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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 again,
01:38but there's no denying how out of place this moment is.
01:41Number 9. Techno Diva Dance – The Fifth Element
01:4523rd century NYC cabbie Corbin Dallas teams up with Leeloo, the 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, none are stranger than the space opera sequence.
02:05Corbin and Leeloo follow a quest for some sacred stones – just go with it – to a blue diva called
02:11Plava Laguna. But before they can reclaim it, they – and we – are forced to sit through an excruciating
02:17few minutes of space opera. Techno music kicks in, the diva throws some shapes and the audience cringe
02:24from behind their fingers. The scene is awkward, uncomfortable and seriously out of place, which is
02:30saying a lot for a film with Chris Tucker's loud, flamboyant, intergalactic talk show host going
02:35down on an air hostess during takeoff. Number 8. 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 between fiction
02:55and reality. Along the way he encounters many wonders of a technologically advanced yet
03:00persistently unequal society, but perhaps none more striking than a triple-breasted mutant prostitute.
03:07Played by Lycia Naff, the futuristic lady of the night is offered up to Arnie by her pimp,
03:13and she opens her blouse to show him the goods, laughing like Janice from Friends. Now far be it for
03:19us to poo-poo a bit of space nudity, but this scene feels shoehorned into the film. Unless there's a
03:24deeper, more artistic element at play that we're missing somehow? Unfortunately no, I don't think so.
03:30This film establishes a pattern for the film where most female characters are presented as sexualised
03:35objects, ostracised freaks, or both. Naff came to regret taking the part as it left her feeling
03:41overexposed and deeply unsexy, and it isn't difficult to see why. Number 7. Elvis Shrine –
03:49Robocop 2. Peter Weller returns to the streets of a dystopian Detroit as Alex Murphy, the eponymous
03:56Robocop taking 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. While
04:10pursuing 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.
04:38Number 6. 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 the
04:48film that got him kicked out in the first place – Spider-Man 3. Despite the film's inability to
04:53control its characters and narrative flow, it manages its tone fairly well – at least until Peter
04:59Parker gets infected by the Venom symbiote and things go… a little odd. He's so bad, in fact,
05:06he's going to dance in the street like your dad at a wedding. Buying a black suit and dancing on the
05:11pavement, taking his girlfriend to a jazz club and dancing on the tables, and generally dancing his
05:16way into our worst Spidey-related nightmares. Peter goes full cringe in a sequence that is unforgettable
05:23for all 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
05:34us to say, but what we can say is that Raimi was planning on making a fourth film and, well,
05:39that was 15 years and two additional Spider-Men ago.
05:42Number 5. 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
06:03jewels, coke-snorting demon bikers, or a green goblin that projectile vomits macaroni cheese.
06:09Trust me, this movie's really good though. The creepy little green guy appears on television
06:13during a tense and crucial point in Red's emotional journey, treating two children to some
06:19macaroni chunder. The scene is undeniably brilliant, but it comes at a strange time,
06:25right 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.
06:37Number 4. 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 with it.
06:51As is opposite, 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
07:03most jarring sequences, Riddler plays Whispers with the inmate in the cell next door,
07:08Barry Kogan's wonky-toothed Yokel Joker.
07:12The deleted scene of Batman meeting Joker goes a long way to explaining why the Riddler-Joker scene
07:17exists in the first place, but the very fact that they didn't include the former should have seen
07:22the impetus needed to nix the Clown Prince of Crime's inclusion altogether. As it stands,
07:28the scene feels shoehorned in, serving no purpose other than to tease lucrative sequel bait.
07:34Worse than that though, it actually robs the Riddler of some of his mystique,
07:37and has him playing subservient second fiddle to a character who isn't even in the film.
07:43Number 3. 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 Widow.
08:07Thankfully, unlike a decade ago, there are plenty more well-developed female heroes to fill her shoes,
08:12and 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 to
08:22showcase 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.
08:31Host note here, I actually love this scene, but let's keep going.
08:36What's intended to be a badass female-affirming scene comes off as the cheesiest, hammiest,
08:41most manufactured moment the MCU films have ever brought us.
08:45And that's saying a lot, considering some of them rely almost solely on cheese,
08:49gloss and soap opera drama to pad their runtime.
08:522. Xion Orgy Rave – The Matrix Reloaded The re-emergence of The Matrix has of late sent
08:59many of us down memory lane, revisiting 1999's stone-cold sci-fi classic and its sequels.
09:06After some initial wallrunning and gunslinging to sate fans' thirst for shiny leather action,
09:11the free people of Xion gather in an underground cavern so MC Morpheus can kick off the biggest
09:17rave the world has ever seen – probably. Thus ensues a mass of bodies bumping and grinding to
09:23some dirty beats, intercut with Neo and Trinity getting jiggy with it.
09:28The 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 Layer – Star Wars The Last Jedi
09:47Star Wars The Last Jedi – or Episode VIII, depending on what neck of the woods you hail
09:51from – enraged 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,
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 – neither
10:29the 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
10:52detonator suppository? That's the end of our list,
10:55but let me know down in that comment box what you think are the most out of place scenes in sci-fi movie
11:01history. As 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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