The latest: Avatar: Fire and Ash is now in theaters!
For James Cameron, it all started with a severed arm and some maggots. He was art director on Roger Corman’s Piranha II: The Spawning and, for one special effect, thought to “motivate” some live maggots into movement in a prosthetic arm by shocking the prop with a live electrical cable. This helped him get promoted to director on Piranha II, setting in motion a career associated with groundbreaking sci-fi and genre movies.
Cameron has long since disavowed his Piranha experience — he was only “director” for less than three weeks and didn’t have access to dailies or the editing room — paving the way to claim The Terminator as his feature debut, which we admit looks slightly better on a resume. And in this story of time-travelin’ cyborgs run amuck, we already see one of Cameron’s core fascinations: the frequently fatal conflict between man and technology, and the way it cuts off our own humanity (ironically told using state-of-the-art special FX), as seen in later movies like T2: Judgment Day, The Abyss, and Avatar. The success of the first Terminator got him into the major studio system with a gig directing Aliens, which also further cemented his reputation of creating hardened female protagonists.
By the ’90s, Cameron had the freedom to indulge in his obsessions, including ocean exploration, which produced Best Picture phenom Titanic (only the highest-grossing movie ever at one point) and two documentaries, Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep. He returned to narrative filmmaking with Avatar (only the highest-grossing movie ever at one point), and though he didn’t release a movie in the 2010s, it’s going to be Avatar that will carry him and us through the 2020s: No less than 4 sequels are planned for this decade, with The Way of Water in 2022, and Fire and Ash in 2025.
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Are you ever stuck wondering what to watch next but you don’t know where to begin? If the answer is yes, look no further than Fandango At Home’s Certified Fresh Bundles, curated movie collections that are all Rotten Tomatoes-approved Certified Fresh. Because when the critics say it’s a must-watch film, chances are they’re right.
We’re partnering with Fandango At Home and several film studios to share the following collections centered on everything from award-winners and iconic duos to horror classics and book adaptations. Whether you’re a Matt Damon stan, a true bardolator, or you’re just in the mood for a good baseball movie, explore all 26 Certified Fresh collections below and see if you find some of your favorites.
Read on to see each collection, and for information on how to access bundles, visit FandangoAtHome.com.
(Photo by Paramount Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY)
Critically acclaimed and super scary, the following heart-pounding horror movies make up this six-film collection from the Paramount Scares library and are sure to make you jump out of your seat.
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(Photo by Courtesy Everett Collection. THE BIRDS)
This Certified Fresh five-movie collection features the best in horror, from Psycho to The Birds. You may not want to be home alone with this bundle.
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(Photo by Orion Pictures Corp / courtesy Everett Collection. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS)
See the best of the best with the Award Winners bundles. The 1990s Award Winners 2-film Collection features two acclaimed Best Picture-winning titles: Dances With Wolves and The Silence of the Lambs.
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(Photo by Paramount Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection. THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY)
From bestsellers to beach-reads, the films in this five-movie bundle are based on their beloved original novels, including The Talented Mr. Ripley, Election, Trainspotting, and Zodiac.
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(Photo by Courtesy Everett Collection / GOOD WILL HUNTING)
This three-film collection features popular films starring Academy Award-winning actor Matt Damon, including favorites like True Grit and Good Will Hunting.
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(Photo by Courtesy Everett Collection / THE TRUMAN SHOW)
The Mind Bending 2-Film Collection includes two iconic films from the 90s: Best Picture winner American Beauty and the prophetic reality-show satire The Truman Show.
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(Photo by Universal Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection. M3GAN)
Just in time for Halloween weekend, get lost in some of the best horror films of the decade with this five-film bundle that includes M3GAN, Halloween, Us, and two more chilling titles.
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(Photo by Mary Cybulski / Paramount Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET)
Two tales of greed, fortune, and high-stakes betrayal come together in this movie bundle that includes The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short.
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(Photo by Orion / courtesy Everett Collection. THE TERMINATOR)
Man and machine combine in this action-packed bundle that features two cult classics: James Cameron’s The Terminator and Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop.
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(Photo by Paramount / courtesy Everett Collection. FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF)
Three critically acclaimed and infinitely quotable ’80s comedies make up this must-have bundle that’s guaranteed to bring all the laughs.
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(Photo by Courtesy Everett Collection. NOAH)
This collection features three epic movies with massive production design and scope: Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, and J. D. Dillard’s Devotion.
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(Photo by Courtesy Everett Collection. THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY)
Saddle up for two Clint Eastwood-staring iconic films that make up this bundle: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars.
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(Photo by Paramount / courtesy Everett Collection. WAYNE'S WORLD)
Gear up for the ultimate binge-worthy bundle. Featuring some of the most hysterical movies ever made, this 6-film collection includes fan favorites like Wayne’s World, 48 Hours, and four others.
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(Photo by MGM / courtesy Everett Collection. LICORICE PIZZA)
Oh, to be young and in love. In the midst of all the spooky content, enjoy the hot, heavy, and complicated romance films that make up this two-movie bundle.
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(Photo by United Artists / courtesy Everett Collection. RAIN MAN)
See the best films of the ’80s with this bundle that features two Best Picture-winning titles: Oliver Stone’s Platoon and Barry Levinson’s Rain Man.
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(Photo by Universal Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection. NOBODY)
Enjoy the best in non-stop action with these five explosive films like Ilya Naishuller’s Nobody, Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity, and Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
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(Photo by Paramount / courtesy Everett Collection. THE NAKED GUN)
From the groundbreaking writer-director team Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker, this bundle features three hilarious and critically acclaimed comedies.
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(Photo by Courtesy Everett Collection. REPO MAN)
This collection features five action classics, including Alex Cox’s Repo Man, Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, and more.
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(Photo by United Artists / courtesy Everett Collection. THE BIRDCAGE)
Get ready for non-stop laugher with this bundle comprised of two outrageous ensemble comedies: Mike Nichols’ The Birdcage and Emma Seligman’s Bottoms.
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(Photo by Courtesy Everett Collection. MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS)
This gift-worthy bundle features some of the most celebrated films in cinema history. The six-movie collection includes favorites like It’s A Wonderful Life, Murder on the Orient Express, My Fair Lady, and more.
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(Photo by MGM / courtesy Everett Collection. GET SHORTY)
Dive into these criminally hilarious comedies with star-studded casts. The triple-feature bundle includes the Coen brothers’ Fargo, Charles Crichton’s A Fish Called Wanda, and Barry Sonnenfeld’s Get Shorty.
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(Photo by Samuel Goldwyn Films / courtesy Everett Collection. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING)
Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in these adaptations of William Shakespeare’s classic plays. The two-film bundle includes Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing.
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(Photo by Courtesy Everett Collection. DON'T LOOK NOW)
A trio of dramatic thrillers packed with stellar performances make up this collection that includes Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, Gregory Hoblit’s Primal Fear, and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown.
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(Photo by Courtesy Everett Collection. WEST SIDE STORY)
Dance and sing along to the these two beloved Broadway stories: Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s West Side Story and Norman Jewison’s Fiddler on the Roof.
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(Photo by ©BBC / courtesy Everett Collection. THELMA & LOUISE)
Buckle up for some legendary adventures with these unforgettable duos. The two-film bundle includes Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise and Stephen Herek’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
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(Photo by Orion Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection. EIGHT MEN OUT)
Two home run hits make up this baseball-themed bundle that features Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham and John Sayles’s Eight Men Out.
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Ah, the 1980s: A decade of big hair, shoulder pads, heavy synths, and multiple violent robots and androids. Two stood out from the pack though – Robocop and Terminator – and in our latest episode of Vs. we’re going full robot wars, pitting Paul Verhoeven’s ultraviolent black comedy against James Cameron’s groundbreaking and grungy time-travel actioner. Host Mark Ellis (who comes with zero robot parts), will compare the two original films across multiple criteria including box office performance, Tomatometer and Audience Score, the quality of their characters, and more. Who will be the last bot standing? Tune in to find out.
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(Photo by Marvel Studios / Disney, 20th Century Fox, Miramax, TriStar)
For their bravery, wit, general badassery, and unbroken spirit in the face of enormous challenges (be they gender discrimination or acid-hissing aliens), we pay tribute to 87 Fearless Movie Women Who Inspire Us.
How did we arrive at our top 87? With the help of a fearless panel of women critics made up of some of the best writers in the industry, including a few on the Rotten Tomatoes staff. Starting with a long list of candidates, they whittled down the list to an initial set of 72 amazingly heroic characters and ordered them, crowning the most fearless woman movie hero in the process. Want to know more about the ladies who voted? We included their bios at the end! Then, in addition to their contributions, which make up the bulk of the list, we also added a handful of more recent entries chosen by the RT staff.
The final list (you can watch every movie in a special FandangoNOW collection) gives compelling insight into which heroes have resonated through the years, women whose big-screen impact remains even as the times change. We have the usual suspects along with plenty of surprises (Working Girl, your day has come!), and the only way to discover them all is reading on for the 87 fearless women movie heroes — and groups of heroes — who inspire us!
(Photo by 20th Century Fox Film Corp.)
#1One of the appeals of science-fiction is the luxury to comment on modern issues and social mores, or even eschew them completely. Take a look at the diverse space crews in Star Trek, Sunshine, or Alien, where people are hired based on nothing but competence, and none have proven their competence under extreme pressure as well as Ellen Ripley. She’s tough, pragmatic, and cunning in Alien. Journey with Ripley into Aliens and we get to see her in a new light: mothering and nurturing with hints of deep empathy (Sigourney Weaver was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for this performance), which only makes the Xenomorph-stomping side of her even more badass.
(Photo by 20th Century Fox Film Corp.)
#2And on the other side of the Sigourney spectrum, Weaver here plays Katharine, a particular kind of woman who’s nasty to the competition: other women. The object of her scorn is her secretary, Tess McGill (played by Melanie Griffith), who has her great ideas stolen by Katharine. The plucky Tess in turn pretends to be her boss’s colleague, and proceeds to shake things up in this corporate Cinderella story. Who doesn’t dream of one day suddenly arriving in a higher echelon of society? Of course, it’s what you do once you get there that’s important, and the glowing and tenacious Tess makes the most of it.
(Photo by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Marvel)
#3Hard-drinking, ass-kicking Valkyrie makes no apologies for her choices and draws solid boundaries. Sure, she’s flawed, but that’s what makes her successes so sweet. That she’s played by Tessa Thompson doubles the fun.
(Photo by Marvel/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
#4Letitia Wright proved that a sister doesn’t have to sit in the shadow of her sibling simply because he’s king. Her Shuri has the smarts and the sass to cut her own path, making her technical genius essential not only to the Kingdom of Wakanda, but also the Avengers’ recent efforts to take down the tyrant Thanos.
(Photo by Fox 2000 Pictures)
#5Don’t ask us to choose a favorite among Hidden Figures’ Space Race heroines: Taraji P. Henson as Katherine G. Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan, and Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson. The Oscar-nominated drama tells the story of a real-life team of female African-American mathematicians crucial to NASA’s early space program.
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#6As Imperator Furiosa, Charlize Theron blazed a trail for enslaved post-apocalyptic cult wives in skimpy clothing – literally. With an assist from Max (Tom Hardy), soldier Furiosa set the road on fire to rescue her charges from madman Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), leader of the Citadel.
(Photo by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Lucasfilm Ltd)
#7Daisy Ridley gave girls everywhere – and full-grown women, in truth – a fresh new hero to adore when she debuted in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Of humble origins, scrappy Rey overcomes her circumstances living as an orphan in a harsh environment to become an essential component in the Resistance. It helps, of course, that The Force is with her.
(Photo by Clay Enos/Warner Bros. Pictures)
#8Despite her superpowers and privileged background, Gal Gadot as Diana – princess of Themyscira and the Amazons, daughter of Queen Hippolyta and King of the Gods Zeus – retains her humility and a genuine care for humanity. She’s also the most rock solid member of DC’s boys club of Justice League superheroes.
