10 Most Out Of Place Scenes In Sci-Fi Movie History

Australian Cinephile

Star Wars, Avengers, The Matrix - why did they have to go and include THAT?

Transcript

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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