6 Movies That Didn't Realize They Let The Villain Win
Not every movie can end with the main villain being punched, electrocuted, smashed by a fire truck and dropped on a conveyor belt, like in Con Air. (Unfortunately.) We understand that.
What we don't understand are the movies where the writers seemed to forget about the bad guys completely.
#6.
The Rest of the Aliens from Independence Day
In Independence Day, the film that inaugurated Roland Emmerich's obsession with seeing America destroyed, the bad guys are a "far more advanced" form of intelligent life that looks like something the Queen from Aliens gave birth to after getting drunk with Predator.
ALF just... stared.
These guys packed quite a lunch bag for their Independence Day barbecue: spaceships the size of Hawaiian islands, shields that could withstand the nuclear bombing of Houston, weapons capable of leveling Washington D.C. in a single blast, plus all the information about human anatomy they could possibly probe out of Randy Quaid's asshole.
But, after pancaking dozens of cities, a rag-tag group of humans cause each and every one of the alien ships to crash, the thousands of people who were no doubt crushed under each one a small price to pay for victory.
But We Forgot About...
Let's be generous and assume that every one of the alien city-destroying mother ships was downed. Do you have any idea how large a 15-mile-wide spaceship is? Each one is like a flying city, 1,000-stories high and about 100 blocks wide in every direction. And while New York may not have been designed to have giant spaceships fall on it, we have to imagine the space crafts had been designed with a contingency plan for gravity.
We're not sure how many troops and crew were on board each, but we know each one housed an entire air force worth of those little fighter craft.
Speaking of which, any aliens who happen to be sitting in one of those crafts is probably going to make it. We saw earlier that an alien shot out of the sky was able to survive. And by survive we mean it hot wired a human brain and had a conversation with the fucking President after going through a crash-landing, a cold cock delivered by none other than Will Smith, and being cut in half on an operating table.
"Wow, he went down really easy. It's almost like he wants me to take his unconscious body to my leader."
Take into account the weaponry the aliens will be able to recover from their downed ships, and we have a District 9 situation on our hands... only we're the ones herded into camps.
And we can't quite rock a red vest.
#5.
The Libyans from Back to the Future
Let's disregard for a moment all of the numerous problems we have with the "happy" ending of Back to the Future. Let's grant the filmmakers that everything wrapped itself up perfectly; Marty is happy, parents are happy, Biff is their slave.
All he wants is a case of Schlitz and time to forget.
It's so easy to get wrapped up in the Biff Tannens and time paradoxes as the main obstacles to be overcome that we forget the guys who should have kept Marty McFly up late at night.
But We Forgot About...
The Libyan terrorists Doc Brown ripped the plutonium from. You know, the armed, pissed off terrorists driving freely through Hill Valley, who wanted Doc Brown to build a nuclear bomb for them.
Ho-hum.
Take a close look at that VW van. These guys pack more wallop in there than the collected drug cartels in Breaking Bad and The Wire. These Libyans have AK-47s, RPGs, a shoot-first policy, tracking abilities that baffle even the guy who perfected time travel, and... oh, fucking plutonium.
This is some Tom Clancy shit right here.
OK, so Marty hooks up with his mom and warns Doc about the Libyans, which he takes as his cue to dig up a bulletproof vest capable of stopping assault-rifle slugs at point-blank range. Good for him. They then take off in their van and chase Marty in the Delorean. When Marty disappears back in time, the van crashes into a one-hour photo stand. Then... what?
...they back up, drive to Marty and shoot him in the face?
Nothing happens. Seriously, there are no terrorists flying through windshields; no RPGs going off; no big cathartic explosion to justify the use of the word "bomb" in the movie. All we see is the van kind of tip over, but sustain the abuse like any good, German-made car was built to. But when Marty returns from the past to check on Doc, they have an emotional reunion that completely ignores the fact that there is a dented van full of terrorists right over there.
If it can survive hippies, it can survive anything.
Hell, even if the van burst into flames and vaporized the gunmen, there's no way those few guys represented the entirety of their terror cell. This is a group serious enough to sneak into the U.S., obtain military-grade weapons and goddamned weapons-grade plutonium. You know, the stuff that no terrorists and only a few militaries have ever been able to get their hands on. If anything, Back to the Future is a cautionary tale about how disastrously vulnerable small U.S. towns were to terrorism during the Reagan years.