(Photo by 20th Century Fox)
#9Come on…she’s Princess Leia. She leads the Rebel Alliance. She saves the galaxy again and again (with a little help from Luke, and Han, and Chewy). She eventually becomes a revered general, but from the very start – when she first confronts Darth Vader at the beginning of Episode IV – A New Hope – she shows a defiant, fiery nature that never dims. In her defining film role, Carrie Fisher brings impeccable comic timing to this cosmic princess.
(Photo by Roadside Attractions)
#10Before she was Katniss, Jennifer Lawrence was Ree, the role that made her a star and earned her the first of four Oscar nominations. A no-nonsense teenager, Ree dares to brave the dangers lurking within the Ozark Mountains to track down her drug-dealing father and protect her siblings and their home. With each quietly treacherous encounter, she shows depth and instincts beyond her years, and a willingness to fight for what matters.
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#11You can’t have any fear when you’re going up against Hannibal Lecter – or at least you can’t show it. He’ll sniff it out from a mile away. But what’s exciting about Jodie Foster’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the young FBI cadet is the way she works through her fear, harnessing that nervous energy alongside her powerful intellect and dogged determination. Clarice Starling is a hero for every little girl who thought she wasn’t good enough.
(Photo by Universal Pictures)
#12Julia Roberts won a best-actress Oscar for her charismatic portrayal of this larger-than-life, real-life figure. Erin Brockovich is repeatedly underestimated because of the flashy way she dresses and the brash way she carries herself. But as a single mom who becomes an unlikely environmental advocate, she’s a steely fighter. What she lacks in book smarts, she more than makes up for with heart. Steven Soderbergh’s film is an inspiring underdog story.
(Photo by 20th Century Fox)
#13Jane Craig is the toughest, sharpest, most prepared woman in the newsroom at all times, but she isn’t afraid to cry to let it all out when the pressure gets too great. Writer-director James L. Brooks created this feminist heroine, this workplace goddess, but Holly Hunter brilliantly brings her to life. She’s just so vibrant. Even when she’s sitting still (which isn’t often), you can feel her thinking. And while two men compete for her attention, no man could ever define her.
(Photo by MGM Studios)
#14It would be easy to underestimate Marge Gunderson. Sure, she’s in a position of power as the Brainerd, Minnesota, police chief. But with her folksy manner – and the fact that she’s so pregnant, she’s about to burst – she’s not exactly the most intimidating figure. But in the hands of the brilliant Frances McDormand, she’s consistently the smartest and most fearless person in the room, and she remains one of the Coen brothers’ most enduring characters. You betcha.
(Photo by Marvel/Walt Disney Studios)
#15Danai Gurira plays Okoye, the leader of the Dora Milaje who specializes in spear fighting and strategic wig flipping. Of late, Okoye has been seen keeping company with Avengers.
(Photo by Miramax Films)
#16Things Bridget Jones is prone to: accidents, fantasizing about sexy coworkers, worrying about her weight, and running mad into the snow wearing tiger-print underwear. All totally relatable things, so it’s no surprise she’s the highest-ranked romcom heroine on this list. It also doesn’t hurt that, at their best, Bridget’s movies are what romantic comedies aspire to: They’re fun, cute, and just when it feels like everything’s about to fall apart, there’s the exhilarating little twist at the end that leaves watchers feel like they’re floating on air.
(Photo by Paramount Pictures)
#17It’s true that Cher is a little oblivious to the world at large, but she’s just so earnest and she tries so hard. She discovers a passion for doing good after successfully matchmaking a pair of teachers, and after a series of difficult lessons learned, she makes an honest effort to escape her privileged bubble and become a better person. Like we all should.
(Photo by MGM Studios)
#18Thelma and Louise, best friends who stick by each other no matter what. And when their girls’ getaway weekend quickly turns from frivolous to frightening, they find even deeper levels of loyalty to each other. Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon have an effortless chemistry with each other, and Ridley Scott’s intimate and thrilling film never judges these women for the decisions they make — or for the lengths to which they’ll go in the name of freedom.
(Photo by Warner Brothers)
#19Enduring racism, misogyny, and emotional, physical, and sexual violence, Celie (Whoopi Goldberg in her film debut) transcends her traumatic life in the rural South, finding friends, strength, and her own voice.
(Photo by Sony Pictures Classics)
#20As a transgender waitress, Marina constantly endures cruelty and confusion from the ignorant people around her. When the one man who loves her for who she truly is dies unexpectedly, she finds herself in the midst of an even more emotional, personal fight. Transgender actress Daniela Vega initially was hired as a consultant on Sebastian Lelio’s film; instead, she became its star, and A Fantastic Woman deservedly won this year’s foreign-language Oscar.
(Photo by TriStar Pictures)
#21Sarah Connor makes many want to be a better mother – or at least get to the gym and work on our triceps. The once-timid waitress crafts herself into a force of nature, a fearsome and visceral manifestation of pure maternal instinct. Played most memorably by Linda Hamilton in the first two Terminator movies, Sarah may seem unhinged, but she’s got laser-like focus when it comes to protecting her son, John, from the many threats coming his way.
(Photo by Miramax Films)
#22The return of blaxploitation queen, Pam Grier! What’s not to love? Especially in Quentin Tarantino’s killer love letter to South Bay Los Angeles. As Jackie Brown, Grier exudes classic cool with a tough exterior.
(Photo by Richard Olley/Columbia Pictures)
#23Jessica Chastain has made a career of playing quick-witted characters with nerves of steel. Nowhere is this truer than in her starring role in Kathryn Bigelow’s thrilling depiction of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Maya is obsessively focused in her pursuit of the al Qaeda leader. She’s a confident woman who has to be extra prepared to survive in a man’s world. But when the mission is over and she finally allows some emotion to shine through, it’s cathartic for us all.
(Photo by Warner Brothers/ Everett Collection)
#24She’s the smartest kid in the class, regardless of the subject. The hardest worker, too. And she’s proud of those qualities, making her an excellent role model for girls out there with an interest in math and science. But Hermione isn’t all about the books. Over the eight Harry Potter films, in Emma Watson’s increasingly confident hands, Hermione reveals her resourcefulness, loyalty, and grace. She’s a great student but an even better friend.
(Photo by Columbia Pictures/ Everett Collection)
#25Howard Hawks’ celebrated screwball comedy benefited from a not-so-small change to the stage play it was based on: In the original The Front Page, Hildy Johnson was a male. But thanks to Rosalind Russell’s lively performance, as well as a few script changes she personally insisted upon, the character blossomed into an early icon of the independent working woman who’s not only just as effective at her job as her male counterparts, but also equally adept with a witty comeback.
(Photo by Walt Disney/ Everett Collection)
#26Elastigirl takes on all the trials of motherhood: She’s got hyper kids, a bored husband, and has to witness certain parts of her body unperkify. Elastigirl also just happens to be a superhero, with the fate of the world resting on her shoulders.
(Photo by Universal/courtesy Everett Collection)
#27Fans of the short-lived but beloved Fox sci-fi series Firefly were already familiar with Gina Torres‘ badassery as Zoe Washburne in Serenity. A veteran of the Unification War and second in command of the ship, Zoe is a strong and loyal ally who rarely pulls punches, whether she’s stating a controversial opinion or engaged in a literal fistfight. With her free spirit and deadly skills, it’s no wonder she became a fan favorite.
(Photo by 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection)
#28Dolly Parton is a national treasure, and 9 to 5 allows her to light up the screen with her sparkling, charismatic personality. But while Doralee may seem like a sweet Southern gal, she’s got a stiff backbone and a sharp tongue, and she isn’t afraid to use them when she’s crossed. When she finally stands up to her sexist bully of a boss alongside co-workers Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, it’s nothing short of a revolution – one that remains sadly relevant today.
(Photo by Columbia Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection)
#29The story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is one that deserves to be told, and it’s Geena Davis‘ Dottie Hinson who grounds this fictional account. She’s a talented local player who becomes the star of the Rockford Peaches, and it’s her quick thinking that brings publicity to the sport. When her decision to play in the World Series leads to a spectacular finish, she also demonstrates a very human vulnerability, making her a strong but relatable heroine.
(Photo by Focus Features/courtesy Everett Collection)
#30Jane Austen’s classic heroine Elizabeth Bennet jumps off the page in the 2005 film starring Keira Knightley, who gives audiences an intelligent, down-to-Earth, sometimes literally dirty, but uncompromisingly steadfast leading lady.
(Photo by Everett Collection)
#31Never underestimate a sorority girl. They are organized and they know how to get what the want. In the case of Elle Woods, she goes after her law school goals with a smile on her face, a spring in her step, and an impeccably coordinated wardrobe. Reese Witherspoon is impossibly adorable in the role, with a potent combination of smarts and heart to shut down the naysayers who are foolish enough to judge her simply by her looks.
(Photo by Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection)
#32Talk brashly and carry a big sword. As Tom Cruise’s character unravels a complex time travel sci-fi story, a constant in his fluctuating world is Rita Vrataski aka the killer Angel of Verdun. But Emily Blunt gives life to Rita beyond burgeoning love interest. She takes the lead and makes the movie just as much her’s.
(Photo by Marvel Studios)
#33When Nick Fury sent that mysterious intergalactic text message right before disappearing into dust at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, eager fans knew what was in store. As played by Brie Larson, Captain Marvel is one of the most powerful superheroes in the MCU — if not THE most powerful — and she’s in such high demand that she spends most of her time battling evil on other planets. She shows up when it counts, though, and she can rock a mowhawk like nobody’s business.
(Photo by Paramount /Courtesy Everett Collection)
#34Though hit hard by tragedy and seemingly insurmountable odds of surviving an alien invasion, mother and daughter duo Evelin and Regan Abbott prove their mettle in A Quiet Place.
(Photo by Paramount Pictures / Courtesy: Everett Collection)
#35Played first in film by the groundbreaking star of the Star Trek TV series, Nichelle Nichols, the role was passed on to Zoe Saldana in the 2009 reboot film. Uhura, the USS Enterprise chief communications officer, was a critical crew member throughout the franchise in both TV and film.
(Photo by 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection)
#36Who can stand up to Hugh Jackman’s fierce Wolverine without flinching? His cloned daughter X-23. Dafne Keen imbued the preteen mutant, a.k.a. “Laura,” with a volatile mix of anger, despondency, obstinance, and hope – that we would very much like to see more of.
(Photo by 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection)
#37She’s Buffy. She slays vampires while juggling cheerleading and the SATs. But while Kristy Swanson gives the character a satricial bent, it’s the legendary TV adaptation that gives this character a lasting legacy. But the movie ain’t a bad place to start.
(Photo by Warner Bros. Thumbnail: Jasin Boland for ©Warner Bros. Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Entertainment/Courtesy Everett Collection)
There’s only one place where you can get clones, time travel, simulated realities, irradiated and irritated giant lizards, and space fights and beyond. (Maybe not all at once, but we can dream.) Anything’s possible in this creative nebula known as science fiction, and with its long and historic association with cinema, we present our choices of the greatest science-fiction movies ever: The 150 Essential Sci-Fi Movies!
As they do with horror, filmmakers use science fiction to reflect our aspirations, terrors, and issues of the times. Through genre lens, we can consider our impact on the environment (Godzilla, WALL-E), technology gone berserk (The Terminator, Ex Machina), identity (Blade Runner, The Matrix), and societal breakdowns (Children of Men, A Clockwork Orange). We might even check-in on the current state of the human condition (Gattaca, Her).
Or, maybe we just want to see giant ants wreak havoc across the neighborhood. There may not be a lot of subtext in a big monster movie like Them!, or even crowd-pleasing masterpieces like Star Wars or Back to the Future, but they speak to the one thing that attracts us to movies in the first place: escapism. Science-fiction movies are our tickets to planets far-away (Star Trek, Avatar, Starship Troopers), or a quick hop to a local joint in the solar system (The Martian, Total Recall). They take us just above the atmosphere (Gravity), deep down to the bottom of the ocean (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Abyss), and into the human body (Fantastic Voyage). Limited only 2020by imagination, sci-fi inspires wonder, awe, terror, and hope for alternative mindsets and better futures.
