Alex Honnold and Netflix Team Up for a Corporatized “Free Solo”

In Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Oscar-winning 2018 documentary, “Free Solo,” the world-class stone climber Alex Honnold expresses reservations astir being changeable by a movie unit portion helium attempts to go the archetypal idiosyncratic ever to standard Yosemite’s El Capitan monolith without ropes oregon a harness. “The thought of falling off . . . It’s, like, benignant of O.K. if it’s conscionable by myself, but, like, I wouldn’t privation to autumn disconnected close successful beforehand of my friends,” helium says, explaining that usually, erstwhile helium free-solos—the high-risk signifier of no-supports climbing—he tends not to archer anyone he’s doing it. “The less radical cognize anything, the better, really.” For Honnold, the documentary suggests, escaped soloing isn’t astir fame oregon attraction oregon money. Instead, it’s astir the climber’s ain request to beryllium to himself that helium tin flooded mortal hazard arsenic good arsenic his ain fears. To bring cameras into the equation mightiness mar the authenticity of this pursuit.

If being watched is portrayed arsenic a tricky proposition successful “Free Solo,” watching, too, is shown to beryllium fraught. The animating play of the documentary doesn’t hinge conscionable connected whether Honnold volition look from climbing El Cap with beingness and limb intact but, also, connected whether documenting his ascent is adjacent appropriate—a question that members of the movie crew, who are each climbers themselves, grapple with onscreen. “I’ve ever been conflicted astir doing a movie astir escaped soloing due to the fact that it’s truthful dangerous,” Chin says. “It’s hard to not ideate your friend, Alex, soloing . . . and you’re making a movie astir it, which mightiness enactment undue unit connected him to bash thing and him falling done the framework to his death.” At the movie’s climax, arsenic we spot Honnold yet ascending to El Cap’s peak, hanging connected the wall’s granite aboveground by his fingertips oregon balancing connected a slim ridge with his toes, the changeable occasionally pans to 1 of the cameramen, Mikey Schaefer, who keeps turning distant from his lens. “I can’t judge you guys really tin watch,” helium says to his colleagues astatine 1 point.

How acold we’ve come. On Saturday night, Alex Honnold was back, but this clip the full satellite was invited to ticker arsenic helium climbed not a earthy wonderment but a man-made one—the Taipei 101, 1 of the tallest buildings successful the world—as portion of a peculiar Netflix streaming event, “Skyscraper Live.” The sanction of the broadcast called to caput 1 of those nineteen-seventies catastrophe movies, similar “The Towering Inferno” oregon “Airport,” successful which a catastrophe befalls a built situation to harrowing effect. But if portion of the pleasance of those films is watching their protagonists’ conflict to conscionable hardly flight immoderate outlandish calamity has been thrust upon them, successful Honnold’s case, the calamity, were it to come, would beryllium self-inflicted. It would besides beryllium streamed globally, and successful existent time, to millions of Netflix subscribers.

“It’s truly conscionable sensationalism for the involvement of daze and awe, similar verging awfully adjacent to Colosseum benignant entertainment,” a idiosyncratic wrote successful a overmuch liked remark connected a Reddit climbing thread, and erstwhile I watched the special’s promotional trailer, which leaned hard connected the event’s captious stakes, I disquieted that this instrumentality wasn’t wrong. (“If you fall,” Honnold says successful the promo, arsenic the camera rushes astatine a dizzying clip down the magnitude of the astir seventeen-hundred-foot building, “you’re going to die.”) The information that “Skyscraper Live” was expected to instrumentality spot connected Friday nighttime but, astatine the past minute, got postponed due to the fact that of rainfall successful Taipei, was, connected the 1 hand, reassuring, since it indicated that Honnold and Netflix were being astatine slightest somewhat sensible by not taking connected much hazard than they had already signed up for. On the different hand, it reminded maine that determination was lone truthful overmuch they could control. What if it started to rainfall portion Honnold was climbing? What if the upwind picked up? What if determination was seismic activity?

Around 8 P.M. Eastern Standard Time connected Saturday, with the ascent up Taipei 101 astir to commence, these possibilities were each raised by Mark Rober, a fashionable subject YouTuber and 1 of the special’s presenters. Rober’s peppy manner—“finally, judge it oregon not, we’re monitoring earthquakes!”—was echoed by the event’s squad of commentators, among them the Netflix sports anchor Elle Duncan, the celebrated stone climber Emily Harrington, and the man-bun- and undercut-sporting W.W.E. combatant Seth (Freakin’) Rollins. The trio’s bland, affable chatter—“the goosebumps are goosebumping,” Duncan offered astatine 1 point, perkily—reminded maine a spot of watching 1 of the sleepier Olympic sports (dressage? archery?) alternatively than a harrowing life-and-death event.