Top Secret! is a gem of a movie and I will be watching it tomorrow in his honour.
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Okay, what's the name of the movie? Yes, what's the name of the movie. What movie? Top secret? Yes! What's the name of the movie? That's the name! The movie's name is that? If you're referring to the top secret, then yeah, that's the name of the movie!
Telling that, as of now, most comments mention a different film of his. Kilmer was great in so many things! I’ll just add Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to the pile, RIP to a great actor
Open the dictionary and under the word idiot, what do you see?
A picture of me?
No! The definition of the word idiot! Which you are!
(done from memory, so likely not 100% accurate)
Heat.
I've read that he was a bit of a pain in the ass to work with, but I've always appreciated the results. So many great rolls. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is great, Tombstone, etc. I've not met too many people who mention The Salton Sea. That's in my top 3 for his performances.
Any day we lose a Batman is a bad day. RIP Iceman.
I shall honor him by going Skeet Surfin' tomorrow.
If everybody had a 12 gauge
With a sufboard too
You see em shootin' and surfin'
From here to Malibu
He'll always be my Huckleberry.
Personally believed he carried that movie. Without him it would have been different to me.
The greatest swordsman that ever lived
Now I'm Sadmartigan.
"Wyatt Earp is my friend."
That scene always gets me, it's one of the greatest in all cinema.
"hell I got lots of friends"
... "I don't."
God damn that scene gets me every time.
Man, I don't normally get choked up about celebrities but some of Val Kilmer's movies got me through a pretty dark time in the late 90s. I was 8 when Willow came out, we wore that VHS out. In 2000 I lived in the boonies taking care of an indoor broccoli growing operation in Colorado. The only thing I had was 20 or so books, a box of VHS tapes, and a 13" TV VCR combo. I must have watched Tombstone and The Saint 10000 times.
I am still friends with the guy who worked with me and anytime he asks me what happened to or where is so and so I 100% answer with "He ran off to live in the forest, in the nude."
Not entirely surprising I guess, but still a sad one. Somehow stayed just a touch under the radar despite some of the most iconic roles of the 80s and 90s.
How has nobody mentioned Real Genius yet?
That was the first movie I saw him in. He defintely stole all of the scenes with his great acting chops.
Can't forget Chris, from Heat. Took one in his neck. RIP
This dude made movies so good.
Tombstone Batman Top gun The saint Prince of Egypt Red planet
Shame his career was cut short. I assume he lost his speech because God needed it after watching Prince of Egypt.
SIR/MADAM! I call foul! Most foul!
Your list is horribly disingenuous, due to the absence of Val Kilmer's greatest movie:
I watched that one much later in life but it was in fact good.
It is a cinematic triumph. Peter Cushing himself called it his greatest role! Well, he might have said that.
Fun fact that I actually just learned today. The cast made from Mr Cushing's face for his scene in Top Secret was used by the SFX wizards working on Rogue One to digitally recreate the actor for the movie.
Imagine that, a casting for a prosthetic made over 40 years ago was used to recreate the image of Peter Cushing so that he could appear as Grand Moff Tarkin again.
Have to admit, that rather stunned me when I read it.
Uhh, Heat???????
One of my favorite movies of all time. The gun battle in the streets is an all-time great scene.
How has Willow not been mentioned? He was really good as a halfling!
But Kilmer didnt play a halfling
Shhhh! I'm trying to get people to watch it!
Fuck. RIP Mr. Kilmer. What a fine human being. From Willow to Top Gun to Batman to so many from our childhoods. Looks like be watching a Val film this evening.
His role as Gay Perry in Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang is underrated. He owned the role and outshone even the protagonist!
R.I.P. legend.
Well damn. :(
I hope he gets his sun god robes and thousands of women throw little pickles at him wherever he ends up.
Another one to throw into the mix of mentions here. The first Val Kilmer movie that I actually always think of is The Island of Dr. Moreau. A bit offbeat I suppose but one of my absolute favourite childhood movies and I rented the VHS on more than one occasion. Think I might need to rewatch now.
He was so great as Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's Doors movie. The only one who could have played that role.
