Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
53:01 – 64:54… needs to revive this and be like the Lao trilogy. That would actually probably get greenlit because people would be like, oh, we could sell that. All right. Apex Mountain. Heath Ledger. Time to do some impersonations. Heath Ledger, is this Apex Mountain for Heath Ledger? It's all part of the plan. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmm? You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gangbanger will get shot. Or a truckload of soldiers will be blowing up. Nobody panics. …
The whole segment, as transcribed
Who are they? It all goes back to Lao. This is a Lao problem. I think Nolan needs to revive this and be like the Lao trilogy. That would actually probably get greenlit because people would be like, oh, we could sell that. All right. Apex Mountain. Heath Ledger. Time to do some impersonations. Heath Ledger, is this Apex Mountain for Heath Ledger? It's all part of the plan. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmm? You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gangbanger will get shot. Or a truckload of soldiers will be blowing up. Nobody panics. Because it's all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die. Well, then everyone loses their minds. I take that as a yes. Yeah. I mean. It's broke back in this and it's like those are the two shining achievements. Yeah. I mean I think he's obviously just an all-time great American actor or Australian actor I suppose. But this performance as Jason identified before is like is just burned into the brains of a generation of people who love this movie. I honestly think he's kind of ruined comic book villains. He really has. Well, you know, it's something I was going to mention earlier. Basically all other comic book villains I think are bad. Yeah. Or at least we have problems with them. Marvel punted. Yeah. Marvel's just like we're just going to have like various like space monsters. Right. But we can't come up with anybody on this level. Yeah. Is there someone sitting in the, I guess the Avengers canon? Like because obviously X-Men has Magneto and others. Right. And Apocalypse and different things. But are they only dealing with what they've got available? Or is there like a guy in the Avengers canon that you're like why are they aren't you guys doing this? They just don't have that level of character. Like for instance Thanos is a, it's really a rip off of. Is it Darkseid? Darkseid. So it's, yeah, there's not that level of psychological analysis you can apply to these other Marvel villains. Except for Magneto. Magneto has an interesting backstory. I was going to say there's two for me. One is Magneto who I think especially in the Fassbender iteration I thought they've done a really good job with. Two, I think that Sam Raimi did a really good job with Dr. Octopus who I was not in my mind a very, wasn't a villain with a lot of gravitas in the comic books but the way, the rendition of him that Alfred Molina does in the second Spider-Man movie. I think it's actually quite good and it's because it's the opposite reason that Ledger is good. He's very vulnerable. There's like a story about his wife and what motivates him to do the things that he does and what drives him mad. That's really the only one that I can think of. I mean it's unfair. There's like four good villains. There's like Anton Chagru, Hannibal Lecter and the Joker. I mean it's a great point. Sean brings up something really interesting about Dr. Octopus's like pathology and it's that, you know, a great villain thinks he's the hero. Yeah. So when you're just kind of playing out, you know, the Red Skull who is a Nazi and all these other various, you know, literally cartoony villains that you just can't apply that. The Joker doesn't necessarily think he's the hero but he understands very well what he is and the role he plays as the flip side to Batman. I guess Lex Luthor would be the one that kind of got left on the table. Yeah. Although he is, there's something almost like schlocky about him. Like I think Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor is kind of a great movie character. I'm not sure if he's a great villain. The one thing that the Joker does and that Ledger does in the performance is if you take this movie seriously enough, if you decide to take it on its face, he literally asks you why you're doing the things that you're doing. Right. He literally makes you say, he's like, I'm going to light this mountain of money on fire and I don't care. Yeah. Should you care? Yeah. That's a pretty powerful thing. And it pokes at the very motivations of a lot of these movies. You know what I mean? It's like whether it's heroism, whether it's financial gain or whatever the thing that you know, people do these extreme things for. He's just like, I just don't care. Right. I know. I just don't care about them. This is the most interesting question, I think, of Apex Mountain is Bale. Because Bale is a movie star who hasn't really made a hugely successful movie other than Batman that he wasn't part of an ensemble. So like Big Short and American Hustle were successful, but Bale is very much part of an ensemble in those movies. The movies that he toplines have been strange to say the least. A couple of Malick's, a couple of Scott Cooper movies. I think that you can make the argument that it's the fighter is his greatest role. Although I would say personally, no shots at him. I think it's Empire of the Sun. Oh, wow. He was a child, so it's almost a different person. Some people might be partial to American Psycho. What about you, Sean? That would be my vote, American Psycho, which I'm just a fan of that movie and I know it's divisive, but I think he's extraordinarily well suited to that role in a way that he actually is not well suited to Bruce Wayne. And I've never really liked his Batman. I don't think it's bad necessarily, but a lot of the choices he makes rub me the wrong way, particularly the voice, which is for some people a deal breaker. I think, I was going to ask you guys if you think this movie works without Ledger. No. That's, you know, it's because I feel like I'm not all the way in on Christian Bale. I think American Psycho is probably his most interesting performance. I think The Fighter is probably his most like realized performance. So it's not Apex Mountain for me. I mean, it's probably Apex Mountain for him as a movie star. Yeah, it's Apex Mountain as a movie star. I also agree that it's not his. I would also go with American Psycho because that's the movie that, you know, he's so handsome and square jawed. You look at him and you think that's, a movie star looks