There was more to it, though. Early on, Master Splinter says to his kids: "You are ninja, you must always practice the art of invisibility," and, holy fuck, he was obviously talking about this fight. Clearly, the turtles couldn't take on Super Shredder head-on so they'd have to spread out and attack him from the shadows, slowly chipping away at him like a Dark Souls boss, presumably with non-meat nunchucks. Yup, this fight would finally bring the entire movie together.

The Actual Fight:

Shredder pushes Leonardo and then collapses the entire boardwalk, which crushes him to death. The end. The fuck?

It's actually amazing just how much potential was wasted here, not just action-wise, but also in terms of story development. By showing the temperamental TEENAGE turtles take their time to carefully ninja Shredder in the dick, the movie would actually end on a fantastic message about how skill and patience can triumph over brute force. Instead, the movie decided it'd be funnier to promise to shower us in gold only to then deliver a golden shower of disappointment straight into our expecting mouths.

Even Shadowcat gets to show off her phasing powers when she passes through a guy, grabs him from behind, and uses his momentum to slam him into the ground. I loved that because it was the kind of action scene WE NEVER SEE in movies, and I'm all about experiencing new things (don't tell my wife) especially when they are magic mutant aikido.

20th Century Fox
Apropos of nothing, did you know the comic book Shadowcat dated, and then became, Star-Lord? You can HAVE that one, internet.

That's why I was so excited when Juggernaut -- a mutant (don't, comic book nerds) who cannot be stopped once he starts running -- was sent to kill the mutant child that can "cure" mutants, and Shadowcat ran to stop him.

I could see it all then: Shadowcat would phase through the walls, baiting Juggernaut to come at her as she hastily phased through different parts of him and the environment, attacking from every possible and impossible angle, pulling him through the floor etc. Essentially, it'd be an epic David and Goliath battle between an unstoppable force and the intangible object. It not only would be the most original superhero fight ever, it'd work on so many levels, what with the tiny Shadowcat being the only person who can stop the massive Juggernaut. Ultimately, it'd serve as a counterpart to the purely physical combat we'd seen until now, which was pretty good. There was no way the movie could mess this up.

20th Century Fox
"Don't you know who I am? I'm X3, bitch!"

The Actual Fight:

Shadowcat pulls Juggernaut through the floor, he gets loose, then he gets close to the power-cancelling child, and knocks himself out on a wall.

Bull-fucking-shit. What we should have gotten was an even more kick-ass version of the White House fight scene from X2, only between two mutants who can literally walk through walls. Also, one of them is Vinnie Jones. If missing out on this serving of crazy-awesome juice doesn't piss you off, then clearly I'm talking to Brett Ratner, the movie's director, in which case let me just say: START MAKING BETTER MOVIES, BRETT. You can only rest on the laurels of Rush Hour 2 for SO LONG.

In light of this, I was actually pumped for the fight between Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and Bison (Raul Julia). This thing is foreshadowed from the very first few minutes of the movie AND it features an actual martial artist plus one of the greatest actors who ever lived. It's true that Julia was dying from cancer around this time but if they just had him act with his face and voice while letting JCVD do midair splits, this fight could have induced a wave of news stories about parents being terrified that their kids were going to potentially recreate it. And being scared that your kids are going to try it is the Badass Fight Scene Nobel Prize.

The Actual Fight:

Julia can barely lift his arms and legs while JCVD is basically doing battle ballet on his face. Most of Bison's moves include love-tap slaps which according to Julia's face are 100 times more painful for him. Because they probably were. Within the first few seconds, the whole thing quickly goes from a "fight" to "a 30-something-year-old viciously beating a guy in his 50s with cancer."

Even when Bison starts flying and gains the power of force lightning, he is still barely able to move, flying in a straight line at Guile until JCVD finally puts the guy out of his misery. In the end, the only winner here is the owner of the booze shop I hit whenever I finish watching this scene.

RoboCop 3 seemed to get it. The movie is essentially about a private police force forcibly relocating slum residents to other locations and/or the afterlife, and there are lots of really good gun fights between the two factions. And once CyborgPeacekeeper finally arrives, he is the puckered-lip tank we all love, getting showered by damage confetti without a care, even being set on fire at one point and STILL MOVING FORWARD. So when the movie introduces the Otomo, a nimble, Japanese robot ninja, it seems to foreshadow a fantastic fight scene.

Orion Pictures
Plus a great opportunity for someone to say "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto."

Their fight practically wrote itself. MechaFive-O would have to Gun Kata the whole thing, turning the battleground into a precisely-calculated Bullet Hell, which the Otomo would naturally deflect with his sword. In close combat, the Otomo would understandably land a lot of blows on AutomatPolice, maybe even do some real damage over time. But that would only add to iLEO's Terminator-ness as he slowly gets taken apart but still KEEPS MOVING FORWARD, driven by both his human spirit and his robotic constitution. Hell, a child could write this. Or a very talented dog that had seen Robocop 2.

The Actual Fight:

Did ... did a child/ultra dog write this? The whole fight is basically one giant robo cop-out, mainly because MachineLawEnforcer isn't allowed to use his gun. Well, he does use it in the end to kill the Otomo in one unsatisfying shot, but before that, he gets knocked down immediately while the Otomo slices off his hand and immobilizes the walking Abrams tank with an oversized butter knife. Oh, wait, he also did some meh-like backflips so I guess it all evened out.

It really should go without saying, but stopping ComputerOfficer has to be a big deal. Here, it just happens, without any weight being given to the situation. Even in a later scene, when Copper2.0 gets a jetpack and fights TWO Otomo, the robots easily topple him by jumping around like ASIMO on cocaine. Then they get hacked by a genius child all while ApplianceConstable, yup, just fucking lies there immobilized. Roll credits. Fuck this.