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When great action happens to bad movies.
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00:00Now, even most awful movies aren't entirely worthless. I mean, there's usually something
00:04that can be praised, be it a decent performance, cool sliver of dialogue, or an idea that might
00:09have worked better with a different approach. And then there are those terrible films that
00:13manage to deliver a single thrilling action sequence amid a sea of otherwise atrocious
00:18filmmaking choices. And that's what we're here to talk about today. I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:23and these are 10 Incredible Action Scenes in Terrible Movies.
00:2610. The Forest Fight – Transformers Revenge of the Fallen
00:30The second Transformers film might well be the most unbearable of the lot, a cluster migraine
00:35masquerading as a movie that is jam-packed with humour both embarrassing and offensive,
00:40plus way too much talking and not nearly enough compelling action. The single saving grace,
00:45though, comes at almost exactly the one-hour mark, where Optimus Prime battles the combined
00:50might of Autobots Megatron, Starscream, and Grindr. The thrillingly kinetic fight kicks
00:55off in a gorgeous remote forest, and, as presented in a full-frame IMAX aspect ratio,
01:00delivers action with scale and clarity far in excess of anything else in the movie.
01:04The visual effects hold up incredibly well to this very day, offering up a real sense of weight
01:08to the duelling bots and palpable fear that Optimus will not come out on top this time,
01:13and eventually he doesn't. It's a sequence that proves what brilliance Michael Bay is capable of
01:17when the conditions are right, even if it's miserably plunked into the middle of an otherwise
01:21mind-numbingly awful movie.
01:249. Bond vs. North Korea
01:26Die Another Day
01:27Die Another Day sadly brought Pierce Brosnan's hit-and-miss tenure as 007 to an unceremoniously
01:33woeful end, overindulging in silly action, corny one-liners, and an inane plot to the point that
01:39it basically became a parody of itself. It's especially disappointing, as the film's pre-title
01:43sequence promises a considerably better and more seriously-minded movie, with James Bond facing off
01:48against a rogue North Korean army colonel and his seemingly never-ending fleet of goons.
01:53The sequence shows Bond outnumbered in a way that we've rarely seen before, forced to combine
01:57tech gadgetry with his scrappy cunning to blow up the base, hijack a hovercraft, and start chasing
02:02the colonel. It is a scene packed with ludicrously, explosively entertaining action beats, most of which
02:07is achieved practically in stark contrast to the rest of the movie, before climaxing with a rather
02:12unexpected result, and that is Bond being captured.
02:15And when you start your movie with Bond outmanoeuvring a giant flamethrower and using an Uzi to detonate
02:20mines, whilst piloting a hovercraft no less, you better have something insane ready to follow
02:24up with. Sadly, Die Another Day didn't, and once Madonna's title track starts up, it goes
02:29pretty much downhill.
02:308. Taking Out The Trash – Death Wish 3
02:33By any standard metric of evaluating a film, Death Wish 3 is totally awful. A textbook example
02:39of a franchise entering its shambling, zombified stage, as it continues to exist only because the
02:44box office groceries haven't dried up yet. On a moral level, the reactionary right-wing
02:49politics are so disgustingly on the nose as to be unintentionally comical, enough that the film
02:54has become something of an accidental, campy cult classic in recent years. But ironic enjoyment aside,
03:00there is one sequence in the movie that is utterly unimpeachable as action filmmaking goes,
03:04and that's the gonzo climax in which Charles Bronson's pool rallies the citizens of an overrun New York
03:09City to violently fight back against the creeps that are haranguing them. What follows is a glorious
03:1415-minute orgy of cartoonish violence, beginning with Paul unleashing an oversized minigun on the
03:19street punks and only getting more absurd from there. After finally running out of ammo, Paul reverts
03:24back to his trusty hand cannon to keep mowing the bad guys down, intercut with the area increasingly
03:29coming to resemble an actual war zone as the punks blow up basically every building and vehicle in
03:34sight. It is an absolute bloodbath, with cops, criminals, and civilians all suffering massive
03:39casualties. Until the sequence concludes with its pièce de résistance, and that is Paul blowing up
03:44the gang's leader Manny with a bloody bazooka. 7. The Cliffside Ninja Fight – GI Joe Retaliation
03:51Though GI Joe Retaliation was a tad more tolerable than its pure jank predecessor, primarily due to the
03:57presences of both Dwayne Johnson and Bruce Willis, it was still ultimately a bland nothing burger of a
04:02sequel that made no impact whatsoever. Yet there is a single scene that people still fondly remember
04:07a whole decade later, and that is the wonderfully thrilling Cliffside Ninja Fight, in which Snake
04:12ninjas whilst carrying an injured storm shadow up a cliff. In terms of action design, it is both
04:17imaginative and technically impressive, focusing on the perilous, breathless thrill of heroes sprinting
04:22across a cliff face with swords while cutting their way through a ninja horde. It's a scene that feels
04:26more in tune with a kid playing with their GI Joe action figures than anything else in the series'
04:31three movies, and it's really the only truly worthwhile sequence in the entire bloody trilogy.