Sci-fi spreads across subgenres, all represented here: the monster movie (Cloverfield), space opera (Serenity), cyberpunk (Ghost in the Shell), and post-apocalyptic (Mad Max: Fury Road) and more. Or it can fuse onto traditional genres like drama (Donnie Darko, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), comedy (Repo Man, Idiocracy), and action (Predator, Demoliton Man). Wherever the destination, these movies — each with at least 20 reviews — were selected because of their unique, fun, and possibly even mind-blowing spins on reality.
It’s time to strap in and cue the Theremin for some of the best science-fiction films created: Time to launch the 150 Essential Sci-Fi Movies! (Alex Vo)
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Hollywood doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to creating female characters, routinely giving them smaller parts and less screen time according to research collected by resource center Women and Hollywood. But what they do with that screen time? That is increasingly becoming more interesting. From Danai Gurira’s fierce Okoye tossing her wig so that she can better fight the enemy in Black Panther to Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince not thinking twice about entering No Man’s Land in Wonder Woman (or just some sassy lip service from old Hollywood greats like Mae West and Katharine Hepburn), there are quite a few moments of women in film that make us say “f–k yeah.” So we rounded up a few of our favorites for this list.
With her sultry purrs, swaying hips, and mastery of the double entendre, Mae West could easily take up 90-percent of the spots on this list. But the sheer moxie of her role in 1933’s I’m No Angel is an inspiration to us all. “When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better,” she flaunts to Cary Grant’s wealthy Jack Clayton in director Wesley Ruggles’ salty romp. Here’s hoping HBO is still working on that biopic about West because the world needs her right now.
Never underestimate the cunning of a determined heiress. In this famous hitchhiking scene from director Frank Capra’s screwball comedy, Claudette Colbert’s headstrong Ellie Andrews shows Clark Gable’s washed-up reporter Peter Warne a much more effective way to stop traffic than the old waving thumb routine. The film – the first of three movies to win all of the five major Academy Awards – is adored by cinephiles and continues to be celebrated in current popular culture (perhaps you might remember it referenced in the modern-day cinematic classic, Sex and the City 2?).
Many old Hollywood films suffer from the virgin vs. temptress depiction of women, but Katharine Hepburn was not typically one for such simplicities. This film was her first big hit and the one that cemented the public’s knowledge of her unmistakable mid-Atlantic accent. “Dexter, would you mind doing something for me? Get the heck out of here,” she demands as shuts down her ex-husband, played by Cary Grant, who is intruding upon the celebration for her upcoming second marriage. (Because this is a 1940 romantic comedy, he will also become her new husband by the time the credits roll.)
This film adaptation of the Cole Porter play (itself an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew) was a celebration of female independence disguised as a cheery musical comedy. Take, for example, the bluntly titled solo “I Hate Men,” which is meant to represent one character’s complete and total side-eye to the concept of courtship. Lines like, “of all the types I’ve ever met within our democracy / I hate the most the athlete with his manner bold and brassy!” make it seem like not much has changed since the show hit Broadway in 1948 and then, eventually, theaters in 1953.
Never judge a movie by its title and never underestimate the craftiness of a buxom bombshell. There are so many great moments in director Howard Hawks’ musical comedy, but we love the way that Marilyn Monroe’s showgirl, Lorelei Lee, doesn’t raise her voice an octave above her trademark whisper when she tells off her intended’s disrespectful father, who dismisses her as another gold-digger. “Don’t you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty?,” she says. “You wouldn’t marry a girl just because she’s pretty, but my goodness, doesn’t it help?” Well, we do all lose our charms in the end …
It takes a lot of gumption to stand up to the King of Siam. After all, all you risk losing is a little self respect (and balance) if you agree to squat lower than his height whilst wearing a hoop skirt. But Anna (Deborah Kerr) did it, and she got through to the hard-headed monarch played by Yul Brynner. It eventually led to some pretty remarkable dancing and romance (with a clear understanding that this kind of thing can happen, of course).
A #MeToo moment long before the hashtag went mainstream, Audrey Hepburn’s bookshop owner and budding philosopher Jo Stockton is quite clear that teaching Fred Astaire’s older fashion photographer, Dick Avery, about empathy doesn’t mean that she wants to be kissed – “by you or anyone else.” They do lock lips at the end of the Stanley Donen-directed film, but by then it’s a mutually agreed-upon action.
With a flash of fuchsia ruffles and some fancy footwork, Rita Moreno’s Anita and her gal pals offer a piece of hope during the dance number for Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s song “America” in directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ 1957 film adaptation of the popular musical. This moment isn’t just for immigrants to this country with dreams of success (or just having your own washing machine); it symbolizes the ability to stand up to the bothersome men who might be holding you back.
So much of the legacy of outlaw Bonnie Parker is tied up in Faye Dunaway’s Oscar-nominated depiction of her in director Arthur Penn’s 1967 film: A bored young girl from a nowhere town who jumps at a chance to break from the rulebook that fate set out for her — even if it means going whole hog into a life of crime. The way she taunts this power and revels in the danger of it by telling Michael J. Pollard’s C.W. Moss that “we rob banks” is so brazenly anti-heroine that it makes even the most stringent pearl-clutchers pause and consider adding some excitement to their lives.
Maybe the world needs more vigilantes like Pam Grier’s eponymous crime fighter in writer-director Jack Hill’s 1973 blaxploitation film. A nurse who is sick of seeing her neighborhood (and, specifically, her own sister) destroyed by drug use, Coffy goes rogue to take down any and all responsible parties – especially the ones who double-cross her. Car-jacking, faking a drug-induced stupor, and the killing of corrupt cops ensue.
Carrie Fisher’s Leia Organa may be a princess, but she for sure isn’t a damsel waiting to be rescued. In the first few minutes alone of the 1977 Star Wars movie, A New Hope, she acts quickly to hide the blue prints for the Death Star space station, is so over the threat of an uber-villain like Darth Vader, and mouths off to Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing), even though she seems headed for certain death. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo could never.
Sometimes all it takes is one woman who is willing to risk it all. Sally Field’s Oscar-winning turn in the role inspired by union activist Crystal Lee Sutton brought increased public attention to the need for safe and healthy working conditions. In the film’s stressful climax, we see her strongly and silently stand on her work table and hold up a sign with a single, solitary message: UNION. It works, even if she is hauled off to jail.
With all the workplace revenge fantasies about lecherous bosses that have been made, we really could just name director Colin Higgins’ seminal film and be done with it. But let’s concentrate on Dolly Parton’s fed-up Doralee Rhodes. Sick of being sexually harassed and gossiped about by her boss, Franklin Hart, Jr. (Dabney Coleman), she takes advantage of his current moment of immobility (he’s been kidnapped and tied up) to make him think she’s willing to change him from a “rooster to a hen in one shot” of her gun.
Apparently messing with fate is just asking to get your head squashed. By the end of director James Cameron’s first Terminator movie, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) has embraced her inner badass and is ready to finish the job that resistance fighter Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) was sent from the future to do: Take down the killer robot played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and save humankind. How does she do this when pipe bombs aren’t enough? Flattening its head in a hydraulic press and uttering one obvious-but-mighty catchphrase (“you’re terminated, f—er!”).
There is so much pain and suffering in director Steven Spielberg’s 1985 period drama (and Alice Walker’s novel, which serves as its basis), but the idea of a woman encouraging a man to abuse another woman? That is squashed in one wrenching scene. “All my life I had to fight … but I ain’t never thought I’d have to fight in my own house!,” the hardened Sofia (Oprah Winfrey) challenges her step mother-in-law Celie (Whoopi Goldberg), who had herself become weak and submissive after a lifetime of abuse.
There comes a time when a woman can no longer handle the put-downs and harassments; a moment when she (hopefully) dares to prove her naysayers wrong and that she can (and will) amount to something without them. For Angela Viracco (Faith Prince), that moment came when she accepted that her lousy, kidnapping crook of a boyfriend Eddie (Chris Murney) was more interested in his own ego than her feelings. She calls him a “misguided … asshole” before walking out for “elocution class.”
“Get away from her, you bitch!” The phrase that will be forever associated with Alien franchise star Sigourney Weaver also works for so many of us who have never had the pleasure of battling an alien queen while wearing an exo-suit (try it the next time you’re at a club, a grocery store, or a dog park when someone gets inappropriately close to your friend). To her credit, Weaver has said that she thinks she got the line in one take. You better just start dealing with it, Hudson.
Burned out by life and distrustful of everyone and everything? Shirley MacLaine’s Ouiser understands. At this point in director Herbert Ross’ 1989 film adaptation of Robert Harling’s play, Ouiser has zero qualms about telling Julia Roberts’ Shelby that, in no uncertain terms, she does not want to be fixed up with some seemingly kind-hearted widower. Don’t take it personally, though. As Ouiser says, “I’m not crazy. I’ve just been in a very bad mood for 40 years.”
Even though Murray (Donald Faison) would eventually school Dionne (Stacey Dash) about the cultural significance of street slang in Clueless, Regina King has zero time for the vernacular in her breakout role as Shalika in director John Singleton’s 1991 coming-of-age dramedy Boyz n the Hood. As she blatantly puts it during a party, she “ain’t no ho.” All the respect for my future Oscar winner.
Meow. The battle of wits between Batman (Michael Keaton) and the Penguin (Danny DeVito) was getting kind of droll before Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman Simone Bileses her way into it in all her red-lipsticked glory. They would also soon learn that she’d turned the department store behind them into a powder keg (after lassoing guns out of the hands of two underpaid night security guards). Because that’s how you make an entrance.
Domestic abuse is so often a hidden crime, and it’s not something we should celebrate. But Tina Turner’s brave admittance of her own suffering (and Angela Bassett’s Oscar-nominated depiction of it in director Brian Gibson’s 1993 biopic) did wonders for mainstreaming a previously taboo topic. The scene where she fights in a limo, after so many people ignored her pain because of Ike Turner’s power, resonated with an unfortunate number of audience members.
The ’90s ultimate Final Girl, played by Neve Campbell, finally puts an end to Billy (Skeet Ulrich) and Stu’s (Matthew Lillard) murder spree when she shoots the former square between the eyes. Warned that the killer always comes back, our heroine – who would go on to survive three more movies and a total of seven killers overall – pulls the trigger and declares, “Not in my movie.” Sidney Prescott: Breaking horror-movie rules since 1996.
Female empowerment sing-alongs are a trope in and of themselves. But a group of middle-aged women played by Bette Midler, Diane Keaton, and Goldie Hawn who have been wronged by love and life rocking out in three-part harmony to a Lesley Gore staple in matching white suits? Yes, we would very much like to be invited to that party. We promise not to tell them what to do, what to say, and we will certainly not put them on display.
In the future, combat is still clearly required to survive. Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo, a humanoid reconstructed by scientists in 2263 from remaining cells in a sarcophagus, isn’t always sure if she likes people and the harm that they’ve done to the planet, but she is quite good at protecting us – especially when the bad guys come at her. She also made a collection of ‘90s mall rats (well, me) want red hair and white midriff tops.
Disney heroine Mulan (who is voiced by Ming-Na Wen) accomplishes quite a feat in directors Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft’s 1998 animated hit. Not only is she brave enough to masquerade as a man and enlist in the Chinese army in the name of sparing her father, a great warrior who is now in weakened health, but she and her trusty sidekicks are able to save the emperor from a bloody attack by the Huns – and get the entire city to put sexism aside and bow down to her.
Before Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman entered No Man’s Land or Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen braced for the Hunger Games arenas, Carrie-Anne Moss’ Trinity was bending the rules of time and space without breaking a sweat in her Latex for the Wachowskis’ cyber-punk dystopian thriller. She came with quite an introduction, after all. In the beginning few moments of the first Matrix, we see her sail onto rooftops, take down a fleet of police officers and stare death in the face as she gets out just in time. A role model to us all.
