There I was, casually looking up Jaume Collet-Serra’s upcoming movies after Carry-On when I stumbled upon this little oddity. As I started reading more about it, the story kept getting weirder and, sadly, more generic. Before we get to that, let’s sort out the important stuff first. Cliffhanger reboot, currently titled just Cliffhanger, is in post-production which means filming in the mountains of Austria is finished. We can expect the movie to hit the theaters either in late 2025 (Christmas?) or early 2026. That is if there’s no additional filming required. Considering the complexity of the project I don’t think there will be any as it would be just too expensive.
I predict this will be another mildly entertaining but sleek-looking and completely watchable experience. I would compare it to Collet-Serra’s 2016 movie The Shallows starring Blake Lively. Before we go any further, I just want to make one thing crystal clear: I’m not here to bitch and moan about the gender-swapping in this Cliffhanger reboot. I will not scream woke agenda or any type of nonsense like that. In fact, judging by the stills, Lily James really gave it her all and she looks awesome. I don’t know how it makes sense for her to be half-naked high-up in the mountains but I’m not complaining. After all, the original movie Cliffhanger from 1993 was your basic action thriller with a climbing twist.
And Stallone used every opportunity to show off his muscles and climbing skills. So, I will not bitch and moan about the gender swap. However, I will bitch and moan about the fact they’ll use the title of a nineties guilty pleasure classic starring Sylvester Stallone to promote another father-daughter action thriller. I would’ve said this even if originally the project wasn’t a reboot but a sequel starring none other than Sly himself. We still don’t know why or how this happened but what we do know is this was a very different movie some two years ago. Okay, okay, I’m getting carried away again here. So, let’s get back on track and learn a bit more about this sappy story.
The current movie stars Lily James (Pam & Tommy, Baby Driver, Cinderella) and Pierce Brosnan as daughter-father climbing experts who will get into a lot of trouble when their wealthy client gets kidnapped. You already know the deal, the daughter will have to face her biggest fear to save her father and so forth. I’ve already talked about this in Neil Blomkamp’s next movie They Found Us is going to suck. You have just one chance to try and guess what’s the story of that movie. The corniest, safest, and most boring narrative you can think of seems to be gold to these producers. To quote the immortal George Carlin: “Take a fucking chance, live a little.”
To make things even weirder, one of the writers is Ana Lily Amirpour who wrote A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and one of the better episodes in Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. The other writer is Mark Bianculli (The Good Neighbor). The only thing I can think of is that they’re under contract and looking to cash in. After all, you do a couple of commercial movies and then you do your passion project. I like these dumb but visually impressive and just fun movies. I just wish they were a bit more original. Well, with that out of the way, we can really dig into the story of the Cliffhanger sequel that was in the works for more than 30 fucking years!
Cliffhanger 2: The Dam starring Stallone was the original sequel, basically Die Hard but on a dam. The project was in developmental hell from 1994 to 2010 when they had a new idea. Following the huge success of the Star Trek reboot, they wanted to do the same thing. So, a bunch of young climbers, possibly under Stallone’s guidance will have to do something edgy and cool. This only meant we were entering another phase of developmental hell that lasted up until 2019. With Ric Roman Waugh (Felon, Angel Has Fallen, Greenland) at the helm and Stallone, now as an old man, starring, we finally pivoted to the idea of the father-daughter duet. And this is how we ended up with the movie we’re currently waiting for.