Let’s explain the parameters: this is not a list about the “best” moments, or the “awesome” moments. This is a list about those moments in Geek Cinema where the gauntlet gets thrown down, everything changes… and sh*t gets real (a phrase I’ve been told I can’t pull off, which makes it even funnier to me.) There’s for sure scenes that I wanted to include here that I couldn’t fit because, well, you’ve gotta cap the list somewhere. Also, this is my list and therefore totally subjective. You’re gonna agree with me, disagree with me, think I left stuff off, think I shouldn’t have put stuff on… and I want to hear all about it in the comments below because I LOOOVE a good convo about stuff like this. So pull up a chair, get your popcorn, and take a gander. ‘Cuz sh*t’s about to get REAL. Son.
10. Tony Stark Busts Out the Briefcase Armor (Iron Man 2) – The first Iron Man is infinitely better than the second, I know that. But this might actually be my favorite part of both Iron Man movies. It’s just got that vibe. You know, that “Hey, whip guy! You trashed my race car, you sliced up my Beamer, you threatened my personal assistant/love interest, you frightened my driver/director, but now I’m gonna Transformerize this briefcase, mighty-morph into Iron Man, and kick your ASS!” vibe. THAT vibe.
9. Wolverine Goes Berzerk (X2: X-Men United) – “Okay, guys, here’s the plan: there’s this mansion full of super-powered kids and their grown-up guardians, most of whom also double as a paramilitary superhero strike force. We’re going to invade that mansion with night vision goggles and tranq darts, which should totally be enough to sneak in and take over the place unscathed. Any questions?”
“Yes, sir; any chance one of the grown-up superheroes might be around, maybe one with super-sensitive hearing, foot-long knives sticking out of his hands, and a propensity to go into a wild-man berzerker-killing bloodlust when cornered or threatened?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is going to be fine. Nobody’s going to leap off a balcony and slaughter a bunch of us in a display of sheer comic book awesomeness. Okay, let’s go!”
8. “All right! This Chick Is TOAST!” (Ghostbusters) – This is an example of the gold that is sometimes spun when great performers are allowed to improvise, because what’s written in the screenplay is miles behind what we actually get on-screen when it’s time for the GB’s to man up:
“Grab your stick!”
“Holdin!”
“Heat ’em up!”
“Smokin!”
“Make ’em hard!”
“Ready!”
“Let’s show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown. THROW IT!”
7. “I’m Batman” (Batman Begins) – I could have gone with the arguably more iconic Michael Keaton version of this, from Tim Burton’s ’89 Batman. I didn’t. Here’s why: 1.) I think the Nolan/Bale Batman films are better, simply put. 2.) Keaton says it to some random no-name thug. Bale says it to mob boss Carmine Falcone. Where do you think the message has the greater impact? 3.) The Keaton line comes at the top of the film. The Bale line comes almost halfway through, after we’ve seen Bruce Wayne take the long journey to BECOME Batman. So when Bale’s Dark Knight pulls Falcone through the roof of the limo and tells him who he is, we believe him wholeheartedly; we were there when it happened. When Keaton says it, we have to take his word for it.
6. Hit-Girl Says the “C” Word and Then Kills A Bunch of Guys (Kick-Ass) – Kick-Ass is, ostensibly, about Kick-Ass, but we all know the truth: when Hit-Girl shows up she blasts the movie into overdrive, stealing the rest of the film as she goes. I mean, c’mon. The titular hero spends the first third of the flick as a naïve daydreaming loser fanboy with a MySpace account getting his butt handed to him seven ways from Sunday until an eleven year-old girl sticks a ginsu knife through the chest of that dreadlocked thug, utters the most profane of profanities, and then puts the ol’ slice-and-dice to everyone else in the room, showing Kick-Ass (and all of us) how it’s done.
5. Kirk Sits Down (Star Trek ’09) – About 3 minutes into seeing the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek I sent a text message to my friend Danny, the biggest Trek fan I know, and I remember the text verbatim: “This is the best Star Trek anything ever.” Abrams’ Trek was very much a getting-the-band-together movie. Spock, Uhura, Bones, Scottie, Chekov, Sulu; everything old is new again. But none of them matter, really. What’s a Star Trek tale without a captain capable of overcoming insurmountable odds? Or, you know, without a captain at all? So when the neophyte crew of the newly-commissioned Starship Enterprise NCC-1701 find themselves staring down the barrel of a mysterious and unbeatable foe, without that captain or even a first officer, what’s the only thing to be done, that MUST be done, to make Star Trek, Star Trek? James T. Kirk sits down, for the first time in this new continuity, in the captain’s chair and takes command of the USS Enterprise, and a new era of boldly going where no man has gone before was truly and finally launched. Romulan Bruce Banner didn’t stand a chance.
