Early candidates include every Ginger scene, Bill Paxton’s arrival, and Rick Rossovich returning from a plate-glass-window throw to keep fighting in his underwear.
Tech Noir combines indiscriminate danger, slow-motion club imagery, Sarah recognizing both pursuers, Kyle’s rescue, and the reveal that shotgun blasts cannot stop Arnold. — Bill Simmons
Kyle’s tunnel explanation of Skynet, extermination, and Sarah’s unborn son is praised as exposition that should fail but succeeds through writing and performance. — Bill Simmons
The Terminator repairing his arm and eye is remembered as astonishing 1984 practical work whose crudeness now adds charm; sunglasses make the puppet face convincing. — Shea Serrano
The police-station assault turns flimsy PCP explanations into a brutal crash-and-shootout showcase whose sound improved with later formats. — Bill Simmons
The oil-tanker chase, delayed explosion, and endoskeleton emerging from fire create a false ending and reset the rules again.
The Mexico coda completes Sarah’s transformation and pays off the photograph Kyle had carried without explaining away the causal loop.
Two hosts explicitly choose Tech Noir, and the third centers his favorite quality on that scene’s revelation of how hard the machine is to kill.
One pick is not Arnold, Rachel or Sharon but the eye bulges, the best in movie history, since the pain is understood even in an alien setting; the only comparison is Hostel. — Shea Serrano
A second voice takes that pick in a different direction: body horror, as the most mainstream version of David Cronenberg-style body horror with the mutants, Kuato and the eye bulges. — Jason Concepcion
A third voice is torn between Arnold and Verhoeven, noting how hard the film was to make before CGI, but leans to Arnold for buying and shaping the script and for the three-movie Apex that made him one of the five biggest stars of his lifetime. — Bill Simmons
A high-school debate with a friend: is it OK to be attracted to the three-breasted woman, and could you date her? The answer given is yes. — Bill Simmons
The three-breasted woman has already drawn far more air time than an expected 40 seconds; Cohaagen versus Trump is deferred to a separate podcast. — Bill Simmons
Did Arnold make a run at Sharon Stone? One host calls it a 100% lock, reasoning that the lack of rumors proves it. — Bill Simmons
Shea agrees Arnold took a swing, and she likely said no thanks, or maybe found it fun. — Shea Serrano
Was it real? The hosts say Verhoeven wanted it ambiguous and believed it was a dream, while Arnold's casting pushed toward reality. — Bill Simmons
Dream evidence: the salesman promises he will get the girl, kill the bad guys and save the planet; the chosen woman's face appears on screen; 'Blue Sky on Mars' is named; the sweat-drop doctor describes later events. This host's official answer is a dream from the moment he is at Rekall. — Bill Simmons
Counter: it cannot start at Rekall because the film opens with him already dreaming of Ticotin's character; the construction coworker's and Lori's suspicious looks suggest it is real, and one host says it has to be real.
Asked, Jason says it is a brain-damage delusion, running the memories in a loop because his brain was fried; another host calls that depressing. — Jason Concepcion
A closing view: they are all kind of right, because Verhoeven put everything on the table and wanted ambiguity; there is more evidence for a dream, but it could go either way. — Bill Simmons
Neck injections; the oversized nose tracker; Arnold punching Lori without a mark; the Hauser memory-wipe plot; sending a recognizable giant to Earth; the name Quaid near Kuato
The plot says Hauser worked for Cohaagen, switched sides and underwent the memory wipe; the hosts find this confusing. — Bill Simmons
Asked, Jason says he thought Cohaagen wiped him and stashed him on Earth, wonders why Cohaagen does not just kill Quaid, and why Hauser would wipe his own memory. — Jason Concepcion
Asked to explain, Shea lays out two plot lines: Richter truly wants Quaid dead, while Cohaagen and Hauser planned to wipe him, push him back to Rekall and Mars to infiltrate the mutants and kill Kuato, then restore Hauser. — Shea Serrano
Further flaws: sending a 6'3", 280-pound hero back to Earth unnoticed, and the name Quaid being so close to Kuato. — Bill Simmons
From the Action Hero Championship Belt piece: this was an 'A-Fucking-Pex' stretch for Arnold with Kindergarten Cop and T2 within about 14 months, but asked to choose, the others pick T2 as his Apex. — Bill Simmons
Terminator 2 or 1 is the movie tied to Arnold forever; Total Recall is the deep cut, and the stretch culminates in T2. — Shea Serrano
His pay, veto power and 15% of profits may have earned him $100 million, though this was not his most successful movie. — Bill Simmons
Rachel Ticotin is contested: this might be her Apex for her action work, while another host picks Man on Fire as his personal Apex and a better performance.
