the Ace Ventura parody?
lol massive blunder on my part
Meryl Dixon's leg is fine! His hand however... :(
Do Ghostbusters. Bill Murray shocking the kid. In and of itself, it's not a bad scene. it's like an SNL skit, but he's not a mean person in the movie. It didn't fit. I love a good, out of place, character introduction, and I loved the movie Ghostbusters - a light hearted, entertaining romp with bad CGI, but not bad for the time. It holds up today, but that opening scene. We forgive it, because it's Bill Murray but it's not a good introduction.
My man, you're overthinking too much. It's stallone movie, lean back and enjoy.
Rocky, First Blood, & Copland are'nt just vastly superior movies to ones like Demolition Man, Cliffhanger, and Judge Dredd, But they're great movies when compared to something other than just Stallone's filmography. There is even an interview from when Copland came out where Stallone didn't realize he'd become a meme until he started work on it.
@@a6am3mn0nCopland is excellent. Reptile with Benicio Del Toro tackles a similar subject enjoyably.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 - I remember watching this with my parents in the 90's when I was a kid, and I distinctly remember my mother sitting there watching this scene rolling her eyes, saying "Oh brother, this is awful!" and laughing at the absolute stupidity. She left the room and stopped watching after that scene; deciding not to waste any more time. I foolishly kept watching. 🤣
If you cut out the opening sequence entirely, the idea you get about Gabe is that he's a daredevil and a hard case, from that exchange with Hal. Also, we'd get less "happy go-lucky insane free soloing for fun", which should increase the tension of what Gabe does. I think you have a "winner", in that there's a high likelihood the movie would be just plain better without it. Perhaps intersperse parts of it as "flashbacks" in key moments, but don't use the whole thing, and don't lead with it.
How much has Schwarzenegger paid you to do this video? Cliffhanger is a cult movie, you can nitpick all you want
Cliffhanger is silly but fun, but the opening sequence was always terrible, even without analyzing it as deeply as you did.
Never saw this film and now I never will.
You're taking a 90's action movie way too seriously 😂
I really like this movie
Worst weirdo youtube video ever. One of the great movie opening sequences ever.
Well that's like your opinion
Is this video a joke? Cliffhanger is an awesome movie with one of the best opening sequences ever. This guy is clearly just a hater trying to get views. Horrible take.
ρгό𝔪σŞｍ
disagree. the opening is perfect for the type of movie this is. after watching almost all your videos i can confidently say you are the type of person who should watch movies alone. a killjoy. you suck the happiness and fun out of a room lolll.
why so triggered?
"Waaaaah! Stop disliking things I like!"
never saw killing eve don't plan on it. I disagree with your hatred of Cliffhanger