04:366. The Single-Take Shootout – London Has Fallen
04:40While Olympus Has Fallen, the first entry into Gerard Butler's dab thriller series,
04:44was a solid slice of B-movie fun, sequel London Has Fallen touted a much meaner and more
04:49misanthropic streak, as ultimately descended into outright xenophobia. But amid its ugly America
04:55is the best vibe, there is one set piece that cannot be discounted, and that is the superbly
05:00slick single-take shootout in which Secret Service agent Mike Banning battles his way through the
05:05streets to save kidnapped US President Benjamin Asher. Alongside a Delta-slash-SAS extraction team,
05:11Banning gingerly pushes forward through the streets, mowing down dozens of anonymous goons in a single,
05:16seamless take. Even though the digital joins between the takes are incredibly obvious,
05:20it's clear that a ton of effort went into staging the sequence to be as immersive as possible,
05:25and it positively shames the resoundingly pedestrian action thriller that the rest of
05:29the film becomes. For around five pulse-racing minutes, it almost convinced us that London
05:34Has Fallen might be a good movie.
05:375. The Fake-Out Finale – The Twilight Saga – Breaking Dawn Part 2
05:41Twilight's final entry, Breaking Dawn Part 2, is an appropriately awful conclusion to a series that
05:47never quite found a fun balance of frothy teen melodrama and campy thrills. The second part of
05:53this two-part conclusion is, for the most part, a leaden bore, packed with unintentionally cackle-worthy
05:58dialogue and drama, but that is saved for a climactic showdown that is far better than the movie really
06:03deserves. Because the Breaking Dawn novel ends on something of an un-cinematic shoulder shrug,
06:08the filmmakers smartly came up with something new that ultimately wouldn't actually piss off the
06:12die-hard fans, and so Part 2 wraps up with a wonderfully bonkers battle as the vampires and
06:17wolves team up to fight the villains. For a PG-13 movie aimed at tweens, it's a shockingly violent
06:22war, with cherished characters being dismembered and even decapitated before our very eyes,
06:27though the vampire's ice-like composition makes the brutality a little more palatable for families.
06:32Fans were surely irate that characters who survived in the book were dying left and right,
06:36until the fight suddenly ends and we realise that it was actually just a vision being shown to the
06:40leader of the villains by Alice, which convinces him to walk away and that's that. Make no mistake,
06:45Breaking Dawn Part 2 utterly stinks, but the filmmakers did the absolute best they could
06:50with a tricky situation, delivering a smart, surprisingly visceral compromise to the source
06:55material's non-ending. 4. The First Person Shooting
06:59Doom 2005's Doom might be the better of the two live-action Doom movies produced to date,
07:04the other being 2018's wretched director video Doom Annihilation, but it is still a load of old
07:09bobbins for the most part. For starters, the hell setting from the video games was ditched for no
07:14discernible reason, and the bulk of the movie smacks of a generic sci-fi action romp with
07:18recognisable branding cynically just slapped over it. But there is a single sequence that captures
07:23the honest-to-God vibe of the video games, and that's when protagonist John Reaper Grimm is
07:28injected with a life-saving experimental serum, bestowing him with superhuman abilities as he takes
07:32on the monster's gallery filling the UAC research facility. And the scene's big hook is that
07:37it's executed from a first-person perspective as a single take in order to resemble the aesthetic
07:41of the games. It's goofy, for sure, but it boasts a creativity and technical ingenuity that suggests
07:47a real love for the source material, something that the script otherwise totally lacks. Seeing Reaper
07:52blast his way through infected humans and mutated monsters alike, including the monstrous Pinky,
07:56is a ton of fun, even if it's a sadly fleeting diversion in an otherwise piss-poor adaptation.
