Star Wars, Avengers, The Matrix - why did they have to go and include THAT?
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00:00From superheroes to deep space sagas, there are few places in the universe that science fiction cinema hasn't taken us.
00:07But sometimes even our favourite films take us places we didn't necessarily want to go.
00:12We can be watching along, happy as Larry Fishman, before a sudden shift in tone, plot, quality or character takes us out of things completely.
00:21I'm Jess from WhatCulture and here are the 10 most out of place scenes in sci-fi movie history.
00:2710. America Gets Torn In Two – Chappie
00:31Longtime Blomkamp collaborator Sharlto Copley voices the titular character,
00:37a decommissioned enforcement robot and the first true AI, who falls in love with Di Antwoord of all people,
00:44reluctantly turning to a life of crime on the streets of Johannesburg.
00:48On this journey, America, one of Chappie's teachers and co-conspirators,
00:53teaches the young robot to wear bling, walk with an attitude and put people to sleep.
00:58At least until the third act, that is, when Hugh Grant's villainous engineer,
01:03Vincent Moore, stomps him using his remote-controlled moose robot.
01:08In a sequence better suited to a Saw movie than this edgy yet frequently happy-go-lucky
01:13Genesis story, the moose grips America with a robot claw and tears him in half
01:19before splattering his torso on the building behind.
01:22Little in the film up until this point prepares you for such a grim and sudden
01:26death of a supporting character. Tonally, it doesn't match any of the action,
01:30emotion or visuals surrounding it, and it leaves the audience reeling.
01:35The end of Chappie may bring the wholesomeness around again,
01:38but there's no denying how out of place this moment is.
01:419. Techno Diva Dance – The Fifth Element
01:45Twenty-third-century NYC cabbie Corbin Dallas teams up with Leeloo,
01:50the embodiment of the sacred Fifth Element,
01:53to keep an ancient planet-eating cosmic force from destroying the world. Calamity ensues.
01:59While the film features many wild and wacky digressions,
02:02none are stranger than the space opera sequence. Corbin and Leeloo follow a quest for some
02:07sacred stones – just go with it – to a blue diva called Plava Laguna.
02:12But before they can reclaim it, they – and we – are forced to sit through an
02:16excruciating few minutes of space opera. Techno music kicks in, the diva throws some shapes,
02:23and the audience cringe from behind their fingers. The scene is awkward,
02:27uncomfortable and seriously out of place, which is saying a lot for a film with Chris Tucker's
02:32loud, flamboyant intergalactic talk show host going down on air hostess during takeoff.
02:388. Tri-Breasted Prostitute – Total Recall, 1990
02:43Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Douglas Quaid, a construction worker whose memory-implant fantasy
02:49of being a secret agent on a mission to Mars seems to be coming true, blurring the lines
02:54between fiction and reality. Along the way, he encounters many wonders of a technologically
02:59advanced yet persistently unequal society, but perhaps none more striking than a triple-breasted
03:06mutant prostitute. Played by Lysia Naff, the futuristic lady of the night is offered up to
03:11Arnie by her pimp, and she opens her blouse to show him the goods, laughing like Janice from
03:17Friends. Now, far be it for us to poo-poo a bit of space nudity, but this scene feels shoehorned
03:22into the film. Unless there's a deeper, more artistic element at play that we're missing,
03:27somehow? Unfortunately, no, I don't think so. This film establishes a pattern for the film where
03:32most female characters are presented as sexualized objects, ostracized freaks, or both.
03:38Naff came to regret taking the part as it left her feeling overexposed and deeply unsexy,
03:44and it isn't difficult to see why.
03:477. Elvis Shrine – RoboCop 2
03:50Peter Weller returns to the streets of a dystopian Detroit as Alex Murphy,
03:55the eponymous RoboCop, taking on crime buff Kane and his designer, drug-pushing Nuke Cult.
04:02While also attempting to prevent psychologist Dr. Juliet Fax from creating another RoboCop
04:08using a death row inmate. While pursuing Kane, RoboCop tracks his gang to a warehouse,
04:13where he uncovers the skeleton of one Elvis A. Presley in a glass case.
04:19That's right, the Nuke Cult have the remains of the King of Rock and Roll in their lair,
04:24alongside pictures of Mother Teresa, and deleted scenes reveal that they worship him as some kind
04:30of a god. Amusing though this is, the scene doesn't make any sense. How did they get him?
04:35And why Elvis? We may never know.
04:386. Jazz-Dancing Emo Peter – Spider-Man 3
04:42Sam Raimi may be back in the superhero fold with Multiverse of Madness,
04:47but let's not forget the film that got him kicked out in the first place, Spider-Man 3.
04:52Despite the film's inability to control its characters and narrative flow,
04:56it manages its tone fairly well. At least until Peter Parker gets infected by the Venom symbiote,
05:02and things go… a little odd.
05:04He's so bad, in fact, he's going to dance in the street like your dad at a wedding.
05:09Buying a black suit and dancing on the pavement, taking his girlfriend to a jazz club and dancing
05:14on the tables, and generally dancing his way into our worst Spidey-related nightmares.
05:20Peter goes full cringe in a sequence that is unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.
05:24Sure, this is Raimi's humour down to a tee, but god damn it Sam, there's a time and a place.
05:30Did this scene sound the death knell for the series? That's not for us to say. But what we
05:35can say is that Raimi was planning on making a fourth film and, well, that was 15 years and
05:40two additional Spider-Men ago.