It’s easy to hate Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) in writer-director Alexander Payne’s 1999 adaptation of novelist Tom Perrotta’s political farce. She is a Type-A grating perfectionist and, chances are, she reminds you of some obnoxious overachiever who went to your high school. But she deserves her success and, in a spectacular art of verbal emasculation during one scene, you can see why: Matthew Broderick’s otherwise beloved high school teacher, Jim McAllister, thinks he’s cornered her into admitting she destroyed a rival candidate’s election campaign posters while implying that his true frustration with her is that she had an affair with his married, adult friend. Tracy goes on the attack and you instantly end up rooting for her.
Much of the beginning of director Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 biopic sets up why polite society should hate Julia Roberts’ Oscar-winning portrayal of the eponymous heroine. She’s got kids from different dads, has street smarts instead of framed diplomas, and used to be a beauty queen (“Oh, the horror!” to all of the above). But Erin’s able to get answers that others can’t by playing up her other, ahem, assets. “They’re called boobs, Ed,” she smirks when her boss (Albert Finney) asks how she acquired such necessary and privileged information.
Even if martial arts isn’t your thing, it’s hard not to ignore the beauty in director Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning film. The 2000 movie is also a feminist mantra, as it concentrates on fighting techniques traditionally employed by women. No matter if you’re rooting for Michelle Yeoh’s skilled warrior or Zhang Ziyi’s governor’s daughter who secretly trained in the art of Wudang fighting, it is empowering to see them duel each other in one of the most thrilling sequences of the film, as it demonstrates exactly how deadly each of these ladies is.
Does Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty really look like someone who isn’t prepared to burn rubber in a drag race? Nope. And the opposing driver should have heeded her advice to “hit Hollywood Boulevard” if he was looking for a hook-up. All she was willing to offer him was an “adrenaline rush” and a chance to lose a chunk of change. She made good on both of those.
Reese Witherspoon’s pink-partial Elle Woods showed that one could care about the law and time-consuming hair and beauty regimens in director Robert Luketic’s brightly-colored comedy. All she had to do to get her client (Ali Larter) off the hook for murdering her husband is prove that the prosecution’s star witness’s alibi that she wasn’t around to see the gun go off was a bit frizzy at the ends (perms take a couple days without shampooing to set, don’t ya know?).
It’s complicated to watch the Kill Bill movies now, in the wake of star Uma Thurman’s allegations that Quentin Tarantino mistreated her on set. But, the writer-director’s 2003 ode to martial arts films still has a message about a woman’s revenge plot to take down her former colleagues and mentor/boss. The climax in the first movie happens after she murders a nemesis’ young protégé (after begging the girl to leave her be) and involves the epic, bloody slaying of a menagerie of swordfighters and knife throwers in suits. Hell hath no fury …
While condoning violence should not be encouraged, it’s easy to understand why Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) felt the need to punch the “foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach” Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) in the nose. The sniveling little rich brat had it coming; he’d just got an innocent hippogriff sentenced to death because he’d lied to his powerful father about why the animal attacked him.
It’s not difficult to be badass when you possess the ability to control blue fire, and Selma Blair’s Liz Sherman from the Hellboy films proved more than once that she was a force to be reckoned with. Sure, she came close to burning down a hospital (not her fault, really), but who comes to Hellboy’s aid when he’s being overwhelmed by demon pups? Liz flames on and incinerates the beasties — and fries a few demon eggs in the process — proving that behind every good man (or Hellboy), there’s an equally good woman.
The only true way to survive The Hunger Games’ eponymous cruel, futuristic gladiator arenas isn’t to kill a bunch of other teenagers – it’s to outsmart the people who forced you into them and then changed the rules at will so that the odds were never going to be in your favor. When killing her ally (and budding crush) Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) seems to be the only option for survival, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) bets big and pivots to suggest a double suicide pact on national television. It works, and they’re safe – for a while.
Who says a princess has to have a suitor? Tearing her constricting dress, Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) shows she’s a better shot than all of the “eligible” bachelors fighting for her hand in an archery contest. Much like her bouncy red curls that flow in all their glory, this medieval Scottish princess from directors Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman’s 2012 animated Disney film cannot be contained.
Sometimes the pressure is too much and you have to roar with all your might. This is especially true if you’re a little girl in the Louisiana bayou and you desperately want to please your father. Quvenzhané Wallis received an Oscar nomination for playing Hushpuppy, the six-year-old who is mighty enough to find her own means of survival as her world crumbles around her in director Benh Zeitlin’s 2012 drama.
It’s one thing to kill your deranged, megalomaniac captor. It’s quite another to do it during a dusty, gritty car chase in a post-apocalyptic action film, like director George Miller’s 2015 OScar-winner. Here, Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa finally destroys Hugh Keays-Byrne’s Immortan Joe after his years of abuse and horrendous crimes on her community, particularly the five women he’s kept for “breeding.”
Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) was one of the smartest mathematicians at NASA. She knew she had to choose her words carefully when her boss, Kevin Costner’s Al Harrison, asked her why she kept disappearing during her shift in front of co-workers who didn’t really trust her that much already. The answer to her problem was a simple enough one; she just needed someone else to solve it – in the still-segregated building, she needed a lavatory she was allowed to use to be near her office. And she got it.
Timid-seeming Elisa (Sally Hawkins) gets “moments” aplenty in Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning The Shape Of Water: a gorgeous dance sequence, a wonderfully matter-of-fact masturbation scene, a dreamy underwater awakening. But the one that had audiences cheering – and still does – is the scene in which she tells Michael Shannon’s cartoonishly awful Colonel Strickland “F–k you” in sign language.
As Charlize Theron’s MI6 field agent Lorraine Broughton deadpans to her interrogators in a debriefing, if she knew she’d be walking into a police ambush when she searched their dead colleague’s apartment, she would have “worn a different outfit.” Instead, she takes on a group of thugs like a real-life game of Whac-A-Mole – if, of course, that arcade game was traditionally played in over-the-knee black boots, a miniskirt, and a white trench coat.
It isn’t so much that Daisy Ridley’s Rey is able to hold her own in a fight with armed guards after Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren chooses her over his master, Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis). Everyone knew that was coming. It’s when she realizes that Kylo still hasn’t come back to the light side of the Force and they battle for Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber so hard that it splits in two that things really get interesting.
Sometimes you want to emphasize with the villain – especially when she’s played with such vindictiveness as Cate Blanchett plays Thor’s big sister, Hela. And like so many other older siblings, she took away her brother’s favorite toy (his hammer!) when he refused to obey her. Sorry, Thor (Chris Hemsworth). You can’t win them all. But at least you still have chiseled arms and pretty blonde hair.
Well, they did call it No Man’s Land. Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince doesn’t care that soldiers haven’t been able to get the Germans to retreat from this bloody war zone. She only cares that people are suffering and they need her help. The scene, which some called the best superhero moment of the year when director Patty Jenkins’ film came out in 2017, showed a fearless, determined heroine courageously throw herself into battle in the name of protecting the innocent.
Danai Gurira’s Okoye can fight in an evening gown, but in a major act of toppling the patriarchy she feels more comfortable going into battle without her wig. This no-nonsense moment is both practical (why hold onto anything that’s a liability when things are about to get real?) and also an educational tool to teach mass audiences a lesson about Black womens’ hair.
Because one female superhero is great but three is even better, there’s this moment of comradery in Anthony and Joe Russo’s 2018 comic-book film: Danai Gurira’s Okoye had just gotten used to fighting with Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow when Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch descended from the skies to help them finish the fight. Okoye does ask an important question, though: “Why was she up there all this time?”
Want to prove your loyalty? Then don’t allude to the things better left unsaid. Emma Stone’s Abigail learned this lesson well when she attempted to bond with her cousin, Sarah (Rachel Weisz) over some casual bird shooting in the lawn belonging to their mistress, Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne. Given Sarah’s not-so-veiled threats, perhaps Abigail should have waited to have this conversation at a place where firearms weren’t involved.
The clacking of the mahjong tiles. The two random ladies who don’t appear to speak English. The unflinching courage of Constance Wu’s economics professor Rachel Chu in the face of her most fearsome adversary: Michelle Yeoh’s Eleanor Young, the stoic mother of her love, Nick (Henry Golding). This battle of wits at the end of director John M. Chu’s smash 2018 rom-com, Crazy Rich Asians, displays so much deep-seated aggression. But if you think this is about which side Henry will choose, you’re only seeing half the picture.
Lock and load. By the end of director John Krasinski’s 2018 horror film, Emily Blunt’s Evelyn Abbott has lost her husband, given birth in a tub as monsters stalked her, and just watched her deaf daughter’s hearing aid make another monster explode while also sending out the signal for more of them to come. No wonder she’s ready to take charge and survive.
In this futuristic dystopia, there’s no room for love or mercy when you’re a Hunter-Warrior (or bounty hunter). So why should cyborg Alita (Rosa Salazar) show mercy to Jackie Earle Haley’s nefarious Grewishka when she finally gets the upper hand after he sliced up her body? As she tells him in director Robert Rodriguez’s 2019 action thriller, “F–k your mercy.”
The Terminator franchise has had its ups and downs over the years, but like Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s trusty T-800, it’s kept lumbering on for more than three decades — and with further sequels promised in the not-too-distant future, we can only expect more blockbuster battles between man and machine. In the meantime, the saga’s second installment is back in theaters this weekend, sporting a new 4K restoration and 3D conversion. To celebrate its imminent arrival, we decided to take a fond look back at Mr. Schwarzenegger’s best films sorted by Tomatometer, while inviting you to rank your own personal favorites. It’s time for Total Recall!
We bet those pesky xenomorphs are getting smug now that their last two movies, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, have gone Certified Fresh.
Enough with the space jockeys, unqualified cartographers, and people who run in straight lines: How about terrorizing someone who can put up a real fight? Vote on our 10 suggestions below or leave your dream Alien deathmatch in the comments!
For that, Hollywood has turned to a quirky variety of devices and charmed objects to facilitate time travel on television and in the movies — from straightforward DIY time machines to phone booths, DeLoreans, and even a hot tub. Here are some of the coolest, weirdest, most inventive, and sometimes highly unreliable devices used to wander through time.
Don’t see your favorite time-travel gadget below? Tell us in the comments.
Bill Paxton, the Golden Globe-nominated actor whose everyman persona belied a versatility and penchant for eccentric roles in a wide variety of movies and television series, died Feb. 25 after complications from heart surgery. He was 61.
Paxton is probably best known to general audiences for his work with director James Cameron; the actor scored one of his first movie parts in The Terminator, and had memorable supporting roles in Aliens (he ad-libbed his famous “Game over, man!” line in an early rehearsal) and Titanic (playing the treasure hunter whose interview with an elderly Rose provides the film’s framing device).
Born in Fort Worth, TX, Paxton was photographed in the crowd in Dallas the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. After appearing in a few Roger Corman films and The Terminator, Paxton made a memorable impression in John Hughes’ Weird Science as a bullying older sibling; in Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark as a particularly bloodthirsty vampire; and in Carl Franklin’s low-budget thriller One False Movie, as an eccentric cop.
Paxton was a big part of several major box office hits in the 1990s; in addition to Titanic, he played an astronaut in Apollo 13 and a storm chaser in Twister. Other memorable roles the dark thrillers A Simple Plan and Frailty, the later of which marked Paxton’s feature directorial debut and earned a cult following.
Most recently, Paxton’s best work could be found on television. He earned two Golden Globe nominations for his performance as the head of a polygamous family in Big Love, and earned critical acclaim for his work in the Hatfields & McCoys miniseries. He can currently be seen on the CBS police drama Training Day. He is survived by his wife and two children.
For Bill Paxton’s complete filmography on Rotten Tomatoes, click here.
