Baggage-area fight; first McClane-Lorenzo meeting; painters shootout and ramp standoff; ejection and parachute escape; runway fight and fuel-trail landing
First listed: McClane fighting two men in a restricted baggage area, with Vondie Curtis Hall; the cluttered, climbable set is praised and the airport raised as a possible Apex Mountain for airport movies, though it was not actually shot at Dulles. — Bill Simmons
The first McClane-Lorenzo meeting is quoted, with both actors bringing it; it sets up the trope of an official who is unimpressed by a proven hero, riffed on through an imagined Sully Sullenberger being brushed off.
The metal-detector insult to Carmine is noted as a likely ad-lib whose joke nobody fully understands. — Bill Simmons
The paintball-style shootout, with sinister painters (including Robert Patrick) ignored by the airport SWAT team, and the suspenseful moving-ramp standoff are nominated. — Bill Simmons
The plane crash is called the craziest and most horrifying scene in action-movie history; with some 220 deaths quickly moved past, it is judged memorable rather than rewatchable. — Bill Simmons
After 9/11 such a scene would never be made; the movie is one of the most violent mainstream films, mixing sight gags with a British plane crash that kills about 200 people, after which everyone at Dulles keeps drinking and waiting, and making the passengers unlikable British travelers is called a weird choice.
McClane pushing the crate, taking on Esperanza on the transport plane and ejecting leads to a shot of him parachuting at the camera, called one of the better action-movie shots, though the villains oddly fail to finish him. — Bill Simmons
The final fight with John Amos and Stuart ends with the plane blown up on an improbably long runway and controllers using the fire trail to guide landing planes. — Bill Simmons
Nominees: Nestor Carbonell as Mayor Antonio Garcia, Joshua Harto as Coleman Reese, Anthony Michael Hall as TV interviewer Mike Engel and William Fichtner as the bank manager; added is Richie Costner (as transcribed) as the Chechen, whom only the three hosts came to know as the corrupt mayor in True Detective season two, giving a very good performance with a very bad Count Dracula accent.
One host gives the award to Anthony Michael Hall for embodying the action-movie trope of the TV crew always present when something important happens, the William Atherton role from Die Hard, with the accountant going on the local Charlie Rose to reveal the Batman after the commercial.
A second host also lands on Anthony Michael Hall, because swole late-career Hall never fails to stop them in their tracks, and asks whether he only works in Nolan movies now.
One more name: Chin Han as Lau, a Chinese corporate titan laundering money for Gotham's gangsters, called the definition of a heat check; every conversation he goes for it, toe to toe with Morgan Freeman, moving all the mob's money without telling them, and never finding it odd that Lucius Fox turns up to check him out right after.
Fox breaks the building's one no-phones rule, does a switcheroo and brings down a multi-billion-dollar corporation with a cell phone, which leads to Batman illegally extraditing Lau from China via skyhook; Lau then becomes a living MacGuffin who must be protected to testify against all of Gotham's criminals.
Why is Lau needed when the Chechen could surely be prosecuted; it is read as an early sell-the-movie-in-China move and as the cynical choice to hand the most convoluted part of the plot to an Eastern character because he is mysterious anyway.
The Hong Kong shoot is compared to the hosts' own deep-in-the-weeds blog obsessions: Bale insisting on standing on the skyscraper himself, Alan Horn cutting a $35 million check to send 400 people to shoot in IMAX when Gotham or CGI would have been fine.
Bruce's cover story compounds the absurdity: landing a plane in the ocean because he cannot use Hong Kong airport, a yacht with ballet dancers, Michael Caine surrounded by companions in the South China Sea, mystery pilots; it all goes back to Lau, and a Lau trilogy would probably get greenlit.
