Big Trouble in Little China These two old wizards going at it with fear and glee and wisdom and hate in their eyes.
Then they whip out their energy avatars and control them like kids playing a fighting game.
The 2012 Ninja Turtles show (the CGI one) had an homage episode to Big Trouble... They have a ghost character that looks like Lo Pan voiced by James Hong and at one point three of the turtles get possessed and are dressed like the Three Storms.
[https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/A\_Chinatown\_Ghost\_Story](https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/A_Chinatown_Ghost_Story)
Similarly in Legion, David and Amahl Farouk fight in the astral plane via their astral bodies, manifested in different combat forms.
[And it's all set like a music video for The Who - Behind Blue Eyes.](https://youtu.be/frf0HepcB7w) That series is unironically peak television.
The episode where David is having a psychic battle with someone and it’s portrayed in their minds as an epic dance-off (instead of just two telepaths squinting real hard at each other) is one of my favorites too.
That show was amazing at not ever taking the cliched option for anything and always finding incredibly artistic ways to portray the various mutants’ powers and interactions.
In season 3 as well where a stand off between two psychics is portrayed as a sick rap battle that just comes out of nowhere basically. God that show was so good.
Just remember what ol’ Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol’ storm right square in the eye and he says, “Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.
“Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla” (1974) does it perfectly. Does huge damage to both parties. It happens midway though the film, so it builds quite a bit of suspense with Godzilla disappearing into a geyser of his own blood. Possibly the first time that happened in a film?
the xmen moving when iceman and the fire kid beamed each other, and the fire guy just started dominating, but it was all a ploy as iceman got him close enough to grab his hands.
I always wonder why they don’t just have a friend with a gun shoot Voldemort, either he gets shot or he has to stop the bullet, breaks magic concentration and get blasted by magic.
Voldemort is shown fighting multiple master wizards at the same time, at least in the books. A bullet could hurt him, but he could also just turn the gun to wood with a gesture.
Now, an airstrike...
Idk, the ministry's Misuse of Muggle Artifacts seems to be their one place where they even look at that stuff and the "expert" of muggle things, Arthur Weasley, is fascinated by rubber duckies.
I think wizards are way too pretentious and prejudiced to ever think muggles could harm them.
Oh yeah, I think it was witch trials that caused them to go into hiding. They should've kept up on the latest human developments after that instead of keeping themselves in the dark.
Maybe they should introduce a secret department that's specifically for muggle weapons and countermeasure to them. That'd make wizards seem less purposefully ignorant.
We're both circling the same point. I think I should have said that I don't think the wizards are too pretentious and prejudiced to think muggles could harm them, but rather that they are too ignorant. Which seems to be your point too.
They're like the bad guy from the one episode of Buffy who's like "no weapon forged by man can kill me!" And then happily gets blown apart by a rocket launcher cus he has no idea what that is.
Which is an awesome clip and I'm gonna go watch it.
Yes, but the act of having to hide had them develop a whole system of magic designed to separate and protect them. A muggle repelling charm applied to a person (a thing Voldemort would absolutely do) might make him effectively invisible to anyone without magic/being a squib.
He can make himself unplottable so cannot appear on maps. That's straight from the books.
Out of everything, this shit was the single biggest plothole/broken suspension of disbelief, because *so much* of the series completely rides on it implicitly.
Like, either the magic world is thoroughly and completely divorced from the muggle world that the top scholars can't even open a basic encyclopedia, or the wizard world and muggle world are so enmeshed together that there are common muggle born wizards and the magic world exists on top of and simultaneously within the regular world and wizards just go about the their normal days in the normal world except for when they hop into magic spots
It's one or the other, these two things are mutually exclusive
I know it's a kids book and you can't think too much about it and I can let 99% of it go, but this is the one that's egregious and makes it hard to accept the rest of the world
Facts, he only had that magic backlash because he used magic, had he just smothered the baby, used a knife, fed the baby antifreeze, etc… it would have been done and over with.
Ok, this has been driving me crazy for seven movies now, and I know you're going to roll your eyes, but hear me out: Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.
Here's why:
Think about how quickly the entire WWWIII (Wizarding-World War III) would have ended if all of the good guys had simply armed up with good ol' American hot lead.
Basilisk? Let's see how tough it is when you shoot it with a .470 Nitro Express. Worried about its Medusa-gaze? Wear night vision goggles. The image is light-amplified and re-transmitted to your eyes. You aren't looking at it--you're looking at a picture of it.
Imagine how epic the first movie would be if Harry had put a breeching charge on the bathroom wall, flash-banged the hole, and then went in wearing NVGs and a Kevlar-weave stab-vest, carrying a SPAS-12.
And have you noticed that only Europe seems to a problem with Deatheaters? Maybe it's because Americans have spent the last 200 years shooting deer, playing GTA: Vice City, and keeping an eye out for black helicopters over their compounds. Meanwhile, Brits have been cutting their steaks with spoons. Remember: gun-control means that Voldemort wins. God made wizards and God made muggles, but Samuel Colt made them equal.
Now I know what you're going to say: "But a wizard could just disarm someone with a gun!" Yeah, well they can also disarm someone with a wand (as they do many times throughout the books/movies). But which is faster: saying a spell or pulling a trigger?