The wow factor of Gale Anne Hurd’s career can’t be overstated: Hurd breathed life into 1984’s The Terminator as writer and producer. She served as producer on such Certified Fresh movie fare as Aliens, The Abyss, and, as executive producer, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
And now — after numerous awards and accolades — she’s the queen of zombie TV: executive producer on AMC’s The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead and consulting producer on the Chris Hardwick–hosted after-show Talking Dead.
Hurd graciously took time out of her packed schedule to speak to us about the expanding world of The Walking Dead, which premieres season 7 on Oct. 23; her newest project, USA’s Falling Water, which debuts on Oct. 13; and the state of women working in Hollywood.
Debbie Day for Rotten Tomatoes: So I have to ask the question: Who did Negan kill?
Gale Anne Hurd: He kills me. He killed me, and everyone’s gonna be really disappointed. (Laughing.)
RT: Have you been on the show?
Hurd: I’ve never been a zombie. My daughter was, back in the first season, in the season finale. She’s represented for the family.
RT: Is there a reason why you haven’t decided to, or are you just too busy?
Hurd: I’m just one of those people, that — you know how you hear people talk about someone fail [The Walking Dead executive producer] Greg Nicotero’s Zombie School? Uh, I would probably be a failure. I’d probably wash out. And no one would have the heart to tell me, and I’d ruin some amazing scene, or, even worse, they’d, like, put me in such distant background that — I wouldn’t want to spend an hour and a half in a chair getting made up.
RT: What do you do for the show on a day-to-day basis these days?
Hurd: It depends on the time of year. I’ve obviously got multiple shows that I’m working on, so I’m always — for The Walking Dead, obviously…hearing from [showrunner] Scott Gimple what the season arc’s going to be and essentially what every episode is going to be. Very involved in all of the casting. And I tend to be there for pre-production in the first episode or two episodes of the season, and then I just start going back and forth. Very involved in marketing and promotion of the show…everything from artwork to even visuals of the shows — all the packages for the EPKs and things like that…. The first two and a half years, I was on set almost every year — the first two and a half seasons. Now that we have more than one show, I don’t have the luxury of being there every day.
RT: Are you nostalgic at all for that?
Hurd: I have to say, anyone who hasn’t spent time on our set cannot appreciate just how challenging it is. Shooting in Georgia in the heat, in the humidity and the bugs — you just can’t appreciate it until you’ve been through it. It never ceases to amaze me, the commitment that every single person on the show — cast and crew, all of the extras, everybody — makes every day of what is a very long season. We start shooting at the beginning of May, and we wrap just before Thanksgiving. And that’s five days a week as a minimum, of on-set time of 12 hours, and a lot of people are commuting an hour each way. That’s just huge. I don’t think that there’s another show, in its seventh season, in which people are so giving with their all.
RT: Which storylines are you most looking forward to this season?
Hurd: Negan is just such a game-changer. And we could not have cast someone more perfect than Jeffrey Dean Morgan. And it’s just been a pleasure to see him bring Negan to life. Obviously, there are very sad moments, because…while fantastic to watch from a performance perspective, his quid pro quo — from his perspective, of course — is justified, because if you look back on it, it was Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his group who came to the sleeping Savior outpost and killed them in cold blood — he’s exacting revenge. Negan is fantastic and, obviously, we have King Ezekiel (Khary Payton) and The Kingdom, along with his tiger, Shiva — another character that I know fans of the comic book have wanted us to bring to life, and, in fact, probably thought we weren’t, at least, with the tiger. So I think people have been very excited to see the sneaks that we have posted of what those two are going to be like.
RT: I think it’s exciting that such prominent characters are being introduced at this time and together. It seems like it’s frothing to a level of excitement that, um — What can I ask that’s anything that you can talk about?
Hurd: The key thing here [is that] we’re really expanding our world this season. We still have Alexandria — of course, it’s going to be changing. We have The Kingdom. And we have Hilltop. We have where the Saviors are. So, there are so many different communities now — and the characters that populate those communities — that it is a great big new world (laughs) for the people who survive, the people who survive that dark and brutal evening from last season. That’s something that we’ve only indicated; we’ve seen one community at a time, really, and just as it opened up the comic books, it’s going to open up and expand the world of The Walking Dead. That’s, I think, something that people have really enjoyed in Game of Thrones — just the different communities, the different groups and how they interact — and there’s gonna be that wider scope in The Walking Dead. All with really, really interesting characters, whether it’s Gregory (Xander Berkeley) at Hilltop — who you wonder how such a sort of squirrelly, seemingly cowardly guy could be a leader, but sometimes those are people who maneuver and manipulate so they can survive.
And then you have King Ezekiel — very much, almost like a feudal lord with his pet tiger. Then you have Negan, who is unlike any villain we’ve encountered on the show, because he’s incredibly charming, he’s incredibly brutal, and he owns it all. He’s not trying to convince himself that he’s doing the right thing. In his mind, if he does it, it’s right. And that wasn’t the case for the Governor, who, I think in his mind, was trying to justify just about everything that he did, and wanted to think of himself as a good guy.
RT: At Negan’s level of leadership and where that world is right now, it completely makes sense. I’m trying to psychoanalyze him now.
Hurd: Yeah, and as our unfortunate survivors discovered, his reach is quite long, and it’s not just the one outpost. They would’ve been fine if he’d only had that one outpost and that was his headquarters, because that is the world that Rick and his fellow survivors believed was — it’s their world. It was their world of Alexandria, it was Sanctuary. Every community that they’ve encountered has just been within those walls. Negan’s – it’s the first time he’s encountered someone who has control of so many different groups and communities.
It really opens things up, because they’ve always faced threats before that were within one set of walls — at Terminus, et cetera. They’d have scouts and all of that, but if they destroyed the nest, so to speak — but, in this case, it’s going to be a lot more challenging.
RT: So how did you get involved with Falling Water?
Hurd: A few years ago, Blake Masters, the showrunner, and his writing partner on the project, the late Henry Bromell, came for a meeting and said they had this absolutely fantastical and — as it turns out when I read it, fantastic — spec pilot called Falling Water, and that it dealt with our dream world. I mean, that’s one thing we all share in common, regardless of our background, or culture, or ethnicity, is we all dream.
And if you take the conceit… What if someone could enter our dreams, and what kind of power they would have, which is compelling to me, but only compelling if it’s rooted in characters that I care deeply about. What’s so fascinating about the show is that we’ve got three fantastic lead characters.
We have Tess, who’s a trendspotter, played by Lizzie Brocheré, who is on American Horror Story and also one of the stars of Versailles. She feels very strongly that she had a baby, but there’s no proof that she did, so she’s trying to get to the bottom of that, and if indeed she did, find that child.
And then, the character of Burton, played by David Ajala, who’s starring on the West End in London, right now in a play that’s about to go up: One Night in Miami. He is the head of security — in other words, a fixer — for an investment bank in New York, which means that he gets people out of trouble, and he tries to keep the company from getting into trouble, through protecting it from any nefarious activities that any of its executives might do. And he’s madly in love with a woman that may only exist in his dreams. And she’s very, very real to him, but he can’t seem to connect with her in the waking world.
And then, the third character of Taka, who is a police detective played by Will Yun Lee, who is in Hawaii Five-0. He’s called “The Hunch.” He’s someone who always seems to have a sixth sense about things, and he is desperately trying to reach his mother. His mother, for over a dozen years, has been catatonic, and he wants to reconnect with her. So they’re people who have very active dream worlds and are seeking answers in their dreams. As it turns out, their abilities may make them prime targets for people who have nefarious plans for people who are such powerful dreamers.
RT: That hints at who the villains are — can you say, or is discovering the villains part of the story?
Hurd: There are various groups that want people with that kind of ability. I don’t know if you’ve read about it, but it turns out that, recently, scientists, neuroscientists have found that you can possibly hack people’s dreams. So, as far-fetched as we thought this project was, when it was originally envisioned by Blake and Henry, years ago, it turns out that we’re not that far off of something we could be facing very soon, which is people who can hack into our dreams.
RT: That’s frightening.
Hurd: (Laughing.) It is. I mean, it’s the one thing that you think is your own. “It’s my dream, and it’s taking place in my mind.” Well, maybe other people can see it, too.
RT: That is really, really terrifying. And there’s some freedom in the dreams, I think, in that it’s one thing you can’t really control. But now, if you can hack them, you can control them, and can that be kind of a drug, I wonder?
Hurd: Yep. Well, you’ll see, and a lot of the things you’re talking about are examined in the show.
RT: The status of women in Hollywood — how are you feeling about it these days? How has it changed, with all of the discussion going on about it?
Hurd: Well, I’m really glad that there is a spotlight on it, because it’s important. I mean, change — meaningful change — won’t really happen if people aren’t aware (laughs) that there is a problem. And now people are aware. There’s no getting away from that.
If you go back and you look at my history, my films have often featured female protagonists, long before I think it was popular or even common. And I’ve worked consistently with women directors and people of color; in fact, our writers room on Falling Water, is 60 percent female, and our cast on the show is incredibly diverse: We’ve got three leads, and one is African-American, one is Korean-American, and one is actually French.
People are finally accepting that we live in a diverse world, and we should be seeing those characters on the screen, whether it’s the big screen or the small screen.
The Walking Dead season 7 premieres Sunday, Oct. 23 at 9 p.m. ET on AMC
Falling Water airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on USA
Rotten Tomatoes looks at 24 unresolved TV cliffhangers, ranging from poisoned presidents to adrift interstellar spaceships. We couldn’t possibly solve these mysteries. Can YOU?
This week on streaming video, we’ve got a handful of new releases — including Russell Crowe’s directorial debut — and a wealth of additions to online services like Netflix, Crackle, and Hulu. There was so much new stuff, in fact, that we did our best to pare down the selections to the most interesting and noteworthy films. Read on for the full list:
74%
Donnie Yen stars in an action thriller about a wrongly-convicted martial arts instructor who’s released from prison to help police track down a killer.
84%
This coming-of-age drama centers on teenager with a vivid imagination who falls for an older boy and finds out he may not be all that he seems.
Available now on: Amazon, iTunes, Google Play
63%
Russell Crowe’s directorial debut is a drama about a man who searches for his sons in the aftermath of one of World War I’s bloodiest battles.
Available now on: iTunes, Vudu, Google Play
45%
Like its title indicates, this true story stars James Franco and Jonah Hill in a drama about a disgraced NY Times reporter who discovers an accused murderer has claimed to be him after being taken into custody.
Available 7/10 in DigitalHD on: iTunes
90%
A scary-looking cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) travels back in time to kill a woman (Linda Hamilton) before she can give birth to the child who will grow up to lead the human resistance against an evil network of sentient machines.
Available now on: Netflix
95%
Robert Wise’s Certified Fresh sci-fi classic tells the story of an alien being who arrives on Earth with a warning for mankind: make peace or face annihilation.
Available now on: Netflix
88%
Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, and Frank Sinatra lead a powerhouse cast in this Certified Fresh, multiple Oscar-winning World War II romance about the lives of three soldiers stationed in Hawaii in the days leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack.
Available now on:
90%
Stephen Chow hit the big time with this wacky, uniquely stylized action comedy about three martial arts masters in the slums of Shanghai who defend their streets from a notorious gang.
Available now on:
91%
Cameron Crowe’s idealized self-portrait of his time as a young Rolling Stone correspondent is a funny, insightful look at the excitement and chaos surrounding a successful rock band.
Available now on:
88%
Set in an alternate New York reality, Walter Hill’s cult classic action thriller follows a street gang as they fight through the city to make it back to their home turf after they’ve been falsely accused of murdering a charismatic gang leader.
Available now on:
77%
One of the most hyped movies in Hollywood history, Batman found director Tim Burton jettisoning the plots (if not the dark tone) of Bob Kane’s original comics, and utilizing set designs reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and freakish, brooding characters similar to… well, a Tim Burton movie.
Available now on:
91%
Steven Spielberg’s strange, moody, and ultimately brilliant sci-fi classic is an important bridge between the esoteric auteurism of the movie-brat generation and the awe-inspiring spectacle of the blockbuster era.
