There’s one really obvious, horrifying way Alex Honnold’s ascent of the Taipai 101 skyscraper could go wrong. Allow these films to reassure you that it (almost) certainly won’t.
Photo: Corey Rich/Netflix
There has never been a television event quite like Skyscraper Live, which sounds like the riskiest thing anyone has ever attempted in the medium: Sui generis climber Alex Honnold climbing up the Taipei 101 skyscraper, in his customary free-solo style, with no ropes or other safety gear to catch him if he falls — there’s one really obvious way this could go wrong, and it is horrifying to think about. Many dangerous sports exist (football, MMA, ski jumping), but they’re TV mainstays, so there’s infrastructure for what happens if a competitor gets horrendously injured: medics to send to the athlete’s side, ads to cut away to. What happens if Honnold careens off the skyscraper? There’s no contingency plan there. Even just writing about it is giving me a stomachache.
However: If there’s one person who could do this kind of climb in his sleep, well, it’s Honnold. He’s an icon in the climbing community for both his roped and rope-free ascents, and he never takes on anything he isn’t confident he can safely tackle. All those decades of experience don’t eliminate the slim chance that something catastrophic might occur on January 23, when Netflix will be livestreaming his climb up Taipei 101. Hopefully not! We are really, really hoping not! But as further reassurance before you watch, here are four “seriously, these people know what they’re doing” film recommendations. Consider this your exposure therapy.
The 2018 documentary that introduced Honnold to the mainstream was produced by a crew who were largely, like co-directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, also climbers and friends of Honnold’s, adding an extra layer of intimacy and concern to the work. Honnold’s challenge for himself felt impossible: be the first person to free solo the wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. He would climb a 3,000-foot route, Freerider, that he had climbed previously using ropes. But now, no harness, no ropes, no carabiners, no nothing; if he slipped, it would be a many-seconds-long fall. It’s a task that everyone in the documentary, especially Honnold’s recurring climbing partner, Tommy Caldwell, speaks about in hushed tones, like it’s so outlandish that no one can really wrap their heads around it. (Including me; I’ve watched this documentary about a dozen times, and I still don’t understand how Honnold grips the minuscule holds and tiny foot chips that he does.)
Free Solo then breaks down how Honnold went about it, which is obsessively. He trained, he practiced, he went over the route, he quit one time when it didn’t feel right. Of course, you’re going into this viewing experience knowing that Honnold made it out alive, but the people who made Free Solo — which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Film in 2019 — didn’t know that as they were filming Honnold climbing in real time. Everyone involved had nerves of steel, and you can watch it to get into that mind-set before Skyscraper Live, too.
There’s also an important reveal in this film: Honnold’s amygdala processes fear differently than the rest of us. (The science magazine Nautilus conducted its own interesting tests with Honnold about this.) That doesn’t mean that he acts recklessly, but that he’s going into these challenges already at an advantage. Frankly, for us as viewers, what a relief. (Streaming on Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix)
More climbing without ropes, this time in urban areas. Rooftopping is a combination of urban exploring, climbing, and parkour, in which people climb urban structures — radio towers, cranes, chimneys — and often livestream or post about their exploits. It’s sort of like if Tom Cruise climbed the Burj Khalifa for Instagram likes instead of for Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.
Rooftopping is generally trespassing and often illegal, which won’t be the case with Honnold climbing Taipei 101; a security guard isn’t going to appear out of nowhere and potentially spook Honnold into losing his grip. But Skywalkers will give you a sense of how climbing an urban structure is different from climbing a mountain. Sometimes there are basically ladders built into the entity, but most often there aren’t; sometimes the challenge is more about navigating materials you’re not used to, like the slick texture of siding, roofing, or glass windows, as opposed to more naturally gritty rock. Skywalkers provides a look at the unexpected challenges to technical climbing, which will be helpful to understand what Honnold faces with a skyscraper rather than natural terrain.
Skywalkers also chronicles the relationship between Russians Angela Nikolau and Vanya Beerkus, who made both their romance and their climbing into content. Another option, if you’d prefer to watch a similar documentary with a friendship framework rather than a love-story one, is Roof Culture Asia, from the British parkour collective Storror. The lads in that group are a mixture of brothers and friends who are all incredibly supportive of one another, and the 2017 film followed the group as they traveled throughout Asia and filmed illegal stunts on roofs in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Seoul. The moves they pulled off are exceptional and horrifying, but again, they all lived! So that’s reassuring! (Skywalkers: A Love Story is streaming on Netflix; Roof Culture Asia on Sling)
Man on Wire is sort of the perfect amalgamation of the three aforementioned films — like Skywalkers and Roof Culture Asia, it feels a bit like a heist movie because its central feat was done in secret; like Free Solo, it follows an iconoclast and legend whose physical abilities were simply unparalleled in their time. In this case that’s French high-wire artist Philippe Petit, who specialized in secretly installing tightropes in cities and performing circus-style stunts on them. In 1971, he juggled balls while balancing on a cable between two Notre Dame towers, and in 1974, he pulled off a similar stunt between the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.
On a wire 1,312 feet above the ground, Petit walked back and forth, laid down, did stunts, and was cheered by onlookers for nearly an hour. Petit wrote about it in his 2002 book, To Reach the Clouds, which director James Marsh adapts and augments here with never-before-seen footage of Petit’s preparation for the day, archival photographs of the event, and interviews with some of the people involved. More than anything, Man on Wire is a deeply pleasurable watch, a process piece that captures a man totally in control of his talent and aware of his own strengths and limitations. As a viewer, your confidence in Petit is practically immediate, and that can transfer to Skyscraper Live, too — the knowledge that only someone as skilled as Honnold could attempt Taipei 101 to begin with, and the certainty that he wouldn’t do this if he weren’t ready for it. Well … near certainty. Very close to 100 percent certainty! (Streaming on Tubi, Philo, Pluto TV, and more)
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