![]() Klaitu's Top 11 Cool Movie Moments
Submitted Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - 2:38:37 AM by Klaitu
You know, sometimes when I'm watching a movie, I'll run across a particularly freaking cool scene that just burns itself into my brain for one reason for another. Then, later on when the years have gone by, I'll be watching the movie again, and I'll be waiting for that scene to roll around again. I don't really know if everyone works this way, or if it's just me.. nevertheless, here we go.. the top 11 coolest movie moments I can think of!
Of course, these are in no particular order.
- The Mask of Zorro
In your traditional action film, they save the "big battle" for the end fight between the hero and the villian. With the Mask of Zorro, you can throw that tradition out the window. The "big battle" comes near the first part of the movie.
Zorro's secret identity, Diego Della Vega, is enjoying some R&R after thwarting his rival, the no good Don Rafael.. who is to return to Spain. Before he leaves, though.. he shows up at our hero's hacienda, having discovered the true identity of Zorro.
Rafael and Diego have had some back story here.. Rafael covets Diego's wife, Esperanza. Rafael proceeds to arrest Diego, but Diego's having none of it. The bust loose with the most intense and amazing swordfight in the entire movie as Diego tries to protect his family from Rafael.. and of course, he fails.
- Cliffhanger
I wouldn't really say that Cliffhanger was an awesome movie. It was okay, but nothing special, except for one scene. Usually you can tell if a character is going to die in a film.. they just can't keep it a secret. They have to do some foreshadowing or some crap. They can't just make it a suprise.
At the very beginning of the movie, Stallone is trying to rescue his best friend's wife from the top of a mountain. This involves the use of a climbing wire, which is stretched horizontally to a nearby peak, where a helicopter can land. Wouldn't you know that the lady's harness is about to break? So Stallone heads out there to rescue her. There are "tense moments" as the buckles snap, and Stallone grabs her gloved hand.. and wouldn't you know, the glove starts slipping, too?
Since it's the very first scene in the movie, and you don't really know how they're setting up Stallone's character, it's entirely possible that he can rescue the girl.. but also, since you don't know any of the characters very well, it's also entirely possible that she will fall to her demise. The movie doesn't let you know which.. it doesn't hint, or foreshadow or anything. You just have to wait and see. This is the only scene in any movie where I actually felt some level of tension or suspense.
- Die Hard
Everyone's seen Die Hard.. it's one of the best Christmas movies ever made where a building explodes! I think it's safe to say that the original Die Hard was a pretty freakin cool movie, but it also has a freakin cool scene at the end.
You may remember that Reginald VelJohnson plays Sgt. Al Powell in this film, and during a touching moment with Bruce Willis, he recounts his story of how he accidentally shot a little kid, and that ever since, he never had the confidence to draw his firearm again.
At the end of the film, after Alan Rickman takes a swan dive, the big swedish guy who's been after Bruce Willis the entire movie comes out of nowhere, and pulls a SMG on the crowd (and Bruce).. when lo and behold, mysterious gunshots ring out, taking him down. Of course, we've all figured out that the heroic defender is none other than Al Powell, but the scene is rendered so beautifully that you don't really care that you outsmarted the plot. The camera comes up from belt level to eyelevel focussed on the gun, and when it gets there, the focus shifts off the gun and onto VelJohnson's face. That coupled with the musical score (by Michael Kamen) ensures that every Christmas, I'm watching Al Powell take down the swedish guy. I'll never forget it.
- The Fellowship of the Ring
It's no secret, I really don't like Fellowship of the Ring.. in fact, if I never saw it again, it would be too soon. Except for one particularly amazing and unforgettable scene.. that's right, the death of Boromir.
I never saw this one in the theater.. primarily because I was tired of people telling me how like unto a god Tolkien is in the fantasy realm. I never enjoyed Tolkien and found his books rather dull.. Eventually it came out on DVD, so I considered watching it out of boredom. I started asking what it's about, and the answers I got were that elves were awesome, and hobbits were cool, and that dwarves were like bikers.. and that the humans pretty much sucked. In fact, nobody I ever talked to watched the movie to see the human struggle.. they all wanted to see Gandalf.. or Sam and Frodo.. or Legolas.