Available now on: Crackle
96%
John Singleton’s inner city coming-of-age drama stars Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ice Cube as Tre and Doughboy, a pair of childhood friends who take different paths in life. Laurence Fishburne co-stars as Tre’s father, who helps steer him in the right direction.
Available now on: Crackle
94%
Chris Smith’s Certified Fresh documentary follows the efforts of an independent filmmaker named Mark Borchardt to produce a horror movie in order to fund his own dream project.
Available now on: Crackle
92%
In celebrated anime director Satoshi Kon’s holiday-themed feature, even the most broken-down, ragtag group of outcasts can find redemption in unlikely and unexpected places.
Available now on: Crackle
84%
Get your motor runnin’ with this biker classic starring Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in the movie that kickstarted the New Hollywood era.
Available now on: Crackle
87%
Ziyi Zhang, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Andy Lau star in Zhang Yimou’s period martial arts classic, which features some of the most staggering costumes and fight scenes this side of Hero.
Available now on: Crackle
74%
Zombies! Alien invaders! Creepy Crawlies! Mad slashers! Night of the Creeps has all that and more, so it’s not hard to see why this low-budget horror comedy developed a cult following.
Available now on: Crackle
And finally, Hulu has just launched an entire IFC Film Collection, which is available to subscribers. You can check out the entire list here, which includes such films as The Trip, Y Tu Mamá También, Pina, The Other Woman, Super, and More.
The Terminator franchise kept itself going without Arnold Schwarzenegger during his politics-enforced acting hiatus, but it really wasn’t the same without our trusty old T-800 dispensing shotgun blasts and one-liners like only he can, so it was with great anticipation that fans of the series greeted the news that (ahem) he’d be back for the latest installment, Terminator Genisys. To celebrate its imminent arrival, we decided to take a fond look back at some of the brightest critical highlights from a career that includes plenty of blockbusters — and a few surprises. It’s time for Total Recall!
Luring action fans to the theater in 1985 didn’t come much more simply than putting Arnold Schwarzenegger in a sleeveless vest, handing him a weapon, and slapping the poster with the delicious tagline “Somewhere, somehow, someone’s going to pay.” Commando delivered as promised, starring Arnold as a retired Delta Force op whose daughter (Alyssa Milano) is kidnapped by an exiled Latin American dictator (Dan Hedaya) in an effort to blackmail him into assassinating his replacement. Loaded with heavy artillery and big explosions, Commando provides, in the words of Filmcritic’s Pete Croatto, “one of the best arguments available for the action movie as pure entertainment.”
It took a dozen years to make its way to theaters — and did it without James Cameron — but thanks to the durable mythology of the franchise and Schwarzenegger’s welcome return to the title role, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines proved audiences were still eager for more Skynet-fueled mayhem. Starring Kristanna Loken as the first female Terminator, Nick Stahl as the new John Connor, and Claire Danes as his future bride Kate Brewster, T3 relied more heavily on special effects than storytelling, leaving some critics cold — but for others, even diluted Terminator was good for a couple more hours of popcorn entertainment. “A sizable quotient of the movie’s target audience just wants to see stuff destroyed,” sighed the Chicago Reader’s J.R. Jones, “and in that regard Rise of the Machines won’t disappoint.”
Making an enjoyable movie about a monosyllabic, sword-wielding barbarian is harder than it might seem — just ask the folks behind 2011’s Conan the Barbarian, who attempted to update Robert E. Howard’s classic character for a new millennium and found themselves deluged with bad reviews for their trouble. But it isn’t impossible, as John Milius proved with his 1982 Conan, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the beefy barbarian, Max von Sydow as King Osiric, and James Earl Jones as the wonderfully named Thulsa Doom. It’s all very silly, of course, but that’s part of its charm; as Rob Vaux put it for Mania.com, “Its magnificence stems from the very properties we should be condemning with all our might.”
The death knell had sounded for the big, dumb 1980s action movie with 1992’s prophetically titled The Last Action Hero — which, fittingly, also starred Schwarzenegger — but James Cameron helped revitalize the genre with this light, funny, fast-moving thrill ride that boasted likable performances from not only its well-muscled star, but a crackerjack supporting cast that included Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill Paxton, and Tom Arnold at his funniest. Though it was heavily criticized for being misogynist and racist, True Lies combined with Speed to make the summer of 1994 feel a little like the 1980s never ended, and took Cameron’s reign as a Hollywood action king to its logical conclusion while earning the begrudging praise of critics like the Globe and Mail’s Rick Groen, who wrote, “However high your ranking on the culture scale, I defy you to watch this and leave the theatre without a whistled ‘Wow’ followed by a grudging ‘That’s entertainment.'”
Say it’s the mid-’70s and you’re making a movie with a part for an Austrian bodybuilder who plays the fiddle. What do you do? For Bob Rafelson, director of Stay Hungry, the choice was easy: Hand Arnold Schwarzenegger a fiddle. And the results weren’t as silly as they might sound, either — starring Jeff Bridges as the conflicted flunky of some crooked real estate developers who want to strongarm their way into ownership of a Birmingham gym, Hungry earned high critical marks for its assured storytelling and offbeat charm. “When the movie’s over, we’re still not sure why it was made,” admitted Roger Ebert, “but we’ve had fun and so, it appears, has Rafelson.”
Producer Joel Silver and Schwarzenegger teamed up twice during the ’80s, and the results — Commando and Predator — are among any action fan’s favorites from the era. Here, Schwarzenegger must lead a team of tough-as-nails soldiers into the jungle on what’s believed to be a rescue mission for prisoners of war — but which quickly turns out to be a bloody fight against a dreadlocked interstellar hunter (played to perfection by the late, lamented Kevin Peter Hall). Silver’s pictures from the period tended to follow a certain formula, but at this point, familiarity hadn’t yet bred contempt — and anyway, if Predator lacks a surplus of moving parts, it does what it’s supposed to with cool precision. “It achieves a sort of sublime purity,” sighed an appreciative Tim Brayton for Antagony & Ecstacy. “It is Action Movie, nothing more and nothing less.”
One of Schwarzenegger’s most quotable films (not to mention a $261 million box office smash that earned a Special Achievement Academy Award for its impressive special effects), 1990’s Total Recall returned its star to sci-fi after forays into buddy cop territory (Red Heat) and comedy (Twins). A mind-bending adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, it took audiences on a fast-paced, set piece-fueled journey from Earth to Mars, dispensing quips along the way — and proved so singularly successful that no amount of development could produce a workable sequel (or, as we learned in 2012, a worthwhile remake). “Total Recall is too much,” wrote Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman, “but it’s too much of a good thing.”
More often than not, if it takes seven years to put together the sequel to a hit movie, disappointment is just around the corner. In the case of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, however, the prolonged delay worked to everyone’s advantage: James Cameron, a relative newcomer when The Terminator was filmed, had spent the intervening years turning himself into one of Hollywood’s biggest directors, and one of the few filmmakers with enough clout to secure the $102 million budget necessary to pay for both Arnold Schwarzenegger and the super-cool special effects that turned Robert Patrick into a puddle of molten metal. It was money well spent, as T2‘s eventual $519 million worldwide gross proved; in fact, despite its slightly lower Tomatometer rating, many fans believe the second Terminator is superior to the original. In the words of Newsweek’s David Ansen, “For all its state-of-the-art pyrotechnics and breathtaking thrills, this bruisingly exciting movie never loses sight of its humanity. That’s its point, and its pride.”
We don’t often include documentaries in these lists — but then again, there aren’t many documentaries like Pumping Iron, Robert Fiore and George Butler’s fascinating look at the 1975 Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition. The film introduced a pair of future stars who’d trade in heavily on their physiques: Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno, who went on to green-hued fame as Bill Bixby’s alter ego in the Incredible Hulk TV series — and while Ferrigno achieved his big breakthrough first, Pumping Iron finds him thoroughly manipulated and outclassed by Schwarzenegger, who spends much of the film displaying the physical skill and ruthless savvy that made him one of Hollywood’s foremost action heroes. “The movie is a very shrewd mixture of documentary and realistic fiction, put together with both eyes and ears on entertainment value,” observed Derek Adams of Time Out.
It was made with a fraction of the mega-budget gloss that enveloped its sequels, but for many, 1984’s The Terminator remains the pinnacle of the franchise — not to mention one of the most purely enjoyable movies of the last 30 years. Subsequent entries would get a little hard to follow, but the original’s premise was simple enough for anyone to follow: A scary-looking cyborg (Schwarzenegger) travels back in time to kill a woman (Linda Hamilton) before she can give birth to the child who will grow up to lead the human resistance against an evil network of sentient machines. Tech noir at its most accessible, Terminator earned universal praise from critics such as Sean Axmaker of Turner Classic Movies, who wrote, “Gritty, clever, breathlessly paced, and dynamic despite the dark shadow of doom cast over the story, this sci-fi thriller remains one of the defining American films of the 1980s.”
Best known for his appearances in the trailers for Disney’s upcoming Big Hero 6, Baymax is the helpful, loving robot companion of Hiro Hamada, a brilliant young inventor living in the city of San Fransokyo. With the help of Hiro’s high tech prowess, Baymax transforms into a powerful crimefighting machine, but even robots need to relax once in a while. So what does Baymax watch when he’s not protecting the citizens of San Fransokyo? We’ll let him tell you in his own words:
Dumbo (Samuel Armstrong, 1941; 97% Tomatometer)
I would cry every time if I could cry.
Babe (Chris Noonan, 1995; 97% Tomatometer)
I’m a big James Cromwell fan.
Such a pleasant man.
If robots needed inspiration, George Bailey would be an inspiration.
I love a good robot movie.
Big Hero 6 opens in theaters this week.
His name may not be instantly familiar, but his work most certainly is: over a prolific career, Vic Armstrong has been a stunt man, stunt coordinator and second unit director on some of the biggest and best-loved action movies of the past four decades — a list of credits far too long to even consider including here. He’s stunt-doubled for successive James Bonds, from Sean Connery to Pierce Brosnan, worn the cape and tights on Richard Donner’s Superman, and famously done stunt work for Harrison Ford on, among many of the actor’s other roles, the original three Indiana Jones films.
Then there’s his work with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone and Angelina Jolie, to name a handful, or — our personal favorite — his listed credit as “Unicorn Master” on Ridley Scott’s Legend. How does one get to be a Unicorn Master, anyway?
Armstrong’s robust career as a second unit action director has also seen him shoot sequences for the likes of James Cameron, Paul Verhoeven, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, while he recently completed work on Marvel’s Thor and forthcoming The Amazing Spider-Man.
This week, he releases his autobiography entitled — and with a fair claim to the crown — The True Adventures of the World’s Greatest Stuntman, which chronicles his career from riding horses for Gregory Peck through his role today as one of the industry’s most sought-after action coordinators.
Armstrong called in for a chat with RT, having just wrapped shooting on Spider-Man, to talk stunts on the new Marvel web-slinger, some career highlights and, as ever, five of his favorite movies. (And hey, if he wants to pick movies he’s worked on — who are we to say no?)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, 94% Tomatometer)
Raiders would have to be one of them. I just think the ride, the whole thing, is just fabulous entertainment and escapism — and it felt real, you know.
Lawrence of Arabia, purely for stylistic reasons. For storytelling — and visually telling a story — it’s fantastic.
True Lies, because it’s a great, great action film with the right amount of action and the right amount of storytelling.
I gotta go for one of the Terminators as well — I don’t know which one. [laughs] Probably one, because the first time I saw it… one is always more difficult than the second one, I think. I saw that in Rome after Arnie brought it over when I was doing Red Sonja. We were gonna go out to Rome one night and I said, “I can’t, I’m working, I’ve got a five-o’clock-in-the-morning start,” and he said, “Well, take this — go up to your room and watch this video.” And I watched it — and it was a rough cut of it — and I went, “Oh my god, it’s the greatest film I’ve ever seen.”
And then I’d say Tomorrow Never Dies, because I think you get a real bang for your buck in that — and I enjoyed making it. It was just a nice, big Bond, going back to the old style. It just kicks arse, and you believe he’s in there getting his arse kicked as well.
