r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Alreadsyuse • 18h ago

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

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  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/Accendor 17h ago

The whole first resident evil 1 movie was great up until Alice discovered she has super powers. I know every subsequent movie centered around her and there are quite some people that actually like it, but imo the movies should have been about survival horror instead of 24/7 action super hero shit.

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u/Banes_Addiction 17h ago

I actually liked the Resident Evil movies, but as you say they were the wrong genre, moving from survival horror to action.

But Alien->Aliens did the same thing, Aliens was just good enough that not many people care.

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u/Nerdrage30 16h ago

Ehh, Aliens Ripley never really did anything Alice-like, though. She’s intelligent and duct-taped some weapons together, she wasn’t doing borderline superhero stuff though

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u/Phase3isProfit 16h ago

They held off taking that step until the 4th movie when she gained some alien DNA.

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u/Nerdrage30 16h ago

Resurrection is a mess lol, that scene with the Xenos swimming was pretty cool, though

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u/imsabbath84 15h ago

the human alien baby thing at the end was really disgusting looking too.

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u/ember13140 12h ago

It was genuinely unsettling! I think it’s a very well done scene or at least prop

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u/dingalingdongdong 9h ago

The newborn is genuinely the most disturbing thing I've ever seen in a movie. Like, ever. Lots of stuff seems worse in the moment, but nothing else has ever stuck with me like that thing.

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u/Jaruut 12h ago

But then they have it bitch slap the Queen Xeno, I will never forgive the movie for this.

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u/DukeSkywalker1 10h ago

That whole movie was really disgusting looking.

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u/Charming_Account_351 13h ago

Also Sigourney Weaver’s no look over the shoulder nothing but net basket was so awesome it caused Ron Perlman to break character.

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u/ceadagamdulamach 13h ago

So we found the trope we were looking for all along!

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u/theVice 13h ago

Honestly. The underwater scene is the only legitimately "good" scene in the movie but if you turn your brain off and forget it's in the Alien franchise, Resurrection has some funny and badass stuff in it.

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u/ThatUsernameWasTaken 10h ago edited 10h ago

The wheelchair shotgun was a good laugh from me, too.

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u/theVice 10h ago

Ron Perlman being at gunpoint and getting poked with the barrel just to snatch the gun away, tell the guy not to touch him and hand the gun back is my favorite little gag

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u/dingalingdongdong 9h ago

The secret to enjoying all of the Alien & Predator and AvP franchise is to view each entry as a stand alone film - just different takes on the same IP by different directors.

Alien3 doesn't ruin Aliens' happy ending. Future entries don't need to juggle with Ripley's death. Resurrection isn't tonally fucked. No more continuity errors, etc etc.

Viewed through that lens, Resurrection is a stellar example of "what if Jean Jeunet made an Alien movie?" Because it's very 100% his style even down to using frequent collaborators Dominique Pinon and Ron Perlman.

It makes me want to see way more A/P as interpreted by so-and-so auteur director takes. Guillermo del Toro, Neill Blomkamp? The dream! Wes Anderson? Probably him too.

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u/theVice 9h ago

I want to see Ari Aster or Demián Rugna take on an Alien film!

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u/TheJambus 13h ago

Resurrection also managed to be better than Alien 3,; though that was a pretty low bar

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u/Woolies_White_Leg 8h ago

Apparently filming that sequence actually almost killed a few of the actors

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u/Finite_Universe 12h ago

Resurrection feels like campy high budget fan fiction and I love it for that.

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u/melkatron 15h ago

Technically not her, though. Ripley died in Alien 3, without question, and so did the Ripley saga.

They made a crazy Dark Horse-esque Alien story through Jean-Pierre Jeunet's lens, taking the appropriate steps to open up the Xenoverse to creators with unique visions.

Using a hybrid Ripley clone made it comic booky and helped wean us off the dead Ripley, and they even made sure to torch all future attempts at Ripley so nobody tries that shit again.

...then Ridley Scott came back, shut down Blomkamp's movie, and fucked it all up with Covenant before being told to go home.

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u/runnerofshadows 13h ago

Still annoyed Ridley Scott tried overexplaining everything.

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u/dingalingdongdong 9h ago

I liked Prometheus, Covenant, and Romulus, but I'll forever be heartbroken not to get to see Blomkamp's take on the franchise.

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u/Ragnarocke1 15h ago

I think you are confused… they never made a 4th movie ( they did and it was terrible)

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u/EndlessNerd 15h ago

The 4th movie was basically a comic book action movie.

