Let’s take a trip through the history of Cliff Beasts, the (fictional) “23rd biggest action franchise of all time” at the center of Judd Apatow’s The Bubble.
Set during the uncertain early days of the pandemic, the meta-comedy gives audiences a behind-the-scenes look at the chaotic making of Cliff Beasts 6: Battle for Everest: Memories of a Requiem, the wholly unnecessary new installment in a series about murderous flying dinosaurs, aka cliff beasts. Karen Gillan, Leslie Mann, David Duchovny and several others star as actors in the Cliff Beasts saga, who reunite at a hotel to film the sixth entry in a pandemic bubble. Trapping a group of narcissistic celebrities who share a complicated history in one location for six months goes about as well as you’d expect.
“Cliff Beasts is like a C-level Jurassic Park. You know how there was Jaws, but then there was Orca? It’s one of those. They’re chasing the original hit a little bit, but it is popular in its own right,” Apatow told Netflix. “It’s a group of people that don’t really even like each other. They’ve made all these movies together. They don’t really appreciate each other. This is basically a cash gig for most of them.”
If you’re curious about the evolution of the Cliff Beasts franchise, check out the posters from all six movies below.
At the dawn of the new millennium, the smash-hit franchise about flying T-Rexes was born. The first movie starred Duchovny’s Dustin Mulray as Dr. Hal Packard, a scientist with conflicted feelings about this battle between dinosaurs and humanity. “Preserving life would be the most important thing to Dr. Packard, my character,” Dustin explains in a special featurette about the Cliff Beasts series. “It’s a bit of a conundrum because the cliff beasts are killers. That’s their nature.” Cliff Beasts also introduced Gillan’s Carol Cobb as Dr. Lacy, a psychic; Mann’s Lauren Van Chance as Dolly; Key’s Sean Knox as Colt Rockwell; and Guz Khan’s Howie Frangopoulos as Gerard, the movie’s comedic relief.
Now, who says blockbuster franchise creativity is dead? From a sprawling metropolitan city to the ancient Chinese capital of Beijing and a Jaws-inspired aquatic adventure, the filmmakers of the Cliff Beasts saga aren’t afraid to take the titular monsters to new locations.
Houston, we have a problem. While it took the Fast & Furious franchise nine movies to make it to space, Cliff Beasts got there in five. Unfortunately, it did so without Cobb, who declined to return for this entry, which created a rift between her and Chance. In Cliff Beasts 5: Space Fury, Dr. Packard and the remaining characters are shocked to learn that the flying dinosaurs originate from cliffs on Mars, as revealed in the featurette. Outside of Cobb’s absence, though, no one in the cast mentions the movie’s story in The Bubble. So maybe that’s a sign this one is better left forgotten.
After adventuring in space, the Cliff Beasts series travels to the top of Mount Everest, where the dinosaurs have made a home for themselves. Unfortunately, the beasts are forced to defend their nest from an evil company that wants to build a hotel there. On top of heralding Cobb’s return to the franchise, the movie also introduces Oscar-winning actor Dieter Bravo (Pedro Pascal) and mega TikTok influencer Krystal Kris (Iris Apatow), whose character inevitably teaches the dinosaurs how to dance. And yes, Cliff Beasts 6 is supposed to be as awful as it sounds, because Apatow and co-screenwriter Pam Brady purposefully conceived the worst movie-in-a-movie they could come up with. “We had to think of a really bad movie, to then show them shoot a really bad movie, and debate how to execute a bad movie,” Apatow said. “For me, I’m both writing what I think is a good movie, The Bubble, and a bad movie, Cliff Beasts 6.”