Next, Armstrong talks about filming action on The Amazing Spider-Man and Thor, and takes us through some of the highlights of his impressive career — including his stunt work on the original Indiana Jones films.
RT: You’re filming the action stuff on The Amazing Spider-Man at the moment — how’s it all going?
Vic Armstrong: Great; we just wrapped some shooting in New York. Did you see him flying? There were some amazing pictures of him flying.
I did, yeah. Everyone seems to be impressed that you’re doing this old school, with wires and practical stunt work.
It’s amazing how it’s gone full circle. Whenever you get offered a film now it’s like, “We wanna try and do as much of it for real as we can.” And one of the things we always discussed on Spider-Man was that we wanna get away from the CGI Spidey flying through the air — we wanna see it for real, and try to do it as much as we can for real. [Marvel producer] Avi Arad said the other day, “Vic, that’s exactly what you guys did.” There’s a certain movement when you see it; subconsciously you realize it’s real, you know.
Did you look at the other Spider-Man movies for a sense of motion, or is this a whole new thing?
We didn’t look at the other movies, really, because when you think about it, they would have had to look at what we were doing, or the type of work that we were doing on other things, in the old days — probably trapezes and things like that. We based ours on, not a trapeze, but literally vine-swinging, if you like — going back to [Tarzan star] Johnny Weissmuller and that type of action. You work logically: how would you “web” yourself down the street? You’d go one direction and then you’d go another way and you’d use that momentum to come back in another direction. It’s a bit like skiing.
You also did second unit on Thor prior to that, which is doing rather well.
It’s done fantastically. I was really pleased, actually, because we put a lot of effort into it and, again, we did as much as we could for real — knowing that you’re going into a surreal environment, everything that we can put into that that’s real, we did. Do you remember a picture called Starship Troopers, with all the bugs? Huge bug movie, but we did everything we could to interact the terrain, the people, the location, the studio — everything to interact with those bugs, you know. It was the same with Thor: we wanted to put as much reality into it as we could. And we put as much realism as we can into the action by using the actor, as well. Chris [Hemsworth] was fantastic: he trained up and worked with us; it was just like having another stuntman.
Did Andrew Garfield do any of his own stunts on Spider-Man?
Yep, he trained as well, down at this big warehouse we had down in Culver City, where every piece of the action we shot was all mocked up. It was quite funny if you’d seen it: lots of cardboard boxes and platforms simulating buildings or fire escapes or a bridge. Andrew would be there and he’s one of this new breed of actors that wants to be involved in every aspect of their character’s being; so he’s down there with the stunt guys and they would train him up to whatever standard we could get him to. He was very closely involved, and we’d put him in wherever the chance was. He was putting his thumbprint on it, as it were.
Your film credits read like a list of the biggest action movies of the past 40 years; I don’t know where we’d begin talking. I understand you got into the business because your dad owned racehorses?
Yep. I think my earliest recollection was in the ’50s, of a very famous English actor called Richard Todd — he kept racehorses with my father. So when I was seven, eight, nine years old I’d watch this guy with a big open Bentley and women in furs, and I would talk to him, in awe, and he’d tell me what films he’d been doing and I’d go off and watch them. So that was my interest on movies. And then I’d come home and get on my pony and gallop off playing Cowboys and Indians on my own, and falling off my pony — so I guess that was my introduction into it.
Were you aware that there were stunt people that did this stuff?
No! [laughs] I was Richard Todd when I was doing it. They never even said they had other people to do it. [laughs]
So, your first paying stunt job doubling for Gregory Peck on Arabesque — how’d you get that?
I had a great horse that could jump anything, and a stuntman called Jimmy Lodge would come and exercise the horses with us. He was the stunt coordinator on Arabesque. One day he said to me, “Look, can I rent your horse off you, because the ones we have on the set are useless.” I rented him the horse and he called next day saying, “We need another good riding double to jump these jumps as well.” And off we went. I thought, “Wow — 20 pounds a day.” That was a week’s wages. I thought it would work very well with my horse racing career. Everyone said don’t rely on this for a living, it’s very spasmodic. If I was a jockey, I probably would have been retired now for 35 years. [laughs] I’d be shoveling sh** now.
And a year later you’re on You Only Live Twice — that must have been something for a young guy.
Oh, I was in awe. I went out to Pinewood Studios, this great cavernous place, and inside there was the inside of a volcano — with rockets standing up and a roof for a helicopter to fly in and a monorail going round and round. I’d never seen a set before like it. The guy who would become my father-in-law, [stunt coordinator] George Leech, said, “We need people to slide down a rope four or five hundred feet,” and I said “Yeah, I can do that” — thinking, “There’s no way anyone can do that.” Again, I was in the right place at the right time of my career.
What was your favorite 007 stunt, of all the many films you did?
I think on the Bonds, directorially was when I had more fun — when I was starting to do it with Pierce. The boat chase, and the car chase where the BMW was remote-controlled; they were cool chases and fairly original. How do you make a car chase original? How do you make a boat chase original? And they both came out pretty original. To me, the most important thing is to have exciting and original chases, thinking that you’re not ripping anybody off. And then on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, sliding and hanging off a cliff at the end of this big old ski chase; and then there was the fight with Yaphet Kotto in the shark pen, on Live and Let Die.
Then there’s Superman…
That was tremendous, Superman. We’d just finished A Bridge Too Far, another huge, huge movie. I ended up doubling Chris [Reeve], not knowing it was going to be such an iconic film. It was amazing, working with Dick Donner, a guy with such fantastic vision.
Did you get to keep the outfit?
I have, funny enough, Warner Brothers gave me a life-long loan on them: the cape, the tights, the costume. I’ve got a cinema in my house in England and I’ve got them hanging in there. I’m very proud of them.
Many fans are familiar with you from your work on the original Indiana Jones movies. How did you meet Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford and get involved with that crew?
When they started Raiders, Wendy, my wife, was on it — she was doubling Karen Allen — and I was in Mexico on Green Ice, with Ryan O’Neal. David Tomlin, the first assistant director, was a good friend of mine, and he said [to Spielberg], “You need to get Vic Armstrong out here, he’s a great double for Harrison.” He tried to get me and I was busy, so they shot in England and then went out to Tunisia, and had been there a week, I think, and I finished up on my film and flew out to meet them. I got there and I was just kind of standing around on the set watching. We said, “We’re not doing anything, let’s slope off and get a quick lunch before the mob get here.” So we started walking away and I heard this person calling, “Harrison! Harrison!” Then somebody grabbed me and spun me around, and it was Steven — and he went, “Oh, you’re not Harrison. What are you doing here?” I said I was a stuntman and he went, “David, come here, this guy says he’s a stuntman, he looks just like Harrison.” David said, “Yeah this is the guy I’ve been telling you about, Steven.” So that was it — straight into the deep end.
The cover of your book is a shot of you, as Harrison, on the rope bridge from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. What was that like to perform?
That was fantastic. That was an amazing construction: we had a company put up that great big bridge with cables wrapped in rope, and then we blew it up for real. It was across this ravine which was two or three hundred feet deep and the water was only 18 inches deep, so you couldn’t have anyone come off it. And then we had the real rope bridge hanging on the side of the ravine, and I did the fight with Mola Ram and then we built another bridge back at Elstree and did some more stuff with people falling off that.
Of all the actors you’ve worked with, who would you say was the most game in the stunt work?
That’s gotta be Harrison, Arnie, Tom Cruise or Chris Hemsworth for Thor.
What was it about Harrison?
Just everything, yeah — there’s not a stunt he didn’t do on [the Indiana Jones movies] that he wasn’t in, in some way or form. I mean, I did the jump on to the tank [in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade], but that was silly — you wouldn’t want him to do that. But every little thing — even when he was off on Temple of Doom with a bad back, when he came back the first thing we did was go straight into the fight on the rock-crushing conveyor-belt. We’d shot it with me and then we just went straight into it with him and put him into it. There’s nothing he wouldn’t go for, if you say, “Yeah, this is good and this is okay, you’re not risking too much.” Obviously we don’t want to risk them, because it’s our livelihood, you know — we don’t want them to get hurt, because we wanna keep working. [laughs]
You’ve long been a busy second unit action director — was that a natural extension of being a stunt man?
It’s a pure progression from a stunt man, to a stunt coordinator who thinks up the stunts, to the action unit director who works out how you’re going to shoot it. The thing I like about it is the creativity of being the director. You bring everything together: you pick the people, you work out the stunts, you work out the safety, then you get the great thrill of actually shooting them.
I was surprised to discover you shot the opening sequence of Terminator 2.
Yeah. I was supposed to do the whole movie [as second unit director] at one time but I was busy. Anyway, I got off what I was doing and they’d finished [Terminator 2] and said, “We need this opening sequence.” I was thrilled I got to work on it at all, you know, because I love Arnie and I love Cameron’s work. I was very honored to get on to it, I must say.
Has CG changed the way you coordinate second unit action sequences?
I work very, very closely with them [CG artists], and I look at it as your “Get out of jail free” card. When you really need help, that’s what you use it for. It’s like morphine: morphine is a wonderful drug if you really need it, but abuse it and it’s deadly, it’s a killer — it’s the same with CG. CG can kill a sequence. We’ve seen as many films ruined by CG as we have made good by it. But I think it’s only through misuse, you know. It’s a fantastic thing; it’s all in the use. It’s dreadfully abused at times, but it’s all through lack of knowledge of how to do it properly.
Vic Armstrong’s book, The True Adventures of the World’s Greatest Stuntman, is available now.
Spider-Man image via Splash Online. Other images courtesy Vic Armstrong/Titan Publishing.
This Week’s Ketchup either represents one of the worst seven days in recent movie news memory, or columnist Greg Dean Schmitz was just grumpy that he didn’t get invited to the Royal Wedding (he loves wacky hats!). Aging action stars trying to revive their golden oldies (Terminator 5), a Justin Bieber basketball movie, and a movie that reimagines Zorro as a sort of Mad Max figure are just three of the seven Rotten Ideas. On the brighter side are stories about The Lone Ranger, The Hunger Games (fingers still crossed on that one, at least) and a cool sounding new role for Jeff Bridges.
The rights to a fifth movie in the Terminator franchise were shopped around to studios this week, with Arnold Schwarzenegger attached to star. This is the highest profile post-politics role for the former Governor of California, with his other planned projects including the TV show and movie spinoff based on the superhero concept of The Governator. Justin Lin, the director of the last three movies in the Fast and the Furious franchise, is also attached to direct this hypothetical fifth Terminator film. The studios that are reportedly most interested in currently acquiring the rights are Universal, Lionsgate and Sony (which distributed Terminator 2: Judgement Day and handled international distribution of the 3rd and 4th films). It’s worth noting that Warner Bros, the main studio behind Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator: Salvation is not in that list of most interested studios. This is the first real news for the Terminator franchise since February, 2010 when the property was sold at a bankruptcy auction for $29.5 million. That is, unless you count a report last year about an animated Terminator project that was quickly debunked by the holders of the Terminator rights. There is no screenwriter for a Terminator 5 yet, and no indication of whether there is even a known premise other than that it would somehow involve Arnold Schwarzenegger returning to one of his most famous roles. This is the Weekly Ketchup’s Top Story, but if it wasn’t, it would most likely also be the Most Rotten Idea as well. The reason for this mostly has to do with the dwindling results from the Terminator films (post Judgement Day). There is also the simple fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is some 27 years (and counting) older than he was when he starred in the first film in 1984. The screenwriter might come up with an explanation for why the T-850 model looks like a 63-year-old man, but the writer might be challenged to come up with a really good explanation. That, however, wasn’t the only Schwarzenegger news this week. Before he ever returns to that franchise, Arnold Schwarzegger is also now signed to star in Cry Macho, which will be directed by Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer). Cry Macho is the story of a horse trainer (Schwarzenegger) who agrees to rescue (AKA kidnap) his boss’ son from his rich ex-wife, who it turns out also wants to be rid of the 11-year-old kid. Filming of Cry Macho is expected to start this summer if adequate financing can be acquired next month at the Cannes Film Festival.
