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
00:35migraine masquerading 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 Grinder. The thrillingly kinetic fight kicks
00:55off in a gorgeous remote forest, and – as presented in a full-frame IMAX aspect ratio
01:00– delivers 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
01:08of weight to the duelling bots, and palpable fear that Optimus will not come out on top
01:12this time. And eventually, he doesn't. It's a sequence that proves what brilliance Michael
01:16Bay is capable of when the conditions are right, even if it's miserably plonked into
01:20the middle of an otherwise mind-numbingly awful movie.
01:249. Bond vs. North Korea – Die Another Day
01:28Die 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
01:38point that it basically became a parody of itself. It's especially disappointing, as
01:42the film's pre-title sequence promises a considerably better and more seriously-minded
01:46movie, with James Bond facing off against a rogue North Korean army colonel and his
01:51seemingly never-ending fleet of goons. The sequence shows Bond outnumbered in a way that
01:55we've rarely seen before, forced to combine tech gadgetry with his scrappy cunning to
01:59blow up the base, hijack a hovercraft, and start chasing the colonel. It is a scene packed
02:04with ludicrously, explosively entertaining action beats, most of which is achieved practically
02:09in stark contrast to the rest of the movie, before climaxing with a rather unexpected
02:13result, 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
02:24follow up with. Sadly, Die Another Day didn't, and once Madonna's title track starts up,
02:29it 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
02:39example of a franchise entering its shambling, zombified stage, as it continues to exist
02:44only because the box office grosses haven't dried up yet. On a moral level, the reactionary,
02:49right-wing politics are so disgustingly on-the-nose as to be unintentionally comical, enough that
02:53the film has become something of an accidental, campy cult classic in recent years. But ironic
02:58enjoyment aside, there is one sequence in the movie that is utterly unimpeachable as
03:03action filmmaking goes, and that's the gonzo climax in which Charles Bronson's Paul rallies
03:07the citizens of an overrun New York City to violently fight back against the creeps that
03:12are haranguing them.
03:13What follows is a glorious 15-minute orgy of cartoonish violence, beginning with Paul
03:18unleashing an oversized minigun on the street punks, and only getting more absurd from there.
03:22After finally running out of ammo, Paul reverts back to his trusty hand cannon to keep mowing
03:26the bad guys down, intercut with the area increasingly coming to resemble an actual
03:31war zone as the punks blow up basically every building and vehicle in sight. It is an absolute
03:36bloodbath, with cops, criminals, and civilians all suffering massive casualties, until the
03:41sequence concludes with its pièce de résistance, and that is Paul blowing up the gang's leader
03:45Manny 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,
03:56primarily due to the presences of both Dwayne Johnson and Bruce Willis, it was still ultimately
04:00a bland nothing-burger of a sequel that made no impact whatsoever.
04:04Yet there is a single scene that people still fondly remember a whole decade later, and
04:08that is the wonderfully thrilling Cliffside Ninja Fight, in which Snake Eyes and Jinx
04:12join forces to battle an unrelenting fleet of ninjas whilst carrying an injured Storm
04:17Shadow up a cliff.
04:18In terms of action design, it is both imaginative and technically impressive, focusing on the
04:23perilous, breathless thrill of heroes sprinting across a cliff face with swords while cutting
04:27their way through a ninja horde. It's a scene that feels more in tune with a kid playing
04:31with their G.I. Joe action figures than anything else in the series' three movies, and it's
04:35really 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 misanthropic
04:53streak, as ultimately descended into outright xenophobia.
04:56But amid its ugly-America-is-the-best vibe, there is one set piece that cannot be discounted,
05:02and that is the superbly slick single-take shootout in which Secret Service agent Mike
05:06Banning battles his way through the streets to save kidnapped US President Benjamin Asher.
05:11Alongside a Delta-slash-SAS extraction team, Banning gingerly pushes forward through the
05:15streets, mowing down dozens of anonymous goons in a single, seamless take. Even though the
05:20digital joins between the takes are incredibly obvious, it's clear that a ton of effort
05:24went into staging the sequence to be as immersive as possible, and it positively shames the
05:29resoundingly pedestrian action thriller that the rest of the film becomes.
05:33For around 5 pulse-racing minutes, it almost convinced us that London Has Fallen might
05:37be a good movie.
05:405. The Fake-Out Finale – The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2
05:45Twilight's final entry, Breaking Dawn Part 2, is an appropriately awful conclusion to
05:49a series that never quite found a fun balance of frothy team melodrama and campy thrills.
05:55The second part of this two-part conclusion is, for the most part, a leaden bore, packed
05:59with unintentionally cackle-worthy dialogue and drama, but that is saved for a climactic
06:04showdown that is far better than the movie really deserves. Because the Breaking Dawn
06:08novel ends on something of an uncinematic shoulder shrug, the filmmakers smartly came
06:12up with something new that ultimately wouldn't actually piss off the die-hard fans, and so
06:16Part 2 wraps up with a wonderfully bonkers battle as the vampires and wolves team up
06:21to fight the villains.