like that, a stockbroker looks like that. And so American Psycho is really interesting as an investigation of the dark side of that image. And Bruce Wayne is sort of that too, but not, but he's just much more blank. I mean, Bruce is just a kind of a blank figure, a mirror image for the Joker. And the Joker is obviously the much more interesting character in that duality. I think this is probably, I mean, you mentioned the voice. Part of the reason why I don't think Dark Knight Rises is sort of resonated with people is that there is like that, like the weird voice, there's tone out, there's a tonal similarity between Bane and Bruce that is just like too much great. Like it's too, too overbearing. There's not that electricity that Ledger brings to the movie. I do think that, you know, you know, everybody's like, oh, the Joker is this haunted role and you know, it's, it's impossible. I think Batman might be the hardest role in, in movies. Yeah. I was thinking about Affleck when Jason was talking and what he's trying to do. And it's difficult if you're a performer who has any sense of irony, I don't think that Bruce, you can do Bruce Wayne. And we know that Bale does have that because the American Psycho performance is pretty funny. Yeah. And it's pretty, it's purposefully over the top because that's how that character is written. And Affleck, obviously we know as a performer is like larded with a kind of irony. Yeah. And I don't, how do you, I don't even know how you play it well. And I don't know that anyone has successfully done it. Keaton did a good job. We haven't really seen someone do the, the Adam West version of it. Like a kind of like I'm snappy dialogue guy, you know? Yeah. Uh, Apex Mountain, Aaron Eckhart. If you need me to refresh your memory, here are some other films from Aaron Eckhart's canon, you know, that, that might be in competition. Obviously in the company of men is what he's best known for in his early part of his career. Nick Crozier. Yeah. Proto Lane Kiffin. Yeah. In Any Given Sunday. George in Aaron Brockovich. Josh in The Core. Keep going. Thank you for smoking, Nick Naylor. Sergeant Michael Nance in the Battle for Los Angeles. His characters have great names. Yeah. He played President Benjamin Asher in Olympus Has Fallen. He played Benjamin Asher in London Has Fallen. Would America elect a Benjamin Asher? But he goes pro and wins the belt as Jeff Skiles in Sully. The loyal, the loyal co-pilot. Man, things have really come apart for him. Is Harvey Dent Apex Mountain for Eckhart? Ooh. I'm going to say yes. Because, I don't know if you guys saw this recent meme that blew up on Twitter, maybe two months ago, where, I forget the name of the user, but he tweeted something like, one of the greatest moments in movie history is Harvey Dent not recognizing the Joker in the hospital until the Joker takes off his surgical mask. Which is just a great... This is a weird looking nurse. Maybe because half of my face is burned off and my vision's a little impaired, but sheesh. Yeah. I like that scene a lot. Yeah. I think that's a good scene for Eckhart, too. Yeah. It's obviously a huge flex for Ledger. Every line he has in that scene is great. Or is this Apex Mountain for Eckhart? I think he's a pretty good actor. And I think just hearing you rattle off some of those roles, you know, I think he's a really good number two. Yeah. And he's basically a number two in this movie. He's Sully's co-pilot. Yes. He's Sully's co-pilot. But he's very good in Erin Brockovich. You know, he is this, like, empathetic biker. I like Aaron Eckhart. I think he's well cast. Yeah. I think this is a good performance. Okay. Maggie Gyllenhaal? I'm going to go no because that goes to Honorable Woman or Secretary or any number. She's phenomenal in the deuce. In the deuce. She's great. Has a lot more to deuce. But this is the big one. Is this Apex Mountain for Nolan? In terms of cultural impact, yes. Is it his best movie? I think Sean will disagree. But I think Dunkirk is his best movie. In terms of cultural impact, yes. Yes. I think Inception is his best movie. I go Dark Knight 1 and Inception 2. I think what he's able to accomplish, even if it's just in fits and starts in this movie, is way above almost any of his peers. He's more capable of greatness, which is why I tend to be harder on him than I am on almost any other filmmaker. Because I'm like, you got it. Right. You know how to be John Ford. You know how to be Howard Hawks. You know how to be Steven Spielberg. He's got that stuff. Do you think he needs David Coop or somebody to come in and write William Goldman to write his script for him? Yeah, the way Andy Reid needs a time management coach. Yeah. I'm not joking. I mean, his dialogue is fine. I think in Dark Knight, it's actually way more comic book-y than I remember. There's a lot more like, I'm going to tell you exactly what the theme of the scene is. This movie plays right into his strengths, which is he – the set pieces hold this entire movie up. And it's when you get into those small moments that you can sense the seams. And it's a testament to how hard he crushes the set pieces in this. You really don't look for that stuff until you do something like this where you have to really watch the movie again and analyze it. I often think about how Nolan and Fincher together would be the greatest filmmaker of all time because Fincher actually cares so much about the precision of those intimate moments, the intimate one-on-one drama moments. And even if the script in the Fincher movie is a little bit flawed, somehow he executes those scenes so that they have as much weight as any – I mean, you don't really think of – there's not a lot of Fincher set pieces that are legendary. They're mostly like the cumulative effect of the movie, whereas Nolan, it's the set pieces are incredible. And then he too has an incredible attention to design and detail but like obviously just doesn't know how two people talk to each other and whether or not – and how to like put together a coherent story. I'm not as concerned as much with the dialogue. I think especially in a comic book movie, there's a certain element of explicativeness and also kind of corniness that I can deal with. I find the plotting in almost all of his movies to be much too convoluted, very often for no reason. And it was very charming in Memento and pretty much since then, there's not rationale for it. Best quote since we're talking about dialogue. Joker saying, I don't want to kill you. What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers. No, you complete me. Here's the most important part about this quote.
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