Well, cheers to Boromir, who not only went down fighting, he took at least 3 arrows defending people who couldn't do it themselves.. showing that for all the flaws that Tolkien humans have, courage and determination are their unique advantages. They don't need no glowin swords or magic sticks or all-powerful rings.
- The Phantom Menace
Oft hailed as the worst of the Star Wars saga, there's one thing everyone agrees on: Darth Maul is one bad dude.. and Darth Maul is at his baddest when fighting a certain two Jedi in the Theed power core.
It's the fad nowadays to cover up the actors lack of skill with a sword (or lightsaber as the case may be) by doing a lot of "action cuts" and keeping the actual blades of the swords offscreen. The Phantom Menace wasn't afraid of the blade, the entire Obi-Wan vs Darth Maul fight is completely visible. You can watch the entire thing in slow motion and watch every single individual move.. no cuts.. no nothing. Just straight up clash of the apprentices.
It really is a shame that Episodes 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 use the lame "action cut" method. If you pick up the Special Edition Trilogy set, and check out the features for Episode 6.. you'll see that the Darth Vader vs Luke fight was similarly amazing.. if only it weren't cut.
- Willow
This movie marks the very beginning of digital photomanipulation. It's even the origin of the word "morphing" if you can believe it.. but my favorite scene in Willow has nothing to do with all that. It's actually much more practical.
In his quest to protect the baby Elora Danin from the evil Sorsha, Willow enlists the aid of Val Kilmer (in the form of Marmartigan). When they are captured by the evil beauty, Madmartigan, Willow, and the baby narrowly escapt on a makeshift sled made out of a shield. Along the way, Madmartigan falls off the shield after a particularly nasty jump. Willow in the meantime slides safely through the front door of someone's cottage.
When Willow manages to stand up and look out the window, he is suprised to discover that there's a 20 foot in diameter snowball rolling down the hill at breakneck speed.. with Madmartigan's boots sticking out of one side. It impacts the cottage and falls apart, and out jumps an extremely disoriented Val Kilmer who isn't sure what the heck happened.
Alright, so it's a little cheesy, but it's the only time I can think of that Val Kilmer almost killed a midget by transforming into a snowball.
- Anastasia
Suprising scenes come in all sorts of movies. Anastasia is an often forgotten Don Bluth film.. the one he released just before Titan A.E. It's a "what if" story about the legendary Russian duchess who supposedly escaped the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Of course, in real life she was shot in siberia, but in the film she ends up an orphan with Amnesia.
The Supercool scene comes near the end of the film. You see, in the interim, Anastasia's grandmother has offered up a substantial reward for the wherabouts of her royal progeny. A conman named Dimitri holds auditions to find an Anastasia lookalike, and of course.. stumbles over the orphaned real Anastasia. He believes her to be his ticket to riches, but doesn't know she's the real deal.. that is, until she tells the story of hos a boy rescued her from the palace.. the boy being the young Dimitri.
As with all fairy tales, Dimitri has fallen in love with the princess.. and the princess with him. When he attempts to get Anastasia and her grandmother back together again, his reputation as a conman thwarts the deal, and Anastasia, not knowing he was a conman cuts off an relation with him as well.
Undeterred, he kidnaps the grandmother and hauls her to see Anastasia, who is by herself able to convice the grandmother of her true identity. In their excitement, they completely forget about Dimitri, who quietly walks off into the cold, rainy night.
- Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars
Farscape itself had many awesome moments.. but this is the coolest MOVIE moments, so I'll have to use the awesome moment in the Peacekeeper Wars.
Farscape is the story of John Crichton, an everyday astronaut who through a freak coicidence ended up on the far side of the galaxy on a ship full of aliens. One of the aliens was not so alien.. Aeryn Sun. Her race was called Sebacean, but she looked human in every way.. all of her race did. For most of the series, all the characters mistake Crichton for being Sebacean. Of course, the fans of the show speculated for 5 years as to why humans and Sebaceans were so much alike.
Being a TV series, hints to most plots would be given over a series of episodes.. but not so in Farscape. The similarity was talked about commonly, but nobody really knew what the deal was. Crichton even made it back to earth once, and the geneticists were unable to come up with anything conclusive either. In fact, the series provided no clues at all.