And how vulnerable the terrorists were to crimes of Chronomancy.
#4.
Death Proof
Tarantino's Death Proof is actually two stories: the story of the psychotic Stuntman Mike harassing a group of ladies, and the story of Stuntman Mike harassing a (different) group of ladies (who fight back and kill him). This is about the latter.
The former didn't last long.
This part of the story is a girl-power picture which focuses on a white 1970 Dodge Challenger that our heroines hope to borrow for a dangerous game called "Ship's Mast."
They borrow the car from a scary-looking dude, and eventually use that car to get their revenge on Stuntman.
But We Forgot About...
Mike is just one of two. That white 1970 Dodge Challenger our heroines have their sights on is being offered for sale by a hardcore Tennessee "son of the soil" named Jasper. Bear in mind that Jasper is played by Jonathan Loughran, who you may remember as the trucker who tried to rape Uma Therman in Kill Bill, Vol 1. He's basically the same character here, right down to his trademark pre-rape "heh heh."
Nothing can go badly here.
Our heroines have no intention of buying the car, but nevertheless finagle their way into getting Jasper to let them take the hog for a spin by offering their single hottest friend as collateral. To sweeten the deal, they even point out that she's a porn actress as a nudge-nudge that she might be down for some intercourse while they're out. Oh, and they never mention any of this to her. Oh, and she's wearing this:
And the last we ever see of her is this:
What the hell were they expecting to find when they came back, especially after that little porn actress lure they used? The cheerleader and the hillbilly playing chess?
Even if they come back and the cheerleader is, somehow, still intact, there's the little matter of her girlfriends leaving her behind as collateral. You know, in case something bad happens to the Dodge Challenger, like maybe an on-and off-road duel with a homicidal stuntman.
By the end of the film the car is completely totaled, so what does that mean? Does the hillbilly get to keep the cheerleader (or her mutilated corpse, as the case may be)?
You forgot that in "The Silence Of The Lambs" and "Hannibal," Dr. Lecter made his escape at the movie's end. Talk about a bad guy who won the contest!
Reply--RKJ
I don't think it's so much as forgetting about Hannibal as it is that Silence of the Lambs doesn't fit into the list. See, this article is titled, "6 Movies That Didn't Realize They Let The Villain Win", and has a number of movies where we see some bad guys get their comeuppance, yet the rest of the organization is still there. This article is about how the writers forgot to notice the bad guys are still out there, able to go on with their lives getting revenge. Seeing how the last scene in Silence of the Lambs is of Lector walking down the street after a love call to Clarisse, I don't think the writers forgot that he had still won.
When the alien ships crashed on the cities in Independence Day they weren't very populated, (the latter half of the movie shows this when the aliens, yknow, destroy everything. Washington is viewed as a wasteland). Anyways, the ships also exploded from the inside out, before they crashed, so there wouldn't be much chance for survival. You should give Independence Day a watch..
ReplyMeh, the americans exploded one of the ships, there were a lot floating around, still wondering why was it a bad idea to buy that discount mcaffee antivirus.
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ReplyUm, the alien in Independance day wasn't cut at all in the lab. That was just a suit it was wearing that they sliced in to. A few dead ones are shown in tubes and are much scrawnier and smaller.
ReplyRE: Death Proof, assuming Mary Elizabeth Winstead is still OK when the rest return with the now trashed charger, they may have to pay some pretty hefty damages, but I don't think they're in any physical danger. Zoe Bell, who is basically playing herself, kicks his ass if he tries anything. And for those who might object that even a badass stuntwoman is going to have trouble with a man considerably bigger and stronger than she is, you have to consider that this isn't real life, this is a badass stuntwoman in a Tarantino movie, meaning Bell takes out Billy Bob and his entire family of redneck cannibals by herself.
ReplyAlso, keep in mind that Winstead is a classic "final girl" type - literally; she's played the final girl in at least two horror movies - if this is a family of inbred cannibals, she's the one who's going to survive in the end.
