Good in Theory (Bad in Practice): Scenes That Have Gotten Our Hopes Up, Only to Let Us Down

Have you ever heard someone talking about a scene in a movie and you're thinking to yourself, Holy shit! That sounds so awesome! And then you watch the movie and the scene is utterly lame and you feel foolish for ever thinking it was going to be good or entertaining to begin with? Well, it has happened to all of us! Here's a list of some of our favorite let downs. (Joe)

Spider-Man III: Peter Parker Goes Bad


Aliens, men made of sand, piano sequences, and clay-faced Toby Maguire. What isn’t there to love about Spider-man 3? A lot, there is a lot you can’t love about Spider-man 3. Bad acting, horrible dialogue, James Franco…and who okayed casting Topher Grace as Eddie Brock?

When I was just a lad, Venom was portrayed as this giant terrifying creature. Apparently Topher Grace fits the mold. Anyways, this movie had a chance to do something really great and Raimi seriously dropped the ball. I completely understand that the Spider-Man movies were supposed to be fun and campy, but there is one scene that took it to a whole new level. When the alien symbiotic takes over Peter’s suit, he starts to feel more confident and powerful. This was their chance to show how powerful and dangerous it was. Instead, Sam Raimi thought it was a better idea to turn this into a huge long sequence of terrible jokes. It starts with Peter combing his bangs forward over his eyes like some fourteen-year-old scene kid. He then proceeds to walk down the street pelvic thrusting and double gunning at every single female he sees. Some laugh, some cringe, and some are into it. The scenes greatest/worst moment is Peter arriving at the bar MJ is working at and he sits down at a piano and starts playing some jazz tune. While the band is playing, Peter starts swinging (weird nobody questions this) and dancing around the bar, snapping like a maniac and dancing with Gwen Stacy and kisses her to make Mary Jane jealous.

Seriously guys? If you want to show Venom as this creature that turns people into public enemies, you cant have a scene where people are dancing around, calling people hotlips and saying “now dig this.” It completely takes away from the aspect of “evil.” Fortunately, this drop-of-ball if you will has given us one of the most laughable sequences in movie history. For this, Sam Raimi should be given a medal of honor, then shot.

Four Brothers: Car Chase

Four Brothers tells the touching story of four adoptive brothers, some of whom have fallen onto the wrong side of the law (and by some I mean all), coming together to help track down the gunman who shot and killed their adoptive mother.

The scene I'm pointing out occurs somewhere in the middle of the movie. They've been playing detective and track two men down who might have information (or the murderers) involving the death of the interracial brothers' mother. The two men somehow escape questioning and get to their car, only to be pursued by Mark Wahlberg, Outkast, some other singer and the dude from Tron: Legacy AKA The Four Brothers.

The movie is set in Detroit during the winter months, so there is snow. For anyone who haven't driven in snow: Go fuck yourself! I wish I was you! You have no idea how great you've had it every holiday season! For those of you that have driven in snow: You get it. When it snows it seems like everyone either slows down way too much, or they're trying to show off how badass they are by speeding far too much. When it comes to the actual driving, you've got to be careful to not go too fast because then you're just not going to stop. Sometimes you don't stop even if you're going really slow.

One thing I'll point out is most of the chaos while driving in the snow happens mentally. I'm usually muttering to myself and waiting to slid into a car, or person, or animal, or a something.

The issue with the scene is it's a blizzard. Oh yeah! Chaotic blizzard car chase! It's never been done before and people hate driving in the snow! Slippery sliding and shit in the house! False. What we get is the slowest car chase of all time. It looks like the cars are going about twenty miles an hour, gently bumping into one another. The absence of other cars on the road makes this scene even more boring. Other drivers are the worst part about driving in the snow, and now we've got a 3am chase through the streets of Detroit, where no one else seems to drive. They even tried to put a flat tire into the scene to build the tension, but the blow out didn't seem to affect the brothers' car in the slightest? Oh, shit! Tension!

An added bonus to this: The guys being chased are overacting way too much. Their screams, while they assumed would build the tension and make the whole situation seem a lot worse, actually makes the whole cars bumping look even more ridiculous. There isn't panic in their voices, just forced screams.

Robocop: Shoot-Out

Scenes that are great in conception and yet have little to deliver? Pardon my blasphemy, but I'm throwing in Robocop.

Now, to be fair, others come to mind. Take Home Alone, for example. A little boy has two crooks run a gauntlet of near fatal, intricate, and brilliantly timed traps building up to a promising boss battle only to have these invincible foes be knocked cold by an arguably delicate shovel-tap (spoiler alert? No. If you haven't seen Home Alone, go to hell).

But then there's Robocop: Verhoeven's masterpiece. Don't yell just yet, I love the movie. But I have a major complaint every time I watch it. There comes a point in the film where Robocop (part man, part machine, all cop) enters a warehouse/drug factory determined to senselessly beat the balls out of his psychopathic nemesis, Boddicker. But to get to him, Murphy-redux has to shoot his way through a literal warehouse of armed men one by one, destroying everything that moves. So to recap: a goddamn robot gets to go on a limitless shooting spree against dozens of heavily armed men in an enormous building filled with chemicals and catwalks and glass and guns and drugs, destroying everything in its path until it gets to the guy on the other side. Whoa, awesome. Even as I write that I'm crossing my fingers for chain reactions of people getting lit on fire while running through mountains of cocaine, stumbling into a scaffolding of paint thinner that falls over, crushes a guy in half, lights off some gasoline which explodes a window which sends shards of glass into twenty guys' eyeballs, and Robocop just strolls through the flames unscathed, casually shooting other precarious barrels of deadly acid above even more enemies.

But instead, Robocop just targets everybody and casually shoots them all one by one. The end. Thank God he's at least walking while this happens, not just standing still. The only improvement the audience gets to what otherwise is just “bad guy shooting, Robocop shooting, bad guy dying” is the faintest hint of one guy unintentionally harming another, which, really? C'mon. It might as well be slapstick. I want something that makes “mousetrap” crap itself. I want mayhem. Even Big Willie Style wreaked more havoc in the hangar at the end of Bad Boys. Give the armed robot a chance.

To be fair, Robocop does proceed to immediately throw Boddicker through several panes of glass for no reason whatsoever, very satisfying. And I get that the scene needs to keep up pacing, that it's an important scene in the movie that brings out a hint of Murphy's “anger.” But to write such an open-ended and promising scenario for what we all accept as a ludicrous and over-exaggerated movie to begin with, why not go full monty? Lord knows Verhoeven doesn't get his reputation by holding back.