08:023. Doom's Rampage – Fantastic Four 2015
08:07From one doom to another now, with Josh Trank's ill-fated 2015 Fantastic Four reboot.
08:12Depending on who you believe, the film was either hacked to pieces by a twitchy fox,
08:16or Trank simply couldn't hack it as a big-budget filmmaker. But either way,
08:20the end result is a chaotic, tonally jarring mess that unfortunately totally fell flat.
08:25But there is one scene which hints at the film's darker potential, given that Trank has spoken
08:28extensively about his movie being inspired by the body horror films of David Cronenberg. And that
08:33comes near the end, where Doom is awakened and embarks on a brutal rampage through the research
08:37facility where he's being held. Cue Doom using his abilities to telepathically explode the heads
08:42of anybody who tries to prevent his escape. If you can get over Doom's undeniably silly design,
08:47it's a genuinely unnerving sequence which ranks among the more disturbing set pieces of any superhero
08:53film from the last decade. It may only last all of a hot minute, but what a minute!
08:572. The Chicago Chase – Jupiter Ascending
09:01Jupiter Ascending is one of the biggest mega-budget disappointments of the last decade,
09:05an ambitious dud from the Wachowskis that, despite its technical ingenuity,
09:09abjectly failed on a narrative and character level. And let's not even get started on Eddie
09:13Redmayne's Razzie-winning performance here, but there's one set piece so masterfully executed
09:17as to be worthy of The Matrix, and that's the eight-minute chase sequence in which Jupiter
09:22and Kane flee from an alien fleet in downtown Chicago. As the aliens attack, Kane scoops up a
09:27falling Jupiter with his rather nifty anti-gravity boots, soaring across the Chicago skyline whilst
09:32the alien weaponry decimates nearby skyscrapers. There's an incredible visual clarity to the
09:36sequence, despite its frantic intensity, enough so that we can fairly assume a good portion of
09:41the film's stonking $200 million budget was spent on it. As a dazzling VFX showcase and a reminder of
09:47what the Wachowskis are capable of, it's a wonderful sequence. Yet coming so early in the first act as it
09:52does, it leaves the rest of the movie scrambling and failing to live up to it.
09:561. The Attack on Pearl Harbor
09:59Pearl Harbor
10:00Michael Bay strikes again, this time around with his flaccid attempt to out-Titanic,
10:05Titanic in his 2001 war epic Pearl Harbor. Clocking in at an excruciatingly overcooked 183 minutes,
10:12the late great Roger Ebert might have put it best when he said at the movie,
10:15Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941,
10:21the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40
10:26minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. And you know
10:31what, he's mostly right. The overwhelming bulk of Bay's film focuses on a toe-curlingly feckless
10:36love triangle between three characters you're barely encouraged to care about, and is set against
10:40the backdrop of a major piece of real-world history. Viewers have to sit through 90 minutes of exhausting
10:45melodrama before the Attack on Pearl Harbor finally happens, but when it does, it at least has the
10:50courtesy to be a damn doozy. Even Bay's toughest attractors will struggle to write this technically
10:58stunning sequence off in its entirety, a staggering 30-minute pyrotechnics display combining incredible
11:04practical stunt work and gorgeous VFX carnage. It's the only part of the movie that feels even
11:09remotely worthy of holding James Cameron's jockstrap, as soon enough we're back to business as tedious
11:14for the remaining hour. The attack on Pearl Harbor was so thoroughly ripe for a splashy
11:19Hollywood treatment that Bay suffocated the centerpiece amid a wealth of gooey, unconvincing
11:24romance.
11:24And there we go, my friends. Those were 10 incredible action scenes in terrible movies. I hope that you
11:29enjoyed that, and let me know what you thought about it down in the comment section below. As
11:33always, I've been Jules. You can go follow me over on Instagram, where it's at RetroJ,
11:37but the O is a zero. And you can come check out all the Warhammer miniatures that I've been
11:40painting. Yes, I am a nerd. But before I go, I just want to say one thing. Hope you're treating
11:45yourself well, my friend, with love and respect, because you deserve all the best things in life,
11:49alright? As always, I've been Jules. You have been awesome. Never forget that,
11:52and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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