"Also, keep in mind that Winstead is a classic "final girl" type - literally; she's played the final girl in at least two horror movies"
Not counting her small role in Ring 2, she played in three (The Thing, Black Christmas, Final Destination 3). And SHE DIED IN ALL OF THEM!
So, yeah, I hope her friends have a good time explaining to Mary's parents how they left Mary to be raped and mutilated because they wanted to go for a joyride.
She was in the shitacular The Thing remake and she was the final girl in that. Plus in FD3 they just kinda suggest her impending doom. Knowing those movies she'll probably show up 5 movies later completely crippled.
I remember a Saturday Night Live skit that covered #2: Uncle Billy remembers the Mr. Potter stole the money, prompting the town to form a lynch mob and beat the crap out of Potter (who it turns out was faking being crippled and could actually walk the entire time). Even watching it as a little kid, I thought it sounded like a good idea.
ReplyI don't think a single writer for Cracked has watched "Independence Day" all the way through. That WAS the entire aliens' civilization. Their whole population is in that mother ship which moves from planet to planet like locusts.
ReplyI hate locust.
Mr Potter doesn't win. George Bailey is the single person keeping Bedford Falls from becoming Potterville and Potter knows it. That everyone would come in and bail him out shows that the community ties are stronger than he thought when he stole the 8k. Potter is totally sitting there on a burnt out a*****e with no soothing lotion to rub on it.
ReplyTo me, one factor is that only a short period of time has passed since Potter got the money and the end of the movie. There hasn't been much time for the fallout to happen and it likely happened after the final credits ran. Plus, Potter called the law on Bailey and the question's going to be asked is how Potter knew the money was missing.
Um, did everyone miss the part about how the ships were downed? They were shot up through their main beam, and blew up from the inside out. You can see the explosions blowing out all over the ship. The suckers didn't just crash, they blew the hell up. I don't think most of the aliens are going to live through that. How many of them do you think live in their battle armor on the main ship? Assuming the armor could protect them, only a fraction of all the aliens would reasonable be wearing it.
ReplyExcept we see giant heaps of flaming, smouldering wreckage in the sequences after Goldblum and Smith land. Some of the aliens could survive, and the humans undoubtedly just killed huge numbers of their own people by dropping fiery death wreckage on them.
I am this person; The Alien in Independence day isn't cut in half. He's cut out of a semi organic(looking?) space/flight suit. You actually see the 'exposed' Alien corpses earlier in the film(from the Area 51 crash in the fifties), and also the scientists doing the cutting say out loud 'this is a sort of flight suit we're cutting in to'
Reply#2 Seriously. It has an underlying 'don't expect too much out of life message' even worse than the wizard of oz.
ReplyRe: Death Proof, heck they already made Machete, so maybe Revenge Of The Innocent Cheerleader is next. But please, make it x-rated!
ReplyMay it only suck a quarter as much as Machete did.
The Libyans in Back To The Future didn't have the plutonium, Doc Brown did, and that's why they were after him to start with.
ReplyErm, the Libyans actually stole the Plutonium and gave it to Doc Brown demanding him to make a bomb for them. Instead he made them a phony bomb, which is why they come after him to kill him and presumably get their Plutonium back.
You are absolutely right, and while Gavmeister is correct in his more detailed description, I don't know why he seems to think you're wrong in anything you said. He must just be a douche.
Have you actually SEEN "Independence Day", Jacopo? This was so badly researched I thought it was written by Christina H.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesThe alien is not cut in half, as is clearly described by Brent Spiner's dialogue; he's wearing armor. In fact, when Spiner cuts the damn thing slightly and it pops open (along a SEAM), you can tell it's a helmet. Because it has a m***********g HEAD in it.
Further, the alien ship doesn't resist the affect of a nuclear blast; its SHIELDS do so. They also explain that the aliens use some form of broadcast power to their smaller fighter craft, so bringing down a mother ship brings down the fighters.
The scary thing is that I've only seen the movie twice and I apparently remember more than you do. Was Wikipedia offline or something?
You're reading too much into comedic flair.
Yeah, but isn't there still an army of aliens in each one of those ships? An army of aliens that are now going to run out and f**k everyone who didn't get crushed by the giant ship? Plus I'm pretty sure that the alien invaders showed up with more than their little planes.