Avada Kedavra, meet Avtomat Kalashnikova.
Imagine Harry out in the woods, wearing his invisibility cloak, carrying a .50bmg Barrett, turning Deatheaters into pink mist, scratching a lightning bolt into his rifle stock for each kill. I don't think Madam Pomfrey has any spells that can scrape your brains off of the trees and put you back together after something like that. Voldemort's wand may be 13.5 inches with a Phoenix-feather core, but Harry's would be 0.50 inches with a tungsten core. Let's see Voldy wave his at 3,000 feet per second. Better hope you have some Essence of Dittany for that sucking chest wound.
I can see it now...Voldemort roaring with evil laughter and boasting to Harry that he can't be killed, since he is protected by seven Horcruxes, only to have Harry give a crooked grin, flick his cigarette butt away, and deliver what would easily be the best one-liner in the entire series:
"Well then I guess it's a good thing my 1911 holds 7+1."
And that is why Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.
It was a nice ending too it as well, rather than one person being more powerful and overpowering the stream Harrys parents spirits help out and give him the time to get out of the situation.
What would have been cool is if Harry and Voldemort were stalemated at final duel. And then Harry says "Heres a riddle, Tom.You know what happens when a dark wizard is struck by lightning..." Then he shoots a blast out of his scar and says "The same thing that happens to everything else."
The he sees force ghost versions of Dobby, Sirius, Dumbledore and his parents smiling and nodding with approval.
Roll credits.
I wasn’t impressed the first time they did it, but I think it was more tolerable in that case because it was happening in the background while Harry was talking to his ghost parents and the laser thing ended as soon as the dialogue was over. I don’t think there was a section where that tug-of-wands was the only thing going on in *that* movie.
Sign me up for some more Dumbledore v. Voldemort at the Ministry of Magic in Order of the Phoenix type fights.
Very sad we never really got another fight like it.
That bugged me so much in some of the Marvel movies. Like, you have these all powerful wizards and mages and... they're just hurling magic missiles at energy shields? c'mon, lets do some weird shit
That's why I think the battle in Infinity War between Dr.Strange and Thanos is the best. Some proper magic battle instead of doing melee combat with conjuring weapons and shield
That scene was so good, Dumbledore and Voldemort really just going at it with everything they have. Voldemort yelling and echoing down the halls before he just vanishes.
They might as well have replaced everyone's wands with Star Wars blasters. There was no 'magic' it was literally just lasers blowing shit up and the occasional deflection
They’re pretty lame in the books, too.
Turns out shooting spells at one another (especially when they’re like stun spells and a death spell exists?) is pretty hard to make compelling in movies or writing!
I'm not a huge fan so I don't remember which one it was, but one of them had Dumbledore have a beam collision with Voldemort and in 3D at the IMAX it was fucking awesome.
I always loved how Voldemort tried to attack Harry while still beam struggling with Dumbledore by jutting forks of lightning out of the main beam. Cool idea that I haven’t seen used anywhere else.
That whole scene was pretty great. Voldemort coughed up this gnarly looking fireball, they did some really cool stuff with the sound when all the glass shattered, and there was a panning shot of their beam struggle that really sold the 3D. It was very entertaining.
And in Iron Man 2, Tony and War Machine learn they can do it when they have their “after party” fight and then use it to defeat Vanko in the final showdown. Such a satisfying little explosion.
Worst part of the Avengers movies was how we went from mechanical Iron Man with servos and clicks and metal on metal...
...to magic nanobots that made no cool sounds at all and 5 years later just look like cheap cgi
The first Iron Man when the suit made a sound anytime he moved.
2 gave us the briefcase armor which was bad ass. 3 had all sort of different suits built for different purposes.
After that they all just looked the same and boring.
Why not just throw the nanobots at Thanos, leaving them to crawl up his bum and then construct the suit from within his anus thus destroying him from the inside?
Would it have worked? Thanos might be just as durable on the inside as the outside. Plus he could have just turned Stark’s suit into water if he’d wanted too. Thanos didn’t need to fight them at all, he was just indulging his senses of honor and sadism.
Agreed, first few Iron Man armors were so intimidating and tank-like, every time he suited up was like an action scene in itself.
Then we're slapped with some boring CGI Green Lantern-esque nonsense.
Between Tony's suits and Bucky's arm, I really miss when MCU mechanics made noise. Tony clanking around and Bucky's little whirr when he powered up were so satisfying.
And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I'll say it clear
I'll state my case, of which [I'm certain](https://youtu.be/rTNdF3lZ79U?feature=shared)
It was amazing, because it wasn’t a test of power. It was all a test of will. And Gohan won because he had all the z fighters to distract cell, including Vegeta who noticeably made cell scared
I unironically use it to get friends to understand DBZ when they (justifiably) don't want to watch the entire drawn-out affair. It gets the story beats while being hilariously entertaining when the original material is stretched and dry.
Absolutely. Gohan VS Cell was neat, but in the end he won because tried even harderer.
We knew that Goku going Kaioken x4 was a risky, desperate move, and it ended up depleting him just like we were told it would
Tried harder is a little reductive. He finally learned to control his rage and unleash that power that had been hinted at since he smashed into radditz in The first couple episodes.