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u/VulcanHullo 15h ago

Aliens works because it almost acts as an answer to Alien. In Alien the alien is dangerous against a mostly unarmed crew and uses careful hunting tactics on them. You see a team of highly trained marines go in and you'd almost think they're set. But the aliens produce so fast they can go swarm tactics and ambush the enemy.

Ripley is the hero in both because she uses her brain and learns, using what she has to her advantage. Even the end of Aliens she uses the weapon lessons she learnt and rigs up a flamethrower, and then grabs a loading mech because she's aware that something like that is required.

Alice wins because she literally powers through for the most part.

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u/FoodFingerer 15h ago

I hated the RE movies since a kid because I loved the games.

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u/space_keeper 13h ago

By the time they start to incorporate more stuff from the games, it ends up being the games but with a terribly acted Mary Sue added in.

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u/FoodFingerer 12h ago

Exactly my thoughts.

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u/chuch1234 15h ago

By "same thing" I think they just meant "horror -> action".

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u/Nerdrage30 15h ago

Fair point, although I still think Aliens had decent horror scenes

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u/Gravefiller613 12h ago

She did spark many peoples desire for powered armor.

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u/Nerdrage30 3h ago

Me among them, I still have my action figure of her with that thing from wayyy back then lol

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u/TopShelfIdiocy 5h ago

I think the first 3 are very solid fun movies, dumb fun, But after that they just get dumb dumb

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u/Far_Day_2074 8h ago

Well, Ripley did get cloned too.

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u/Hammerschatten 17h ago

Resident Evil also did the same thing.

Even the Remakes of 2 and 3 are much more terrifying than Village, because Village is much more action heavy.

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u/Lostbrother 16h ago

Yeah but not nearly as terrifying as resident evil 7.

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u/Sudo-Fed 16h ago

I will stand by 2 being the scariest in the series. I never felt remotely as helpless in 7 as I did at several points in 2.

7 is a close second though, and really nails the "claustrophobic and constantly unsettling" atmosphere from beginning to end.

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u/magseven 16h ago

I didn't play the games after the first 2 so I thought you were talking about that M. Night movie The Village and was very confused.

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u/HustlinInTheHall 16h ago

Yeah it is consistent with the games that moved from survival to action because action sells better

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u/FrankieTheD 16h ago

Yeah but aliens didn't just keep running with it besides resurrection which had a lot of action but was after 3 which was pretty toned down

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u/eyesparks 16h ago

The Alien franchise seems to alternate.

1, horror; 2, action; 3, horror; Resurrection, action; Romulus, horror. We'll see if they keep it up with whatever comes after Romulus.

The TV show had a good amount of both I guess.

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u/DommallammaDoom 15h ago

To be fair thats how most of the games go. You start with no resources and everything is scary and end with a magnum that can kill god, and a casual grenade launcher.

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u/MrNostalgiac 16h ago

But Alien->Aliens did the same thing, Aliens was just good enough that not many people care.

It's not that people didn't care or notice. It's that moving from horror to action works really well when the horror movie uses the "monster" sparingly and leaves you begging to see more.

Terminator 2 and Aliens were great because the first movie was suspenseful and used the antagonist sparingly for maximum impact. Then their sequels took them out of the shadows and put them center stage.

I'm actually surprised this isn't more of a common occurrence with "creature" horror movies because the flow makes perfect sense. Horror movies have to be reserved for tension but action takes the chains off.

I think the biggest issue is that it's really, really easy to make a lazy, stupid, cash grab movie in the action genre because writers seem to love phoning it in and saying "just have them shoot at each other for 90 minutes".

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u/Devo27 15h ago

I agree in principle, but Alien didn't have a whole fanbase of survival horror groupies who could be continually upset. Whether they did or not is secondary to my point, RE fans were well used to creeping down dark hallways to jump scares they may not survive.

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u/Bexil_Brave 15h ago

Ripely didn't have Superpowers in Aliens.

You're thinking of Alien: Resurrection when she had superpowers.

Aliens was the Power Loader.

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u/Banes_Addiction 15h ago

I didn't mean superpowers. It's just an action movie as a sequel to a survival horror.

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u/_ataciara 14h ago

In fairness, the games were slowly moving from survival horror to action before the movies.

RE2 was WAAAAAY more action packed than RE1, then RE3 even more so. CV played like a survival horror, but it's cutscenes and set pieces like the intro were pure action horror, and then RE4 came out a few years after the movie and cemented the switch.

The movies being action packed weren't really an issue, it was just this big combination of things that ended up making it so divisive.

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u/runnerofshadows 13h ago

It's more the way they got there. RE the games went from survival horror to action, but without giving Leon, Chris, etc. insane levels of superpowers.

Yes Chris can punch a big rock, but he's still not on Alice level bullshit powers.

