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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 as I'm Jules,
00:22this is WhatCulture.com, and 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, delivers action
01:01with scale and clarity far in excess of anything else in the movie. The visual effects hold up
01:05incredibly well to this very day, offering up a real sense of weight to the duelling bots and
01:09palpable fear that Optimus will not come out on top this time, and eventually he doesn't.
01:14It's a sequence that proves what brilliance Michael Bay is capable of when the conditions
01:18are right, even if it's miserably plunked into the middle of an otherwise mind-numbingly awful movie.
01:239. Bond vs. North Korea – Die 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. And when you start your movie with Bond outmaneuvering
02:17a giant flamethrower and using an Uzi to detonate mines, whilst piloting a hovercraft no less,
02:22you better have something insane ready to follow up with. Sadly, Die Another Day didn't, and once
02:27Madonna's title track starts up, it goes pretty 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 of a
02:39franchise entering its shambling, zombified stage as it continues to exist only because the box office
02:45grosses haven't dried up yet. On a moral level, the reactionary right-wing politics are so
02:50disgustingly on the nose as to be unintentionally comical, enough that the film has become something
02:55of an accidental, campy cult classic in recent years. But ironic enjoyment aside, there is one
03:00sequence in the movie that is utterly unimpeachable as action filmmaking goes, and that's the gonzo
03:05climax in which Charles Bronson's pool rallies the citizens of an overrun New York City
03:09to 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
03:24reverts back to his trusty hand cannon to keep mowing the bad guys down, intercut with the area
03:29increasingly coming to resemble an actual war zone as the punks blow up basically every building and
03:34vehicle in sight. It is an absolute bloodbath, with cops, criminals, and civilians all suffering
03:39massive casualties, until the sequence concludes with its piece de resistance, and that is Paul
03:44blowing up the gang's leader, Manny, with a bloody bazooka.
03:477. The Cliffside Ninja Fight – G.I. Joe Retaliation
03:51Though G.I. Joe Retaliation was a tad more tolerable than its pure jank predecessor, primarily
03:56due to the presences of both Dwayne Johnson and Bruce Willis, it was still ultimately a bland
04:01nothing burger of a sequel that made no impact whatsoever. Yet there is a single scene that people
04:06still fondly remember a whole decade later, and that is the wonderfully thrilling Cliffside
04:10Ninja Fight, in which Snake Eyes and Jinx join forces to battle an unrelenting fleet of ninjas
04:15whilst carrying an injured storm shadow up a cliff. In terms of action design, it is both imaginative
04:20and technically impressive, focusing on the perilous, breathless thrill of heroes sprinting
04:25across a cliff face with swords while cutting their way through a ninja horde. It is a scene that
04:29feels more in tune with a kid playing with their G.I. Joe action figures than anything else in the series' three
04:34movies, and it's really the only truly worthwhile sequence in the entire bloody trilogy.
04:396. The Single-Take Shootout – London Has Fallen
04:43While Olympus Has Fallen, the first entry into Gerard Butler's dad thriller series,
04:47was a solid slice of B-movie fun, sequel London Has Fallen touted a much meaner and more
04:52misanthropic streak, as ultimately descended into outright xenophobia. But amid its ugly America is the
04:58best vibe, there is one set piece that cannot be discounted, and that is the superbly slick
05:03single-take shootout in which Secret Service agent Mike Banning battles his way through the streets
05:08to save kidnapped U.S. President Benjamin Asher. Alongside a Delta-slash-SAS extraction team,
05:14Banning gingerly pushes forward through the streets, mowing down dozens of anonymous goons
05:18in a single, seamless take. Even though the digital joins between the takes are incredibly obvious,
05:23it's clear that a ton of effort went into staging the sequence to be as immersive as possible,
05:28and it positively shames the resoundingly pedestrian action thriller that the rest of the film becomes.
05:33For around five pulse-racing minutes, it almost convinced us that London Has Fallen might be
05:38a good movie.
05:405. The Fake Out Finale
05:42The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2
05:44Twilight's final entry, Breaking Dawn Part 2, is an appropriately awful conclusion to a series
05:50that never quite found a fun balance of frothy team melodrama and campy thrills. The second part
05:55of this two-part conclusion is, for the most part, a leaden bore, packed with unintentionally
06:00cackle-worthy dialogue and drama, but that is saved for a climactic showdown that is far
06:05better than the movie really deserves. Because the Breaking Dawn novel ends on something of
06:09an uncinematic shoulder shrug, the filmmakers smartly came up with something new that ultimately
06:14wouldn't actually piss off the diehard fans. And so, Part 2 wraps up with a wonderfully bonkers
06:18battle as the vampires and wolves team up to fight the villains. For a PG-13 movie aimed at tweens,
06:24it's a shockingly violent war, with cherished characters being dismembered and even decapitated
06:29before our very eyes, though the vampire's ice-like composition makes the brutality a
06:33little more palatable for families. Fans were surely irate that characters who survived in
06:38the book were dying left and right, until the fight suddenly ends and we realise that it was
06:41actually just a vision being shown to the leader of the villains by Alice, which convinces him to walk
06:46away, and that's that. Make no mistake, Breaking Dawn Part 2 utterly stinks, but the filmmakers did the
06:52absolute best they could with a tricky situation, delivering a smart, surprisingly visceral compromise
06:58to the source material's non-ending.
