Whedon’s Speed

Speed is a great movie.

Shut up. Dennis Hopper just one hair away from revisiting Frank Booth, explosions galore, FUCKING JEFF DANIELS and Keanu the machine - in his prime. Watch this and Point Break as a double bill and you can just about forgive those Matrix sequels. It’s also still the best thing that Sandra Bullock has been in (Bionic Showdown included)*.

Joss Whedon ‘interfered’ in what would have been just Die Hard on a bus without his uncredited input. A key change was Alan Ruck’s character being rewritten from a carbon copy of Ellis (”Hans, babe, put away the gun“) in Die Hard to the wonder struck tourist that almost falls under the speeding wheels of the rescue vehicle at the airport. Interestingly Whedon rewrote the character to be an audience favourite and then went ahead and killed him anyway. Whedon is a bad bad man.

The one chance I got to put a question to him in person I asked if killing off much loved characters was something that came easy. “Have you ever seen my stuff?” was the reply.

We’ll take that as read.

Now, I’ve seen Speed many times, but this time what really struck me was something in the final part on the subway train. I’ve always felt this sequence was needlessly tacked on and sure enough it was very much a last minute addition to the script and every time I’ve seen it it manages to push the movie from ludicrous-but-enjoyable to just the wrong side of dumb. However, this time my favourite part of the movie was after Hopper has been dispatched and Jack and Annie realise that those handcuffs just aren’t coming off. Jack has a chance to leave Annie, but of course this is SPEED so instead he just pushes the throttle higher.

And this is where things get interesting.

He puts his arms around her, gets between her and the cuffs and they sit down and wait for the thing to derail. There’s a small quiet moment in the movie just before things go all kablooy for the last time as they shoot along the tunnel holding onto each other as the lights flicker over head and I fucking loved that scene.

I wonder if that (last minute as it was) was another Whedon addition. It’s a great scene, Jack’s frustration at not being able to kick the pole from its fitting gives way to quiet acceptance as Annie pleads with him to leave and once the dust settles and you hear her joyous “You didn’t leave me!” you just know it’s the perfect ending.

Then they went and made Speed 2.

Fuckwits.

*Actually she’s great in Demolition Man too. Shut up. (Oh and the crappy screencap above is actually the results of me photographing the TV. Haven’t looked into screen capture from Blu-ray yet)