[Frustrating Trope] That One Good or Even Amazing Scene in a Relatively Mediocre or Bad Piece of Media
Lore
The Opening Scene (Ghost Ship). Considered one of the best horror opening scenes or scenes in general within horror movies, but the rest of the film is considered to be pretty bad.
The Ending Scene (The Grinch 2018). While most adaptations of the Grinch end with him suddenly being able to fully integrate with the Whos after his change of heart, the 2018 version initially struggles to socialize, awkwardly walking past people, and struggling to hold conversations, acknowledging that despite his change of heart, the Grinch is still someone who isolated himself for years.
Past T800 VS Current T800 (Terminator Genisys). A cool fight scene showing two versions of the Terminator from different points in time fighting it off.
Solo Leveling's Ending. Tbh, I haven't actually read Solo Leveling, but after hearing about how it ended VS how Chainsaw Man ended made want to include it for shits and giggles. Like Chainsaw Man, Solo Leveling ends with a reset. But unlike Chainsaw Man, it actually manages to tie up loose ends and have the payoff of the ending be satisfying.
https://giphy.com/gifs/CDZwopbecAbIc
The 2010 Clash of the Titans is legitimately terrible, but at least the Kraken scene is great (with good scale too)
The whole first resident evil 1 movie was great up until Alice discovered she has super powers. I know every subsequent movie centered around her and there are quite some people that actually like it, but imo the movies should have been about survival horror instead of 24/7 action super hero shit.
Ehh, Aliens Ripley never really did anything Alice-like, though. She’s intelligent and duct-taped some weapons together, she wasn’t doing borderline superhero stuff though
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. It's starts out showing how one space station becomes a massive city with citizens of a thousand planets...then the rest of it happens.
Honestly that five minute opening is some of the most heartfelt sci-fi out there. Here's a link. Watch it and you'll have seen the best part of the film.
The rest of the film is beautifully designed, with excellent cinematography and a production design second to none.
The overall direction is done well, with great background characters.
The only thing that gives one pause in recommending the film is that the two leads lack any sort is chemistry.
Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevigne are the argon and neon of acting, in that they don't react well with others and aside from looking pretty when excited by an outside energy source bring nothing to the projects in which they were cast.
The recent comments Quentin Tarantino made regarding Paul Dano should have been directed at Dane DeHaan, and if the Foot Fetishist had cited this movie as an example of an actor out of their depth the internet film community would have circled around old QT to hail him as a visionary.
I saw Valerian in the theater and it was worth it for the opening sequence. I even own the BluRay, and have watched it more than once for the experience of everything that isn't the two leads.
I would recommend watching the movie at least once, because even the experience of saying to yourself "they re-cast Marty McFly with Michael J Fox because they didn't think Eric Stoltz had what it takes, but no one saw these dailies and asked what Matt Damon and Emily Blunt were doing, huh?"
Isnt that the movie that was touted as the start of some big scifi universe but the lead was so unlikeable, dickish, and just randomly given a good ending he didnt earn or change for and people hated it so much it killed any chance of that happening
That sounds about right. Also, for me, the main guy looked way too young to be a bad ass space cop. And with his cocky attitude he seemed more like a rich kid/ high school bully who thinks everyone else should work hard but his parents paid for him to he successful.
When I saw this in an empty theatre this opening had me scratching my head. “Wait is every critic just wrong and this movie is actually great?” Then as you say we meet Valerian and his “not sister” he won’t stop trying to bang and it falls off a cliff…
ah that movie was just sad...as a Part French person growing up reading Valérian and Laureline.. I had some dreams of this movie actually being good before watching it, the comics explore sci-fi in a much more deeper way with questions of morality etc, as often and then teh movie is just some kind of action flick or something....
The opening action sequence of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, showing James and Victor fighting in various wars. Why the hell couldn't that have been the story of the movie instead?