06:22For a PG-13 movie aimed at tweens, it's a shockingly violent war, with cherished characters
06:27being dismembered and even decapitated before our very eyes, though the vampires' ice-like
06:31composition makes the brutality a little more palatable for families. Fans were surely irate
06:36that characters who survived in the book were dying left and right, until the fight suddenly
06:40ends and we realise that it was actually just a vision being shown to the leader of the
06:43villains by Alice, which convinces him to walk away, and that's that.
06:48Make no mistake, Breaking Dawn Part 2 utterly stinks, but the filmmakers did the absolute
06:52best they could with a tricky situation, delivering a smart, surprisingly visceral
06:57compromise to the source material's non-ending.
06:594. The First Person Shooting – Doom
07:032005's Doom might be the better of the two live-action Doom movies produced to date,
07:08the other being 2018's wretched director video Doom Annihilation, but it is still a
07:12load of old bobbins for the most part. For starters, the hell setting from the video
07:16games was ditched for no discernible reason, and the bulk of the movie smacks of a generic
07:19sci-fi action romp with recognisable branding cynically just slapped over it.
07:24But there is a single sequence that captures the honest-to-god vibe of the video games,
07:28and that's when protagonist John Reaper Grimm is injected with a life-saving experimental
07:33serum, bestowing him with superhuman abilities as he takes on the monster's gallery filling
07:37the UAC research facility.
07:39And the scene's big hook is that it's executed from a first-person perspective as
07:42a single take in order to resemble the aesthetic of the games. It's goofy, for sure, but
07:47it boasts the creativity and technical ingenuity that suggests a real love for the source material,
07:52something that the script otherwise totally lacks. Seeing Reaper blast his way through
07:56infected humans and mutated monsters alike, including the monstrous Pinky, is a tonne
08:00of fun, even if it's a sadly fleeting diversion in an otherwise piss-poor adaptation.
08:053. Doom's Rampage – Fantastic Four, 2015
08:10From 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,
08:20or Trank simply couldn't hack it as a big-budget filmmaker. But either way, the end result
08:24is a chaotic, tonally jarring mess that unfortunately totally fell flat. But there is one scene
08:28which hints at the film's darker potential, given that Trank has spoken extensively about
08:32his movie being inspired by the body horror films of David Cronenberg.
08:36And that comes near the end, where Doom is awakened and embarks on a brutal rampage through
08:40the research facility where he's being held. Cue Doom using his abilities to telepathically
08:45explode the heads of anybody who tries to prevent his escape. If you can get over Doom's
08:49undeniably silly design, it's a genuinely unnerving sequence which ranks among the more
08:54disturbing set pieces of any superhero film from the last decade. It may only last all
08:58of a hot minute, but what a minute.
09:012. The Chicago Chase – Jupiter Ascending
09:04Jupiter Ascending is one of the biggest mega-budget disappointments of the last decade, an ambitious
09:09dud from the Wachowskis that despite its technical ingenuity, abjectly failed on a narrative
09:13and character level. And let's not even get started on Eddie Redmayne's Razzie-winning
09:17performance here. But there's one set piece so masterfully executed as to be worthy of
09:22the Matrix, and that's the eight-minute chase sequence in which Jupiter and Kane flee from
09:26an alien fleet in downtown Chicago. As the aliens attack, Kane scoops up a falling Jupiter
09:31with his rather nifty anti-gravity boots, soaring across the Chicago skyline whilst
09:35the alien weaponry decimates nearby skyscrapers. There's an incredible visual clarity to
09:40its 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
09:50of what the Wachowskis are capable of, it's a wonderful sequence. Yet coming so early
09:54in the first act as it does, it leaves the rest of the movie scrambling and failing to
09:58live up to it.
09:591. The Attack on Pearl Harbor – Pearl 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,
10:241941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece
10:29is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality.
10:34And you know what, he's mostly right. The overwhelming bulk of Bay's film focuses
10:37on a toe-curlingly feckless love triangle between three characters you're barely encouraged
10:41to care about, and is set against the backdrop of a major piece of real-world history. Viewers
10:46have to sit through 90 minutes of exhausting melodrama before the attack on Pearl Harbor
10:50finally happens, but when it does, it at least has the courtesy to be a damn doozy.
10:55Even Bay's toughest attractors will struggle to write this technically stunning sequence
10:59off 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
11:09even remotely worthy of holding James Cameron's jockstrap, as soon enough we're back to
11:13business as tedious as usual for the remaining hour. The attack on Pearl Harbor was so thoroughly
11:18ripe for a splashy Hollywood treatment that Bay suffocated the centerpiece amid a wealth
11:22of gooey, 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 comment
11:32section below.
11:33As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Instagram, where it's at RetroJ,
11:36but the O is a zero, and you can come check out all the Warhammer miniatures that I've
11:40been painting, yes, I am a nerd.
11:42But before I go, I just want to say one thing. Hope you're treating yourself well, my friend,
11:46with love and respect, because you deserve all the best things in life, alright?
11:49As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak
11:53to you soon. Bye.