6 Terrible Movies With One Incredible Scene
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00:00 Bad movies are often terrible from start to finish, but sometimes even a 4/10 director
00:05 has one 10/10 idea, and manages to strike gold in just a single fleeting scene, as is
00:11 absolutely the case with these following movies which are otherwise not remotely worth your
00:16 time.
00:17 So with that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are 6 terrible movies with one incredible
00:23 scene.
00:24 Johnny Mnemonic is a classic example of Hollywood desperately attempting to cash in on the techno
00:32 thriller trend in the mid-90s.
00:34 Despite a strong concept and some solid visuals, this is a haphazardly directed, scarcely logical
00:40 piece of storytelling, led by - and it pains me to say this - mostly wooden Keanu Reeves,
00:46 ensuring it's best watched through the lens of So Bad It's Good Filmmaking.
00:49 And that's because in any conventional sense it… wait, it stinks.
00:54 Slap that on the back of the box.
00:55 Just wait.
00:56 It stinks I guess.
00:57 2/5.
00:58 Well, it stinks apart from the meme-worthy scene in which Reeves' titular protagonist
01:02 launches off an unhinged rant about, of all things, room service.
01:07 As Johnny rants to Jane about the sorry predicament he's found himself in, he screams "I want
01:12 room service.
01:14 I want the club sandwich.
01:15 I want the cold Mexican beer.
01:17 I want a 10,000 a night hookah."
01:19 Obviously my rendition of this is like a 2/10, but Keanu ramps it up to 11, it absolutely
01:24 sells the scene.
01:26 For as much as his performance is far too subdued to be interesting throughout the rest
01:29 of the flick, in this single scene he absolutely knocks it out of the park and manages to be
01:33 both genuinely captivating and totally hilarious.
01:37 5.
01:38 The Final Battle - The Twilight Saga - Breaking Dawn Part 2
01:43 Beyond the craven greed of pointlessly splitting the final book into two movies, Breaking Dawn
01:47 Part 2 is par for the course for the IP.
01:50 Packed with shoddy melodrama that's impossible to take seriously, a problematic central romance
01:55 to say the least, and eyesore-inducing visual effects, namely a CGI baby that is quite simply
02:02 a crime against humanity.
02:07 Director Bill Condon and writer Melissa Rosenberg pulled off one undeniably ingenious sleight
02:12 of hand for the film's finale.
02:14 Basically, the climax to the Breaking Dawn novel is, well, a bit of an anti-climax, in
02:19 that there isn't a final battle and everything just ends on a whimper.
02:23 So how do you end a movie adapted from a book that has a total non-event of an ending?
02:28 Well you make up a new one, but with a clever get-out-of-jail-free clause.
02:33 So Breaking Dawn Part 2 ends with a totally insane and surprisingly brutal battle as the
02:38 various heroic factions team up to battle the evil Volturi, with beloved characters
02:42 being violently dismembered and beheaded left, right and centre.
02:47 Fans understandably were utterly shocked and distressed at what they were seeing, given
02:51 that this sequence and these deaths never occurred in the novel.
02:55 Yet as this glorious fight comes to an end, we pull back and it's revealed that the
03:00 battle was really just a vision being shown to the Volturi leader by Alice, which then
03:05 convinces him to walk away.
03:07 Now this is honestly one of the few times in cinema history that the "it was all a
03:11 dream" twist actually worked in the movie's favour, because it gave us an extra action
03:15 scene that was denied by the source material.
03:19 You won't find many people sticking up for the daft legacy sequel Space Jam A New Legacy,
03:28 which attempted to update the formula of the 1996 Michael Jordan-starring sports comedy
03:32 by doubling down on all things meta.
03:35 Sadly the end result wasn't all that great and cynicism dripped from every pore of its
03:40 creation, well except for that glorious cameo from Michael Jordan.
03:45 In the movie at half time during the climactic basketball match between the Toon Squad and
03:49 the Goon Squad, Sylvester the Cat gleefully announces that he's found Michael Jordan
03:54 to help them pull back a victory.
03:56 But as the original film's star makes his apparent appearance, he's actually revealed
04:00 instead to be Michael B. Jordan, the beloved Creed and Black Panther star.