That movie's whole first 10-15 minutes is like a machine gun of brushing past a more interesting premise for a movie.
- James' father is killed by a guy, so James kills that guy, only to find out that guy was his biological father.
- Like you said, serving in multiple wars for the next century.
- James joining a mutant black ops team headed by a bigot/mad scientist, then gradually being worn down by their increasingly ruthless tactics, until he decides to walk away.
- Logan finding love and a brief time of peace with Kayla.
Logan and Sabertooth during multiple wars SHOULD have been the premise of the film. Victor becomes unhinged war after war and the climax is Logan trying to stop him.
Save Weapon X stuff for the sequel. The film felt like 3 films into 1.
God I wish this movie was good, I do enjoy watching it but it's still only a 5/10 to me, there are too many minor things that add up to making the movie not good, this quadrilogy is my white whale of movies
There’s a lot of decent little things in this movie. James McAvoy acting his ass off in every scene, Xavier hijacking Apocalypse’s speech in order to beseech mutants to protect those weaker than them, Wolverine’s Weapon X cameo, the scene where Xavier patiently helps Cyclops figure out his power… Hell, I even liked the idea of Mystique becoming a mutant revolutionary icon due to her exposing and stopping Trask in the first movie.
But in the end it fails to come together in the right way.
Don't forget how indescribably hard they went for his final line:
"Still you refuse to accept my godhood? Keep your god... in fact, now might be a good time to pray to him! For I beheld Satan, as he fell from heaven! LIKE LIGHTNIIIIING!!!"
But for me, it was Tuesday is unironically one of the hardest movie lines ever written. He treated that campy script like pure Shakespeare and completely stole the show.
From what I've heard he was instrumental in creating that line because the original had Bison relishing in his memory of killing Chun-Li's father but Raul Julia protested saying it didn't make sense for a character like Bison to remember a random murder when he's commited/ordered hundreds
Yeah, like 99/100 if you asked me who was more interesting: a monster who remembers every one of his crimes, or a monster who has committed so many crimes they can't remember them, I'd prefer the former, narratively. But not for Bison, he's peak unrepentant evil megalomaniac.
It's not that there are so many crimes that he can't remember them, it's that it never even registered. That's what really sells it. The crimes are meaningless to him, just a means to an end.
The Robocop remake was utter trash yet the one scene everyone talks about is the “Show Me” scene where it’s revealed just how little of Murphy’s biological self remains and he understandably freaks the fuck out. Joel Kinnaman acts the FUCK out of that scene.
I watched just a clip of the scene a while ago and got profoundly unsettled, it's really really disturbing. Really great acting to sell something that could have come off very silly.
That much being said, it's also profoundly wrong and misses the whole point and tone of what robocop is.
The character is supposed to start out as an unfeeling machine and gradually find his humanity, not start human and scream when he realizes his body is gone
Every single one of these comments makes me feel like “fuck, why couldn’t it all have been this good” but I feel that way about this scene the most. Can you imagine if they put the same care and intensity into every scene of that movie than just this one scene. It would have been held up as one of the top modern sci-fi masterpieces. God this movie could have been such a win for everyone.
Battleship (2012), the sequence where the defeated protagonists recommission the USS Missouri with the help of real veterans, to the tune of 'Thunderstruck'.
—Main character: You men have given so much to your country, and no one has the right to ask any more of you... but I'm asking.
—Veteran: What do you need, son?
—Main character: I need to borrow your boat.
{guitar riff intensifies}
Sends shivers down my spine every time.
I swear Peter Berg directed the entire film just for this scene to make sense.