Here are some cool facts about the movie:
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- Val Kilmer didn’t just play Jim Morrison—he became him. Before CGI, before deepfakes, there was Val Kilmer. He spent six months rehearsing, learned 50 Doors songs, and recorded vocals so convincing that Ray Manzarek couldn’t tell them apart from Jim’s. Kilmer even paid out of his own pocket to film a full performance demo for Oliver Stone. But it wasn’t just mimicry—it was method acting gone full Lizard King. He wore Morrison’s leather pants, spoke like him between takes, and according to crew memos, requested not to be addressed by his real name on set. Now that’s rock ’n’ roll commitment—or possession.
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- The real Patricia Kennealy plays the priestess in her own fictionalized wedding scene. Talk about meta. Rock journalist and Wiccan high priestess Patricia Kennealy, who actually participated in a handfasting ceremony with Jim Morrison in real life, appears in the movie—but not as herself. Instead, she plays the priestess marrying Meg Ryan’s Pamela Courson and Kilmer’s Morrison. The kicker? Kennealy has denounced the film’s portrayal of her, claiming much of her dialogue was given to Courson’s character instead. She called it a betrayal, but in a twist worthy of Morrison’s own poetry, she helped perform her own cinematic erasure.
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- The script was filtered through dozens of people—including Morrison’s parents and Elektra Records. Oliver Stone didn’t just write a rock movie—he had to negotiate with lawyers, estates, labels, and parents. Morrison’s family only allowed dream-like flashbacks. Pamela Courson’s parents restricted any implication that she influenced Jim’s death. Meanwhile, the band members weren’t all on the same page: Ray Manzarek refused to participate, while John Densmore and Robby Krieger consulted on the film, each bringing their own version of the myth. The result? A movie as much shaped by censorship and grief as by art and music.
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- Kilmer’s live performances in the film weren’t lip-synced—they were sung live over original master tapes. Most music biopics fake it with overdubs or studio trickery. Not The Doors. Val Kilmer sang live, blending his voice with the original multitrack recordings of the Doors, minus Jim’s lead vocals. The effect was chilling. He rehearsed daily and performed so hard during the five-day shoot of “The End” at the Whisky a Go Go recreation that he nearly lost his voice. This wasn’t a musical performance—it was a séance, captured on film and played back like a ghostly echo from the Summer of Love.
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- Nearly everyone turned it down before Oliver Stone picked up the torch. Before Stone got behind the camera, the Doors biopic passed through Quentin Tarantino, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and more. Bono, Michael Hutchence, Johnny Depp, and even John Travolta were considered for Morrison. But it was Stone’s obsession and Kilmer’s uncanny embodiment that finally got the film made. Stone even had to abandon Evita (sorry, Madonna) to make room for the psychedelic circus that The Doors became. The studio fights, lawsuits, casting drama—it’s a miracle the film ever made it to theaters. But like the band it depicts, it survived in chaos and emerged as something unforgettable.
https://www.thatericalper.com/2025/04/02/5-wildly-unknown-facts-about-the-doors-movie/--
RIP Mad Mardigan 🖤
RIP to one of the Batmen I grew up watching. I used to love going through my dad's DVD collection and watching batman forever.
Does anyone else have a mandela effect about Val Kilmer being dead already? I feel like I have read about his death mutliple times over the past decade and then had a mandela effect that I thought he had already died, but then also when I heard any story about him I also have a mandela effect that I thought he was dead.
He was very sick for a bit and hid it for awhile so there was lots of talk about his health for a bit then he disappeared from the public eye for awhile because he was fighting cancer and recovering. He never rejoined the public eye to the degree he used to be. He was in Top Gun Maverick though which I remember being kind of a big deal because he hadn't been in much for awhile and of course had had lots of trouble with speech following the cancer I believe.
He was in a movie called Spartan. It's about the same plot as Resident Evil 4. Badass soldier rescues the president's daughter. Rarely see that movie mentioned but I thought it was very classic Val, just floating in that zone of crazy good acting and chewing up the scenery. Tombstone is probably my favorite of his movies but Spartan is a close second. I'm glad we all got to see this legend of an artist. May he rest in peace.
There’s a peck here with an acorn pointed at me!
Damn. Val was a great actor.
When the music’s over…
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