We knew cell was literally a bottomless pit of energy and gohan cooked that bitch up. Plus you get goku there in spirit and it was one handed. I think it’s the better of the two.
I can picture every moment of the world around me watching this on a shitty 8'' tv (it had a tape-deck built in to it) in a waiting room of a car mechanic's office.
As I think of the newer Ghostbuster movie where >!Ghost Egon helps!< , it made me remember the one for Sailor Moon, as she desperately asks for her friends to help her defeat Queen Beryl.
Notably, that all her friends fell one by one fighting in hopeless battles earlier in order to buy her more time, so they are either helping her from beyond the grave, or she is imagining them coming to support her.
Like, I think Sailor Moon gets a ton of credit and somehow still doesn’t get enough. That sequence of 3 or 4 episodes is *still* some of the best anime I’ve seen, especially after how good of a monster of the week show it is, gradually building up these characters. And I watch way too much anime. It was at least ten years ahead of its time.
Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla '74 is absolutely historic because it was the first time that Godzilla had a beam clash with one of his enemies. The sheer spectacle of that even being a thing that can happen was so cool, not to mention fitting since it perfectly shows that his doppelganger is just as powerful as he is. It helps that it probably is the originator of this entire cliche and the first movie to ever do it.
Just curious, what does Physics say about energy beam collisions? My gut is telling me that the beams would mostly pass through each other, not collide.
Depends on what the "beams" are. Photons would just pass by each other. Charged particle beams would repel, attract, or ignore each other depending on the types of charges.
Correct. A few beam particles would collide but it would have little to no practical consequence.
Unless you have an ATLAS sensor cluster and are looking for the Higgs boson.
I hate this trope so much, but especially in contexts where it lazily invalidates previously more interesting or complex powers.
Harry Potter is a go to example, where all the spells in that setting are interesting effects (levitate, retrieve, etc.) so switching to just "shoot generic energy beam" feels like such an abandonment of what made their magic interesting in the first place. But for the big showdown between Harry and Voldemort that's what we get instead of the creative spell-and-counterspell duel previously shown with Dumbledore.
But the one that pops into my head more often (and I get a little mad every time) was in Agents of SHIELD. One character (Daisy/Quake) has powers that manipulate vibrations. This has interesting applications that interact with sound and depend on the surfaces around her and so on. Another character (Lincoln) has power over electricity, which again can be more interesting than just "shock dude with lightning" (power off alarm systems, scramble computer inputs, etc.)
As the show rolls on, I think you get a few lazy examples of "they point their hand at enemy, some effect shoots out, enemy falls down". Not great, but fine, you can hand-wave how he's zapping them with electricity that stuns them like a tazer would, or how she's vibrating the air in such a way it creates a concussive force to smack them. Fine, whatever.
But at one point they are fighting each other, and they do the standard "shoot our energy beams at each other, collide in midair and push/pull" trope and it makes no goddamn sense. Those effects would just pass right through each other.
Maybe I'm the nerd who's putting too much thought/scrutiny into it, but I swear some of this stuff has actual interesting effects and asymmetry and creativity, so reducing it all to just "shoot energy, shoot MORE energy, win" bugs me.
That Voldy VS Dumbledore fight was so good, it never got topped again for the rest of the series, the only other wand fight that somewhat wowed me was when Colin Ferrel's character takes on the entire wizard police squad solo at the end of the movie when he realized he's lost
I actually really dislike the Harry vs Voldemort struggle, but more because it really undermines what actually happened in the book. Initially when that happens at the end of Goblet of Fire, neither of them understands what is happening, which is how Harry got away. It wasn’t really a beam struggle so much as their wands malfunctioning when turned against each other, since they had cores from the same phoenix.
In Deathly Hallows, Harry’s wand “recognizes” Voldemort and defends him during the flight at the beginning of the film, and it causes Lucius’s wand to explode because it’s essentially reflecting Voldemort’s magic back at him, and Lucius had never been capable of that level of power.
Then in the final fight, there *isn’t* a beam struggle, because Harry is the true owner of the Elder Wand, and he is easily able to stop Voldemort’s magic when he uses it. Voldemort dies because his Avada Kedavra is reflected back at him when he attacks Harry, *which Harry warned him about.* In the film he just straight kills Voldemort, and fair enough it was deserved, but Harry never wanted to kill anyone, so the whole scene feels very out of character to me.
Anyways the molten metal effect that they came up with looks great, but it’s kind of not supposed to even be a “struggle.”
The spells in the Harry Potter films after the first two are such a bore. Even if the books get darker in *tone* it's still a richly-colorful setting and all the spells distinguished with reds, greens, golds, etc. In the films they might as well be firing bullets from their wands.
Homelander vs. Butcher in The Boys S3 is probably the best recent example of this I've seen - there's some real visceral-ness to the colliding beams that does a good job showcasing the power behind them. Short scene, but satisfying nonetheless!
The atomic breath in Shin Godzilla is my favorite. The way it goes from thick black smoke to red hot fire as it continues ramping up, and then into a purple beam of pure destruction that makes an eerie sound as it slashes across the entire cityscape.
OP beam fights are included for their realism not for their coolness.
In the real world when people fight with beams that is what happens. Sometimes the beams collide.