Marshall Bell (George and Kuato) is picked over Ironside because he plays two characters in one scene; both are briefly allowed, and it is called the Apex of both careers. — Jason Concepcion
Ironside is then placed at Starship Troopers instead, since a host assigns Apex by the first role that comes to mind; the others accept. — Shea Serrano
For Ronny Cox, one answer is RoboCop while two voices pick this role. — Shea Serrano
Mars: the case is made that this, not The Martian, is Mars's Apex, since it is about an idealized Mars rather than a Matt Damon vehicle that could have been set on the moon. — Jason Concepcion
A host leans to The Martian but concedes; the argument cites that living on Mars still seemed conceivable in 1990 and that the way characters say 'Mars' is more fun.
Venusville is mentioned, and three-breasted and four-breasted women are named an Apex because they have never been seen since. — Bill Simmons
Nominees include the three-breasted woman and Kuato in his two scenes. — Bill Simmons
Sharon Stone is the quintessential winner: three scenes, beats Arnold twice, super sexy, and you leave thinking she will be a massive star. — Bill Simmons
The woman at customs whom Arnold disguises himself as ('Two weeks') is also included for going so hard.
The hosts say Verhoeven cast Stone in Basic Instinct for her ability to flip from sweetheart to diabolical, and said on the commentary that this is how she is in real life. — Bill Simmons
Opening credits; human-shield gore; plasma wall TVs and video calls; virtual-reality tennis; ESPN World Series from Tokyo; Cohaagen raising the price of air; "Give these people air"; fingernail-polish tech; the humor; Sharon Stone; the safety-deposit-box message
The terrible but beloved opening credits say 'Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna present'; the hosts wonder whether those producers were real or pseudonyms. — Bill Simmons
In the airport escalator scene Quaid uses a bystander as a human shield who is shot many times, and Richter stomps on the bullet-ridden chest with a squishing sound; the hosts cannot recall that much splatter in earlier action movies.
The hosts say it first got an X rating for gore and had to be scaled back, but Verhoeven would not cut the human-shield stomp. — Bill Simmons
Futuristic predictions: plasma wall TVs, video calls like FaceTime, possibly Johnny Cabs as Uber or Tesla autopilot, and Lori's virtual-reality tennis, her best moment in the film. — Bill Simmons
An ESPN promo for game five of the World Series live from Tokyo is enjoyed even if the prediction missed. — Bill Simmons
Cohaagen raising the price of air is a classic subtle evil move; the hosts work out how air billing might work through dome taxes and compare it to Trump in a pandemic.
It leads to Arnold turning 'air' into three syllables in 'Give these people air.' — Bill Simmons
The fingernail-polish tech is singled out. — Shea Serrano
The humor carries and is funnier now; the line 'If you want to live, don't hang up' is believed to have been lifted for Terminator 2; Sharon Stone has aged best. — Shea Serrano
A late addition: the cryptic message in the safety deposit box, a trick that works every time. — Shea Serrano
The scene list opens with Quaid going to Rekall on a whim for a secret-agent vacation and choosing the woman who will accompany him (athletic, sleazy, demure). — Bill Simmons
The chair freak-out ('schizoid embolism', 'You blew my cover!') is combined with the Johnny Cab ride and the airport fight as one giant scene. — Bill Simmons
The middle act recalls The Fugitive: once he is on the run after Rekall it is escape after escape and fight after fight.
