10 Most Out Of Place Scenes In Sci-Fi Movie History
Star Wars, Avengers, The Matrix - why did they have to go and include THAT?
Transcript
00:00 From superheroes to deep space sagas,
00:02 there are few places in the universe
00:04 that science fiction cinema hasn't taken us.
00:07 But sometimes even our favorite films
00:08 take us places we didn't necessarily want to go.
00:12 We can be watching along, happy as Larry Fishman,
00:15 before a sudden shift in tone, plot, quality, or character
00:19 takes us out of things completely.
00:21 I'm Jess from WhatCulture,
00:22 and here are the 10 most out of place scenes
00:25 in sci-fi movie history.
00:27 Number 10, America Gets Torn In Two, Chappie.
00:31 Longtime Blomkamp collaborator, Charlton Copley,
00:34 voices the titular character,
00:37 a decommissioned enforcement robot
00:39 and the first true AI,
00:41 who falls in love with Di Antwood, of all people,
00:44 reluctantly turning to a life of crime
00:46 on the streets of Johannesburg.
00:48 On this journey, America,
00:50 one of Chappie's teachers and co-conspirators,
00:52 teaches the young robot to wear bling,
00:55 walk with an attitude, and put people to sleep.
00:58 At least until the third act, that is,
01:00 when Hugh Grant's villainous engineer, Vincent Moore,
01:04 stomps him using his remote-controlled moose robot.
01:07 In a sequence better suited to a Saw movie
01:10 than this edgy, yet frequently happy-go-lucky
01:13 Genesis story, the moose grips America with a robot claw
01:17 and tears him in half before splattering his torso
01:21 on the building behind.
01:22 Little in the film up until this point
01:24 prepares you for such a grim and sudden death
01:26 of a supporting character.
01:28 Tonally, it doesn't match any of the action,
01:30 emotion, or visuals surrounding it,
01:32 and it leaves the audience reeling.
01:35 The end of Chappie may bring the wholesomeness around again,
01:37 but there's no denying how out of place this moment is.
01:41 Number nine, Techno Diva Dance, The Fifth Element.
01:45 23rd century NYC cabbie, Corbin Dallas,
01:49 teams up with Leloo,
01:50 the embodiment of the sacred fifth element,
01:53 to keep an ancient planet-eating cosmic force
01:56 from destroying the world.
01:57 Calamity ensues.
01:58 While the film features many wild and wacky digressions,
02:02 none are stranger than the space opera sequence.
02:05 Corbin and Leloo follow a quest for some sacred stones,
02:08 just go with it, to a blue diva called Plava Laguna.
02:12 But before they can reclaim it,
02:13 they, and we, are forced to sit through
02:16 an excruciating few minutes of space opera.
02:20 Techno music kicks in, the diva throws some shapes,
02:22 and the audience cringe from behind their fingers.
02:26 The scene is awkward, uncomfortable,
02:28 and seriously out of place,
02:30 which is saying a lot for a film with Chris Tucker's loud,
02:32 flamboyant, intergalactic talk show host
02:35 going down on an air hostess during takeoff.
02:38 Number eight, Tri-Breasted Prostitute, Total Recall, 1990.
02:43 Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Douglas Quaid,
02:46 a construction worker whose memory implant fantasy
02:49 of being a secret agent on a mission to Mars
02:51 seems to be coming true,
02:53 blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
02:56 Along the way, he encounters many wonders
02:58 of a technologically advanced,
03:00 yet persistently unequal society,
03:03 but perhaps none more striking
03:04 than a triple-breasted mutant prostitute.
03:07 Played by Lysia Naff, the futuristic lady of the night
03:10 is offered up to Arnie by her pimp,
03:13 and she opens her blouse to show him the goods,
03:15 laughing like Janice from Friends.
03:18 Now, far be it for us to poo-poo a bit of space nudity,
03:21 but this scene feels shoehorned into the film.
03:23 Unless there's a deeper, more artistic element at play
03:26 that we're missing somehow?
03:28 Unfortunately, no, I don't think so.
03:30 This film establishes a pattern for the film
03:32 where most female characters
03:33 are presented as sexualized objects,
03:36 ostracized freaks, or both.
03:38 Naff came to regret taking the part
03:40 as it left her feeling overexposed and deeply unsexy,
03:44 and it isn't difficult to see why.