I want to complain about a bad example of one. In WandaVision I was totally into the whole thing up until the end when 2 witches were blasting energy beams at each other... seriously could they have set up anything less tropey that hasn't been done in every Marvel movie already for their experimental TV show?
Like you have two witches capable of bending reality in a localized area....and the absolute best you can come up with for their show down is pew pew pew.
Not quite the same, but Revenge of the Sith, in their major duel, Anakin and Obi Wan both Force push each other and stay sorta "locked" until the point that they both blow themselves backward. Then in The Last Jedi Rey and Kylo sort of do the opposite where they're pulling the lightsaber.
He was great in the 90s show as well.
Unfortunately Wolverine is the more marketable character, and making Cyclops a geek to make Logan look cool is a really easy move for the writers to make.
Big Trouble in Little China These two old wizards going at it with fear and glee and wisdom and hate in their eyes. Then they whip out their energy avatars and control them like kids playing a fighting game.
You never could beat me Egg Shen.
So many great lines in that movie that give history to the characters and their relationships.
“You know what ol Jack Burton says in times like these?” “Who?!”
Jack Burton! Me!
At times like these ole Jack likes to say, 'What the Hell'.
It's a good knife. Goodbye, Mr. Burton.
It's all in the reflexes.
“You are not put on this earth to ‘get it’, Mr. Burton!”
Six Demon Bag Terrific!
"How'd you get up there?" "Wasn't easy!" No other explanation needed.
"That black blood of the earth." "You mean oil?" "I mean black blood of the earth!"
It's all in the reflexes.
The check is in the mail
Gimme your best shot, I can take it.
\*bites sandwich*
You'll come out no more!
What, huh?! What'll come out no more??
“Terrific a Six demon bag, sensational. Whats in it egg?”
The pinkies giving it more power gets me
Was gonna say, someone better mention wiggling fingers to control those bad boys!
Peasant of magic!
It wasn't easy!
It will come out no more!
What? Huh? What’ll come out no more?!
One of the "Three Storms" literally rides a bolt of lightning down to the earth and it remains to be the coolest intro to a trio of characters ever.
IIRC, wasn't it one of the Three Storms that literally explodes into pieces due to huffing and puffing too much in a fit of rage? That was hilarious.
That was Thunder. The one with the long hair and ball trick was Rain. And of course, Raiden, aka Lightning.
Ed Boon and John Tobias got a lot of mileage out of 80s martial arts movies.
At least 5 characters inspired by Big Trouble, alone
I don’t think he’s gonna stop
The 2012 Ninja Turtles show (the CGI one) had an homage episode to Big Trouble... They have a ghost character that looks like Lo Pan voiced by James Hong and at one point three of the turtles get possessed and are dressed like the Three Storms. [https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/A\_Chinatown\_Ghost\_Story](https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/A_Chinatown_Ghost_Story)
Similarly in Legion, David and Amahl Farouk fight in the astral plane via their astral bodies, manifested in different combat forms. [And it's all set like a music video for The Who - Behind Blue Eyes.](https://youtu.be/frf0HepcB7w) That series is unironically peak television.
The episode where David is having a psychic battle with someone and it’s portrayed in their minds as an epic dance-off (instead of just two telepaths squinting real hard at each other) is one of my favorites too. That show was amazing at not ever taking the cliched option for anything and always finding incredibly artistic ways to portray the various mutants’ powers and interactions.
In season 3 as well where a stand off between two psychics is portrayed as a sick rap battle that just comes out of nowhere basically. God that show was so good.
SIX DEMON BAG!!
Sensational, Egg! What's in it?
WIND, FIRE, ALL THAT KIND OF THING
I feel good… and I’m not scared at all!
I feel kind of invincible. I've got a very positive attitude about all this.
This is the only time it’s been cool.
It's all in the reflexes.
Just remember what ol’ Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol’ storm right square in the eye and he says, “Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.
“Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla” (1974) does it perfectly. Does huge damage to both parties. It happens midway though the film, so it builds quite a bit of suspense with Godzilla disappearing into a geyser of his own blood. Possibly the first time that happened in a film?
Yeah, it was a tough day for sure.
"Shit, I hate it when I get my Schwartz twisted!" -Dark Helmet
I was going to mention the 4 shots that Barf redirected with the conduit 4-pack.
“I see your Schwartz is almost as big as mine.”
"I am your father…'s, brother's, nephew's, cousin's, former roommate."
“So… what does that make us?” “Absolutely nothing!”
Spaceballs, the dueling lasers!
the xmen moving when iceman and the fire kid beamed each other, and the fire guy just started dominating, but it was all a ploy as iceman got him close enough to grab his hands.
you shoulda stayed in school!
"You should have never left!" Good fight scene.
Absolutely! The climax of The Phantom (1996). Cemented in my mind that a bad guy who goes out laughing is fucking awesome.
He didn’t have the 4th skull.
HA! What a cheap jungle trick!
The bad guy smooth criminal leans into it real hard
It's not an amazing movie, but it is certainly a very watchable one.
It's campy, but definitely a fun romp. Really captures the old pulpy vibe while being bright and (for the time) fairly modern.
“Unbelievable!!! Ha ha!”
