We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The movie:
‘The Fate of the Furious’
The scene:
Why it’s great:
There comes a point in every action franchise where the laws of physics are thrown out the window in favor of crazy action scenes that strive to be as fun as possible. The Fast and Furious franchise has gotten to that point, having gone from a simple movie about Vin Diesel participating in illegal street racing, to a movie about Vin Diesel outracing a nuclear submarine, and then proceeding to destroy said submarine with a car.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The video:
Why it’s great:
We’ve all experienced a moment where our best-laid plans fail spectacularly. At the time, there’s nothing funny or amusing about it, as we’re usually too blinded by embarrassment, shame, and grief. But as Futureman’s video shows, there’s great comedy to be found in gearing up for something that will look amazing… only to fail so spectacularly that all you can do is either laugh or sit there in stunned silence.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The video:
Warning: This video has language that’s not safe for work
Why it’s great:
Patrick Stewart shoots a talking sponge. That is all.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The video:
Why it’s great:
Years before he blasted off into outer space and became an undead cyborg, Jason Voorhees’ exploits were confined to terra firma. But in 1995, MADTV had Jason head off to the stars. While quite tame by ‘Friday’ standards, this is still a great little clip (especially the mission controller having to constantly revise his inspirational mantra based on Jason’s bodycount), and one can’t help but wonder if the writers of ‘Jason X’ saw this sketch and thought to themselves, ‘hey, that’s not a bad idea!’. Whether it happened or not, it’s amusing how this sketch unknowingly predicted the future of the ‘Friday’ franchise, thus becoming a great example of media unknowingly predicting something that would later come true.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The video:
Why it’s great:
I can’t say why this is great without spoiling it: Make sure closed captioning is turned on and press play (Note that this video is not safe for work).
…
Done?
What I adore about this video isn’t the clip itself, but the fact that whoever wrote the captions for for it decided to go nuts and turn the scene of Xenomorphs killing one of their own to escape a cell into them arguing about Five Nights at Freddy’s and eventually resorting to cursing in internet slang.
What makes these captions so bizzare is that Movie Clips is a company that legally hosts clips from movies and TV shows for fans to watch. Taking a scene and using wildly inaccurate subtitles conjures the image of a disgruntled employee deciding to have some fun behind his or her boss’ backs. I, for one, am glad that he or she did, as it takes a serious scene showcasing alien intelligence and remakes it as a comedy that turns the terrifying Xenomorph into cursing, slang-using aliens who hate the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise. Even better, it retroactively making it easy to imagine aliens in previous films being immature jerks saying, “Comin’ to kill ya, LOL,’ ‘Haha u ded,’ and the like whenever they kill someone, which adds a whole new layer of entertainment to this long-running franchise.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The video:
Why it’s great:
It’s Sesame Street poking fun of Game of Thrones.
…
Okay, I guess I’ll have to do more than post a sentence I never thought I’d write. What makes this sketch by Sesame Street great is that it manages to do three things at once:
1. Do a G-rated parody of an R-rated franchise.
2. Make it educational and entertaining at the same time.
3. Throw in plenty of in-jokes that only adult watchers of ‘Thrones’ would get that would fly over the heads of younger viewers.
It’s Reason # 3 that really makes this sketch shine: What 8 year old is going to catch the in-jokes about the bloodiest wedding in human history, the death of the most irritating teenage monarch ever, decapitation, and so much more? None, I’d warrant. You can almost hear the writers giggling as they turn R-rated horror into G-rated jokes, and on a children’s educational show, no less!
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The video:
Why it’s great:
If you were a little kid during the 90’s, you were probably traumatized by seeing Mufasa fall to his death in ‘The Lion King’. I should know; I was one of those kids who was heartbroken at seeing him become wilderbeast roadkill, and another unfortunate victim in Disney’s never-ending quest to kill all parents.
So, naturally, someone had to take the scene and remake it in 3D, but with incredibly silly animation that looks like it was saved from an animation student’s recycle bin, making another great example of how taking a dramatic scene and interpreting it with silly, amateur production values can make for comedy gold.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The video:
(Skip to 5:40)
Why it’s great:
In most kids movies, there sometimes comes a moment where the young star of the show has to embark on a dangerous mission to save the day, and sometimes those missions involve sneaking around without being seen. Looking past the obvious question of why it’d be sensible to send a pre-adolescent out on a solo sneaking mission up against dangerous, competent, and trained adults, those missions usually end with the youngster managing to embrace the spirit of the ninja and succeeding in saving the day.
