DiCaprio as John would work by making him 13 and nudging the war to 2000, countered that the first film fixed the date.
Michael Biehn as the T-1000, out of respect for an under-appreciated glue-guy actor who was the hero of the first film and was off shooting Tombstone while everyone returned.
The pick is called porn for Chris, president of the Biehn fan club, and Biehn's appearance in The Mandalorian is celebrated.
Michael Biehn was the first choice for the T-1000 in a role reversal, dropped as too confusing for viewers; it would have been too messed up for Sarah, though it could have been cool. — Bill Simmons
Cameron considered Billy Idol, dropped after a motorcycle accident left him unable to run, and W.A.S.P. singer Blackie Lawless, who was too tall. — Bill Simmons
Charlie Korsmo from What About Bob? was supposed to be John Connor but was filming that movie; he may not have read as a delinquent. — Bill Simmons
The Miles Dyson role was offered to Denzel Washington, who passed because all the character does is look scared and sweat; the panel debates whether pre-Philadelphia Denzel was already too famous. — Bill Simmons
The combination of Terminator, Beverly Hills Cop, Fletch, and the Lakers makes mid-1980s Los Angeles a defensible local summit.
Titanic is chosen as Cameron’s strict apex, though the cheap 1980s hotel sex scene gets a joking category peak. — Chris Ryan
The simple one-way naked time-travel rule is praised against later films’ increasingly elaborate mechanics, but the discussion stops short of a firm all-movie victory. — Chris Ryan
Top Gun beats this film for sunglasses, while Tech Noir may be the apex of Pico-area 1980s nightclubs. — Bill Simmons
An abandoned liquid-metal Terminator, the theatrical pitch, minimal Arnold dialogue, performance preparation, studio notes, Cameron’s rights loss, and the death count
An early outline had a second, liquid-metal Terminator that available effects could not realize; Cameron saved the concept for Terminator 2. — Bill Simmons
Lance Henriksen reportedly arrived at the pitch in Terminator costume and makeup to demonstrate the threat. — Bill Simmons
Biehn studied Polish resistance fighters, while Hamilton filmed running scenes on a badly injured ankle. — Bill Simmons
The studio suggested a K-9 android for Reese, which Cameron rejected, and asked for more Sarah/Reese romance, which produced the hotel scene. — Bill Simmons
Arnold trained with guns daily for a month and received praise for realistic weapon handling. — Bill Simmons
Cameron sold away rights early, missed royalties from several sequels, and later described the loss as the price of a Hollywood education before copyright reverted. — Bill Simmons
Cameron voices the answering-machine date cancellation, and the estimated body count varies from 39 to 42 depending on Tech Noir. — Bill Simmons
Orion executive Mike Medavoy proposed OJ Simpson as the Terminator and Arnold as Kyle Reese; Cameron rejected Simpson as too likable at the time and the pursuit image as racially wrong. — Bill Simmons
Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson reportedly declined the Terminator, while Tom Selleck was considered because the machine was originally imagined as an ordinary man able to blend in. — Bill Simmons
Sting is the one Kyle Reese alternative treated as credible and exciting, though Michael Biehn is defended. — Bill Simmons
Baldwin was the second choice for McManus; the first choice, Michael Biehn, reportedly turned it down and later called it a huge mistake. — Bill Simmons
With Biehn it would be a less funny movie, though one host has always loved him. — Chris Ryan
The script went to everybody in town; Palminteri's role was offered to Chris Walken and Bob De Niro, and Walken is imagined as Kobayashi or Redfoot. — Bill Simmons
Singer and McQuarrie sent Spacey the script without saying which role was his; he assumed Palminteri's or Byrne's part, but it was written with him in mind for Verbal. — Bill Simmons
Byrne, dealing with personal problems, backed out for 24 hours until the filmmakers agreed to shoot in LA, where he lived, in five weeks. — Bill Simmons
A joke proposes making Redfoot the Voight character from Heat to connect the universes. — Chris Ryan
The Saul Rubinick award (as transcribed) is given to Dana Wheeler Nicholson as well; one host refuses to accept that in a movie with Powers Booth, countering with Booth, and the pick is repeated as Dana Wheeler Nicholson; Booth is defended as good, if more Booth than needed, and Thomas Hayden Church (transcribed 'Daniel Church') is said to be closer to the award than he is.
The case against her: in bed after Wyatt gets back from the picnic, asked how she is feeling, she is so high she is laughing at her own misery, and that is not good acting.
The defender insists the other two are both wrong: calling her overacting in a film where Powers Booth wears a sash and sashays around town on opium shooting people in the chest, and in which Michael Biehn appears, makes no sense. — Chris Ryan
Further candidates: Billy Zane, who overacts in every movie and is not good, though in fairness that is literally the point of his character, an actor, and he played that same melodramatic man in his next nine movies, including as a serial killer on a boat; Sam Elliott overdoing the Western thing, rejected; and Robert Mitchum's completely unnecessary narrator, parked as a nitpick.