4. Peter Chases Down Uncle Ben’s Killer (Spider-Man) – Say it with me: with great power comes great responsibility, part of which is the responsibility of wielding that power without allowing it to corrupt. It’s the hammered-into-our-heads mantra on which the entire Spider-Man mythos is based. This is the one place in the Raimi films where we see the anger, the fury, the potential of what Peter Parker could do with his newfound abilities were he to give in to his darker urges. Running down an alley, shedding clothes to reveal his makeshift costume, scaling walls, swinging recklessly down the streets of Manhattan after the killer’s car, holding the man at his mercy… that alone could make this a sh*t-getting-real moment. But it’s the restraint he shows here, in one of the moments were the Raimi Spider-trilogy just works perfectly, that defines for us where this man’s reality and character are going to lie.
3. The Toys Join Hands (Toy Story 3) – I may be pushing the boundaries of “geek cinema” with this one (although I’d argue one can’t much geekier and awesome than Pixar), but whenever I tried to whittle down this list I just couldn’t bring myself to take this off of it. For just this one moment, when this group of toys, this family, is on a conveyor belt in the dump, trapped in a sea of refuse and being swept inexorably towards the blast furnace… as they face the destiny that awaits so many forgotten toys, disposal and destruction and incineration… when they realize that hope is lost and the strongest, bravest thing they can do is meet their end, together… in this moment I believed, at least for a split second or two, that Disney/Pixar was actually going to do it. I believed, as plastic hand clutched plastic hand, that they were going to end the trilogy of their greatest films by allowing these beloved characters to die. And if I, someone who analyzes story beats when watching a movie instead of getting lost in the tale, could be convinced even for a moment that this was how a Disney animated feature was going to end, then I couldn’t possibly leave that moment off this list.
1. Clark Kent Opens His Shirt (Superman) – Superman is not my favorite hero and Superman is not my favorite movie. But I have to recognize: Lois dangled off of the roof of the Daily Planet building right out of a scene from “When Helicopters Attack”, Clark meandered out of the office, picked Lois’s hat off the ground, looked up into the sky, realized what was going on, ran to a useless telephone stall, high-tailed it across the street towards a revolving door… and as he went, he pulled aside his tie and pulled open his shirt, revealing the iconic red and yellow “S” shield emblazoned on blue across his chest, and the world of geek cinema was changed forever.
For real.
Tom Hoefner (@TomHoefner on Twitter) is a playwright, theatre director, college professor, and would-be novelist living in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter. Just as much as he wants you to follow him on Twitter he’d love for you to check out “From the Casefiles of Race and Cookie McCloud”, a blog of super-short stories chronicling the adventures of Race McCloud, Private Eye, and his 15-year old former-secret-agent-in-training niece Cookie: http://raceandcookie.blogspot.com/
0. Tony Stark Gets a Surprise Visit (Iron Man) – I lied. THIS is the best moment of the Iron Man movies, and it established the “Marvel movies ain’t over ’til the credits are over” trend. It was surprising enough, for most of us, that an Iron Man movie was not only good but pretty much awesome and able to go toe-to-toe with the best of the best of the superhero genre. But then after the credits, we get two things: Samuel L. Jackson, and our minds blown. Forget the Iron Monger. Everything that came in the two and a half hours of Iron Man prior got lost in the wake of this one geek-dreams-come-true line of dialogue: “Nick Fury. Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. I’m here to talk to you about the Avenger Initiative.”
“do I look like a cop?!”
“how ’bout a magic trick?”
“I AM Iron Man.”
Good list otherwise.
Also, I find it difficult to accept you didn’t include: “Ice to meet you.”
What’s “Do I look like a cop” from? The “Amazing Spider-Man” trailer? But the other two… right on!
And I’ve got a whoooole story about “Batman and Robin” coming one of these weeks. Uggh…
“do I look like a cop?!” is a query Batman poses to a corrupt cop hanging upside down in ‘Begins’. I assume it’s a rhetorical question.
I think you missed the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.
I absolutely did! My list is very contemporary; then again, I was born in ’78, so if we’re dealing with what I’m going to throw out there, what left an impact on me… besides, a lot of what we’d consider “geek” cinema didn’t really encapsulate what one might refer to as good storytelling until the late mid-to-late 70’s, I’d argue. B-movies are kitschy fun, but the birth of the well-made fantasy-adventure film really took place with “Star Wars”.
But, hey, I’ve got “Superman” on there. “Ghostbusters”, too. (Just not “Ghostbusters 2”.)
Please, feel free to tell us which films from those decades you’d cited, which moments, you’d add to the list.
