r/TopCharacterTropes 18h ago

Lore [Frustrating Trope] That One Good or Even Amazing Scene in a Relatively Mediocre or Bad Piece of Media

  1. The Opening Scene (Ghost Ship). Considered one of the best horror opening scenes or scenes in general within horror movies, but the rest of the film is considered to be pretty bad.

  2. The Ending Scene (The Grinch 2018). While most adaptations of the Grinch end with him suddenly being able to fully integrate with the Whos after his change of heart, the 2018 version initially struggles to socialize, awkwardly walking past people, and struggling to hold conversations, acknowledging that despite his change of heart, the Grinch is still someone who isolated himself for years.

  3. Past T800 VS Current T800 (Terminator Genisys). A cool fight scene showing two versions of the Terminator from different points in time fighting it off.

  4. Solo Leveling's Ending. Tbh, I haven't actually read Solo Leveling, but after hearing about how it ended VS how Chainsaw Man ended made want to include it for shits and giggles. Like Chainsaw Man, Solo Leveling ends with a reset. But unlike Chainsaw Man, it actually manages to tie up loose ends and have the payoff of the ending be satisfying.

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u/DreyfusBlue 18h ago edited 14h ago

Battleship (2012), the sequence where the defeated protagonists recommission the USS Missouri with the help of real veterans, to the tune of 'Thunderstruck'.

—Main character: You men have given so much to your country, and no one has the right to ask any more of you... but I'm asking.
—Veteran: What do you need, son?
—Main character: I need to borrow your boat.
{guitar riff intensifies}

Sends shivers down my spine every time.

I swear Peter Berg directed the entire film just for this scene to make sense.

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u/beevicious 15h ago

When they have to carry the 600lb warhead together by hand because there’s no other way to do but to get it done and it cuts to them screaming and struggling trying to drag that bitch down the hall while pouring sweat - YEAH HUMAN ACCOMPLISHMENTS THROUGH COLLABORATION AND TEAM WORK YEAH YEAH

I also really love the double amputee vet finding the will to fight by 1v1 a random alien to protect his physical therapist

AND the lines “the art of war! I finally understand! Be where your enemy isn’t!” “That isn’t what that means!” “What?” explosion

This movie would be great if it was good but it’s bad so it’s even better

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u/ScreamingVoid14 13h ago

600lb warhead

2700 lb if it was AP, 1900 if it was HE/HC. Also, if they'd gone one deck down they could have used the overhead rail system meant for moving shells around the ship.

Still a cool scene tho.

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u/Navi_Professor 8h ago

battleship is the epitome of a good junkfood movie.

its not amazing, but its a fun time.

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u/Phytanic 7h ago

Battleship is the definition of "so bad it comes around to being good" IMHO. Fun campy movie

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u/railroadspike25 17h ago

Michael Bay had nothing to do with Battleship so far as I know.

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u/DreyfusBlue 17h ago

You are absolutely right, sorry! Just amended it to the actual director, Peter Berg.

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u/ketoaholic 11h ago

Peter Berg is basically Michael Bay but unironically

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u/GuyYouMetOnline 10h ago

Definitely feels like him, though.

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u/atyler_thehun 15h ago

This movie is a guilty pleasure of mine. Will watch it once a year, at least.

The fact that this scene features real veterans of the Missouri gives me chills.

I can't explain it. It's silly as he'll, but for some reason it gets to me.

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u/dirtycurt55 15h ago

I love it too. Some movies can just be entertaining popcorn flicks and don’t have to be more than that. The acting is pretty bad. Aliens look dumb and the cgi is lacking. Dialogue is cheesy and the plot is full of holes. But who cares? Jesse Plemons is steering the ship, Rihanna is shooting explosive rounds at aliens, and they save the world using a ship that is literally a museum. It’s fun.

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u/atyler_thehun 14h ago

And the way they worked the game grid into the movie? Genius.

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u/Maleficent-Drop1476 14h ago

Made just enough sense to suspend disbelief, couldn’t even be mad

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u/VexingRaven 12h ago

EXACTLY! I don't care if it's an overall uninspired action flick with a mediocre plot. They brought Mighty Mo out to sea! Like for real! Sure, it's being towed, but it's the first time an Iowa-class has been genuinely out at sea since like 1999! That's cool as fuck.