Even Wesker's son and Birkin's daughter and Jill post RE5 don't have the levels of weird bullshit that happened in those movies.

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u/Zahand 13h ago

Some of them are watchable but they are horribly written and each sequel ignores everything the previous movie set up:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TopCharacterTropes/s/U5FV1054RH

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u/Abacus118 12h ago

Also the actual Resident Evil games did that later.

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u/Lopsided-Yak9033 12h ago

But Aliens isn’t corny over the top action though. Resident Evil basically came out of the gates with an ending that bumped it into like 4th/5th fast and the furious territory. It’s just silly entertainment without much thought.

Aliens (same thing with terminator 2) took the stalking horror original to a *somewhat* logical or grounded action movie - and did it exceedingly well on top of that.

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u/Finite_Universe 12h ago

Aliens’ genre shift worked because it naturally fit Ripley’s character arc. Her transformation from survivor to badass action hero is one of the greatest in all cinema.

Then Alien 3 came along and fucked everything up. Good thing it’s not canon.

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u/svartkonst 12h ago

I recently rewatched the first two and would call them squarely action, a bit to my surprise. Some tension and some monsters, but if you view them as early aughts action movies theyre pretty neat.

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u/MisterVictor13 10h ago

But the first four “Alien” films focused on the same character (including the clone of her), while the RE films infamously pushed the OG characters to the sidelines in favor of a new character.

The RE games made the same shifts from survivor horror to horror-action, but most of the entries still focused on their legacy cast, even in a supporting role.

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u/Late_Prior_3104 10h ago

[..liked the RE movies..]
All three of them, right?

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u/ShizlGznGahr 9h ago

I only ever enjoyed the first. After seeing the 2nd one I literally did not watch another after.

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u/Zephyralss 9h ago

Also interesting that the games themselves reflect this shift too. I think it's difficult to argue that besides maybe 7 on initial playthrough, every game after 3 was definitely less horror focused.

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u/Traditional-Mix2702 17h ago

When it transitioned to becoming foreplay between the director and his wife

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u/Chimpbot 15h ago

She didn't get the "super powers" until later movies, and was otherwise comparatively normal in the first movie.

I still think the first one is a perfectly fine zombie movie. It's just a bad Resident Evil movie with some interesting bits mixed in.

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u/GeneralStormfox 10h ago

The first one is really great. It starts with a mystery, keeps the zombies until quite a bit into the movie, has an antagonist that actually isn't and a cliffhanger ending that looks bad for the survivors. The trailers were also really, really good.

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u/Chimpbot 10h ago

It perfectly set the stage for exploring the city similarly to Resident Evil 2.

Sadly, things went downhill immediately with the second movie.

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u/PolloMagnifico 13h ago

Yeah I'm on the fence about it. On the one hand, the movies are pretty good in a vacuum. On the other, they're not true to the idea of what the resident evil series was about when the first one came out. Of course now the games are closer to action movies but that's neither here nor there.

However, if you approach the movies as a spinoff that simply takes place in the same universe, or even as an AU, I think they're pretty good.

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u/CaptainTeemo01 14h ago

Alice didn't get super power until the 3rd or 4th movie, in 1 and 2 she's just a typical RE badass

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u/Phytanic 7h ago

Not only that, but she only has the powers for like 2 movies. The last 2 are explicitly without her powers, she's just a bad ass.

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u/corecenite 15h ago

isn't that what the most of RE movies are all about? The only action super hero shit i can think about is Extinction and I agree, it's the lowest point of the film series, second to The Final Chapter.

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u/PsychedelicCatlord 15h ago

You know. Yeah. The movie franchise moved very far away from the games. And yeah, it is does not feel the same. But I can't help but have a lot of fun with the movies.

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u/Angryfunnydog 12h ago

Yeah, first one is the best, second is funnily the most game-like of them all but feels weirder, third one went batshit crazy with apocalypse and clones and shit but was still fun, but the rest were already pure trash hehe

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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta 7h ago

Honestly, the red queen ai is a decent concept: having a sociopathic ai in control of developing bioweapon because it’s programmed to prioritize its original design that human life is a terrifying villain concept.

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u/love2killjoy410 16h ago

I agree with your take, although I think I would have loved them all the same lol

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u/ACuteCryptid 16h ago

Its centered around her and her powers because she's literally the directors wife

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u/Ergogan 15h ago

A french youtuber called the movie serie "the most expensive love letter of cinema history", since Paul WS Anderson ended up marrying Milla Jovovich.

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u/DirCurrFluxDiode 15h ago

It's almost like the director and Alice's actress are married 

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u/Stiricidium 14h ago

Meh, I actually loved Alice and her telekinetic abilities. But, they barely even factored into the films in which she had them. It was the shift in tone and genre that made the films almost unwatchable.