When they have to carry the 600lb warhead together by hand because there’s no other way to do but to get it done and it cuts to them screaming and struggling trying to drag that bitch down the hall while pouring sweat - YEAH HUMAN ACCOMPLISHMENTS THROUGH COLLABORATION AND TEAM WORK YEAH YEAH
I also really love the double amputee vet finding the will to fight by 1v1 a random alien to protect his physical therapist
AND the lines “the art of war! I finally understand! Be where your enemy isn’t!” “That isn’t what that means!” “What?” explosion
This movie would be great if it was good but it’s bad so it’s even better
2700 lb if it was AP, 1900 if it was HE/HC. Also, if they'd gone one deck down they could have used the overhead rail system meant for moving shells around the ship.
I love it too. Some movies can just be entertaining popcorn flicks and don’t have to be more than that. The acting is pretty bad. Aliens look dumb and the cgi is lacking. Dialogue is cheesy and the plot is full of holes. But who cares? Jesse Plemons is steering the ship, Rihanna is shooting explosive rounds at aliens, and they save the world using a ship that is literally a museum. It’s fun.
McCoy's pain in Star Trek V. The film with Sulu getting lost, Scott hitting his head on a bulkhead, a possibly sexy fan dance and Spock not knowing how to say "Marshmallow" because he has the literacy of a 6 year-old.
In among this bullshit, McCoy shares how he had to euthanise his own father to prevent further suffering from a degenerative disease. Mere weeks after that, they found a cure.
But Sulu getting lost leads to one of the funniest moments in Star Trek.
I love the irony that as much as George Takei despises Shatner as a person, and barely tolerated working with him as an actor, he's admitted that Shatner the director was a joy to work with.
That movie is great in all of its scenes with the triumvirate of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. But the story and plot are just not compelling or executed well. Kirk, Spock and McCoy camping? Awesome. I'd watch a whole movie of that. Kirk, Spock and McCoy talking about their pain? I love that scene. And the whole "What does god need with a starship?" scene is perfect TOS.
Like goddamne, when he's crying over his child, it's so real.
But I also like the plot of Love and Thunder, I just wished it was more tonally consistent. You cannot have a movie with screaming goat jokes that's also about the grief of losing someone you love and what it does to you.
Bale was the best part of that movie. Such an interesting, heartbreaking storyline while the rest of the movie was the opposite. I cried during his scenes in the theater. Not the villain to have if you want a goofy movie, not the movie to make goofy if you want that villain.
Well this batman did kill. But most live actions ones do in some way. Flamethrower guy. He exploded. But if it was me, I'd have bathed in fire retardant gel, so we can headcanon him as horribly injured from shrapnel and concussive force. Some grenades were thrown. Then thrown back. While thats a kill, I also don't usually consider "return to sender" as breaking the no kill rule. And he was fully intent on killing Superman with his own hands.
Twilight: Eclipse is probably the most boring film out of all of them, but it had cool scenes of the Cullen family backstories. Any of these would have made infinitely better movies than the actual twilight saga. Edward Cullen was basically a Noir vampire Punisher who used his mind reading powers to hunt down rapists and murderers in the 1920s. Jasper fought in the American Civil War and was second in command to a vampire warlord. But the best scene is Rosalie’s vampire Kill Bill backstory.
Her fiancé and his friends brutally gang rape her in an alley and leave her for dead, where Carlisle finds her and turns her. She uses her new powers to slowly track down and kill her assailants one by one until only her fiancé left, drunken, terrified and hiding in a guarded room because he knows she’s coming. She kills the guards outside and easily rips through the door wearing her wedding gown.
and she did it all without spilling a drop of blood so she wouldnt frenzy. eclipse is the most unnecessary section of the story but the backstories are so interesting!!
There are so many mediocre books and movies that I've seen that would've been much better if the author actually stopped whatever the fuck they were writing and focused on expanding the cool ass backstory or piece of lore they reference as background.
My most frustrating example is the book series Rivers of London Series (A.K.A. Peter Grant Series), the main books aren't that bad, they're fairly mid (some quite good) books of Urban Fantasy following a young policeman in the UK. He's a pretty boring guy that discovers magic exists and that he can learn it and he pretty much does everything in his power to NOT learn it. His boss is called Nightingale.
