DC Film Society: Adam's Rib December 2022

Reasons to Cheer

Lost in the furor of “The Slap Heard Around the World” was the Oscars Cheer Moment poll. Most of the choices weren’t half bad: Spider-Man: No Way Home for the “three Spider-Men team-up,” Avengers: Endgame for Captain America's “Avengers, assemble” battle cry moment, Jennifer Hudson’s “And I’m Telling You” song from Dreamgirls, and Keanu Reeves’ bullet-time backbend in The Matrix. Unfortunately, none of those won. Instead, the Zack Snyder fanboys flooded the online poll and crowned as the winner Zack Snyder’s Justice League, not even released theatrically, for The Flash running through the Speed Force. The bizarre selection prompted a brief “What the hell?!” from non-Zack Snyder fans and then a collective shrug.

While the poll’s execution proved horrible, an honest look at “Cheer Moments” enticed me. We go to the movies for many reasons. Sometimes we look for exhilaration, and every so often we find it. What makes us cheer, either literally, or in our own minds? Most of us like an underdog, and seeing one succeed, particularly in sports movies, can give immense joy. Watching an action hero finally defeat a formidable enemy offers similar pleasures. Sometimes relief can trigger cheers, or characters showing a different side of themselves. Occasionally the cheers come by accident.

The cheer moments do not happen in a vacuum but reflect all that came before. Caring what happens to those onscreen is key. To some degree we naturally pull for some characters, but the more the film gets you to identify with them the more we will celebrate their victories. Then there’s a struggle, with a more difficult journey making the finish that much sweeter. A contemptible villain doesn’t hurt either. With all those factors in mind, I delved through the times where the audience or I, or both, cheered the loudest:

10. Lethal Weapon II, “It’s just been revoked!” – With the world’s attention focused on apartheid, white South Africans became the new Nazis in 1980s popular culture. The South African government was so blatantly racist, so blasé about oppressing blacks, that it was only a matter of time before they made it into the movies. Real life alone made South Africans the perfect villains, but the Lethal Weapon II team did not stop there. First, the South Africans show a condescension that would have made Simon Cowell proud, flaunting their diplomatic immunity, with their boss declaring “You can’t even give me a parking ticket.” Then they kill the cop buddies of Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Murtaugh (Danny Glover). Then the lead henchmen reveals that he killed Riggs’s wife many years ago and for good measure, murders his present-day girlfriend. Finally, after a brutal battle where Riggs dispatched the henchmen, the boss shoots him. When the boss declares “Diplomatic Immunity!” one more time Riggs, and we as an audience, have had enough. The hatred and frustration all boil over. I saw Lethal Weapon II at a predominantly African-American theater in Baltimore. As Murtaugh takes a second to collect himself the audience buzzed. Then it erupted when Murtaugh shot the baddie. In many ways, that moment exemplified the 80s, with the belief that we could overcome enemies through sheer toughness. In reality, Murtaugh likely gets stripped of his badge and would be lucky to stay out of jail. But where’s the fun in that? This is wish fulfillment at its finest.

9. E.T., The Flying Bicycles – For almost the whole movie, while E.T. bonded with Eliot (Henry Thomas) and his family, the adults serve as a looming threat. In particular it’s some unidentified government agency that wants to capture E.T. When Eliot and his brother’s friends break E.T. out of the makeshift lab, director Steven Spielberg at first stages the chase as a fun lark, with the kids on bicycles running circles around the grownups. But the fun stops when the authorities block the road. These are men with guns, scaring the kids and us too. Spielberg shifts focus from the group to tight shots of Eliot and then E.T., as if they have to believe that escape as possible. When the bikes soar, so does John Williams’s score and so does the whole film. Belief and a little magic can overcome all obstacles, a very Spielbergian element, especially in his early years.

8. Aliens, “Get Away From Her, You Bitch!” – No one could do a fleeting triumph better than James Cameron. Think of the many times Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese had to kill the Terminator. Cameron topped that in Aliens, as Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) escapes with Newt (Carrie Henn) and Bishop (Lance Henriksen) only for the Queen alien to strike again on the spaceship. Ripley disappears for a moment only to come back in the mechanical loader, which is a perfect example of a “Chekhov’s gun,” something with seemingly little relevance when shown earlier in the film now becoming essential. The loader also means that for the first time Ripley will have a fair fight against the monstrous alien. Ripley’s iconic line serves as both a badass moment from a groundbreaking action hero and a mother protecting her surrogate daughter.

7. The Devil’s Advocate, A Bullet in the Head – Not all cheer moments are intentional. We have been suffering through Keanu Reeves playing a southern lawyer. This was years before Reeves realized he should stick to playing solemn action heroes. Reeves tried to extend his very limited range, straining any shed of credibility as a lawyer who never lost a case. One reviewer wrote that if Reeves was your lawyer you’d want to stock up on cigarettes. Even worse, he played against a hammy Al Pacino, who seemed to be having the time of his life. Their scenes together were like Muhammad Ali fighting a mannequin. Reeves made matters worse with a misguided try at a southern accent. Finally, Reeves character shoots himself, and the audience burst out in applause. I’m guessing this was not the reaction director Taylor Hackford was looking for, but it was the perfect ending for such a ridiculous performance.