Then the Peacekeeper Wars came along. Story goes that there was once a race of people known as Eidolons who have the innate ability to influence people toward peace. Because of this, they essentally became the U.N. for the galaxy.. but because there aren't enough Eidolons to help out the whole galaxy, they needed a police force, and a police force made up of a race that nobody had a quarrel with, so they set out and found an infant earth and abducted some primal humans, who they genetically engineered into Sebaceans, who were bred to keep the peace, hence the term "Peacekeepers".
I know, there's nothing particularly amazing about the scene, it's just some exposition as our crew is imprisoned by the Scarrans.. but the implications of the dialogue gave me goosebumps. Very awesome moment.
- Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children
I don't understand Japanese.. the people or the language, but I do understand people kicking some major butt, and that's what Advent Children is all about. Most FF7 fans are big Cloud fans.. and I like Cloud as much as the next guy, but in this movie it's Tifa that gets the most excellent scene in the film.
Tifa is the Kung-Fu master of the FF7 universe, having trained with a master up in the mountains of Nibelheim. Opposing her is Loz, a failed Sephiroth clone looking for Cloud. the face off is extraordinarily brutal.. for Loz. He gets roundhoused in the face, smashed into walls, and he even gets hit with the Dolphin Blow. He gets bounced off the floor, chucked into the air, and slammed into the ground as well. It's an amazing fight scene with incredible use of bullet time.. with no bullets involved.
- Unbreakable
Do you remember what came after the Sixth Sense? Well, this film did.. but it got poor reviews, and nobody paid much attention to it. The "shocker" ending was pretty lame, but there was one special scene that got special props.. at least from me.
Bruce Willis is like a tank. He's a Superman, he's invulnerable to physical harm.. except by water. He's not what you would call excited about it.. you might say that he's not really conscious of it. With the help of Samuel L Jackson, he discovers how to use his abilities for good, and his very first task is to protect a child from an everyday, psycho murderer/child molester.
Of course, Bruce Willis isn't a fighter. He doesn't go much, if any fighting at all in his daily life. He's an ordinary security guard, so when he follows the evil badguy into the master bedroom, he ends up getting pushed out a second story window. When he returns, he doesn't punch the guy, or throw him around or anything, he just gets a choker hold on the dude, and won't let up.. despite being slammed into walls and furniture and the like. Eventually, the bad guy just dies off from the choker hold. A very interesting superhero fight!
- Bicentennial Man
Robin Williams sucks. He's not a particularly good actor, and he's super political.. but darned if he didn't hit the right role in Bicentennial Man. If you haven't seen it, Bicentennial Man is the story of a robots quest to become a human.
Of course, the natura of a robot is that one would go on forever.. or until someone destroyed it.. and because of this, our robotic protagonist does not age. He watches his master age, and his masters children grow up. His master dies, and the children turn into parents, and then grandparents.. and eventually he figures out that everyone he ever meets is going to die.
This moment comes when the Master's youngest daughter dies.. in her hands is a wooden horse sculpture that he made for her when she was a child. In order to prevent the death of his friends, he sets about developing artificial organs.. and uses them to modify himself to become more human. This is an example of one of those moments where they just manage to hit the nail on the head and make an awesome movie moment.
So, there you have it, the top 11 coolest movie moments that I can think of off the top of my head. Mull over them and enjoy.. and if you missed one or more of them, I highly recommend you rent them and check it out. You'll be glad you did!
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On top of that, you don't speak English.. or any other language. It comes out like Japanese pig latin.. and it sounds cool. thankfully, you've got subtitles to tell you what's going on.
There are welcome additions, like new match types. There are new moves, and new features.. but they come at the expense of the old match types, old moves, and old features. They aren't building on their previous content, they're constantly replacing that old content with new content.
Let's face it, I'm a dork, and I like the television show. As it so turns out, you can't turn American Chopper into a video game.. that's like trying to turn Mythbusters into a video game. It's just not going to work.
We're talking your basic 
Graphics here are a treat, and refreshing. The art style was dictated by the guy who invented Dragon Ball Z.. but don't let that throw you. It actually works pretty well in this context.. and it's not like the story was written by those crappy DBZ writers.
Game controls and strategy are solid, though this definately has the drawbacks of the Japanese RPG format. You can follow the story pretty directly for quite awhile, and then BAM, impossible boss that you have no chance of beating without spending a few hours levelling up. The Japanese apparently like their games to be really really hard. Don't believe me? Just try Xenosaga or Star Ocean 3. This is nowhere near as hard as those.