07:004. The First Person Shooting
07:02Doom
07:032005's Doom might be the better of the two live-action Doom movies produced to date,
07:07the other being 2018's wretched director video Doom Annihilation, but it is still a load of old
07:12bobbins for the most part. For starters, the hell setting from the video games was ditched for no
07:17discernible reason, and the bulk of the movie smacks of a generic sci-fi action romp with
07:21recognisable branding cynically just slapped over it. But there is a single sequence that captures
07:26the honest-to-god vibe of the video games, and that's when protagonist John Reaper Grimm is
07:31injected with a life-saving experimental serum, bestowing him with superhuman abilities as he
07:35takes on the monster's gallery filling the UAC research facility. And the scene's big hook is
07:40that it's executed from a first-person perspective as a single take in order to resemble the aesthetic
07:44of the games. It's goofy, for sure, but it boasts a creativity and technical ingenuity that
07:50suggests a real love for the source material, something that the script otherwise totally
07:54lacks. Seeing Reaper blast his way through infected humans and mutated monsters alike,
07:58including the monstrous Pinky, is a ton of fun, even if it's a sadly fleeting diversion in an
08:03otherwise piss-poor adaptation.
08:063. Doom's Rampage – Fantastic Four 2015
08:09From one Doom to another now, with Josh Trank's ill-fated 2015 Fantastic Four reboot. Now,
08:15depending on who you believe, the film was either hacked to pieces by a twitchy fox,
08:19or Trank simply couldn't hack it as a big-budget filmmaker. But either way,
08:23the end result is a chaotic, tonally jarring mess that unfortunately totally fell flat.
08:27But there is one scene which hints at the film's darker potential, given that Trank has spoken
08:31extensively about his movie being inspired by the body horror films of David Cronenberg. And that
08:36comes near the end, where Doom is awakened and embarks on a brutal rampage through the research
08:40facility where he's being held. Cue Doom using his abilities to telepathically explode the heads
08:45of anybody who tries to prevent his escape. If you can get over Doom's undeniably silly design,
08:51it's a genuinely unnerving sequence which ranks among the more disturbing set pieces of any superhero
08:56film from the last decade. It may only last all of a hot minute, but what a minute!
09:002. The Chicago Chase – Jupiter Ascending
09:03Jupiter Ascending is one of the biggest mega-budget disappointments of the last decade,
09:08an ambitious dud from the Wachowskis that, despite its technical ingenuity,
09:12abjectly failed on a narrative and character level. And let's not even get started on Eddie
09:16Redmayne's Razzie-winning performance here. But there's one set piece so masterfully executed
09:20as to be worthy of The Matrix, and that's the eight-minute chase sequence in which Jupiter and
09:25Kane flee from an alien fleet in downtown Chicago. As the aliens attack, Kane scoops up a falling
09:30Jupiter with his rather nifty anti-gravity boots, soaring across the Chicago skyline whilst the alien
09:35weaponry decimates nearby skyscrapers. There's an incredible visual clarity to the sequence,
09:40despite its frantic intensity, enough so that we can fairly assume a good portion of the film's
09:44stonking $200 million budget was spent on it. As a dazzling VFX showcase and a reminder of what
09:50the Wachowskis are capable of, it's a wonderful sequence. Yet coming so early in the first act as
09:55it does, it leaves the rest of the movie scrambling and failing to live up to it.
09:591. The Attack on Pearl Harbor
10:02Pearl Harbor
10:03Michael Bay strikes again, this time around with his flaccid attempt to out-Titanic-Titanic
10:08in his 2001 war epic Pearl Harbor. Clocking in at an excruciatingly overcooked 183 minutes,
10:15the late great Roger Ebert might have put it best when he said of the movie,
10:19Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941,
10:24the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40
10:29minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. And you know
10:34what, he's mostly right. The overwhelming bulk of Bay's film focuses on a toe-curlingly feckless
10:39love triangle between three characters you're barely encouraged to care about, and is set against
10:43the backdrop of a major piece of real-world history. Viewers have to sit through 90 minutes
10:48of exhausting melodrama before the Attack on Pearl Harbor finally happens, but when it does,
10:52it at least has the courtesy to be a damn doozy. Even Bay's toughest attractors will struggle to
10:57write this technically stunning sequence off in its entirety, a staggering 30-minute pyrotechnics
11:02display combining incredible practical stunt work and gorgeous VFX carnage. It's the only part of
11:08the movie that feels even remotely worthy of holding James Cameron's jockstrap, as soon enough we're
11:13back to business as tedious usual for the remaining hour. The Attack on Pearl Harbor was so thoroughly
11:18ripe for a splashy Hollywood treatment, but Bay suffocated the centrepiece amid a wealth of gooey,
11:23the unconvincing romance.
11:24And there we go, my friends. Those were 10 incredible action scenes in terrible movies.
11:29I hope that you enjoyed that, and let me know what you thought about it down in the
11:32comment section below. As always, I've been Jules. You can go follow me over on Instagram,
11:35where it's at RetroJ, but the O is a zero. And you can come check out all the Warhammer
11:39miniatures that I've been painting. Yes, I am a nerd. But before I go, I just want to say one thing.
11:44Hope you're treating yourself well, my friend, with love and respect, because you deserve all the best
11:48things in life, alright? 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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