6. Jerry Maguire, In Rod We Trust – Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) lies on the ground motionless. He just scored a touchdown but sustained a vicious hit. Tidwell’s wife (Regina Hall) and agent (Tom Cruise) watch terrified. So do we, as we have come to love Rod both for his buoyant personality and his loyalty. He’s the one client who stuck with Jerry Maguire. Without him Jerry is sunk. When Rod awakens, he feeds off the crowd as he celebrates his touchdown. Director Cameron Crowe lets the scene slowly build from relief to pure joy. Now in real life Tidwell should have been taken to a doctor immediately. In today’s NFL he would have gone into concussion protocol. But why let Tidwell’s long-term health concerns cloud such a wonderful moment?

5. Jaws, “Smile You Son of a . . .” – The ship is sinking. Hooper and Quint, the two sea experts, are gone. All that’s left are the reluctant hero, Brody and the big, bad shark. As Brody battles the shark with whatever he can find, he seems woefully overmatched. John Williams classic theme from the shark battles his adventure theme, heightening the tension. When Brody shoves an oxygen tank into the shark’s mouth it feels like he’s just postponing the inevitable. But when the shark turns to make one final pass, we realize that Brody is shooting at the oxygen tank. He fires shot after shot, to no avail, and we understand this is his last chance. Spielberg, as always, knows exactly when to come in for the close-up. Do sharks smile? No, but somehow the line works anyway. The shark served as such an invulnerable killing machine that we share Brody’s relief that it’s now chum. We can all breathe now.

4. Casablanca, “Round up the usual suspects.” – At the beginning of Casablanca Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) “sticks his neck out for nobody,” while the happily corrupt Captain Renault (Claude Rains) is a Vichy collaborator with the Nazis. As Rick gradually allows himself to feel, and moves closer to taking sides, Renault is always one step behind him. Finally, Rick makes his stand, arranging for Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and Laszlo (Paul Henreid) to leave and shooting Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt). When Renault’s men arrive, he pauses. Director Michael Curtiz beautifully frames this moment, with Rick silently pleading for help. Renault could tell his men the truth and arrest Rick, who would probably be hanged by the Nazis. It’s only when Renault tells his men to round up the usual suspects that we know Rick will make it. In 1998 I saw Casablanca at DC’s Uptown theater, and the audience broke out into rapturous applause. Following Rick, Renault has now completed his own journey to the right side, and as an extra bit of emphasis, drops the Vichy water into the trash.

3. Rocky, Going the Distance – With everything that happened in the Rocky series, it’s hard to remember that in the first film he was a broken-down club fighter. That’s one of the reasons Rocky connected with so many people in 1976. They could feel for him. When he talks to Adrian about the fight, he never mentions winning but that he simply wants to go the distance. He wants to have his dignity by still standing at the end. All of that seems in jeopardy when Apollo Creed lands some brutal punches in the later rounds. At one point, Rocky falls to the mat and even his trainer is telling him to stay down. Creed thinks he’s won. When Rocky slowly rises and motions to Creed, we know he will get his wish. Regardless of the fight’s final score Rocky won just by getting up.

2. The Silence of the Lambs, “I’m having an old friend for dinner.” – At the staid, subdued FBI graduation ceremony concluding The Silence of the Lambs, it’s been a while since we have seen Hannibal Lecter. His return brings a much-needed jolt of energy, especially when he reveals that he would soon be eating his former warden, Dr. Chilton. Now Dr. Chilton was a sleazy creep, hitting on Clarice Starling, and manipulating the attention on Lecter to boost his own publicity. Still, to the best of our knowledge he never killed anyone, let alone ate them. On any objective scale he’s a better person than Hannibal Lecter, but a good movie can wash objectivity away. We find ourselves attracted to charm, charisma, and wit, all of which Lecter has in spades. Besides, he did help Starling catch Buffalo Bill. It doesn’t take all that much to have us rooting for a sociopathic killer. So much so, that the 1991 audience where I saw the film went crazy at Lecter’s clever line and all it entailed. I might have turned up my nose at the crowd’s choice had I not been feeling the same thing.

1. Star Wars, “You’re all clear kid!” – Peter Biskind, in his book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, recounts Marcia Lucas, both George Lucas’s then-wife and one of the Star Wars editors, saying “If the audience doesn’t cheer when Han Solo comes in at the last second in the Millennium Falcon to help Luke when he’s being chased by Darth Vader, the film doesn’t work.” She needn’t have worried. The dogfight between the rebels’ X-Wings and the Imperial Tie Fighters becomes so immersive that we almost forget about Han, Chewie and the Falcon. George Lucas sets up the lynchpin of the battle in a Death Star trench, making the action primarily horizontal. For a minute Lucas keeps the battle centered on Vader chasing Luke, still horizontal. The Falcon coming in from above, with a sun behind it, to save Luke wonderfully disrupts the action. Han shouting like a cowboy further accentuates the rescue. Paul Hirsch, another of the film’s editors, recalled that “When they get to the shot where the Millennium Falcon appears at the last minute, not only did they cheer, they stood up in their seats and raised their arms like a home run in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series.” When I saw the Star Wars re-release in 1997, the audience had a very similar reaction. For sheer elation in a movie theater, you can’t do better than that.

Adam Spector
December 1, 2022