The mall was the Sherman Oaks mall, which still exists; the Val Verde island is San Nicolas Island ('Nicholas' in the transcript) off Santa Barbara; the climax compound is the Harold Lloyd Estate in Beverly Hills. — Bill Simmons
The same house hosted Beverly Hills Cop's final shootout a year earlier. — Bill Simmons
One account says the love scene was shot and cut; it was reportedly meant for the amphibious plane, which makes no sense with a knife at his daughter's throat. — Bill Simmons
The question is which Latino actor should have had Dan Hedaya's role, without defaulting to Jimmy Smits; Edward James Olmos ('Edward James almost' in the transcript) is considered but judged too good an actor. — Shea Serrano
Move Gary Cervantes, already in the film as the man with the 'I love you' note who explains the plan to Arnold, into the dictator role for his slimeball energy. — Shea Serrano
Esai Morales ('SI Morales' in the transcript) could have been shoehorned in as a younger deposed dictator or the dictator's son.
That actor owns the room against a fully furious Arnold ('mellow out, man'). — Bill Simmons
The award was created after the New Jack City podcast for someone in a different movie from everyone else. — Bill Simmons
Dan Hedaya seems to be in a TV movie or a Family Ties episode as the dictator and is terrible, still the dad from Clueless or Carla's husband on Cheers.
A different pick is Henriques ('Enrique's' in the transcript), the man Arnold kills on the plane, who is unaware of how dangerous his charge is. — Shea Serrano
Bennett was supposed to be played by Wings Hauser ('Wingshouser' in the transcript), who was fired on the first day and replaced by Vernon Wells. — Bill Simmons
Borrowed 48 Hours theme; Rae Dawn Chong's instant loyalty; sitcom-family ending; no Commando 2; police handling of Matrix; Dan Hedaya as a former dictator; hiding under the bed; closing song; the missile-launcher plan; the destroyed yellow Porsche
The stolen 48 Hours theme is put in both categories. — Bill Simmons
Rae Dawn Chong's character joins Team Arnold almost immediately despite his wrecking her car, like instant Stockholm syndrome. — Bill Simmons
By the end the three are a full-on 80s sitcom family hugging on the plane, though the kidnapped girl should be scarred. — Bill Simmons
Not getting Commando 2 is named an aged-worst pick; the sequel was set up with Kirby and one last job. — Bill Simmons
Rae Dawn Chong firing the missile launcher is offered as improbable, but others disagree and call it great, including her first firing it backwards. — Bill Simmons
The police let a mall-rampage suspect found with a pile of weapons walk out unhandcuffed and ride in the back of a truck. — Kyle Brandt
A 'former' South American dictator makes no sense, and the Dan Hedaya casting is awful. — Bill Simmons
Going under the bed returns, and the closing song, 'We Fight for Love', is horrible compared with Peter Cetera ('Satera' in the transcript) or Point Break's ending. — Bill Simmons
Her plan to fire the launcher at the truck Arnold is in could have gone badly, and destroying the yellow Porsche hurt. — Shea Serrano
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.
Introduced as not a new category but a special one for this movie; nominees are Arnold chopping wood in a tank top, the father-daughter montage, the hard-to-understand Boy George one-liner over a Creem magazine, Dan Hedaya's accent, and Arnold stripping to a bathing suit to row, part of three gratuitous shirtless moments. — Bill Simmons
The pick is Matrix goading Bennett to drop the guns and fight, with Bennett reacting almost orgasmically, as if on take eight after being told to be creepier. — Bill Simmons
There is a long-running internet theory that Bennett is in love with Matrix. — Kyle Brandt
The romance is described as intentional: the director said his coaching was that Bennett hates but loves Matrix, Bennett reminisces about him, and the final exchange ('don't deny yourself the pleasure', shooting him in the balls) is sexually charged, comparable only to Tango & Cash. — Kyle Brandt
The theory is rejected: Bennett is more like Zero in John Wick 3, a fan who respects Matrix's killing skill and wants to measure himself against him. — Shea Serrano
Bennett wearing a sleeveless shirt with no muscle tone next to Arnold shows huge confidence; he was never frightening, suggesting the filmmakers did not yet know what they had in Arnold. — Shea Serrano
Vernon Wells described his look as Freddie Mercury on steroids; director Mark Lester, coming off Firestarter, said Bennett was in love with Matrix but hated him too. — Bill Simmons
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
Schwarzenegger won: a great performance on top of the physical spectacle while he was the biggest star in the world; Cameron deserves praise, but it is Arnold's movie, the jersey going up to the rafters.
John is supposed to be 10 but feels like 13; 10-year-old boys are not that resilient and worldly.
Sarah being 18 in 1984 as a waitress with her own place seems a reach. — Chris Ryan
Why not send 25 people back to protect John? Rebutted: Cameron framed a Western of good gunfighter versus bad gunfighter, the film never opens up timeline logic, and it should just be enjoyed; the rebuttal is dubbed purist Chris Ryan.
No cops died in the Cyberdyne shootout, with Arnold's scan reading zero human casualties. — Bill Simmons
The Terminator movies may have invented the first-person-shooter view. — Bill Simmons
If Arnold can't self-terminate, why would he let Sarah Connor terminate him, and was his mission to protect John for life or only from the T-1000? He could have faked looking away and been shoved in.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is a yes, with agreement: after four straight hits and this, he could have been believed in anything, even as governor. — Bill Simmons
A son remarked while watching that Schwarzenegger was the best bodybuilder, a big movie star and then governor. — Bill Simmons
James Cameron is a no because his peak is still Titanic; Avatar is offered only to be contrary. — Bill Simmons
1991 is an insane-asylum year with this and Silence of the Lambs, taking the title from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. — Bill Simmons
Chin-ups are raised with Cape Fear from the same year; the answer is ambiguous. — Bill Simmons
No actor has sprinted better; Cruise runs in every movie but never did it like this. — Bill Simmons
Pre-CGI sci-fi is a no, with Aliens and Star Wars ahead. — Bill Simmons
Arcades may peak here after Tron and The Last Starfighter, the last time one worked in a movie, offered with 'I guess'.
One-liners get a maybe, with The Matrix's 'I know Kung Fu' as a rival. — Van Lathan
This is Apex Mountain for summer blockbusters as an event; Speed as the first intentional summer blockbuster and Jaws as the unintentional first are debated, and T2 with Jurassic Park is the first movie onslaught of film plus prepackaged promotion. — Bill Simmons
T2 is also Apex Mountain for the Terminator franchise, since later time-travel sequels got convoluted and reboots never got back there.
The film was delayed by CGI limits and a rights dispute: Hemdale owned half and didn't want a sequel, Carolco did, and Mario Kassar paid the struggling Hemdale $5 million for the franchise before it made 520.
80s action producers seemed like arms dealers; Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna were covered on the First Blood episode.
The shoot itself cost about $51 million inside a roughly $100 million budget because of payments to Arnold, Cameron and rights holders. — Van Lathan
A national search picked the dormant Kaiser steel mill in Fontana, California for the climax. — Van Lathan
