In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:42:57Read transcript
- Ajax is simultaneously a great character and badly aged for his language and being a sexual assaulter.
- The counterargument is that a movie about gangs who stalk the streets needs a bad guy, and Ajax contrasts with Swan's King Arthur moral code; a bad guy in a 1979 New York gang is plausible, though some of his words are hard to hear now, and what is said to Mercy is not great.
- Cleon dying has aged terribly and hurts every time; the stunt double thrown onto the tracks and the character never being mentioned again is one host's vote.
- The story recited: Michael Beck as Swan and Thomas Waits (as transcribed) as Fox were to be the two stars, but Fox's actor feuded with Walter Hill, who killed the character off midway, rewrote the last 45 minutes, and used a crew member with the same hair as a stunt double, seen from behind with Mercy before a cop throws him into the train; nobody later asks what happened to Fox the way they ask about Ajax.
- The actor told the story at a 2015 reunion where the cast rode the subway to Coney; another host disliked his face in the zoom-in and was glad he died.
- The death should have established the stakes of the all-night journey and made the arrival a relief, but it is so quick and so hamstrung together that it has no emotional payoff.
- Today a studio would recast as with Eric Stoltz and Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future rather than concoct a stunt death; it also creates a hole when Swan returns to an empty station with no ambulances or police after a man was thrown in front of a train.
- Why the Warriors run from police is debated: they are a gang in colors where they should not be, and the fire, the assassination and the DJ keep police on alert; starting the fire five stops down is called a smart move by the other gangs, and Masai is said to have been pulling the strings like Masai Uhiri (as transcribed).