Two weeks ago, the role of the young Ra’s Al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises went to Josh Pence, who was the body double used to portray half of the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network. Now, the actor whose face was actually used in that film for both of the twins, Armie Hammer, is in talks to take on a role in which it will be his face that is (mostly) obscured. That role is The Lone Ranger, in Walt Disney Pictures’ big screen adaptation of the classic wild west crimefighter. Johnny Depp has long been already cast as the Lone Ranger’s trusty Native American companion Tonto (Depp is one quarter Cherokee). There’s a common perception about this movie that the real “star” will be Tonto, and so the search for Ranger Reid himself was focused on young actors who would have good chemistry with Depp. The Lone Ranger may also very well be the true breakout role that takes Armie Hammer to a whole new level of fame. Gore Verbinski, who previously worked with Johnny Depp on the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies and also Rango, will be directing The Lone Ranger from a script by Justin Haythe (Revolutionary Road, The Clearing). Johnny Depp was also confirmed this week to be cast for a small cameo role in the movie adaptation of the TV show 21 Jump Street (which launched Depp’s career), starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as cops undercover in a high school.
Universal Pictures is in talks with Jeff Bridges to join the supernatural comedy R.I.P.D. based upon the Peter Lenkov-written comic books of the same title published by Dark Horse off and on since 1999. Ryan Reynolds has been attached to star for over a year (making it his fourth comic book franchise after Blade: Trinity, Green Lantern and the planned Deadpool spinoff). Reynolds will be playing a modern cop who is brought back from the dead to work for a special police force of undead detectives who investigate crimes involving monsters and the supernatural. If he signs, Jeff Bridges would be playing Reynolds’ partner, an old west gunslinger who’s been on the job for over a hundred years. Zach Galifianakis had originally been attached to play that role, but he dropped out over scheduling conflicts with Ryan Reynolds. The decision to go with Jeff Bridges can be seen as a clever move in a better direction. Bridges has played western characters before, most notably in the recent remake of True Grit (for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar), whereas Zach Galifianakis is new to the cowboy genre (and may have played the role completely differently than Jeff Bridges). It’s even arguable that the switch from Zach Galifianakis to Jeff Bridges could raise R.I.P.D. from “questionable concept” status to “highly anticipated” for many fans of Bridges’ work in movies like The Big Lebowski, Iron Man, The Fisher King and the TRON movies. R.I.P.D. will be directed by Robert Schwentke (Red, Flightplan, The Time Traveler’s Wife) from a script by the screenwriting team of Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (Aeon Flux, Crazy/Beautiful).
In last week’s Ketchup, there was a lengthy story about the 7 new roles that had been announced for The Hunger Games, 5 of which were kid/teen roles. This week, the emphasis was more on older actors who might help appeal the young adult novel adaptation to the parents who might want to see the movie with their kids. One of the roles is known for sure, and the other three are not. John C. Reilly (Step Brothers) is in talks to play the alcoholic mentor Haymitch. Reilly came to The Hunger Games after recently dropping out of a sidekick role in Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful, starring James Franco. Woody Harrelson is in talks to either play Seneca Crane, the designer of the Hunger Games, or Plutarch Heavensbee, Crane’s successor, who has a much larger role in the book. The two unknown roles are being discussed with Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada) and rock musician Lenny Kravitz, whose most notable role to date was a small role in 2009’s Precious. The Hunger Games will be directed by Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, Pleasantville) from a script adapted by Billy Ray (cowriter of Volcano, Flightplan, State of Play).
Just a few days before Fast Five opens in theaters today, Paul Walker signed on to star in an independent action movie called Vehicle 19. Like the latest (and upcoming) entries in the Fast franchise, Vehicle 19 combines high speed action and a crime story element. Paul Walker will play “an American who gets caught up in the transportation of a criminal witness, facing off against a corrupt police force that wants to silence his testimony.” Relative newcomer Mukunda Michael Dewil will direct from his own script when filming starts in South Africa later this year. Dewil’s first film is another South African independent film called Retribution which hasn’t been released yet. This is one of the week’s Rotten Ideas based mostly on Paul Walker’s critical track record (Fast Five is a recent anomaly). Vehicle 19 was also the subject of some sneaky publicity as this story broke this week. Variety reported that the Vehicle 19 script made the 2010 Black List of unproduced scripts, but what they didn’t say is where it placed. A review of the actual Black List shows that Vehicle 19 doesn’t actually show up in the top *seventy seven* scripts that were picked by at least 5 of the agents and execs that help compile the Black List. So, that means there are at least 77 unproduced scripts that were higher rated than Vehicle 19.
Oh, Mark Wahlberg, you really do enjoy producing stuff (from The Fighter and We Own the Night to HBO shows like Entourage, In Treatment and How to Make It in America). Back in February, Marky Mark was watching a celebrity basketball game during the NBA All-Star weekend, and was impressed with the court skills of a young singer named Justin Bieber. Justin Bieber rocketed to fame and fortune in 2009 and 2010 and earlier this year starred in a very successful concert film/documentary called Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. I inserted that sentence in there because I know what happens when I “assume” people know who Justin Bieber is. The basketball game in question took place on February 18, which was just one week after Justin Bieber: Never Say Never had its very strong opening weekend. So, it was easy for Wahlberg to go to Paramount Pictures (the distributors of Wahlberg’s recent Oscar winning film The Fighter), and say something like (paraphrasing here), “Hey, let’s make a movie about Justin Bieber as a basketball player. I’ll produce and star in it too.” And so, here we are. The untitled project is being described as a cross between The Karate Kid and The Color of Money (if Karate or Pool were Basketball, presumably), and “will revolve around street basketball and will give Bieber the chance to show off his hoops skills.” The script will be written by Ian Edelman, the creator of How to Make It in America. The reason for this story being Rotten is not as easy as pointing to Justin Bieber’s RT Tomatometer score, because Justin Bieber: Never Say Never was actually considered Fresh. Instead, the Rotten Idea status is just based on the question of whether Justin Bieber can make magic strike twice in a movie where he’s actually supposed to be playing someone other than himself.
Every few years, an actor emerges out of recent obscurity to become attached to seemingly every other hot new movie being developed. Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Sam Worthington are three examples of this phenomenon from the last ten years. Without a doubt, the latest actor to experience this is Jeremy Renner, following the critical success of 2009’s The Hurt Locker. Jeremy Renner is already attached to appear in three high profile franchise entries: Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Marvel’s The Avengers (note that new title, too) and The Bourne Legacy. Renner isn’t stopping with just three, however, as this week he joined the voice cast of Ice Age: Continental Drift, the fourth movie in the 20th Century Fox animated comedy series, as Gutt, “a self-styled master of the high seas” (but no word yet on what actual animal he plays). Renner isn’t the only new voice cast member, as he will also be joined by Jennifer Lopez (as Shira, a female sabre toothed tiger), Wanda Sykes, Aziz Ansari, rapper Drake and Keke Palmer. 20th Century Fox will release Ice Age: Continental Drift on July 13, 2012. That wasn’t the only Jeremy Renner news this week, however. The actor is also getting into the production business, starting a company called The Combine. The first movie on The Combine’s slate is an untitled biopic about the life of movie star Steve McQueen, whom Jeremy Renner has already attached himself to portray. This is not the first time that someone in Hollywood has announced plans to make a movie about Steve McQueen, but one advantage that Jeremy Renner has is that one of the two books he’s acquired the rights to was previously to be the basis of one of those competing projects. Video director Ivan Zacharias is attached to make his directorial debut on the Steve McQueen biopic, based on a script by James Gray (We Own the Night; cowriter of The Yards). This is the part where I would normally explain who the subject of a biopic was, but really, if you’re reading this column, I am going to presume that you know exactly who Steve McQueen was. This combined news story is not in the Rotten Idea category because of the Steve McQueen biopic, however (which this writer thinks sounds like a great idea, actually). Nope, it’s all about Ice Age: Continental Drift, and the increasingly low RT Tomatometer scores for the two sequels (57% and 42%, respectively).
A few weeks ago, one of the Weekly Ketchup stories was the news that Larry and Curly in The Three Stooges would be played by Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) and Will Sasso (MADtv), respectively. This week, the trio became complete with the iconic role of Moe Howard going to Chris Diamantopolous, a Canadian actor who had a supporting role on one season of 24. This final grouping is quite different from the time a few years ago when Bobby and Peter Farrelly had Sean Penn, Jim Carrey and Benicio Del Toro in negotiations (or attached) to play the same characters (in that order). Another character switch came this week in the form of Jane Lynch (Glee) being cast as the Mother Superior at the orphanage where the three boys grow up. At one time, the Farrelly Brothers had mentioned hopes that they could cast Cher in that same role. The Three Stooges is not a biopic, or even one feature length movie, but is instead an anthology of three short films, each representing a different era or comedic style that the original Three Stooges are known for. Filming of The Three Stooges starts next month, and the movie will be distributed by 20th Century Fox in 2012.
Fans of the modern classic science fiction novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card have been rallying behind hopes for a movie adaptation pretty much since the novel’s 1985 publication. They might now be hoping that they had been careful what they wished for. Looking for a teen-friendly franchise to replace the soon-to-be-ending Twilight Saga, Summit Entertainment has acquired the rights to Ender’s Game, with Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) attached to direct. Ender’s Game is set in a distant future where the human race has barely survived two wars with an alien insectoid race called the Formics. The international fleet develops a leadership school where young children are trained through difficult games in order to become tactical masters who can guide the fleet to victory against the Formics, and a young teenager nicknamed Ender is the most promising student. There’s no screenwriter attached to this latest attempt to adapt Ender’s Game, but Summit Entertainment is hoping to start production as soon as early 2012 for a release in 2013. Although the fans who believe Ender’s Game (and its sequels) to be an excellent concept for a big screen epic are probably correct, there’s just something about this latest attempt that sets off this writer’s warning bells. And that’s why it’s one of this week’s Rotten Ideas.
Rebooting old movie franchises remains a popular pastime in Hollywood. Heck, it’s even being done with titles that aren’t that old, such as The Amazing Spider-Man, which will have a 2012 release just five years after Spider-Man 3. This week, 20th Century Fox revealed plans to apply a reboot to a classic film (and TV) franchise that is nearly as recent (The Legend of Zorro was released in 2005). One of the big differences, however, with Zorro Reborn is that the most recent movies were actually made by a completely different studio (Sony), and the reason this is possible is because the original Zorro pulp stories by Johnston McCulley are now (possibly) in the public domain (there appears to be some dispute about that issue). 20th Century Fox may be anticipating a challenge from Sony on that issue, because their Zorro Reborn plan actually takes the character out of the California of the 19th century. Zorro Reborn (get ready for this) will instead reimagine the character as a hero in “a desolate and post-apocalyptic” setting, and this Zorro won’t even be a swashbuckling swordsman, either. Zorro Reborn will reportedly have “echoes of both Sergio Leone [The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, etc] and No Country for Old Men.” Zorro Reborn will be the directorial debut of Rpin Suwannath, a previsualization specialist who has worked on franchises like X-Men, Spider-Man and Chronicles of Narnia. The Zorro Reborn script has been written by the screenwriting team of Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy, who don’t yet have a produced movie to their credit, but they have sold a Dracula spinoff movie called Harker to Warner Bros. Zorro Reborn is one of the week’s Most Rotten Ideas because, well, it’s just sort of a ridiculous idea. If Zorro isn’t a hero fighting for the oppressed people of 19th century California, and he doesn’t even use a sword… what exactly makes him Zorro? Does he spraypaint a Z on old abandoned cars? Or maybe make a Z out of bullet holes? Yep, it’s probably that.
For more Weekly Ketchup columns by Greg Dean Schmitz, check out the WK archive, and you can contact GDS via Facebook or a RT forum message.