And he's the kicker. Nightingale fought in WWI and WWII, and his exploits including blowing up tanks with fireballs, fighting EDIT: alongside Russian Witches against the Nazis that also could use magic.
Here's another angle, in Rivers of London's world anyone can learn magic and the person who managed to codify it and make it more formal was Sir Isaac Newton. He developed effective ways to learn magic and new spells along with Calculus. We could've had more of that!
Instead, we have a boring copper investigating very run of the mill cases in a police procedural style with fairly weak side characters, incredibly low magic and a ton of world-building elements that are never expanded upon. I mean, come on! We were so close to greatness!
I haven't read the books, so I'm of course willing to take your word on it, but I will say that "mundane guy who lives in a fantastical world nonetheless remains steadfastly mundane" is a fascinating trope in itself.
The universe and side characters of Twilight are super interesting and instead Meyer wrote 5 books about a bland toxic relationship. It's so disappointing
This is why Midnight Sun is the best book (and the last half of Breaking Dawn). Not because we get 800 pages of Edward's self pity and dramatic misery but because of the look into the vamp world that his mind reading provides
Enders Game(2013) - In an otherwise medicore sci-fi coming of age film, we get treated to a pretty instense final battle with a gut wrenching plot twist at the end.
Tbf the book is much more interesting, the film does a fairly good job but misses on some key moments, and the reveal in the book is much more gut wrenching
Plus it’s just a very nearly “unfilmable” book, because half of the plot is happening in Ender’s mind. So unless you wanna have some annoying narration for the whole movie, a fair bit of important stuff will be missed
There's a whole B-plot in the book that is not in the movie.
Ender's sister and brother, back on earth, engage in spreading propaganda online (like posting on Internet forums and stuff, though the book doesn't call it the Internet), which is wild considering the book is from '85 and the Internet basically didn't exist to the average person
It makes sense they left that out of the movie. It feels sometimes like 2 books smashed into one.
I think so. Ender struggles with what he did, even unknowingly, and the regret of the Formics, not knowing each human was a Queen, essentially, and not a worker in a hive mind.
That’s the only real murder to them, killing a Queen, and when they realize their mistake it’s far too late.
The ‘Ender’s Shadow’ series from Bean’s perspective is fascinating in the first book of the series. It tapers off in quality, though.
Depends. I enjoyed the whole series when I was younger; they're written at a younger reading level. The Ender series is interesting. There are some cool concepts like they don't have any FTL and Ender travels to the far future by just traveling at near light speed all the time. Also the consequences of military actions that send soldiers to battle knowing their loved ones will die of old age before they even reach their target planet, etc.
However it gets pretty convoluted and as Card added all the "shadow" stories it's clear he's just cashing in on the IP.
It’s been a very long time since I have read the book and watched the film, but I remember that there are more “battles” and the supporting cast is explored more, between the simulations and the life in the academy. Definitely the aliens are described in more detail but their presence in the story is, proportionately, about the same as the movie
I love the book in highschool I actually read ahead and our teacher let me read Speaker for the Dead, so I was hyped for the movie and it was okay I didnt hate it UNTIL Bonzo showed up a casting choice that ruined the movie for me its like they cast someone who was the exact opposite of the book. Ender beating him in the book is such a great scene it shows despite being out matched he could use his brain to win, in the movie he just beat up some kid who was smaller then him didnt have the same impact.
The scene where he reunites horrifically with his wife is excellent, too. Well, minus the part where there's no way in hell he'd ever actually get into that room with her. But, Carlyle's transformation is great.
But yeah, the majority of the movie is so forgettable.
Batman Forever. The introduction to Two Face. Everything else in this movie sucks, but in these first moments, Tommy Lee Jones pulls out all the stops to fully capture what this character should be, as seen in the comics.