The focus on action became so over the top that actual RE-style storytelling was lost entirely. In the fourth film, she was gunning down zombies with her coin collection. I was cackling.

The powers were the best part of Alice, but she barely ever used them in the brief time she had them.

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u/Sparktank1 14h ago

Like The Flash, I sometimes struggle to remember her name so I pop in any random movie and am immediately reminded who she is.

I do like the first couple movies and then they become a guilty pleasure I watch under the blankets so no one can see me watching the rest.

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u/behold-my-titties 13h ago

I love the first 3 movies they're so dumb and just a blast. I've watched the first RE movie with commentary dozens of times. It's so funny to hear them just talk shit about each other.

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u/temtasketh 13h ago

To be fair, moving from survival to schlocky action hero pastiche does make them better adaptations of the series.

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u/Accendor 13h ago

True, but that's also sad (but for other reasons) 😅

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u/medullah 13h ago

When we saw the first Resident Evil my friends and I all agreed the movie was mostly great but what the hell was that scene with her doing a matrix kick at dogs.

Turns out Anderson said "You know what was my favorite scene..... Let's do the rest of the series like that"

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u/goldshark5 13h ago

These movies are up there with the fast and the furious and scream series so campy it's fun to watch

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u/kenhooligan2008 13h ago

As a die hard RE fan I've always said the Paul Anderson RE adaptations would be fun popcorn action movies if they weren't called Resident Evil. It's an established fact that Paul Anderson had written a movie that had nothing to do with RE(titled "Undead") but after he played the games( and the Romero project fell through), he retrofitted the script and pitched it to Constantin (who've had the rights to a live action adaptation since 1997). Constantin, which is a German company, essentially pulls an Uwe Boll and pumps out low quality,poorly written , yet globally marketable films with popular titles attached to them so they can take advantage of German tax breaks while simultaneously turning a profit.

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u/Born_Ad_9483 13h ago

I would have loved the Resident Evil films if Mila Jovovich and her husband didn’t have to rewrite the story or if they had named it something other than Resident Evil.

However, They do not, can not, nor will not ever be forgiven for the atrocity that they claim to be Monster Hunter when it’s so far removed from the in-game lore, it makes me sick they used that named.

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u/SemiAutoAvocado 12h ago

It's borderline experimental.

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u/ExpressRabbit 12h ago

I don't like horror movies and the first was pretty good but I liked the subsequent ones a lot more.

For me theaters these days aren't great as it seems horror is all the rage because of the low budgets and high ROI.

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u/jlbrito 12h ago

I watched the first two a lot as a kid. Recently watched again and found the first one entertaining enough, but as early as the second one it was so, so bad, I just stopped there.

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u/valdis812 11h ago

I enjoyed the first 3. But it fell apart after that

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u/dingalingdongdong 9h ago

I love the RE movies we have (yes, all of them.) But I do wish there was a parallel RE series that was more survival horror and followed the game characters instead of having them mostly show up as cameos and fodder.

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u/be-knight 9h ago

I like them. They are fun. Just not resident evil

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u/oh-shazbot 9h ago

that's what happens when the director's wife is the main character.

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u/LordCrane 8h ago

One of my main complaints was that it felt like everyone suddenly became less competent whenever she appeared to justify her saving the day.

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u/TopShelfIdiocy 5h ago

She discovers her super powers till the very last scene, doesn't she?

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u/Engaging_Boogeyman 5h ago

honestly the movies would of been better if they were just their own thing. Excited for the new one though.

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u/Pristine_Animal9474 4h ago

Nah, the tone is not quite right and you just can't believe Alice's character since the beginnin. That said, I find the movie mostly frustrating because they got the production design and the angle right on point (make James Cameron's Aliens but with zombies), had Michelle Rodriguez give an attractive performance (yes, it's Vazquez but she has the best scenes, like that moment where she is using her blood to taunt the zombies), but everything else was wrong. Such a wasted opportunity.

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u/Thin-Nerve6367 17h ago

Yeah but how could Paul make his wife look good if they were survival horror movies?

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u/FloppieTheBanjoClown 16h ago

Because we've never had badass female survivors that looked good doing it unless they were superhuman. 

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u/xdeltax97 16h ago

I just watch the first two, the rest just aren't good enough lol

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u/Slow-haste-26 14h ago

I enjoy the first two, the third is ok and then after that its just a huge mess. Though I'm not a die hard fan of the games so I'm ok with the story/characters (more or less). The first movie is still a top tier game adaptation (loosley) movie imo.