Asked for other thoughts, Shea says the Rekall sequence sets everything in motion, then the movie goes in the opposite direction from what you expect and it still makes perfect sense. — Shea Serrano
Rewatching after 10 or 15 years, the reveal that Arnold was actually the bad guy felt new again; his smirking arrogant Hauser is likened to Eddie Murphy playing several characters in The Nutty Professor. — Shea Serrano
Next nominee: Lori realizing Quaid knows and their fight; Sharon Stone had bounced around Hollywood for eight or nine years (Irreconcilable Differences, the Allan Quatermain movie, Action Jackson) and knew this would be her movie. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say she got in amazing shape and learned jiu-jitsu, so she looks like she could beat Arnold, who can only use brute strength. — Bill Simmons
80s action was about being huge, unlike today's Bourne and John Wick style; Arnold breaks steel restraints, and the Lori fight, with her technical stance, is the movie's best fight, like a king cobra against a grizzly bear. — Jason Concepcion
Arnold and Stallone made 19 action movies between them in the 80s and defined the action hero, compared with Tupac defining the gangster rapper. — Shea Serrano
Patrick Swayze in Road House may have advanced non-brute-force fighting a year earlier; Arnold and Sly are compared to low-post centers like Shaq, and the John Wick era to spreading the floor. — Bill Simmons
Sharon Stone has Sandra-Bullock-in-Speed star gravity; she is in only three scenes yet feels like she is in the whole movie. — Bill Simmons
Venusville nominee: the Sleaze Bar, Marsburger, the mutant hotel, and random Sharper Image, Jack in the Box and Pepsi branding. — Bill Simmons
Asked why Pepsi advertises in Venusville, Shea says one fast-food brand always survives through time, as Taco Bell did in Demolition Man. — Shea Serrano
Venusville was filmed in a refashioned Mexico City subway station; the mutant bar has everything and deserves a 20-minute freeze-frame video, a Disneyland for mutants with a brothel and drugs that the film never explains. — Bill Simmons
Next nominee: the bald Rekall man visiting Quaid on Mars with Lori to convince him it is all a dream; the dream question is saved for later, and the sweat drop is iconic. — Bill Simmons
Stone beats Arnold a second time, then fights Rachel Ticotin in what the hosts say Verhoeven's DVD commentary calls the first real two-woman fight in a feature film; it is called the Jackie Robinson of female fight scenes, with Rachel walking so Michelle Rodriguez could run. — Bill Simmons
The sequence ends with 'Consider that a divorce,' which brought the house down in theaters; the whole run is called a phenomenal seven minutes. — Bill Simmons
Kuato is nominated because it was unbelievable in 1990 and still looks real; a host first wondered what the man turning around was doing, with Silence of the Lambs fresh in mind.
At the Kuato reveal you stop guessing what will happen; 'A man is defined by his actions, not his memory,' and Marshall Bell is said to play George and voice Kuato. — Shea Serrano
A host who let his young twins watch John Wick would not let them see the Kuato scene because it is too disturbing. — Shea Serrano
The practical puppetry works because of the slimy texture and how light plays on it, which CGI would lose; one theory says the look was influenced by Garbage Pail Kids.
The hosts puzzle over what Kuato does when not needed and settle on a coma theory in which George passes out whenever Kuato emerges. — Bill Simmons
The final sequence is nominated: the cab driver turning on them with a tank, the hologram from the suitcase (likened to the Tupac hologram), 'See you at the party, Richter,' and Ronny Cox's bulging-eyes death. — Bill Simmons
Not a pick but a must-include: Arnold disguised as the woman at customs, with the head that comes off, talks back ('Get ready for a surprise') and explodes, while 20 guards point guns and nobody fires. — Shea Serrano
The pick is the Rekall man's visit with Sharon Stone, called a favorite seven minutes; a second voice picks the same scene because it has the line everybody remembers, 'Consider that a divorce.'
A third voice agrees it is where you begin to question whether he is still in the Rekall chair, ending on an iconic line. — Shea Serrano
The hosts say the original line was 'Consider it a divorce' and that Arnold workshopped it into 'Consider that a divorce.' — Bill Simmons