The dispute resumes during nitpicks: the hosts attacking her are told she is alive and reachable through her agent or Twitter, and that it is weird to be most bothered by a woman in three scenes while the men ham it up like boar's head; the defense is that the part is poorly written with no payoff since the narrator simply tells us she died; the attackers say the award is not a demerit and her laudanum-soaked scenes are just bad, with no emotional journey.
Kurt Russell first, with the reminder that the question is the highest point of his career, not the favorite: one case is The Thing in 1982, after Escape from New York and with Silkwood, Swing Shift and Big Trouble in Little China coming; a no is cast because Escape from New York was only later a cult hit, raising whether apex is judged at the time or on reflection.
Reading about Tombstone makes it sound like Russell was able to finance the movie coming off Backdraft, a relatively big hit he starred in, likened to LeBron in the 2018 Finals; a controversial case is made for Tango and Cash, when after the well-liked Tequila Sunrise with Michelle Pfeiffer a hit with Stallone, an absolutely ridiculous movie only those two could pull off, left him looking like an A plus list star.
Tango and Cash was not a huge hit, costing $55 million and making $66 million, though $55 million in 1988 is like $160 million today, and it is not that good; the counter is that it opened up Backdraft and his ability to finance Tombstone; the actual answer may be that there was no apex at all, a range of rolling hills, which is what is cool about his career.
Russell was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Silkwood, which is why his Apex Mountain is around The Thing in 1982 or 1983, when Escape from New York was becoming a cult movie. — Sean Fennessey
Whether Russell was ever Oscar-nominated is disputed, Miracle floated and rejected, until the Silkwood nomination is recalled; the host who forgot it concedes, a 180 the others tease.
Russell could have had a different career as a serious dramatic actor rather than leaning into the masculine hero; he and Harrison Ford are cut from the same cloth, smart throwbacks to Paul Newman charisma, but Ford got two franchises while Russell alternates three good films and three bad; he is also just a good-looking dude, at his most handsome here, a man who should be on a poster.
Val Kilmer: a no, with Top Gun imagined as his apex, since coming out of it people saw him neck and neck with the star, though another calls that the star's movie and goes Heat, where as De Niro's wingman in the biggest mid-90s movie he is the next wave; his pre-Batman run is traced through True Romance, Tombstone, The Real McCoy, Thunderheart and The Doors.
1987 right after Top Gun is floated, when Willow was hopefully going to be his Han Solo and did not work out; one host's personal apex for him is The Doors, where he was out of control, and a Doors rewatchable is wanted, though JFK would have to come first among the Oliver Stone movies.
Jason Priestley is a thousand-percent yes: 90210 was never bigger, he is in a movie with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer and has a couple of heat-check scenes, the steepest mountain of all time, very high with a precipitous drop on either side; a caution that a later show (transcribed 'Natuna') was big for three and a half years does not change the view that this literally was his Apex Mountain and his first dabbling in movies.
Dana Delaney's apex has to be China Beach, which was probably already gone by this point, so she is not a yes; nobody else is proposed except George Cosmatos as ghost director, already covered, with the joke of a Ringer video secretly directed by someone else.
The late Bill Paxton: this is not a Mount Rushmore Paxton performance next to Aliens, Near Dark, One False Move, Weird Science, True Lies and Twister, though it may be his sweetest spot while figuring out how to be Bill Paxton; in Aliens Sigourney Weaver is the hero but Paxton and Biehn would in any other world have been the stars, and One False Move is incredible though arguably Billy Bob's movie too.
Twister was Hollywood's first concerted effort to make Paxton a major star, marketed with Helen Hunt and Philip Seymour Hoffman as people who were going to be stars rather than actual stars; the shift from needing a movie star to needing a tornado, meteor or alien invasion is traced to Speed, where Keanu was the guy and Sandra Bullock turned out to be one of the biggest stars of the next twenty years.
Paxton is one of the all-time great number two or three guys: here he sets picks and makes a couple of corner threes, telling Wyatt he is the one, spits a lot, works the scorer's-table handshakes at the start, and gets the 'hey' when Doc responds to Wyatt's description of his new wife with 'pure as the driven snow'.
Three candidates: Stephen Lang; Michael Biehn, who may not be in it enough and so might qualify; and Billy Bob Thornton, who gets the most out of about four scenes; Lang, reportedly hammered for the entire movie, is so out of control that every time you see him you think what a piece of work and want him shot, and a second host makes Lang his vote too.