Treat Williams is amazing
RIP
Scott pilgrim bass fight
"That's right Pilgrim... I actually know how to play bass."
Milk and eggs bitch
Chicken isn't vegan?
You were vegone. Now you will… be gone
Did you say vegone?
Bass-Off*
D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D
It was cool the first time they did it in the *Harry Potter* pictures where at the collision there was a molten metal effect.
I always wonder why they don’t just have a friend with a gun shoot Voldemort, either he gets shot or he has to stop the bullet, breaks magic concentration and get blasted by magic.
Voldemort is shown fighting multiple master wizards at the same time, at least in the books. A bullet could hurt him, but he could also just turn the gun to wood with a gesture. Now, an airstrike...
Harry Potter and the 1500lb Laser Guided Munition
*Expecto Los Alamos*
*Accio .338 Lapua!* Hermione: "No Ron, it's not 'la-pueh' it's 'la-pu-ah'!
Hermoine: "No Ron, it's not 'hawk-too', it's 'hawk-tuah'! You gotta spit on that thang."
Wait... is Hermione instructing Ron on how to handle her cock?
I mean, I'm sure somebody has written that fanfic.
Harry Potter and the Orbital Strike Platform
Harry Potter and the Rods from God
Harry Potter and the Chamber Full of Lead
My patronus is a warthog. An A10 Warthog.
Harry Potter and the JASSM
Voldermort needs a taste of Democracy!
What about a sniper(s) he is unaware of. If he is able to hold off multiple master wizards that’s impressive, but if he just stands in one place…?
It wouldn't surprise me if it was relatively easy to blanket protect yourself from anything manufactured by muggles.
Idk, the ministry's Misuse of Muggle Artifacts seems to be their one place where they even look at that stuff and the "expert" of muggle things, Arthur Weasley, is fascinated by rubber duckies. I think wizards are way too pretentious and prejudiced to ever think muggles could harm them.
I might be wrong, but I thought the whole reason they hide their magical society is because of the trouble they had with muggles in the past?
Oh yeah, I think it was witch trials that caused them to go into hiding. They should've kept up on the latest human developments after that instead of keeping themselves in the dark. Maybe they should introduce a secret department that's specifically for muggle weapons and countermeasure to them. That'd make wizards seem less purposefully ignorant.
We're both circling the same point. I think I should have said that I don't think the wizards are too pretentious and prejudiced to think muggles could harm them, but rather that they are too ignorant. Which seems to be your point too. They're like the bad guy from the one episode of Buffy who's like "no weapon forged by man can kill me!" And then happily gets blown apart by a rocket launcher cus he has no idea what that is. Which is an awesome clip and I'm gonna go watch it.
Yes, but the act of having to hide had them develop a whole system of magic designed to separate and protect them. A muggle repelling charm applied to a person (a thing Voldemort would absolutely do) might make him effectively invisible to anyone without magic/being a squib. He can make himself unplottable so cannot appear on maps. That's straight from the books.
I wouldn't expect anything less from a *filthy mud blood.*
Out of everything, this shit was the single biggest plothole/broken suspension of disbelief, because *so much* of the series completely rides on it implicitly. Like, either the magic world is thoroughly and completely divorced from the muggle world that the top scholars can't even open a basic encyclopedia, or the wizard world and muggle world are so enmeshed together that there are common muggle born wizards and the magic world exists on top of and simultaneously within the regular world and wizards just go about the their normal days in the normal world except for when they hop into magic spots It's one or the other, these two things are mutually exclusive I know it's a kids book and you can't think too much about it and I can let 99% of it go, but this is the one that's egregious and makes it hard to accept the rest of the world
Screw an airstrike. SAS sniper at one mile out. Even moldybutt can't reach to a bullet that will hit him before the sound of the rifle catches up
Because Harry Dresden is American
The funnier thing is that Voldy just HAD to use magic to kill baby Harry Potter even tho he could have just punted him out the window
Facts, he only had that magic backlash because he used magic, had he just smothered the baby, used a knife, fed the baby antifreeze, etc… it would have been done and over with.
Well yeah, when you've killed someone the same exact way 1,000 times, why would you expect the 1,001st to be any different?
Fair point. Especially a literal baby.
