Depending on the genre, many films have a make-or-break scene on which the whole viewing experience hinges. Some movies are only remembered for one scene, but if the make-or-break scene is poorly executed, the entertainment value takes a serious hit. Even if a film doesn’t have such an important scene, movie buffs aren’t alien to the experience of watching a great movie get ruined by one particularly bad scene.
For example, the scene in Superman where Clark Kent spins around the world in the opposite direction of its rotation is one of the worst scenes in one of DC’s best movies. Similarly often, good movie characters are ruined by one scene. But, while memorably bad scenes are more noticeable in good movies because they ruin the movies, they aren’t rare in bad movies either. Sometimes, the most average film will feature an infuriating scene that becomes impossible to move on from.
10 Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999)
The Midichlorian Count
No doubt the coolest thing introduced by Star Wars is the Jedi order and the Force. Lightsabers already look slick, but when the lightsaber-swinging action is coupled with telekinesis and unbelievable stunts, the fight scenes become even cooler. Consider the fact that the Force can be used for any number of things from mind tricks to sensing emotions, and it only seems to get more and more powerful as a tool in the Jedi’s arsenal. Being connected with the Force is a spiritual matter, something that makes you fit to master the Jedi arts.
Why is the deeply spiritual experience of discovering one’s connection to the Force suddenly reduced to a blood test?
The best part of the original trilogy of Star Wars movies is that it doesn’t attempt to explain the Force, letting it build a mysticism that works in its favor. But then, the first prequel movie features the most infuriating scene – Qui-Gonn performs a test on a blood sample taken from young Anakin and finds a record number of midichlorians, which tells him Anakin is well-connected with the Force. Why is the deeply spiritual experience of discovering one’s connection to the Force suddenly reduced to a blood test?
9 Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
John Connor Dies
Most grand-scale sci-fi and fantasy universes feature a messianic figure who will bring deliverance from oppression. From prophecies to feats of unprecedented nature, these characters become symbols of hope. So, it’s no surprise that John Connor is a beloved character for fans of the Terminator series. However, despite being made the leader of the resistance against the empire of Terminators, he never gets his due from the writers. While it’s true that one risks making a Mary Sue if they commit too much to a character like John, the lack of commitment to giving him a satisfying arc is aggravating.
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From being turned into a Terminator to being prophesied to be killed by a Terminator, John never seems to catch a break. But he’s deeply relevant nonetheless. That is until Dark Fate, accepted as a canon sequel to Terminator 2, retcons the events of Terminator 2 for an infuriating scene where a Terminator goes in the past to kill a young John Connor. It feels cheap to kill off such a character as a kid just to provide Sarah Connor with more motivation and more narrative relevance. John Connor deserved better.
8 Avengers: Endgame (2019)
2014 Gamora Stays Back In Present Time
When the Infinity saga was finally announced to be ending, everyone came up with their own theory of how the Avengers would undo Thanos’ victory in Infinity War and restore every hero who was turned to dust. And unsurprisingly, Avengers: Endgame uses time travel to bring balance to the Universe where 50% of all life has been snapped into obliteration. While it’s riddled with plot holes, the time travel theory hinges on the concept of one sacred timeline that’s maintained by the presence of all the Infinity Stones in their appropriate places.
Restoring the timelines becomes a major concern in the climax. While it’s an ideal setup for a big final fight, using the 2014 version of Thanos and his army presents one particularly bizarre complexity: Gamora is with him. It’s heartening to see Nebula convince her to fight Thanos, but it’s frustrating to see her remain in the present timeline after Tony’s snap sends everyone from 2014 back to 2014. If everything hinges on restoring the timelines to what they were before the time heist, how come she gets to stay? Gamora has a complicated timeline in the MCU.
7 The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Talia al Ghul’s death
Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy is the most critically acclaimed superhero franchise ever. Taking a gritty look at the criminal underground of Gotham, the films poetically build the mythos of Batman as a symbol. Among other aspects, one of the biggest strengths of the trilogy lies in its use of character-driven storytelling to explore its themes through poignant moments and even deaths, adding emotional weight to the storyline.
The Dark Knight Rises
is the most successful Batman movie based on worldwide Box Office earnings.
However, one death in the trilogy stands out as symbolically insignificant and even difficult to take seriously due to the poor acting and directorial choices. Talia Al-Ghul is a poorly written female character, a trademark of Nolan’s work, but she’s given narrative significance by being made the mastermind behind Bane’s plan. Yet, she simply dies unceremoniously, bringing her potentially grand arc to an anticlimactic end. It’s particularly infuriating because Marion Cotillard is a fantastic actress, but her performance as a flailing Talia who simply slumps into her seat just makes the scene comically awkward.
6 Alien: Romulus (2024)
Rook is revealed to look like Ian Holm
Few franchises can keep adding entries to it without suffering a fall in quality, and few examples better demonstrate that than the Alien franchise. One of the longest-running franchises, spanning almost 5 decades, Alien may not have as many movies as the Fast & Furious franchise, but it has experienced its fair share of poor ratings. No film in the franchise has been able to live up to the expectations set by the first one, but the recent Alien: Romulus may have ended the streak of mediocre filmmaking that’s plagued the series for a while now.
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With a tight storyline that follows a fresh set of characters who are all compelling, Alien: Romulus is great film. However, it features a gross misstep in the design of the character Rook. An android who’s meant to serve as a tribute to Ash from the original film, he bears likeness to the late Ian Holm. It is morally dubious to use CGI to “bring back” a dead actor. Furthermore, the CGI isn’t ideal and Rook stands out visually among the rest of the cast. Casting an actor as Rook in Alien: Romulus would have been a better choice.
