Cliffhanger is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the costliest aerial stunt ever performed. Stuntman Simon Crane was paid $1 million to perform the aerial transfer scene, where he crossed between two planes at an altitude of 15,000 feet (4,600 m).
Actually, Crane's first major work came in the 1985 Bond film A View to a Kill. In 1987 he became Timothy Dalton's stunt double in The Living Daylights. He also played the character of Che Che in a reenactment of the "gatecrasher" fight scene from On Her Majesty's Secret Service traditionally used to test the fighting skills of actors up for the part of James Bond. Vic Armstrong coordinated the fight. Actors believed to have tested opposite Crane in the screen tests include Mark Greenstreet, Sam Neill and Pierce Brosnan.
After spending five years as the apprentice to an experienced stunt coordinator, Crane was allowed to act as second unit stunt coordinator on Licence to Kill. In 1993, Crane performed the dangerous-looking aerial transfer for the film Cliffhanger, for which he earned an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for being part of the most expensive stunt ever performed. It cost $1 million to have Simon Crane descending on a rope between two planes at an altitude of 4,572 m (15,000 ft).
In 1995 he became the overall stunt coordinator for GoldenEye - the opening bungee jump was voted the greatest film stunt ever in a poll for Sky Movies. After a four-year break from the Bond franchise, during which he coordinated stunts for the Academy-Award winning films Titanic (in which he happened to play fourth officer Joseph Boxhall, and only had one line) and Saving Private Ryan, Crane returned to handle the stunts for The World Is Not Enough, with Vic Armstrong as second unit director.
Crane also took the role of stunt coordinator in Will Smith's Hancock (2008). He was to make his directorial début directing a film adaptation of the popular video game, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men but departed from the project. Crane directed the 3-D supernatural thriller The Peak, which was based on a screenplay from Neal Marshall Stevens and Crane worked with Will Smith again as Second Unit Director and Stunt Coordinator on Men in Black 3.
Crane was originally a law student, but not liking it, he dropped out after two years and worked as an acrobat in a circus for three years. To fulfill English requirements for stuntmen to achieve instructor level in six sports, Crane became an instructor in gymnastics, parachuting, scuba diving, high diving, karate, and fencing. When he could not obtain a union card as a stuntman fast enough, he became an instructor in three more sports, including hang gliding. His father was Dr. John Crane, who was the doctor forArsenal F.C and the England national football team.
The stunt was performed for the movie Cliffhanger, a 1993 American action-adventure thriller directed by Renny Harlin and starring Sylvester Stallone and John Lithgow. Stallone, who co-wrote the screenplay, plays a mountain climber who becomes embroiled in a failed heist set in a U.S. Treasury plane flying through the Rocky Mountains. The film was a critical and box office success, earning more than $250 million worldwide.
The film was screened in out of competition at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, Best Sound (Michael Minkler, Bob Beemer and Tim Cooney), Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Visual Effects all losing to Jurassic Park.
The film was generally praised by critics, receiving a 69% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 49 reviews. Although the movie was a box-office success, it was nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Supporting Actor (John Lithgow), Worst Supporting Actress (Janine Turner) and Worst Screenplay in the 1993 Golden Raspberry Awards. Although most people enjoyed Lithgow's performance, he was criticized for his inauthentic-sounding English accent, especially when next to native English-thespians Fairbrass and Goodall.
Generally disliked is the film's unrealistic portrayal of rock climbing. One example is the feature of the bolt-gun which fires bolts directly into rock, forgoing the usual rock-drilling and bolt-hammering used in rock-climbing. This ignores certain material properties of rock that should cause the bolt-gun's impact site to shatter and explode with flaky projectiles. The bolt gun is considered the most serious of the film's technical inaccuracies. Further examples are showing athletic moves, which have no use in real climbing, or free soloing with – then also completely useless – gear.
Sneak-preview audiences saw a scene where a rabbit is killed by gunfire. Their reaction was strong enough for Sylvester Stallone to invest $100,000 of his own money to have the scene re-shot so that the rabbit escaped.
The film was originally rated NC-17 by the MPAA on account of its violence. Several cuts were made to almost every violent scene in the film in order to get an R rating. Several death scenes in the film were shot in slow motion and lasted several seconds; for instance in the beginning of the film the pilot of the plane shoots the co-pilot in the head in a very brief shot; in the NC-17 version, this was shot from a different angle that showed blood splattering on the window. Bootleg DVD copies taken from a timecoded VHS workprint feature the original rough cut of the film, complete with uncut violent scenes. Travers' death originally featured him being shot in the shoulder by Walker with the bolt gun and blasted with the shotgun by Tucker. This was changed to Walker firing the gun three times, not due to censorship but because a review of the dailies caused the filmmakers to think of a somewhat slicker death.
