10 Most Out Of Place Scenes In Sci-Fi Movie History
Star Wars, Avengers, The Matrix - why did they have to go and include THAT?
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00:00From superheroes to deep space sagas, there are few places in the universe that science fiction cinema hasn't taken us.
00:07But sometimes even our favourite films take us places we didn't necessarily want to go.
00:12We can be watching along, happy as Larry Fishman, before a sudden shift in tone, plot, quality or character takes us out of things completely.
00:21I'm Jess from WhatCulture and here are the 10 most out of place scenes in sci-fi movie history.
00:27Number 10. America gets torn in two.
00:31Chappie. Longtime Blomkamp collaborator Sharlto Copley voices the titular character,
00:37a decommissioned enforcement robot and the first true AI, who falls in love with Di Antwood of all people,
00:44reluctantly turning to a life of crime on the streets of Johannesburg.
00:48On this journey, America, one of Chappie's teachers and co-conspirators, teaches the young robot to wear bling,
00:55walk with an attitude and put people to sleep.
00:59At least until the third act, that is, when Hugh Grant's villainous engineer, Vincent Moore, stomps him using his remote-controlled moose robot.
01:08In a sequence better suited to a Saw movie than this edgy yet frequently happy-go-lucky Genesis story,
01:14the moose grips America with a robot claw and tears him in half before splattering his torso on the building behind.
01:22Little in the film up until this point prepares you for such a grim and sudden death of a supporting character.
01:28Tonally, it doesn't match any of the action, emotion or visuals surrounding it and it leaves the audience reeling.
01:35The end of Chappie may bring the wholesomeness around again, but there's no denying how out of place this moment is.
01:41Number 9. Techno Diva Dance. The Fifth Element.
01:4523rd century NYC cabbie Corbin Dallas teams up with Leeloo, the embodiment of the sacred Fifth Element,
01:53to 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 opera sequence.
02:05Corbin and Leeloo follow a quest for some sacred stones, just go with it, to a blue diva called Plava Laguna.
02:12But before they can reclaim it, they, and we, are forced to sit through an excruciating few minutes of space opera.
02:19Techno music kicks in, the diva throws some shapes and the audience cringe from behind their fingers.
02:26The scene is awkward, uncomfortable and seriously out of place, which is saying a lot for a film with Chris Tucker's loud, flamboyant, intergalactic talk show host going down on 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 fantasy
02:49of being a secret agent on a mission to Mars seems to be coming true, blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
02:56Along the way he encounters many wonders of a technologically advanced, yet persistently unequal society.
03:03But perhaps none more striking than a triple-breasted mutant prostitute.
03:07Played by Lysia Naff, the futuristic lady of the night is offered up to Arnie by her pimp,
03:13and 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?
03:28Unfortunately, no, I don't think so.
03:30This film establishes a pattern for the film where most female characters are presented as sexualized objects,
03:36ostracized freaks, or both.
03:38Naff came to regret taking the part as it left her feeling overexposed and deeply unsexy.
03:44And it isn't difficult to see why.
03:47Number seven, Elvis Shrine, Robocop 2.
03:50Peter Weller returns to the streets of a dystopian Detroit as Alex Murphy,
03:55the eponymous Robocop, taking on crime buff Kane and his designer, drug-pushing Nuke Cult.
04:02While also attempting to prevent psychologist Dr. Juliet Fax from creating another Robocop
04:08using 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.
04:19That's right, the Nuke Cult have the remains of the king of rock and roll in their lair,
04:24alongside pictures of Mother Teresa,
04:26and deleted scenes reveal that they worship him as some kind of a god.
04:30Amusing though this is, the scene doesn't make any sense.
04:34How did they get him?
04:35And why Elvis?
04:36We may never know.
04:38Number six, jazz-dancing emo Peter, Spider-Man 3.
04:42Sam Raimi may be back in the superhero fold with Multiverse of Madness,
04:47but let's not forget the 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.
04:58At least until Peter Parker gets infected by the Venom symbiote and things go a little odd.
05:04He's so bad, in fact, he's going to dance in the street like your dad at a wedding.
05:09Buying a black suit and dancing on the pavement,
05:12taking his girlfriend to a jazz club and dancing on the tables,
05:15and generally dancing his way into our worst Spidey-related nightmares.
05:20Peter goes full cringe in a sequence that is unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.
05:24Sure, this is Raimi's humor down to a tee, but god damn it, Sam, there's a time and a place.
05:30Did this scene sound the death knell for the series?
05:33That's not for us to say.