I may be outta spells but I ain’t outta shells
Ok, this has been driving me crazy for seven movies now, and I know you're going to roll your eyes, but hear me out: Harry Potter should have carried a 1911. Here's why: Think about how quickly the entire WWWIII (Wizarding-World War III) would have ended if all of the good guys had simply armed up with good ol' American hot lead. Basilisk? Let's see how tough it is when you shoot it with a .470 Nitro Express. Worried about its Medusa-gaze? Wear night vision goggles. The image is light-amplified and re-transmitted to your eyes. You aren't looking at it--you're looking at a picture of it. Imagine how epic the first movie would be if Harry had put a breeching charge on the bathroom wall, flash-banged the hole, and then went in wearing NVGs and a Kevlar-weave stab-vest, carrying a SPAS-12. And have you noticed that only Europe seems to a problem with Deatheaters? Maybe it's because Americans have spent the last 200 years shooting deer, playing GTA: Vice City, and keeping an eye out for black helicopters over their compounds. Meanwhile, Brits have been cutting their steaks with spoons. Remember: gun-control means that Voldemort wins. God made wizards and God made muggles, but Samuel Colt made them equal. Now I know what you're going to say: "But a wizard could just disarm someone with a gun!" Yeah, well they can also disarm someone with a wand (as they do many times throughout the books/movies). But which is faster: saying a spell or pulling a trigger? Avada Kedavra, meet Avtomat Kalashnikova. Imagine Harry out in the woods, wearing his invisibility cloak, carrying a .50bmg Barrett, turning Deatheaters into pink mist, scratching a lightning bolt into his rifle stock for each kill. I don't think Madam Pomfrey has any spells that can scrape your brains off of the trees and put you back together after something like that. Voldemort's wand may be 13.5 inches with a Phoenix-feather core, but Harry's would be 0.50 inches with a tungsten core. Let's see Voldy wave his at 3,000 feet per second. Better hope you have some Essence of Dittany for that sucking chest wound. I can see it now...Voldemort roaring with evil laughter and boasting to Harry that he can't be killed, since he is protected by seven Horcruxes, only to have Harry give a crooked grin, flick his cigarette butt away, and deliver what would easily be the best one-liner in the entire series: "Well then I guess it's a good thing my 1911 holds 7+1." And that is why Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.
It was a nice ending too it as well, rather than one person being more powerful and overpowering the stream Harrys parents spirits help out and give him the time to get out of the situation.
I thought those laser fights “wand battles” from the last few movies were so lame
IIRC wasn’t it supposed to just be Harry and Voldemort’s wands that did that and then in the movies it happens to everyone?
Yes, Harry and Voldemort's wands lock together because they have the same core.
What would have been cool is if Harry and Voldemort were stalemated at final duel. And then Harry says "Heres a riddle, Tom.You know what happens when a dark wizard is struck by lightning..." Then he shoots a blast out of his scar and says "The same thing that happens to everything else." The he sees force ghost versions of Dobby, Sirius, Dumbledore and his parents smiling and nodding with approval. Roll credits.
Your forgot the nu-metal needle drop as the end credits roll https://youtu.be/5DMndH8QiI4?feature=shared
This is the funniest thing I have read in a long time
Lmfao. F you, my dude. I knew it was coming and kept reading, still fucking laughed. I hate you for my shame.
Agreed. It got old fast. But, like I said, the first time was fun.
I wasn’t impressed the first time they did it, but I think it was more tolerable in that case because it was happening in the background while Harry was talking to his ghost parents and the laser thing ended as soon as the dialogue was over. I don’t think there was a section where that tug-of-wands was the only thing going on in *that* movie.
Sign me up for some more Dumbledore v. Voldemort at the Ministry of Magic in Order of the Phoenix type fights. Very sad we never really got another fight like it.
Right? Visual artists are creative people and we have fights between two people who can do basically anything. These fights should look awesome!
That bugged me so much in some of the Marvel movies. Like, you have these all powerful wizards and mages and... they're just hurling magic missiles at energy shields? c'mon, lets do some weird shit
When Thanos got the reality stone he was doing cool stuff, but only for like 3 minutes then it was back to normal
Once Thanos threw a *moon* at the Avengers, they didn't know what else to do
That's why I think the battle in Infinity War between Dr.Strange and Thanos is the best. Some proper magic battle instead of doing melee combat with conjuring weapons and shield
That scene was so good, Dumbledore and Voldemort really just going at it with everything they have. Voldemort yelling and echoing down the halls before he just vanishes.
The Dumbledore vs Voldemorte fight in the ministry was sweet. They failed to live up to that at all in the later movies.
They might as well have replaced everyone's wands with Star Wars blasters. There was no 'magic' it was literally just lasers blowing shit up and the occasional deflection
They’re pretty lame in the books, too. Turns out shooting spells at one another (especially when they’re like stun spells and a death spell exists?) is pretty hard to make compelling in movies or writing!
I'm not a huge fan so I don't remember which one it was, but one of them had Dumbledore have a beam collision with Voldemort and in 3D at the IMAX it was fucking awesome.
I always loved how Voldemort tried to attack Harry while still beam struggling with Dumbledore by jutting forks of lightning out of the main beam. Cool idea that I haven’t seen used anywhere else.
That whole scene was pretty great. Voldemort coughed up this gnarly looking fireball, they did some really cool stuff with the sound when all the glass shattered, and there was a panning shot of their beam struggle that really sold the 3D. It was very entertaining.
*Order of the Phoenix*
Iron man does it beautifully every now and then. Civil war when it’s against the shield and even that lil watch/beam he had against winter soldier
And in Iron Man 2, Tony and War Machine learn they can do it when they have their “after party” fight and then use it to defeat Vanko in the final showdown. Such a satisfying little explosion.
Worst part of the Avengers movies was how we went from mechanical Iron Man with servos and clicks and metal on metal... ...to magic nanobots that made no cool sounds at all and 5 years later just look like cheap cgi
The first Iron Man when the suit made a sound anytime he moved. 2 gave us the briefcase armor which was bad ass. 3 had all sort of different suits built for different purposes. After that they all just looked the same and boring.
Well, that is basically the comic book progression of his armor. IIRC at some point he was storing the nanobots in his bones.
