It’s on YouTube! Because of course is. I did not remember the visuals correctly, but there you go.

The original has one fantastic line. Some generic 80s bad guy, about to fight Swayze, barks out:

I hate these listicles, and always hate myself for reading them.
BUT.
I love this title. “Complex messiahs.” That’s witty!
Carry on.

Wrongly omitted:

I assume this is for series regulars only. Single-episode guest-stars don’t qualify.

The striking thing about Casino Royale is how closely they adapted the novel. They tacked on a first act (all the Bahamas/Miami stuff), reordered some stuff (Bond meets Vesper before they together meet Mathis) and inserted a couple fight scenes; but basically it’s a modern adaptation of the book. Hold ‘Em instead of…

It’s always weird to me that people like Skyfall so much. Casino Royale is still by far the best Craig Bond movie. Everything since has been a clumsily-written mild disappointment.

And Crank!  Can’t believe I forgot to list Crank as one of the influences.

Even David Leitch is kind of bad without Chad Stahelski.

d) that fabulous long-take vertical fight inside the building

Long Kiss Goodnight kind of sucks. My only takeaway from it is “What? Chefs do that.”.

Salt is pretty damn good.

Man, I still love Payback. One of my all time favorite movies.

The Parker book series is basically this. It’s been made into some movies: Point Blank with Lee Marvin, Payback with Mel Gibson, and Parker with Jason Statham.

I felt like Atomic Blonde also made the mistake of indulging to the point of disgust in male gaze.

You could argue that John Wick was inspired by Atomic Blonde, because of the shared creators and the world building

Okay, so we just watched this movie tonight.

(Something Die Hard itself gave up on after the second movie.)

a lot of Shang Chi’s stuff is a bit deep cut. I don’t think I’ve read a comic where he sticks around for more than 1 issue.

I can’t get over just how yellow they made Shang-Chi’s skin. Was he like that in all his old-school comics?