Face/Off
Hey, Do You Remember...?
Christopher Schrader
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2018
⏱️ 113 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Equally revered and reviled, Face/Off is emblematic of the overblown but undercooked action films that were dominating theaters in the late 90s. Director John Woo was already a legend back in Hong Kong, but he never had as much luck with his American-made films. This is definitely the best of that bunch, but one of the running themes in this episode is why so much of his style gets lost in the translation.
There's also the Travolta/Cage of it all. Action movies aren't the only thing that's changed in the two decades since this was released. Our attitude towards these leading man has also shifted pretty dramatically. This represents a pretty interesting point in both of their careers and it's difficult not to let some of the present day baggage cast a shadow over their work here.
Topics include: the two A-listers initially approached to star in this, why the original plan to set this in the future would have solved 80% of this story's logic issues, the much simpler way to get Pollux to talk, some baffling studio notes that Woo wisely ignored, why the action scenes in the back-half are beautiful but uninvolving, the confusing alternate ending, and much much more!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey, do you remember Face Off? |
| 0:06.6 | Hello and welcome Hey Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose tinted glasses to see how it holds up. |
| 0:32.2 | I'm Chris. |
| 0:32.9 | I'm Donna. |
| 0:33.6 | And I'm Carlos. |
| 0:34.5 | And today we're revisiting Face Off. |
| 0:53.6 | Yeah. And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting Face Off. Paramount Pictures bought the script for Face Off largely based on its built-in marketing hook, |
| 0:58.9 | pairing up two larger-than-life movie stars and then having them swap personas. |
| 1:03.7 | They could already see the poster, which is why they immediately offered it to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. |
| 1:13.7 | On the one hand, it makes sense. This was back in 1990. They were the two biggest action heroes on the planet, and they had yet to appear in a film |
| 1:18.2 | together. More importantly, the premise of face-off doesn't work as well, unless the audience has |
| 1:23.2 | enough awareness of the actors on a meta-level to appreciate the novelty of seeing them imitate one |
| 1:28.6 | another. On the other hand, trying to imagine Arnold and Stallone impersonating one another |
| 1:33.9 | conjures up images of something closer to a bad SNL sketch. That version of the film obviously |
| 1:39.2 | never came together, and when director John Wu got involved several years later, he was the one |
| 1:43.9 | who pushed for |
| 1:44.4 | John Travolta, whom he had just worked with on Broken Arrow, and Nicholas Cage, who at this point in time |
| 1:49.7 | had weirdly become one of our go-to headliners for overblown action films. In fact, this was |
| 1:55.3 | released only two weeks after Conair. Wow. Oh my God. The other change Wu made was to the setting. |
| 2:01.6 | The original script took place in the near future, |
| 2:04.0 | a decision that had been made almost entirely to justify the technology required for this |
| 2:08.4 | totally bonkers surgical procedure. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Christopher Schrader, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Christopher Schrader and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.