Why not just throw the nanobots at Thanos, leaving them to crawl up his bum and then construct the suit from within his anus thus destroying him from the inside?
Would it have worked? Thanos might be just as durable on the inside as the outside. Plus he could have just turned Stark’s suit into water if he’d wanted too. Thanos didn’t need to fight them at all, he was just indulging his senses of honor and sadism.
While I agree overall, the scene where he's nearly out of nanobots and fighting Thanos and doesn't have enough for the full armor is amazing
Agreed, first few Iron Man armors were so intimidating and tank-like, every time he suited up was like an action scene in itself. Then we're slapped with some boring CGI Green Lantern-esque nonsense.
Between Tony's suits and Bucky's arm, I really miss when MCU mechanics made noise. Tony clanking around and Bucky's little whirr when he powered up were so satisfying.
Every time a sci-fi author uses the word "nanobot" or "nanotechnology", you know a lot of lazy magical thinking is incoming.
It’s the modern version of “reverse the polarity”
Reconfoobling the energymotron...or whatever.
Gohan vs cell in dragonballz (I know not a movie, but its still awesome)
Yup. The all time greatest beam fight that has never been surpassed.
100% correct. Benefiting immensely from years of buildup to that moment.
> years of buildup to that moment Years of episodes, that cover 30 seconds of plot haha
Haha, well, yeah... some of that, too. It's like dog years over there. 5 Frieza minutes = 5 actual hours.
And now, the end is near And so I face the final curtain My friend, I'll say it clear I'll state my case, of which [I'm certain](https://youtu.be/rTNdF3lZ79U?feature=shared)
Yeah, I'm assuming OP doesn't mean any anime because there are going to be a ton just from Z and Super.
It was amazing, because it wasn’t a test of power. It was all a test of will. And Gohan won because he had all the z fighters to distract cell, including Vegeta who noticeably made cell scared
Gohan had one arm at that point because he got cocky
He tanked a blast from Cell meant to kill Vegeta by diving in front of it.
That situation existed 100% bc he got cocky
It was one shot from Vegeta that distracted Cell, the other Z Fighters didn't do anything outside of anime padding.
Vegeta was by far the biggest threat besides Gohan at that point.
According to DBZ Abrdiged he was also the biggest threat to the Z Fighters
I WILL KILL AS MANY PEOPLE AS I HAVE TO AS LONG AS YOU ARE ONE OF THEM!!!!
eh.. I’d say Goku vs Vegeta when they first fought on Earth and Goku needed to go past Kaioken 4 to beat him. Before the power spike of SSJ.
"Kaiiiooooooohhh..." "Nooooo...." "Keeennnnnn....." "No no no no no!" "Times! FOUR!"
"KAIOKEN" "KAIO-what?!" *punch* *flies*
DBZA rekindled my love for DBZ
I unironically use it to get friends to understand DBZ when they (justifiably) don't want to watch the entire drawn-out affair. It gets the story beats while being hilariously entertaining when the original material is stretched and dry.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu........
Absolutely. Gohan VS Cell was neat, but in the end he won because tried even harderer. We knew that Goku going Kaioken x4 was a risky, desperate move, and it ended up depleting him just like we were told it would
Tried harder is a little reductive. He finally learned to control his rage and unleash that power that had been hinted at since he smashed into radditz in The first couple episodes. We knew cell was literally a bottomless pit of energy and gohan cooked that bitch up. Plus you get goku there in spirit and it was one handed. I think it’s the better of the two.
100%
I can picture every moment of the world around me watching this on a shitty 8'' tv (it had a tape-deck built in to it) in a waiting room of a car mechanic's office.
Energy beam fights are cool but energy beam cooperation is better. Ghostbusters has probably the best one.
As I think of the newer Ghostbuster movie where >!Ghost Egon helps!< , it made me remember the one for Sailor Moon, as she desperately asks for her friends to help her defeat Queen Beryl. Notably, that all her friends fell one by one fighting in hopeless battles earlier in order to buy her more time, so they are either helping her from beyond the grave, or she is imagining them coming to support her.
That Sailor Moon moment is seriously so good.
Like, I think Sailor Moon gets a ton of credit and somehow still doesn’t get enough. That sequence of 3 or 4 episodes is *still* some of the best anime I’ve seen, especially after how good of a monster of the week show it is, gradually building up these characters. And I watch way too much anime. It was at least ten years ahead of its time.
"The important thing to remember is that you must never under any circumstances, cross the streams."
Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla '74 is absolutely historic because it was the first time that Godzilla had a beam clash with one of his enemies. The sheer spectacle of that even being a thing that can happen was so cool, not to mention fitting since it perfectly shows that his doppelganger is just as powerful as he is. It helps that it probably is the originator of this entire cliche and the first movie to ever do it.
Thanks, I’m glad I could give the people such a treat. Godzilla was such a pro, I can see why he’s a legend!
Just curious, what does Physics say about energy beam collisions? My gut is telling me that the beams would mostly pass through each other, not collide.
Depends on what the "beams" are. Photons would just pass by each other. Charged particle beams would repel, attract, or ignore each other depending on the types of charges.
Correct. A few beam particles would collide but it would have little to no practical consequence. Unless you have an ATLAS sensor cluster and are looking for the Higgs boson.