But what if they didn’t?
As seen in the video above, Frodo Baggins bravely attempts to – in the words of reviewer OhhhMarmalade – become one with the shadows and escape from the Shire, complete with the theme music from Metal Gear Solid… only to instantly fail, be caught by the Ringwraiths, and plunge Middle Earth into a never ending age of darkness and hellish suffering.
Whoops.
What amuses me most about the segment above is showing what would really happen if Frodo, or any unqualified person, tried to become a ninja and become one with the shadows as they tried to sneak out of a heavily patrolled area: They would probably be caught almost instantly. It doesn’t matter how pure of heart they are, how noble their quest is, or that they love their family very much: They’re not trained, they’re not qualified, and they’re doomed from the moment they set out.
While there’s far, far too many instances of people failing at trying to do something they can’t in real life, having someone fail immediately at the big, important task/quest they set out to achieve seconds after starting can make for some great comedy, as poor Frodo demonstrates. It gets even funnier if they’re The Chosen One who have to save the world, which can then lead to all sorts of interesting situations: What do the other characters do now that the Chosen One has failed/is dead? Do they try to fulfill the quest? Realize that it was a terrible idea to send a child out to do an adult’s job? And if they do try to pick up the quest, do they have any chance at all at succeeding, since they weren’t chosen by fate/prophecy/God?
Failure can be funny, but it can also open up new avenues and scenarios in storytelling that are otherwise underutilized.
*My apologies regarding a post that went up earlier today that has since been deleted; it was a draft that had been set to be posted automatically, but I forgot to expand and revise it.*
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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Previous installments of this column have looked at scenes that I enjoy watching, but today marks the first that, while brilliantly done, is not a fun scene by any stretch of the imagination.
Back in 2001, I was a 15 year old teen in high school who was eagerly looking forward to ‘Pearl Harbor’ and all the explosions, sinking ships, and general war carnage that hot-blooded teenagers go nuts over. Imagine my surprise to find that most of the movie revolves around a romance that drags on for over an hour before the actual attack starts. When the film came to an end, I was annoyed and disappointed, with the film quickly fading from memory as I headed home.
That is, except for one scene.
For all theflak it’s takenabout the unwanted romantic subplot, the inaccuracies of the attack itself (including clearly visible modern-day destroyers), there’s one horrifying scene that ‘Pearl Harbor’ does perfectly (skip to 1:32):
Even 18 years later, this remains the most unsettling moment in any war film I’ve seen, and is easily the most heartbreaking scene in any movie directed by Michael Bay: Several sailors are trapped inside the upturned USS Oklahoma and screaming for help as the ship continues to flood, but drown only inches from safety as their rescuers fail to cut them out in time, unable to do anything but listen to their muffled screams as they die.
What’s so unsettling about this scene is how it uses an inevitable suffering scenario: That is, people who are going to endure something awful and there’s no way to stop it. Here, it’s the sailors who are going to die in one of the most horrific ways imaginable (drowning), but to make it even crueler, the only thing keeping them from escaping is a single piece of steel. They can see the daylight outside, and the people trying to save them, but it’s too late to get them out. And to twist the knife even further, we see the rescue attempt not from their perspective, but from the people trying to cut through, forcing us, the viewer, to imagine what it must be like underneath that steel. All we see of these doomed sailors are their hands and a screaming mouth.
Pearl Harbor suffers from focusing too much on a romance that nobody really wanted, various inaccuracies, and other issues, but for one scene, it perfectly captures the horrors of war.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The video:
Why it’s great:
Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re writing Hollywood’s next big film, the blockbuster that will finally earn you cinematic immortality and a big boost of friends on your Facebook page. But there’s problem: You’re writing a comedy, and you’re doing a big action scene of, say, soldiers attacking a fortress. The scene’s well-written, but it’s not funny, and nothing you do makes it work. What do you do?
Why not replace the soldiers with kids?
‘Mad Max Power Wheels’ is a near-perfect example of one of my favorite comedy tropes: Having children re-enact adult movies with a comedic bent. We expect to see little kids pretending to be police officers, paramedics, or firefighters when driving around in Power Wheels, not celebrating the release a of an R-rated post-apocalyptic movie by pretending to be hardened road warriors slaughtering each other for gazzoline gasoline. Yet, seeing that contrast between bloody death and ruin and innocent kids having lots of fun makes for comedy gold, and it only gets funnier the more mature, bloody, or gruesome said stories are.Captain Phillips, anyone?
Imperfect Glass 