03:46 Number seven, Elvis Shrine, Robocop 2.
03:50 Peter Weller returns to the streets
03:52 of a dystopian Detroit as Alex Murphy,
03:55 the eponymous Robocop, taking on crime buff Kane
03:58 and his designer, drug-pushing nuke cult,
04:02 while also attempting to prevent psychologist
04:04 Dr. Juliet Fax from creating another Robocop
04:07 using a death row inmate.
04:09 While pursuing Kane, Robocop tracks his gang to a warehouse
04:13 where he uncovers the skeleton
04:15 of one Elvis A. Presley in a glass case.
04:19 That's right, the nuke cult have the remains
04:21 of the king of rock and roll in their lair,
04:24 alongside pictures of Mother Teresa,
04:26 and deleted scenes reveal that they worship him
04:29 as some kind of a god.
04:30 Amusing though this is, the scene doesn't make any sense.
04:34 How did they get him, and why Elvis?
04:36 We may never know.
04:38 Number six, jazz-dancing emo Peter, Spider-Man 3.
04:42 Sam Raimi may be back in the superhero fold
04:45 with Multiverse of Madness,
04:46 but let's not forget the film that got him kicked out
04:49 in the first place, Spider-Man 3.
04:52 Despite the film's inability to control its characters
04:54 and narrative flow, it manages its tone fairly well,
04:58 at least until Peter Parker gets infected
05:00 by the Venom symbiote and things go a little odd.
05:04 He's so bad, in fact, he's going to dance in the street
05:07 like your dad at a wedding.
05:09 Buying a black suit and dancing on the pavement,
05:12 taking his girlfriend to a jazz club
05:13 and dancing on the tables,
05:15 and generally dancing his way
05:16 into our worst Spidey-related nightmares.
05:19 Peter goes full cringe in a sequence
05:21 that is unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.
05:24 Sure, this is Raimi's humor down to a T,
05:27 but goddammit, Sam, there's a time and a place.
05:30 Did this scene sound the death knell for the series?
05:33 That's not for us to say,
05:34 but what we can say is that Raimi was planning
05:37 on making a fourth film, and well, that was 15 years
05:40 and two additional Spider-Men ago.
05:42 Number five, Macaroni Cheese Cheddar Goblin, Mandy.
05:46 Cage plays Red Miller, a lumber worker
05:49 whose girlfriend, Mandy, is kidnapped
05:51 and killed by a religious cult,
05:53 and who therefore must enact a campaign of brutal vengeance.
05:57 It's the '80s, the world has an ominous neon glow,
06:00 and pretty much anything goes,
06:02 whether that be chainsaw duels,
06:04 coke-snorting demon bikers,
06:05 or a green goblin that projectile vomits macaroni cheese.
06:09 Trust me, this movie's really good, though.
06:11 The creepy little green guy appears on television
06:13 during a tense and crucial point in Red's emotional journey,
06:17 treating two children to some macaroni cheddar.
06:20 The scene is undeniably brilliant,
06:23 but it comes at a strange time,
06:25 right after Red has watched his beloved burn to death
06:28 in front of him, and bears little resemblance
06:30 to the rest of the film.
06:31 But no matter how out of place he is,
06:33 Cheddar Goblin will always have a seat at our table.
06:36 Number four, Shoehorned Joker, the Batman.
06:40 Taking us back to Batman's early days,
06:42 Robert Pattinson plays an unrefined junior bat
06:45 who has lots of unresolved parent-based angst,
06:49 and only half a utility belt to help deal with it.
06:51 As his opposite, Paul Dano is the Riddler,
06:54 a genius in cell with a chaotic plan to raise Gotham.
06:58 Needless to say, Batman puts him in Arkham
07:00 and throws away the key,
07:02 but in one of the film's most jarring sequences,
07:04 Riddler plays whispers with the inmate in the cell next door.
07:08 Barry Cogan's wonky-toothed yokel Joker.
07:12 The deleted scene of Batman meeting Joker
07:14 goes a long way to explaining
07:16 why the Riddler-Joker scene exists in the first place,
07:19 but the very fact that they didn't include the former
07:22 should have seen the impetus needed to nix
07:24 the clown prince of crimes inclusion altogether.
07:27 As it stands, the scene feels shoehorned in,
07:30 serving no purpose other than to tease lucrative sequel bait.