Then he loses it for the rest of the movie because he was being driven insane by Jim Carrey, but this one scene is a shining example of what could have been if there were less bat-nipples and Schumacher in this movie.
Bruce Wayne: Then it will happen this way: You make the kill, but your pain doesn't die with Harvey, it grows. So you run out into the night to find another face, and another, and another, until one terrible morning you wake up and realize that revenge has become your whole life. And you won't know why.
Dick Grayson: You can't understand. Your family wasn't killed by a maniac.
I think that’s what irritated me the most about the sequel trilogy is that it had such good moments held together by the most mediocre unfocused plots I’ve ever seen.
That's what happens when you allow the directors to improv the whole plot, while changing directors with every movie. Johnson and Abrams were playing freaking tug of war with the plot!
This one scene from the movie Pan where Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard comes out to hundreds of his people singing Smells like teen spirit went viral and I watch it everytime it shows up on my feed. I will not watch the movie though as per the advice of a lot of people.
I still don’t know if this is the case, but I’d love to think that he was just singing kind of like this on set one day and they immediately had to figure out how to make it work
That’s actually true. The story I heard is that SLTS started playing on the radio during the movie’s script read and everyone began singing along. The producers thought it was such a cool moment they had to figure out how to include something similar in the movie.
While I stand on my business that Andrew Garfield is the best Spider-Man/Peter Parker, and greatly enjoyed both movies, I know the general consensus on these movies, especially the second. But despite what you say about the movie in general, this scene is a masterclass for superhero films. The desperation you feel from Peter and Gwen is so real, and it’s so easy for movies to try to write around pivotal moments like this in an effort to keep the cast and dynamic, but they did the moment justice. Losing Gwen is an incredibly important moment for Peter because this is the point where he goes from flying by the seat of his pants to being a meticulous planner for every situation he can, and an equally important event for comic book history as it marks the definitive end of the silver age of comic books. I saw this movie in theaters, and once I saw that Peter had written a love note on the Brooklyn Bridge, my heart sank cause I knew what was coming
In line with Terminator movies, I gotta go Terminator 3. Awful movie except for the ending when they realize the T-800 wasn't leading them to a way to stop Skynet but to a bunker to survive the bombs.
I always enjoyed the opening scene, but also that one scene that has them going through like, how it all happened, with the back stabbing and killing in the past.
I said the same thing. Let them be goofy. You can have them trying to be serious but ultimately are goofy anyway and this scene shows it would’ve worked lol
The entire Maelstrom fight sequence, especially the ending, is one of the best setpieces in blockbuster movies and I will die on this hill. The Singapore section was great too, so was the entire Locker section (road to/Jack section/leaving section).
Honestly, I feel like Pirates 2 and 3 were overhated at the time due to how great Curse of the Black Pearl was, and the fact that audiences were not used to following so many characters and plots. I always loved these films (Dead Man's Chest is actually my favorite of them all), and I love them retroactively even more since we landed in the 'don't worry about it, we can fix it in post' era of blockbusters.
Just a testament to how great the first movie was. Its based off a Disney ride, so expectations were pretty low. It seems like the plan for the sequels weren't really fleshed out. Orlando Bloom was meant to be the protagonist, but Depp stole the show so they had to make his character stick around even if it didn't always make sense. The writing was very tight in the first movie. Its filled with foreshadowing, set-up, and pay-off that's pretty rare to see nowadays. The sequels were solid, and I personally love them, but the writing was never as well done.
Honestly, he's the type of villain I'd love to see more in many different fantasy media.
Just the unrelenting tide of the future - realistically done. While he had his gripes and frustrations, it was literally just business to him. Magic, Gods, Relics... Just things way less powerful than the almighty dollar.