Lang is in only a handful of scenes so he qualifies; the film was good at identifying people who would become famous, Lang being basically the star of Avatar.
If Biehn is in the category it is Biehn: rewatching, he is a great villain, and the scene where he and Val Kilmer trade Latin for thirty seconds, ending with him winning 500 bucks on one hand, is played as a clip; but Biehn is ruled not to qualify because he is in too much of the movie, so it is Stephen Lang.
Earlier asides: Val Kilmer is called the heat-check guy of every movie he is in, and Billy Bob Thornton's card-table grumbling is called a good heat check.
Kevin Costner was to be Wyatt Earp before leaving for Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp; Richard Gere as Wyatt Earp and Willem Dafoe as Doc Holliday were nearly cast, with Buena Vista vetoing Dafoe over The Last Temptation of Christ; Mickey Rourke turned down Johnny Ringo
Costner was supposed to be Wyatt Earp; according to Kurt Russell the film was nearly cast with Richard Gere as Wyatt and Willem Dafoe as Doc Holliday, but Buena Vista refused Dafoe as blowback from The Last Temptation of Christ five years earlier; thank God, since Dafoe is a great actor but not Doc Holliday.
Mickey Rourke was almost cast as Johnny Ringo and turned it down; as good as Biehn is, one host thinks it would have been a cool Rourke role, while another thinks that with Cosmatos coming in amid the turmoil it would have been one too many cooks, Rourke deciding he was really directing the movie and going full iso ball like Carmelo in OKC.
Production history: Costner was originally involved but disagreed with Kevin Jarr (as transcribed) over the focus, believing the emphasis belonged on Wyatt Earp rather than the many characters; he bowed out and teamed with a then red-hot Lawrence Kasdan on a competing film, Jarr proved a disaster, and this still ended up the better movie.
Costner was the biggest star in the world then, coming off Dances with Wolves; in a True West magazine interview Russell told of Costner giving his blessing, the host thinking that was because Jarr had written Dances with Wolves, yet blocking any deal except with Disney's adult label Buena Vista, which then had its own say over who could be cast, Costner throwing his weight around.
The 'hell's coming with me' scene followed by the killing montage; Wyatt Earp confronting Billy Bob Thornton at the card table; or the stretch from Wyatt Earp, on his horse after Bill Paxton's death, seeing Powers Booth through to the creek
The nominated choices open with Wyatt Earp confronting a heavier Billy Bob Thornton near the beginning, the 'skin that smoke wagon' exchange played as a clip; Earp completely emasculates him and then tells the bartender he is taking 25% of the house; Thornton's grumbling just before, about playing cards with his brother's kids, is also loved and called a good heat check.
More nominees: the first OK Corral shootout and Kurt Russell's 'hell's coming with me' speech, played as a clip and followed by a montage of them killing people; the creek shootout, Russell's version of Larry Bird walking on water in the 1987 playoffs; and Kilmer versus Michael Biehn, one-on-one at the end.
Also proposed, the 'turn your head into a canoe' scene: after the character the hosts call Ben Johnson is killed, Kurt Russell comes out and pistol-whips the shooter, Thomas Hayden Church and the others surround Russell, and Val Kilmer shows up with 'you music lover' and 'I got two guns, one for each of you'.
The first 'I'm your Huckleberry' is nominated with a clip: Michael Biehn is drunk, some of his buddies already killed, and is trying to challenge Earp when Doc comes from the shadows of the saloon and delivers the famous line; beyond Kilmer, Biehn is called really good, against type, a great villain and a great Johnny Ringo, the real-life figure.
Biehn is so good that one host went online to research why his career was not bigger: The Terminator, this, Aliens and The Abyss, where he plays one of the crazy Navy SEALs, and then not much, partly because he stopped working with James Cameron, who makes few movies; it is argued he and Michael Rooker have switched parts, since 99 times out of 100 Rooker would play Ringo and Biehn the good guy you are not sure you trust, Rooker playing a lunatic in every movie.
One favorite is the 'hell's coming with me' scene and the killing montage that follows.
Asked whether anything else belongs in the pool, the answer is no, those are the big five. — Sean Fennessey
Another host does add one: the scene at the very beginning when the brothers and their three women get off the train and look at each other in the mirror; nobody goes for the twelve-minute theater sequence, which they would have told George to cut.
From a channel-flipping standpoint, if the film is on after Bill Paxton dies, with Kurt Russell on his horse pretending to leave and then seeing Powers Booth, one host watches from that point on, knowing he is going to stay and kill everybody and end it in the creek; that is called that host's favorite part.
Another host's favorite is the Billy Bob scene, and Thornton reportedly improvised all his dialogue, as Kurt Russell told the hosts, though with Thornton that is hard to verify.