Now I kinda wanna see "The day after Independence Day". No more fighter jets, just urban combat against aliens that can control our brains.
Except the aliens aren't bullet proof, either. ChriRivan is right, the Alien is cut out of a kind of flight suit/armour and the Alien's from the fifties are EXPLICITLY STATED as having died in in THE CRASH.
So we do actually get told that they are vulnerable to crashing (the alien who crashed during the chase with Will Smith actually sort of...skidded, rather than impacted, think how many planes that have managed a similar kind of landing have been okay while planes that impact at an angle just shatter).
We also SEE for a fact that the Aliens are vulnerable to human guns, AND that every little ship is only protected while their...I guess hive ship, is protected. So when their shields go down it's just a case of shooting the rest out of the sky, then shooting in the f*****g head any aliens who emerge, as they are in no way indestructible, just a little harder to get at.
Also it's stated that the Aliens entire civilisation lives on these ships, both the city ships and the Mothership. . There is no home planet of mother and children Aliens waiting for their brave fightin' men to come home since every last alien was on the mothership and therefore a vast quantity of their population is already dead, presumably including their highest ranking/strongest leaders.
I always assumed that as an apparently hive minded species, the loss of the mothership and their leaders, as well as the city ships, would be pretty damaging to the drone/fighter Aliens left behind, so even if they could survive the crashes(unlikely, again, since the Area 51 aliens died in the crash aside from one who died a few days later...from injuries sustained in the crash) would be sort of..at least a little out of it? Injuries would be common and for all intents and purposes they've just been made blind and deaf.
With say, bees, if the queen dies the bees do s**t in the hive that basically forces the growth of a new queen bee. Assume these are even remotely similar (and they seem to be a bit similar at least) and you have a bunch of drones who have no hive to return to and thus no way to create a new queen or leader or what ever. They'd be pretty easy pickin's for a bunch of pissed off humans who just saw about a third of Earth's population get wiped out.
^I don't remember the movie saying they were a hive mind race. If anything the implication with the captive alien's telepathic ability went the other way to say they individual aliens could operate independently.
Oh, look, a dig at Christina H. How new and edgy.
You might want to add that the aliens have some pretty s****y armor, too- particularly if Will Smith can punch it in the helmet and knock its ass out.
Uncle Billy was so goddamn worthless. Hell, George could've left years ago if not for the fact that Uncle Billy is too stupid to run the bank.
ReplyThe bit about Independence day can also be said about Cowboys and Aliens. By the way before I forget SPOILERS.
ReplyBasically, whatsherface, who's also an alien (because freaken EVERYONE and their brother was an alien in that movie...or at least that's what it felt like) blows up the mining operation building before it could take off because "they'll come back with more, and there will be no survivors."
Um...excuse me...what do you think the United States Military would do if they suddenly lost contact with one of it's many overseas military posts? It's the same premise behind the Empire in Star Wars sending all of those drones. "The drone we sent to *planet* isn't responding...we might want to check it out".
I happen to know that there is a deleted scene from "Wonderful Life" where the angel visits Mr. Potter and tells him about George Bailey making it through the crisis, giving Potter a heart attack and thus killing him. The director cut the scene because he thought it was too dark. I was honestly hoping to see how Mister Potter responded at the end of the movie, which is why I was disappointed that this scene was deleted.
ReplyThat scene from Death Proof remains one of the more disturbing things I've seen. It's so obvious that the redneck is going have his dirty, perverse way with her. What makes it so sick is that, well, for starters, it's Mary Elizabeth Winstead. She's one of the sweetest looking girls and she altogether seems pretty innocent in the film. But the worst is that it was her own c**t friends that set her up. Why? Just so they can go joyriding. What'd she do to deserve that fate? The fact that the film ends with them being heroes is kind of undermined by that they instigated and endorsed a rape. I'd like to see a sequel where she stalks and butchers each one for revenge.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI second that mate
Somebody send Tarantino a memo. Lord knows he could use the work...
If Tarantino had been a little more crafty with his casting choices and scripting, he could have promoted Death Proof as a prequel to Kill Bill...
Do anyone knows Blofeld is actually... the cat?
Reply#6: I thought that WAS their entire race.
Reply