5 Halloween Ends (2022)
Michael Myers dies
Ever since its conception in 1978 with John Carpenter’s Halloween, the Halloween movie franchise has been highly influential on the genre. As a slasher, it created the formula that many films would use for years to come. But none, except perhaps Scream, came close to recreating the terror of the original Halloween movie. And that’s because few slashers feature a villain as iconic as Michael Myers. One of the longest running franchises, Halloween consistently features its terrifying villain from the first movie and fans show up for each entry just to watch him terrify different people.
Halloween
is the longest horror franchise with 13 movies.
Michael Myers’ persona has been built up over a span of 40 years, and he’s established as impossible to stop, even with bullets. Michael Myers could be human or supernatural, but he is practically immortal. His physicality makes it impossible to survive a fistfight with him either. While it’s poetic that Laurie, the final girl from the original Halloween, is the one to take him down, it’s done in a manner that breaks all the rules. He’s inexplicably weak in Halloween Ends and the infuriating death scene ruins his status as the greatest horror villain of all time.
4 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
The “Martha” scene
The Snyderverse era of DCEU has more critical failures than successes, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is the pinnacle of creative failure on the part of Zack Snyder. With a frustratingly long runtime in which barely anything meaningful happens beyond over-the-top fight scenes, the film serves as the perfect demonstration of the flawed vision Snyder had for his DC franchise. Superman would never disregard human life in the way Snyder’s man of steel does when causing so much collateral damage. And a comic-accurate Batman would never practically execute anyone, let alone Superman.
The recent DC film
Crisis on Infinite Earths
actually features a clever callback to the “Martha” scene and executes it perfectly.
The flawed characterization and unnecessarily long fight that make the climax rushed aren’t the weakest points. Bizarrely, Superman survives being murdered by Batman simply because his mother coincidentally has the same name as Batman’s: Martha. Batman has an unwavering conviction throughout the film that Superman must die. But, somehow, just hearing Martha’s name makes him not just reconsider his stance, but team up with Superman. It’s a conceptually flawed scene to begin with, and the execution makes it more infuriating because it’s not even used for comic relief, despite being laughable.
3 The Breakfast Club (1985)
Allison’s makeover
John Hughes is an instantly recognizable name for his work in the coming-of-age genre especially. One of the best John Hughes movies, perhaps his most influential film, is The Breakfast Club. Not only did it inspire one of the episodes in Netflix’s Sex Education, but coming-of-age films featured characters that fall into the archetypes set up by The Breakfast Club, for years since its release. It breaks the usual structure of coming-of-age films, which are usually jam-packed with worldly experiences, and instead features scenes of lengthy conversation that lead the characters to have life-changing realizations.
”
Allison is given a makeover by the other members of “The Breakfast Club” so that she’s more… Presentable? Normal? Traditionally feminine? There’s not an answer that isn’t that isn’t somewhat regrettable because there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way Allison is dressed.
” –
Zachary Moser
–
Why Ally Sheedy Doesn’t Love The Breakfast Club As Much As The Fans
The dated sexual politics and humor in Hughes’ films make him a difficult director to watch today. With an abundance of homophobic slurs and normalized misogyny from its characters, The Breakfast Club isn’t an exception. A particularly infuriating scene is Allison’s makeover towards the end of the film. Her usual fashion is deemed unsuitable for a woman who’s vying for male attention, and she’s changed into different clothes, and given different makeup to appear more “conventionally attractive”. It suggests there’s only one correct way to be feminine and that femininity can only be legitimized by male approval.
2 Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)
Einhorn’s “True Identity” Is Revealed
Featuring one of Jim Carrey’s most likable characters, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is, at points, too much a product of its time to wholeheartedly enjoy today. Much like some of his other iconic characters from the ’90s, Carrey’s Ace Ventura is a loudmouth who offends more than he charms, and is particularly distasteful in his interactions with women. He might be a saint when it comes to saving animals, but his abrasive attitude mostly rubs people the wrong way.
Her body gets scrutinized by men all around her, as Ace presents “evidence” to support his statement.
Transphobic jokes abound throughout the film, mostly made by Ace himself, and the film itself is complicit in the transphobia as the twist in the climax hinges on disenfranchising a trans woman. Einhorn, Ace’s suspect, is revealed to be a man, and her body gets scrutinized by men all around her as Ace presents “evidence” to support his statement after reminding everyone she was in a mental institution. The fact that she’s played by Sean Young, a cis actress, is an added layer of misogyny because it’s being suggested that her body is too masculine to belong to a woman.
1 Blade Runner (1982)
Deckard Forcefully Kisses Rachel
While it’s widely considered to be one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time, there are many harsh realities to face when rewatching Blade Runner. The scale of the story and the grandeur of its setting, especially the beautiful visuals, serve as distractions from the fact that the characters are underdeveloped and one-dimensional. Blade Runner also seems to come close to commenting on what makes humans human, through the characterization of the supposed robot Rachel, played by Sean Young, but it doesn’t fully commit to that aspect of worldbuilding.
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However, as doubtful as her humanity might be, she’s not free from being victimized by the trope of women being forced into romantic encounters by strong men, only to discover they enjoy it. When Rachel attempts to leave, Deckard forcefully keeps her in the room, shoves her into a wall, commands her to kiss him, and has his way with her. It is a particularly infuriating scene because the music seems to suggest this is a romantic encounter, when it’s clearly an instance of abuse. Rachel never explicitly gives her consent and is practically forced to participate.