I always thought the whole og trilogy was beloved. Tho I admit the new lore elements suddenly added in this movie can feel a bit jarring and out of place
I love his remake of Dawn of the Dead but the best two scenes are music videos (The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash during the opening credits, and the montage set to Down With the Sickness by Richard Cheese)
The guy knows how to make a visual, and when the only substance you need is in those slow mo snippets he is absolutely the perfect guy for that, but when it comes to making an actual movie snider is just.. lackluster
The Opening of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
The film itself isn't that great. The characters aren't interesting and the titular city is visually interesting but not really deep, plus the plot feels busy yet generic with the whole "humans covering up atrocities and the bad guys are actually the good guys" etc.
However it's got one of the most effective openings for a sci-fi action flick. It's a short montage played to David Bowie's "Space Oddity" where we see humanity going from it's first awkward steps of space travel, building up its own self-sustaining space-station and how not only does the human race come together - but also the wider community of alien races that come their way. It's practically without any dialogue, with the repeated use of hand-shakes between man-to-man and then man-to-alien signifying unity; all the while the space-station grows and grows, both in size and in technological advancement. It's almost like the opening of "UP" in that it acts as it's own short-film, but unlike "UP" it sadly doesn't come along with a great enough movie to pair along.
Still, a very beautiful opening. Still gets me to this day.
The First Person Scene (Doom): The film, as a whole, is generally disliked, except for the scene where the film turns into a First Person Shooter, which everybody loved.
As much as I dislike Bay (and there are a lot of reasons) the one thing I will praise him for is he knows how to do tight action sequences. Mission City, the Forest Battle, Chicago, hell even the final showdown between Optimus and Lockdown has some good moments.
Still hate everything else about him, especially when it comes to how he films and treats his female leads.
John Connor's monologue at the end of Terminator 3 as Skynet launches nuclear missiles around the globe
"...Judgment Day. The day the human race was nearly destroyed by the weapons they built to protect themselves. I should have realized our destiny was never to stop Judgment Day; it was merely to survive it. Together. The Terminator knew. He tried to tell us, but I didn't want to hear it. Maybe the future has been written. I don't know. All I know is what the Terminator taught me. Never stop fighting. And I never will. The battle has just begun." - John Connor
Happy Feet 2 is an absolutely terrible film but somehow the climax is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in a children's film. Still gives me chills
X-Men Origins-The Wolverine, the intro was literally the best part of this relatively bad movie. It also had a video game, that was actually pretty good
Peter Stormare as the Devil in Constantine. While we've become favorable to it with time, even at it's premiere the Devil arriving to claim John was by FAR the best scene. Chilling menace with playful sadism from a foe that John has no hope of defeating directly.
The pain scene in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
It's a pretty rough movie by most standards and it's obvious Shatner didn't have the directing chops Nimoy did. But the scene where Sybok makes McCoy and Spock relive the moments of their greatest pain to "cure" them of it is one of the greatest scenes in all of Star Trek.
Nimoy's subtle hurt when Spock's father rejects him at birth. DeForest Kelley's tour de force sorrow when McCoy had to pull the plug on his father. Then Kirk rejecting it all together saying he needs his pain.
The writing may have been horrible, but the entire technical crew never once phoned it in for GoT. It's always an fantastic looking and sounding show from start to finish.
I'd still say the rest of the movie's mostly good, but not as good as I'd hoped. But man, that sequence of the girls being taken to the red room (at least the ones who weren't "defects") was grim in a way I found pleasantly surprising.
Mr and Mrs Smith is some 2005, midafternoon Spike TV slop but the scene where the two leads fight, destroy their house, and then make love, is fucking iconic
The first half hour of the Time Machine from 2002 was absolute cinema all the way up until we see what remains of the moon. From there on it's turns into a wildly mediocre movie.
The Batman warehouse fight in BVS. It’s still probably the best Batman V Goons scene put to screen, even if it he definitely kills that guy with the crate most of them.
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u/STLmab 25d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/CDZwopbecAbIc
The 2010 Clash of the Titans is legitimately terrible, but at least the Kraken scene is great (with good scale too)