Apex Mountain
Nicolas Cage; nerve gas; Alcatraz movies; naked guitar playing; Vanessa Marcil; 1996 action movies; Michael Bay creatively; Hummers
In the discussion (13)
Approx. transcript time · 01:15:03Read transcript
- Nicolas Cage is a yes: coming off the Oscar and leading the fourth-biggest movie of 1996 at $330 million, "It's definitely this."
- Connery is a no, as is late-career Connery, with Crusade cited instead.
- Nerve gas rockets, not nuclear, mark the peak moment for nerve gas; the film is said to have been a source of misinformation for British intelligence ahead of the Iraq invasion, and fear of nerve gas persists.
- Ed Harris is a no.
- Alcatraz movies: The Rock is judged better than the slow Escape from Alcatraz, which was filmed during tours and was being shot during a 1980 family visit.
- Naked guitar playing is absolutely Apex Mountain.
- Movie mutinies go to Crimson Tide, with this and Mutiny on the Bounty possibly a Mount Rushmore.
- Vanessa Marseille, after 90210 and dating Brian Austin Green, peaks as the lead female in an action movie; she gets it.
- Christ poses go to The Last Temptation of Christ, then Platoon; needles in the heart stay with Pulp Fiction.
- It is called the best action movie of 1996, better than Independence Day, Twister, Mission Impossible and Eraser, which all made more money; agreement follows.
- With Armageddon raised as Bay's earnings peak, asked whether creatively this was the apex, the answer is "a hundred percent": the only Bay movie that rises to excellent, with Bad Boys 2 and the original Transformers merely okay. — Mina Kimes
- Another view likes many Bay movies, even recent ones, but calls the Transformers films an anvil on his career.
- It was an apex year for Hummers.