07:34 Worse than that, though, it actually robs the Riddler
07:36 of some of his mystique and has him playing
07:38 subservient second fiddle to a character
07:41 who isn't even in the film.
07:42 Number three, Girl Power, Avengers Endgame.
07:46 Avengers Endgame brought the Infinity Saga
07:48 to a definitive close in 2019,
07:50 bringing the entire roster of MC heroes
07:53 back to our screens to defeat Thanos.
07:55 While the Earth's mightiest heroes triumphed,
07:58 the film also delivered with many characters
08:00 we'd spent the previous decade growing to love,
08:03 including the original female Avenger, Black Widow.
08:07 Thankfully, unlike a decade ago,
08:09 there are plenty more well-developed female heroes
08:11 to fill her shoes, and nowhere is this more apparent
08:14 than in the film's final battle against Thanos.
08:17 Unfortunately, the best and brightest
08:19 at Disney and Marvel got together
08:21 and decided the only way to showcase this
08:23 was to have all the major female characters
08:25 to assemble in a row in the midst of battle,
08:28 trading lines to a swell of inspirational music.
08:31 Post-note here, I actually love this scene,
08:34 but let's keep going.
08:36 What's intended to be a badass female-affirming scene
08:39 comes off as the cheesiest, hammiest,
08:41 most manufactured moment the MCU films have ever brought us.
08:44 And that's saying a lot,
08:46 considering some of them rely almost solely
08:48 on cheese, gloss, and soap opera drama to pad their runtime.
08:52 Number two, Zion or G-Rave, The Matrix Reloaded.
08:56 The reemergence of The Matrix has, of late,
08:58 sent many of us down memory lane,
09:01 revisiting 1999's stone-cold sci-fi classic and its sequels.
09:06 After some initial wall-running and gunslinging
09:08 to sate fans' thirst for shiny leather action,
09:11 the free people of Zion gather in an underground cavern
09:14 so MC Morpheus can kick off the biggest rave
09:17 the world has ever seen, probably.
09:20 Thus, ensues a mass of bodies bumping and grinding
09:23 to some dirty beats,
09:25 intercut with Neo and Trinity getting jiggy with it.
09:28 The scene might better belong to train-spotting
09:30 or human traffic, feeling at odds with the tone
09:33 and broader content of The Matrix films.
09:36 What possessed the Wachowskis to include this
09:38 goes beyond rational understanding.
09:40 Perhaps on too many red pills.
09:42 Number one, Flying Space Layer, Star Wars The Last Jedi.
09:46 Star Wars The Last Jedi, or Episode VIII,
09:49 depending on what neck of the woods you hail from,
09:51 enraged some longtime fans upon release
09:54 and pleased plenty of others,
09:56 with director Rian Johnson and actor Kelly Marie Tran
09:59 unfairly catching most of the flack.
10:01 After Sith Apprentice Kylo Ren launches an attack
10:04 on his mother, Leia Organa's ship,
10:06 Leia is blown out into space in a fireball of debris.
10:10 So, she's a Gana, right?
10:12 Wrong.
10:13 After surviving for a good minute or so
10:15 in the vacuum of space,
10:17 her hand twitches, her eyes flick open,
10:19 and she, um, Force-Flies herself to safety.
10:24 The power, the action, and the scene don't jive
10:26 with anything in the Star Wars universe,
10:29 neither the lore, the canon,
10:30 nor even the fundamental laws of chemistry, biology, or physics.
10:34 We discovered in The Rise of Skywalker
10:36 that Leia trained as a Jedi under Luke
10:38 and even has her own lightsaber.
10:40 But this doesn't help land the whole space-flying thing
10:43 any better.
10:44 If they could just zoom around the freezing cold void
10:46 like Superman, why didn't Luke or Obi-Wan
10:49 just zoom up to the Death Star's exhaust port
10:51 with a thermal detonator suppository?
10:54 That's the end of our list,
10:55 but let me know down in that comment box
10:56 what you think are the most out-of-place scenes
10:59 in sci-fi movie history.
11:02 As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture.
11:04 Thank you so much for hanging out with me.
11:06 If you like it, you can come say hi to me
11:08 on my Twitter account, where I'm @JessMcDonald,
11:10 but make sure you stay tuned to us here
11:12 for plenty more great lists.