Mark Wahlberg Talks To A Plant
What Happens: While on the run from a mysteriously apocalyptic event apparently caused by trees, Mark Wahlberg encounters a plant, and talks soothingly to his potential enemy to avoid a conflict.
Why It's Stupid: The reverse shot of the shimmering pot plant following one of Wahlberg’s trademark intense furrowed-brow looks is absurd, disastrous, and hilarious. It’s so entirely woeful nothing can replace seeing it for yourself .
Anti-Runner Robot
What Happens: On the run from a domed dystopian city, Logan and hot female companion Jessica encounter a deranged fish farming robot named, uh, Box, who attempts to process them into protein-rich food.
Why It's Stupid: The idea is kind of brilliant – a bit like if Wall-E started mindlessly processing people instead of trash – but the actuality is total cock. A giant silver man in a shiny dress jabbering on about plankton. This is the scariest robot they could think of? Really?
Kong Of The Dance
What Happens: On the loose in New York, having escaped from his Broadway captivity, the mighty gorilla King Kong is reunited with miniature love Ann Darrow and, ummm, takes her ice-skating on a frozen central park lake.
Why It's Stupid: We all love a monstrously mismatched animal/human romance, but this is a step too far. Kong sliding around the ice on his arse like a giant hairy toddler and playfully flicking snow into the face of the giggling Ann takes the tragic heart of the original film and turns it into a mutant remake of Pets Win Prizes.
Uhuras Fan Dance
What Happens: In order to distract the guards surrounding hostages in Paradise City, Lt Uhura performs an erotic feather-and-fan dance silhouetted by the twin moons of Nimbus III.
Why It's Stupid: Because even goons in intergalactic outlaw towns know that women don’t spontaneously erupt into seductive dance. And if the action scenes the later sequels asked of an increasingly rotund William Shatner were daft, then stripping off the late-50s Nichelle Nichols is equally ill-advised.
McLane On A Plane
What Happens: Escaping from an F-35 fighter jet using a big-rig lorry, Bruce Willis’ man-in-the-wrong-spot cop John McClane falls on to the wing of the low-flying plane which spirals out of control and explodes seconds after he jumps to safety.
Why It's Stupid: The whole point about having homing missiles that can kill anonymously from several miles away is that you don’t have to fly your more-expensive-than-God’s-summer-home jet to traffic level in order to get a clear line of fire.
Gymnastic Dino-Smasher
What Happens: At the climax of a dramatic chase sequence, the daughter of Jeff Goldblum’s science guy kicks a raptor to its death by swinging, parallel-bars style, from the masonry of a research hut.
Why It's Stupid: Because it seems unlikely that the human fight or flight reflex includes intricate subroutines about fending off prehistoric attackers with expressive gymnastics. Also, we’re calling foul for the architecture of that hut being just so with enough space for the necessary swinging. A clanger.
Free Falling
What Happens: The Douglas DC-3 plane flying Bond and new lady companion Camille over a suspect part of Bolivia is shot down by fighter jets. They survive using a single parachute by falling into a sink-hole.
Why It's Stupid: Because the immutable laws of physics state that two people sharing a single parachute invariably become lumpy puddles on impact, instead of fortuitously falling into a soft hole in the ground and dusting themselves off.
Legolas Surfing The Shield
W hat Happens: After Sauron’s army penetrate the outer wall at the battle of Helm’s Deep, nimble elf Legolas comes to rescue his pals by riding a shield down the battlement steps, rapid-firing arrows as he goes.
Why It's Stupid: Even in the name of action, it's dreadfully misjudged. The machine-gun archery from smug, slap-headed Orlando Bloom rips the mostly dead-on atmosphere of Jackson’s super-faithful trilogy to campy bits. He might as well have had a sodding lightsabre.
Parker Strikes A Pose
What Happens: Having partially bonded with the naughty symbiote Venom, Peter Parker becomes a bit of a prick, growing a fringe and, in one particular sequence, using his spidey powers to do a jazz-dance at Mary Jane’s nightclub.
Why It's Stupid: The Venom stuff was one plot strand too far anyway for Raimi’s overwrought threequel, but if you’re going to do it, do it properly.
That means not showing Peter Parker’s moral degradation through the medium of goddam bodypopping.
Tropical Three-Way
What Happens: Brought together by the at-this-point-unfathomable machinations of the plot, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Miles off of This Life have a three-way sword fight on an exotic island.
Why It's Stupid: Because, purely logistically speaking, the fight is utter balls: anyone at any time could just stab one of the other two going at it.
But mostly it’s because they’re fighting over the key to the chest containing Davey Jones’ still-alive heart, which is exactly the sort of literalist stupidity that sunk what should have been a brilliant trilogy.
