Blondie receives an early affirmative Apex suggestion in the discussion of the hit song. — Sean Fennessey
Gere is initially rejected here in favor of An Officer and a Gentleman. — Sean Fennessey
Gere is rejected here in favor of An Officer and a Gentleman, with 1990’s Pretty Woman and Internal Affairs another possible peak. — Bill Simmons
Hutton is rejected here in favor of her 1970s modeling peak; Once Bitten is jokingly dismissed. — Bill Simmons
Gigolos receive an affirmative choice, with Todd Parker’s uncertain status and the Showtime reality series raised as alternatives. — Bill Simmons
Schrader is a probable affirmative choice because this is his biggest hit despite other more celebrated work. — Sean Fennessey
Blondie’s general period receives agreement after comparing Heart of Glass, Call Me, The Tide Is High and Rapture; a more specific preference chooses the preceding October’s Saturday Night Live appearance with Steve Martin. — Sean Fennessey
Rae Dawn Chong is at Apex Mountain because this is what she is known for; she should have been bigger.
Alyssa Milano is a no; the debate is whether her apex is Who's the Boss or Charmed, which airs all morning on TNT ('T&T' in the transcript), with Melrose Place also mentioned. — Bill Simmons
For Vernon Wells, among Mad Max, Weird Science and this movie, this is probably the one people reference. — Bill Simmons
Creem magazine is a no; mid-80s yellow Porsches are a yes, as this is probably their best use. — Bill Simmons
Dan Hedaya is definitely not; missile launchers and bazookas are a yes as the first one that comes to mind. — Bill Simmons
The Harold Lloyd Estate is a no because of Beverly Hills Cop; Val Verde, a fictional country made for this movie, is a yes.
Bennett's chain mail is volunteered for Apex Mountain along with his physique; he lacks muscle for a fistfight with Arnold, possibly wearing slim-fit chain mail, and looks like he needs more steroids. — Kyle Brandt
The wardrobe choice is blamed on 1985 cocaine; his thin arms are distracting in the fight. — Bill Simmons
Still, Bennett is one of Arnold's toughest movie enemies and blew a 10-point lead by not simply killing him. — Shea Serrano
Bill Duke plays about 12 minutes and dominates, and he wins by being good rather than outrageous; his Green Beret threat is believable.
Another submission is the mall security guard on the radio describing a six-foot-two 'gigantic' suspect after asking girls if they want to see him kick some ass. — Kyle Brandt
He is compared to Talen Horton-Tucker ('Taylon' in the transcript), and it is asked why Bill Paxton did not play that part. — Bill Simmons
Bill Duke's three quick opening scenes, mid-80s malls and Arnold's secret gun shed are loved. — Bill Simmons
Bill Paxton's out-of-nowhere cameo ('We lost them, sir') is praised; Paxton had a scene with Arnold in The Terminator, and the guess is Arnold wanted him around.
Arnold's one-liners are top of the game: 'I'll be back, Bennett', the Sully 'kill you last' and 'I lied' callback, 'I let him go', 'We'll take Cook's car' and 'Let off some steam, Bennett'; he reportedly had more ad libs in deleted scenes; the cliff scene was considered for this list and called more of a what's-aged-the-best item. — Bill Simmons
Commando unapologetically lifts the 48 Hours steel-drum theme; for a devoted 48 Hours viewer it is jarring but also a reminder of that film. — Bill Simmons
Rae Dawn Chong is the pick: funny, doing fight commentary during the Bill Duke fight and freaking out in the car, a great balance for Arnold; Justin Long in the Die Hard franchise is cited as a later version of the idea. — Shea Serrano
Seconding the pick: she fires a rocket, there is no romance with Arnold, and the director says they auditioned widely, including Sharon Stone; a planned romantic scene was cut over concerns about southern audiences reacting to a Black woman and a white man. — Kyle Brandt
The Golden Child's love scene with Charlotte Lewis was cut for similar reasons; casting Chong rather than the white girl du jour was inspired. — Bill Simmons
In the mid-80s it was a novelty that she was Tommy Chong's daughter; some once assumed Chong was Mexican because of Cheech. — Bill Simmons
Her career illustrates old Hollywood: Soul Man, then within five years a Melrose Place arc, and it never happened for her.