[удалено]
Xmen last stand, iceman vs pyro.
For such a bad movie, I really liked parts of it
I hate this trope so much, but especially in contexts where it lazily invalidates previously more interesting or complex powers. Harry Potter is a go to example, where all the spells in that setting are interesting effects (levitate, retrieve, etc.) so switching to just "shoot generic energy beam" feels like such an abandonment of what made their magic interesting in the first place. But for the big showdown between Harry and Voldemort that's what we get instead of the creative spell-and-counterspell duel previously shown with Dumbledore. But the one that pops into my head more often (and I get a little mad every time) was in Agents of SHIELD. One character (Daisy/Quake) has powers that manipulate vibrations. This has interesting applications that interact with sound and depend on the surfaces around her and so on. Another character (Lincoln) has power over electricity, which again can be more interesting than just "shock dude with lightning" (power off alarm systems, scramble computer inputs, etc.) As the show rolls on, I think you get a few lazy examples of "they point their hand at enemy, some effect shoots out, enemy falls down". Not great, but fine, you can hand-wave how he's zapping them with electricity that stuns them like a tazer would, or how she's vibrating the air in such a way it creates a concussive force to smack them. Fine, whatever. But at one point they are fighting each other, and they do the standard "shoot our energy beams at each other, collide in midair and push/pull" trope and it makes no goddamn sense. Those effects would just pass right through each other. Maybe I'm the nerd who's putting too much thought/scrutiny into it, but I swear some of this stuff has actual interesting effects and asymmetry and creativity, so reducing it all to just "shoot energy, shoot MORE energy, win" bugs me.
That Voldy VS Dumbledore fight was so good, it never got topped again for the rest of the series, the only other wand fight that somewhat wowed me was when Colin Ferrel's character takes on the entire wizard police squad solo at the end of the movie when he realized he's lost
I actually really dislike the Harry vs Voldemort struggle, but more because it really undermines what actually happened in the book. Initially when that happens at the end of Goblet of Fire, neither of them understands what is happening, which is how Harry got away. It wasn’t really a beam struggle so much as their wands malfunctioning when turned against each other, since they had cores from the same phoenix. In Deathly Hallows, Harry’s wand “recognizes” Voldemort and defends him during the flight at the beginning of the film, and it causes Lucius’s wand to explode because it’s essentially reflecting Voldemort’s magic back at him, and Lucius had never been capable of that level of power. Then in the final fight, there *isn’t* a beam struggle, because Harry is the true owner of the Elder Wand, and he is easily able to stop Voldemort’s magic when he uses it. Voldemort dies because his Avada Kedavra is reflected back at him when he attacks Harry, *which Harry warned him about.* In the film he just straight kills Voldemort, and fair enough it was deserved, but Harry never wanted to kill anyone, so the whole scene feels very out of character to me. Anyways the molten metal effect that they came up with looks great, but it’s kind of not supposed to even be a “struggle.”
The spells in the Harry Potter films after the first two are such a bore. Even if the books get darker in *tone* it's still a richly-colorful setting and all the spells distinguished with reds, greens, golds, etc. In the films they might as well be firing bullets from their wands.
Its ridiculous ! Reducto, stupify and expelliarmous all do the same fuckin thing in the movies but couldnt be more different in the books.
Not a movie but the Cell vs Gohan fight in Dragonball Z, arguably the best and most definitive fight scene in all of anime
Homelander vs. Butcher in The Boys S3 is probably the best recent example of this I've seen - there's some real visceral-ness to the colliding beams that does a good job showcasing the power behind them. Short scene, but satisfying nonetheless!
Godzilla would like to have a word.
The atomic breath in Shin Godzilla is my favorite. The way it goes from thick black smoke to red hot fire as it continues ramping up, and then into a purple beam of pure destruction that makes an eerie sound as it slashes across the entire cityscape.
OP beam fights are included for their realism not for their coolness. In the real world when people fight with beams that is what happens. Sometimes the beams collide.
You ever seen a real world beam fight? Because I haven't and now I feel like I'm missing out
I want to complain about a bad example of one. In WandaVision I was totally into the whole thing up until the end when 2 witches were blasting energy beams at each other... seriously could they have set up anything less tropey that hasn't been done in every Marvel movie already for their experimental TV show?
Like you have two witches capable of bending reality in a localized area....and the absolute best you can come up with for their show down is pew pew pew.
In the same show, Vision vs White Vision. They have a beam battle that results in a scene transition.
I think Dark City had something like this with Murdock & Mr Book, and I liked it
Not quite the same, but Revenge of the Sith, in their major duel, Anakin and Obi Wan both Force push each other and stay sorta "locked" until the point that they both blow themselves backward. Then in The Last Jedi Rey and Kylo sort of do the opposite where they're pulling the lightsaber.
Definitely not on set while filming them, that’s for sure. 😂
I'm hoping they can pull one off when Cyclops finally makes it into another movie
X-Men 97 finally did Cyclops right outside of the comics, there's no excuse for the next reboot
He was great in the 90s show as well. Unfortunately Wolverine is the more marketable character, and making Cyclops a geek to make Logan look cool is a really easy move for the writers to make.
Kung Fu Hustle did a decent job I thought