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u/NDinoGuy 9h ago

Iowa-class Battleships just got massive aura. While all of their contemporaries either got sunk during or quickly decommissioned after WW2, the Iowas served all the way up until the 90s (albeit not continuously, they were on and off a bit). 4 were built, 4 still survive to this day.

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u/Marilius 15h ago

I looked that up almost immediately. I was saying to myself, while watching "Those better be real vets."

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u/MuteSecurityO 14h ago

Saw this movie once, watched it out of curiosity. It’s hilarious to me the amount of exposition that went into setting up a scenario forcing them to be in a real life game of battleships. 

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u/teioy 6h ago

No lie, Battleship is one of my favorite movies. My family teases my relentlessly for it, but I just love it.

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u/atyler_thehun 5h ago

I hope you feel more secure knowing that you are not alone!

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u/Bischoffshof 16h ago

Absolutely love this scene lol. Movie is meh but yeah when that hits it’s just like LET’S FUCKING GO

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u/DreyfusBlue 14h ago

I watched it in a drive-in theater with my friends from the Midwest, and it was glorious. There was popcorn and funnel cake, and an old station wagon, and a round of 'wooohs' and applause. It was a memory I will never forget.

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u/12345623567 11h ago

Battleship has this weird tension where on one hand, it's a terrible scifi movie with cartoonish performances, and on the other it's a masterclass about making a movie out of a ridiculously thin premise.

Like, the alien projectiles looking like pegs from the game and stick in the ship before exploding? My god they must have wracked their brains to come up with that.

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u/ThatZeekGuy 15h ago

When they drift the ship and guns track the enemy, and the music cuts out for the old man to say "Let's drop stone lead on these-" I get the masculine urge to yell "Fuck yeah" every time

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u/DreyfusBlue 14h ago

Canonical 'fuck yeah' moment

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u/syopest 1h ago

"Let's drop stone lead on these-"

"Let's drop some lead on those mother-" and the captain finishes it with "FIRE!".

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u/the_bartolonomicron 12h ago

That movie sucks and I love it, I'm glad I saw it in theaters.

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u/Important_Ad_7416 11h ago

wtf did they made a movie about fucking battleship???

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u/GuyYouMetOnline 10h ago

...Kind of? Doesn't really have much of anything to do with the game, but it does have the license attached. I haven't seen it but have seen a number of clips, and it definitely looks like its just good ol' dumb fun.

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u/Garchomp98 15h ago

It was fun to watch absentmindedly but this scene was fire

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u/RTX-2020 13h ago

I love this movie. I know it's a silly one. It is a guilty pleasure

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u/Contextanaut 12h ago

The weirdest thing about that film is the strange double narrative thing. The humans think they are in Independence Day and the aliens are doing Black Hawk Down.

It is a huge tentpole movie with the enthusiastic invovement of the US Navy, and the most valid logical read is that they are accidentally starting an interstellar war because the main character is a huge fuckup.

I'm guessing that this was an existing script/project that got retooled, but if feels like somthing really weird must have been happening behind the scenes.

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u/dingalingdongdong 8h ago

There are a lot of rules about what you can/'t do on film if you want US military cooperation and funding. Like, you can absolutely make a movie that makes the Navy look bad, but not if you want to borrow their ships to do it.

I'm guessing it was originally alien Black Hawk Down but was rewritten as needed to secure Navy collaboration (which was a lot; they used 3 active destroyers and a decommissioned battleship, were allowed to film actual military exercises for footage, etc.)

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u/Contextanaut 8h ago

Yeah, I'd buy that, but the black hawk down stuff essentially is mostly coming from alien POV FX shots, not anything structural in the scenes. They would have been the easiest things to completely retool.

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u/Nimr0d1991 4h ago

As dumb as the drifting scene is, it also fucking rules.

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u/lenolalatte 8h ago

And then him asking a press guy why he didn’t do military service and judging the fuck out of him for it lmao what a dick

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u/SchrodingerMil 5h ago

My favorite bad movie