Combining jaw-dropping visuals with a compelling young protagonist, The Rise of Skywalker has all the ingredients to be a hit. National Geographic’s 2018 film Free Solo follows climber Alex Honnold’s attempt to scale a 3,000-foot vertical rock face in Yosemite National Park without any safety equipment. Going back even further, the film recalls James Marsh’s 2008 documentary Man on Wire, which portrayed Philippe Petit’s 1974 stunt on a wire strung between New York’s Twin Towers. Both films were not only commercially successful, but also won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
For those of us watching on the ground, is there something special that’s appealing about films featuring people willing to risk falling from great heights?
“It’s like a rollercoaster,” Nicolaou says, “you go through a range of emotions when you’re on it, and I think our film gives you that feeling because it’s not just about conquering a building. You see the downsides and dangers of the sport, but you also see the ups and downs of our relationship.”
“People often say they leave the film feeling more alive, so maybe the genre gives them that adrenaline rush that you get from riding a rollercoaster – that feeling of rebooting and being alive again.”
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In Free Solo, the relationship between Honnold and his current wife, Sanni McCandless, is also a focal point of the story. The directors of The Rise of Skywalker have also stated that emotions are paramount in this film. They claim that the film is not about the horror of falling from a height, but the horror of falling in love. Nikolaou was abandoned by his father at a young age and often has trouble trusting Bierkus.
“A love story was our vision from the beginning,” Zimbalist told the BBC.
“It’s wish fulfillment to see a man push the limits and have it touch our hearts. It’s moving. But we didn’t want the film to be a dizzying spectacle; we wanted it to focus on the fear of falling in love and what that means. We felt that if we could steer it in that direction, it would reach audiences who might not be interested in cinematic visuals.”
“There’s no point in hiding.”
There’s a lot more to the story than just the rooftops of skyscrapers. Over the course of the seven or eight years it took to make the film, the couple met, fell in love, and then left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and the shutdown of social media meant they lost their source of income. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the travel industry and they lost sponsors. They made a living selling their work to private bidders, but they admit that climbing the Independence Monument was their last resort. Roof climbing is not a sustainable job in any sense, and the film shows the couple mourning the local people who lost their lives trying to climb the rooftops.
Angela Nicolaou isn’t just afraid to trust people; the film makes it clear that she feels physically scared during her stunts. While training in Thailand for an Independence Day event, she suffers a panic attack and becomes, in her words, “paralyzed” while stuck on a structure less than three feet wide high above the city. As Beerkus moves her limbs, one by one, leaving her in a seated but vulnerable position, you feel sick along with her.