04:05 Given that a cameo from THE Michael Jordan seemed like a very real possibility, this
04:10 was an absolutely hilarious subversion of expectations.
04:14 A ruck pull that overcame the disappointment of Jordan's absence by arguably giving us
04:19 something greater.
04:20 And to top it all off, the brief cameo ends with Daffy Duck asking Sylvester "We couldn't
04:24 get Michael A. Jordan, so we got Michael B. Jordan?"
04:28 In a largely miserable, creatively devoid exercise, this was pretty good I'll give
04:32 it that.
04:33 For most people, Dumb and Dumberer is an unpleasant half-remembered dream of a film.
04:43 Released back in 2003, this prequel to the legendary 1994 Jim Carrey/Jeff Daniels comedy
04:49 succumbed to basically every imaginable prequel pitfall, desperately attempting to cash in
04:54 on the original's success and in turn feeling like a pale imitation of it.
04:58 The filmmakers made one unequivocally smart call, hiring the late great Bob Saget to play
05:05 Mr. Matthews, the father of Harry and Lloyd's love interest Jessica.
05:09 Saget plays a small but unforgettable role in the film, culminating in the immortal scene
05:14 where he understandably freaks out after Harry smears a melted chocolate bar over his bathroom.
05:21 Upon entering the bathroom, the actor's reaction is priceless, blurting out a hilariously
05:26 expletive-filled rant as he believes that Harry has "annihilated his bathroom" in
05:31 fecal matter.
05:32 So yeah, thanks for giving us some temporary much-needed relief Bob.
05:36 That was awesome.
05:38 From the moment the first trailer for Cats dropped, audiences were left unsettled by
05:45 the dubious decision to have the film's all-star cast be digitally composited into
05:49 CGI cat costumes.
05:51 This resulted in a deeply queasy Uncanny Valley look, with the characters appearing neither
05:56 quite human nor feline, but rather an eerie hybrid of the two.
06:02 There is a single scene that manages to mostly break through the nauseating visual effects
06:07 and deliver something approximating the intended emotion of Andrew Lloyd Webber's source
06:11 material though.
06:12 When Grizabella belts out the haunting tune "Memory", it's such a profound rendition
06:17 of unarguably the musical's best song that you might, temporarily anyway, forget how
06:22 bad the rest of the movie is and maybe even get a little teary-eyed in the process.
06:27 In the film where so much effort is being made in the wrong direction, Jennifer Hudson
06:31 at least brought her A-game and managed to turn in an affecting performance, even while
06:36 fighting against the distracting VFX.
06:38 Max's Drug Trip - Max Payne Max Payne should have been among the easier
06:44 video game properties to adapt into movie form, because while it certainly owes a lot
06:48 of its style to cinema itself, it also brings enough of its own noir-ish sensibility to
06:53 the table to not feel like a pure rip-off.
06:55 But 2008's Max Payne movie was a sure-fire dud, hampered by workman-like direction from
07:01 John Muir, a script that listlessly cycles through the first game's narrative beats,
07:05 and the dual miscasting of Mark Wahlberg as Max and Mila Kunis as femme fatale Mona Sax.
07:11 There's not even that much action in it for a Max Payne game, which is like 99.9%
07:15 action, though Muir does strike fleeting gold near the end of the film when Max is almost
07:21 drowned and, in an attempt to prevent himself from dying from hypothermia, takes a dose
07:26 of a hallucinogenic drug.
07:28 As Max rejuvenates, he sees intense visions of Valkyries flying all around him, before
07:33 he heads off and uses the drug's sense-enhancing properties to mow down fleets of bad guys
07:38 before finally killing the villainous BB.
07:41 It's the one sequence in the film that gets anywhere close to the Mila-minute thrills
07:44 and striking visuals of the video games, yet you have to sit through like 80 minutes of
07:49 pure garbo to get to that point.
07:51 So that's our list, I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below,
07:55 what did you think about these scenes in terrible movies, and are there any hidden gems I missed
07:59 off here?
08:00 While you're down there as well, could you please give us a like, share, subscribe and
08:02 head over to WhatCulture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
08:06 Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see
08:09 you soon.
08:09 (upbeat music)