The movie starts well: a garbage-truck hit, and Bill Duke is involved in three killings within about the first minute and a half; there is no fat and it moves from the start. — Bill Simmons
The first rewatchable scene is the daughter's kidnapping, set up by a shirtless wood-chopping montage and a father-daughter montage of ice cream, hiking, feeding a deer and fishing, called the greatest father-daughter day ever seen. — Bill Simmons
Hiding under the bed is criticized because it is the first place kidnappers look. — Bill Simmons
The twins are told to run out the window rather than hide, since they can outrun almost anyone. — Shea Serrano
Under the bed and lying in the bathtub (as in Training Day) are standard movie hiding places; Taken uses almost the same under-the-bed shot of approaching boots. — Kyle Brandt
He takes so long to get his guns that the cars are already driving away; the downhill Bronco run without power steering, lasting about a minute and a half, is a favorite part.
Compared with efficient modern kills like John Wick's, the first victims are shot dozens of times, a reminder of how violent the film is. — Shea Serrano
A visible booger in Arnold's nose appears when he is surrounded after the crash. — Bill Simmons
The vehicle is probably a Chevy Blazer, not a Ford Bronco; the caravan could simply have stopped, and the plan fails anyway when he goes off the cliff and is captured. — Kyle Brandt
The second most rewatchable scene is the plane escape: he kills the man beside him within seconds, covers him with a blanket, says he is air sick before takeoff, and tells the attendant not to disturb his 'dead tired' friend on the 11-hour flight to Val Verde. — Bill Simmons
He wanders into the cargo hold, hangs from the wheel as the plane takes off, drops into a marsh and checks his watch; surviving the fall is implausible and the falling dummy is obvious. — Bill Simmons
As a nit, the escort should have put Matrix in the window seat; the Red Eye rule is to enclose the abductee. — Kyle Brandt
The mall scene is summarized as Arnold fighting about 25 mall cops, throwing a phone booth and swinging from the ceiling, with an implausibly large, all-stuntman security force. — Bill Simmons
Swinging over the railings at the Houston Galleria at Christmas has always been tempting. — Shea Serrano
Contestants on The Challenge usually fail to hold on in such stunts; the busy mid-80s mall, with a Swensen's ice cream shop, is a pleasure to see. — Bill Simmons
The Arnold versus Bill Duke hotel-room brawl starts with them inches apart, has lame stage combat and self-mocking dialogue ('I eat Green Berets for breakfast'), and wedges in 10-out-of-10 gratuitous nudity from a couple filming themselves. — Bill Simmons
As a nine-year-old with a tape, pausing on that nude moment took many tries. — Kyle Brandt
Driving a forklift into the weapons store and loading a cart like Supermarket Sweep includes scuba flippers he never uses, swimwear, and missile launchers from a store with no alarm. — Bill Simmons
For the finale, the Bennett showdown is bizarre and Arnold goes shirtless under the vest; the garden-shed fight with axes, machetes and saw blades reaches 10-out-of-10 comedic violence, including a man left alive with his arm cut off.
The Equalizer's hardware-store finale may have taken the idea from Commando. — Shea Serrano
The garden shed is the pick; the 91-minute director's cut spends most of its extra minute there, adding a second saw-blade kill and another shot of the man missing his arm. — Kyle Brandt
The opening is the pick, the favorite opening of any Arnold action movie, thanks to the music and the men left to guard him dying immediately, plus the stay-downwind smell line. — Shea Serrano
Another participant picks the plane escape, enjoying the giant man wandering the aisle and the line about the aisle seat. — Shea Serrano