05:425. Macaroni Cheese Cheddar Goblin – Mandy
05:46Cage plays Red Miller, a lumber worker whose girlfriend Mandy is kidnapped and
05:51killed by a religious cult, and who therefore must enact a campaign of brutal vengeance.
05:57It's the 80s, the world has an ominous neon glow, and pretty much anything goes, whether that be
06:03chainsaw duels, coke-snorting demon bikers, or a green goblin that projectile vomits macaroni
06:08cheese. Trust me, this movie's really good, though.
06:11The creepy little green guy appears on television during a tense and crucial point in Red's emotional
06:16journey, treating two children to some macaroni cheddar. The scene is undeniably brilliant,
06:23but it comes at a strange time, right after Red has watched his beloved burn to death in front of
06:28him and bears little resemblance to the rest of the film. But no matter how out of place he is,
06:34Cheddar Goblin will always have a seat at our table.
06:364. Shoehorned Joker – The Batman
06:40Taking us back to Batman's early days, Robert Pattinson plays an unrefined
06:45junior bat who has lots of unresolved parent-based angst and only half a utility belt to help deal
06:51with it. As his opposite, Paul Dano is the Riddler, a genius in cell with a chaotic plan to raise
06:57Gotham. Needless to say, Batman puts him in Arkham and throws away the key, but in one of the film's
07:03most jarring sequences, Riddler plays whispers with the inmate in the cell next door, Barry
07:09Cogan's wonky-toothed yokel Joker. The deleted scene of Batman meeting Joker goes a long way to
07:15explaining why the Riddler-Joker scene exists in the first place, but the very fact that they
07:20didn't include the former should have seen the impetus needed to nix the clown prince of crimes
07:26inclusion altogether. As it stands, the scene feels shoehorned in, serving no purpose other
07:31than to tease lucrative sequel bait. Worse than that, though, it actually robs the Riddler of
07:36some of his mystique and has him playing subservient second fiddle to a character
07:41who isn't even in the film.
07:433. Girl Power – Avengers Endgame
07:46Avengers Endgame brought the Infinity Saga to a definitive close in 2019,
07:51bringing the entire roster of MC heroes back to our screens to defeat Thanos.
07:55While the Earth's mightiest heroes triumphed, the film also delivered with many characters we'd
08:01spent the previous decade growing to love, including the original female Avenger, Black
08:06Widow. Thankfully, unlike a decade ago, there are plenty more well-developed female heroes to fill
08:12her shoes, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the film's final battle against Thanos.
08:17Unfortunately, the best and brightest at Disney and Marvel got together and decided the only way
08:22to showcase this was to have all the major female characters to assemble in a row in the midst of
08:27battle, trading lines to a swell of inspirational music. Host note here, I actually love this scene,
08:34but let's keep going. What's intended to be a badass female-affirming scene comes off as the
08:40cheesiest, hammiest, most manufactured moment the MCU films have ever brought us. And that's saying
08:45a lot, considering some of them rely almost solely on cheese, gloss, and soap opera drama to pad
08:51their run time.
08:522. Zion Oji Rave – The Matrix Reloaded
08:56The re-emergence of The Matrix has, of late, sent many of us down memory lane,
09:01revisiting 1999's stone-cold sci-fi classic and its sequels. After some initial wall-running
09:07and gunslinging to sate fans' thirst for shiny leather action, the free people of Zion gather
09:13in an underground cavern so MC Morpheus can kick off the biggest rave the world has ever seen.
09:20Probably. Thus ensues a mass of bodies bumping and grinding to some dirty beats,
09:25intercut with Neo and Trinity getting jiggy with it. The scene might better belong to train
09:30spotting or human traffic, feeling at odds with the tone and broader content of The Matrix films.
09:36What possessed the Wachowskis to include this goes beyond rational understanding.
09:40Perhaps on too many red pills.
09:421. Flying Space Layer – Star Wars The Last Jedi
09:47Star Wars The Last Jedi, or Episode VIII, depending on what neck of the woods you hail from,
09:52enraged some longtime fans upon release and pleased plenty of others, with director
09:57Rian Johnson and actor Kelly Marie Tran unfairly catching most of the flack.
10:01After Sith apprentice Kylo Ren launches an attack on his mother, Leia Organa's ship,
10:06Leia is blown out into space in a fireball of debris. So she's Organa, right? Wrong.
10:13After surviving for a good minute or so in the vacuum of space, her hand twitches,
10:18her eyes flick open, and she, um, force-flies herself to safety.
10:24The power, the action, and the scene don't jive with anything in the Star Wars universe,
10:29neither the lore, the canon, nor even the fundamental laws of chemistry, biology, or physics.
10:34We discovered in The Rise of Skywalker that Leia trained as a Jedi under Luke,
10:38and even has her own lightsaber. But this doesn't help land the whole space-flying thing any better.
10:44If they could just zoom around the freezing cold void like Superman,
10:48why didn't Luke or Obi-Wan just zoom up to the Death Star's exhaust port with a
10:52thermal detonator suppository? That's the end of our list, but let me know down in
10:56that comment box what you think are the most out-of-place scenes in sci-fi movie history.
11:02As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture, thank you so much for hanging out with me.
11:06If you like it, you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account, where I'm
11:09jessmcdonnell, but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more great lists.