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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
00:05cinema hasn't taken us. But sometimes even our favourite films take us places we didn't
00:10necessarily want to go. We can be watching along, happy as Larry Fishman, before a sudden shift in
00:17tone, plot, quality or character takes us out of things completely. I'm Jess from WhatCulture and
00:22here are the 10 most out of place scenes in sci-fi movie history.
00:2710. America Gets Torn Into
00:30Chappie Longtime Blomkamp collaborator Charlto Copley voices
00:35the titular character, a decommissioned enforcement robot and the first true AI, who falls in love
00:42with Di Antwoord of all people, reluctantly turning to a life of crime on the streets of Johannesburg.
00:49On this journey, America, one of Chappie's teachers and co-conspirators, teaches the young robot
00:54to wear bling, walk with an attitude and put people to sleep. At least until the third act
01:00that is, when Hugh Grant's villainous engineer, Vincent Moore, stomps him using his remote-controlled
01:06moose robot. In 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 before splattering
01:20his torso on the building behind. Little in the film up until this point prepares you for such a grim
01:26and sudden death of a supporting character. Tonally, it doesn't match any of the action, emotion or visuals
01:32surrounding it and it leaves the audience reeling. The end of Chappie may bring the wholesomeness around
01:37again, but there's no denying how out of place this moment is.
01:419. Techno Diva Dance – The Fifth Element
01:4523rd century NYC cabbie Corbin Dallas teams up with Leeloo, the embodiment of the sacred
01:52fifth element to keep an ancient planet-eating cosmic force from destroying the world. Calamity ensues.
01:59While the film features many wild and wacky digressions, none are stranger than the space
02:04opera sequence. Corbin and Leeloo follow a quest for some sacred stones – just go with it – to a
02:10blue diva called Plava Laguna. But before they can reclaim it, they – and we – are forced to sit
02:16through an excruciating 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, uncomfortable and seriously out
02:29of place, which is saying a lot for a film with Chris Tucker's loud, flamboyant,
02:33intergalactic talk show host, going down on an 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
02:48fantasy of 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
03:05mutant prostitute. Played by Lycia Naff, the futuristic lady of the night is offered up to Arnie
03:12by her pimp, and she opens her blouse to show him the goods, laughing like Janice from Friends.
03:18Now far be it for us to poo-poo a bit of space nudity, but this scene feels shoehorned into the film.
03:23Unless there's a deeper, more artistic element at play that we're missing somehow? Unfortunately,
03:29no, I don't think so. This film establishes a pattern for the film where most female characters
03:34are presented as sexualized objects, ostracized freaks, or both. Naff came to regret taking the part,
03:40as it left her feeling overexposed and deeply unsexy. And 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, the eponymous Robocop,
03:57taking on crime boss Kane and his designer drug-pushing nuke cult, while also attempting to
04:03prevent psychologist Dr. Juliet Fax from creating another Robocop using a death row inmate.
04:10While pursuing Kane, Robocop tracks his gang to a warehouse, where he uncovers the skeleton
04:15of one Elvis A. Presley in a glass case. That's right, the nuke cult have the remains of the king
04:22of rock and roll in their lair, alongside pictures of Mother Teresa, and deleted scenes reveal that
04:28they worship him as some kind of a god. Amusing though this is, the scene doesn't make any sense.
04:34How did they get him? And why Elvis? We may never know.
04:378. Jazz Dancing Emo Peter – Spider-Man 3
04:42Sam Raimi may be back in the superhero fold with Multiverse of Madness, but let's not forget
04:48the 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. He's so bad, in fact, he's going to dance in the
05:07street like your dad at a wedding. Buying a black suit and dancing on the pavement,
05:12taking his girlfriend to a jazz club and dancing on the tables, and generally dancing his way into
05:17our worst Spidey-related nightmares. Peter goes full cringe in a sequence that is unforgettable for
05:23all the wrong reasons. Sure, this is Raimi's humour down to a T, but god damn it, Sam,
05:28there's a time and a place. Did this scene sound the death knell for the series? That's not for us to
05:34say. But what we can say is that Raimi was planning on making a fourth film and, well, that was 15 years
05:40and two additional Spider-Men ago.
05:425. Macaroni Cheese Cheddar Goblin – Mandy
05:47Cage plays Red Miller, a lumber worker whose girlfriend Mandy is kidnapped and killed by a
05:52religious cult, and who therefore must enact a campaign of brutal vengeance. It's the 80s,
05:58the world has an ominous neon glow, and pretty much anything goes, whether that be chainsaw jewels,
06:04coke-snorting demon bikers, or a green goblin that projectile vomits macaroni cheese.
06:09Trust 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 chunder. 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 him
06:29and 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 junior bat who has
06:46lots of unresolved parent-based angst and only half a utility belt to help deal with it. As his
06:52opposite, Paul Dano is the Riddler, a genius in-cell with a chaotic plan to raise Gotham.
06:58Needless to say, Batman puts him in Arkham and throws away the key, but in one of the film's most
07:03jarring sequences, Riddler plays Whispers with the inmate in the cell next door, Barry Kogan's
07:09wonky-toothed Yokel Joker.
07:12The deleted scene of Batman meeting Joker goes a long way to explaining why the Riddler-Joker
07:17scene exists in the first place, but the very fact that they didn't include the former should
07:22have seen the impetus needed to nix the Clown Prince of Crime's inclusion altogether.
07:27As it stands, the scene feels shoehorned in, serving no purpose other than to tease lucrative
07:33sequel bait. Worse than that though, it actually robs the Riddler of some of his mystique and has him
07:38playing subservient second fiddle to a character who isn't even in the film.
07:433. Girl Power – 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 Widow.
08:07Thankfully, unlike a decade ago, there are plenty more well-developed female heroes to fill her
08:12shoes, 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,
08:35but 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 their
08:51runtime.
08:522. Zion Orgy Rave – The Matrix Reloaded
08:56The re-emergence of The Matrix has of late sent many of us down memory lane, revisiting 1999's
09:03stone-cold sci-fi classic and its sequels. After some initial wall-running and gun-slinging to
09:08state fans' thirst for shiny leather action, the free people of Zion gather in an underground cavern so
09:15MC Morpheus can kick off the biggest rave the world has ever seen.
09:19Probably. Thus ensues a mass of bodies bumping and grinding to some dirty beats, intercut with Neo
09:26and Trinity getting jiggy with it. The scene might better belong to train-spotting or human traffic,
09:32feeling 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 one too many red pills.
09:421. Flying Space Leia – 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 long-time fans upon release and pleased plenty of others,
09:56with director Rian 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,
10:07Leia is blown out into space in a fireball of debris.
10:10So she's a goner, right? Wrong!
10:13After surviving for a good minute or so in the vacuum of space, her hand twitches, her eyes flick open,
10:19and 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 thermal detonator suppository?
10:54That's the end of our list, but let me know down in that comment box what you think are the most
10:58out-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, you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account where I'm at Jess McDonnell,
11:11but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more great lists.
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