05:34But what we can say is that Raimi was planning on making a fourth film and,
05:39well, that was 15 years and two additional Spider-Men ago.
05:42Number five, macaroni cheese cheddar goblin, Mandy.
05:46Cage plays Red Miller, a lumber worker whose girlfriend,
05:50Mandy, is kidnapped and killed by a religious cult.
05:53And who therefore must enact a campaign of brutal vengeance.
05:57It's the 80s, the world has an ominous neon glow, and pretty much anything goes.
06:02Whether that be chainsaw duels, coke-snorting demon bikers,
06:05or 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
06:14and crucial point in Red's emotional journey,
06:17treating two children to some macaroni cheddar.
06:21The scene is undeniably brilliant, but it comes at a strange time,
06:25right after Red has watched his beloved burn to death in front of him,
06:29and bears little resemblance to the rest of the film.
06:31But no matter how out of place he is,
06:34cheddar goblin will always have a seat at our table.
06:36Number four, shoehorned Joker, the Batman.
06:40Taking us back to Batman's early days, Robert Pattinson plays an unrefined junior bat
06:46who has lots of unresolved parent-based angst,
06:49and only half a utility belt to help deal with it.
06:51As his opposite, Paul Dano is the Riddler,
06:54a genius in cell with a chaotic plan to raise Gotham.
06:58Needless to say, Batman puts him in Arkham and throws away the key,
07:02but in one of the film's most jarring sequences,
07:05Riddler plays whispers with the inmate in the cell next door,
07:08Barry Cogan's wonky-toothed yokel Joker.
07:12The deleted scene of Batman meeting Joker goes a long way to explaining
07:16why the Riddler-Joker scene exists in the first place,
07:19but the very fact that they didn't include the former
07:22should have seen the impetus needed to nix the clown prince of crimes inclusion altogether.
07:27As it stands, the scene feels shoehorned in,
07:30serving no purpose other than to tease lucrative sequel bait.
07:34Worse than that, though, it actually robs the Riddler of some of his mystique,
07:37and has him playing subservient second fiddle to a character who isn't even in the film.
07:43Number three, Girl Power, Avengers 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,
07:58the film also delivered with many characters we'd spent the previous decade growing to love,
08:03including the original female Avenger, Black Widow.
08:07Thankfully, unlike a decade ago,
08:09there are plenty more well-developed female heroes to fill her shoes,
08:12and 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
08:21and decided the only way to showcase this
08:23was to have all the major female characters to assemble in a row in the midst of battle,
08:28trading lines to a swell of inspirational music.
08:32Host note here, I actually love this scene, but let's keep going.
08:36What's intended to be a badass female-affirming scene
08:39comes off as the cheesiest, hammiest,
08:41most manufactured moment the MCU films have ever brought us.
08:45And that's saying a lot,
08:46considering some of them rely almost solely on cheese,
08:49gloss and soap opera drama to pad their runtime.
08:52Number two, Zion Orgy Rave, The Matrix Reloaded.
08:56The re-emergence of The Matrix has, of late, sent many of us down memory lane,
09:01revisiting 1999's stone-cold sci-fi classic and its sequels.
09:06After some initial wall-running and gunslinging
09:08to sate fans' thirst for shiny leather action,
09:11the free people of Zion gather in an underground cavern
09:14so MC Morpheus can kick off the biggest rave the world has ever seen.
09:19Probably.
09:20Thus ensues a mass of bodies bumping and grinding to some dirty beats,
09:25intercut with Neo and Trinity getting jiggy with it.
09:28The 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 on too many red pills.
09:42Number one, Flying Space Leia, Star Wars The Last Jedi.
09:46Star Wars The Last Jedi, or Episode VIII,
09:49depending on what neck of the woods you hail from,
09:52enraged some longtime fans upon release and pleased plenty of others,
09:56with director Rian Johnson and actor Kelly Marie Tran
09:59unfairly catching most of the flack.
10:01After Sith apprentice Kylo Ren launches an attack on his mother, Leia Organa's ship,
10:06Leia is blown out into space in a fireball of debris.
10:10So she's a goner, right?
10:12Wrong.
10:13After surviving for a good minute or so in the vacuum of space,
10:17her 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.
10:40But 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
10:51with a thermal detonator suppository?
10:54That's the end of our list, but let me know down in that comment box
10:56what you think are the most out-of-place scenes in sci-fi movie history.
11:02As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture.
11:04Thank you so much for hanging out with me.
11:06If you like it, you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account, where I'm at JessMcDonald.
11:11But make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more great lists.