We're expecting the two of them to collide in a 17-megaton karate-fist explosion powerful enough to spontaneously incinerate every single VHS copy of The Karate Kid on the planet. MC Hammer will probably have to write a whole other rap song just about their fight, in addition to the one he already contributed to the soundtrack, and this was back in 1990, when a statement like that meant adding another $200,000 to your film's budget, as opposed to the airport brunch and "Great Job, Hammer!" sticker it would cost today. However, rather than engage in a tornado of raw martial arts talent that would've reversed the Earth's rotation and sent us all back in time like in Superman: The Movie, Splinter just judo-flips the Shredder right over the lip of the brownstone, dropping him several stories down into a trash compactor where his probably-already-dead body is crushed into jellied oblivion.

New Line Cinema

New Line Cinema

Not even Sam Rockwell could cure that disappointment, because when I was 7 years old I didn't know who the hell Sam Rockwell was.

New Line Cinema
Sam Rockwell didn't even know who Sam Rockwell was.

Gladiator is a movie about a guy who fights people for a living and then gets screwed out of his retirement and forced to fight even more people until everyone in the ancient world has been stabbed to death by Russell Crowe. There are tiger battles, chariots that chop people in half, Muscle & Fitness models swinging spiked flails into people's faces, and more theatrical impalement than The Running Man and the Mortal Kombat movie combined. A film as overloaded with assbeat as Gladiator should have nothing short of a monster truck rally for its final sequence.

Dreamworks/Universal

Instead, Joaquin Phoenix challenges Russell Crowe to a duel in the middle of the Roman Colosseum. Which is fine, really -- we've spent almost three hours watching Joaquin make Russell's life as shitty as he possibly can by systematically murdering Russell's family and all of his friends. Closing the show with the two of them in an epic sword fight seems more than appropriate. Even better, Joaquin sneaks in and mortally wounds Russell before the fight even starts, leaving Russell stumbling around dead on his feet. That's like Ted DiBiase throwing powder into the Macho Man's eyes while the referee's back is turned. They could've ended the movie right there and told everyone in the audience that Russell needed our applause in order to defeat Joaquin Phoenix but the only way to help him was to buy the final fight for $39.99 on pay-per-view and most of us would've done it.

Dreamworks/Universal
"He also needs each one of you to buy CDs of his terrible, terrible music!"

But the movie continues rolling, so we all settle in for what is sure to be a nail-biting finale. The bell rings, and Russell immediately begins smacking Joaquin around like an angry stepfather looking for his stolen pornography.

Dreamworks/Universal

Joaquin barely lands a single blow. Russell disarms him, backhands him all over the place like John McEnroe, and then stabs him in the throat with his own dagger.

Dreamworks/Universal

The fight is over so quickly, even Russell seems upset and confused.

Dreamworks/Universal
"It makes me feel like singing. People would watch a three-hour movie about me singing, right?"

Penguin presses the button on the remote, releasing a swarm of giant bats that send him stumbling backward through a skylight 50 feet down into an aquarium in a hailstorm of glass. Evidently Batman tricked him by labeling the remote "Press This Button to Immediately Win Everything."

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

The Penguin heaves himself out of the water about 10 minutes later to gurgle out a depressing joke, fall flat on his face, and die. Batman barely had to do anything -- the Penguin just bumbles his way into a spectacular calamity like Super Dave Osborne and winds up killing himself.

Warner Bros.
To be fair, this is how all of Super Dave's stunts would end in real life.

In Die Hard 2, Bruce Willis has his final confrontation against the movie's villain, William Sadler, on the wing of a taxiing jumbo jet full of drug-dealing military terrorists. At this point in the film, Bill Sadler has already personally tried to kill Bruce Willis with machine guns and hand grenades and crashed a passenger jet full of innocent people by tricking Colm Meaney into thinking the ground didn't exist.

20th Century Fox
Admittedly, that isn't too hard.

So we're totally ready to see Bruce Willis clobber him with meaty fists of New York rage. But we've also been given a firm demonstration of Bill Sadler's formidable naked karate skills, so we know it's going to be a close fight.

20th Century Fox

Except when the ultimate battle finally begins, William Sadler proceeds to pummel Bruce like a bunch of Ozzie Canseco cards in the spokes of a Huffy beach cruiser. The only offense Bruce Willis is able to mount is biting Bill Sadler's hand really hard, as if Bill Sadler is swatting him with a rolled-up magazine for peeing on the carpet.

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

Bear in mind, this is Bruce Willis as John McClane, one of the biggest action stars ever playing his most famous action hero ever, getting absolutely trashed by William Sadler, whose only other memorable cinematic battle was attempting to defeat Keanu Reeves at Clue in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. After a minute or two of solid crushification, he finally superkicks Bruce Willis right off of the damn plane and goes back inside to enjoy some champagne.

20th Century Fox
Bruno was not invited.

His reasoning is that the building is so far up that the detonator will be too far out of range to trigger an explosion by the time she hits the ground and dies, but still, he devotes precisely two seconds of thought to Lena's elaborate mass-murdering riddle before saying "Fuck it, YOLO" and pitching her through a windowpane.

Lions Gate
Yeah.

That's like three different bad guy deaths, and Seagal cashed them all in on the same person in less time than it took to read this paragraph.

In Under Siege 2, Seagal finds himself on a train loaded with mercenaries hired by a villainous computer-hacking mastermind to help him accomplish whatever fairy-tale bullshit '90s cinema relentlessly believed computer hackers were capable of doing. Seagal lazily karate chops his way through a bunch of subordinates until he makes it to the badass mercenary leader, who challenges him to a knife fight. This quickly devolves into Seagal waving his hands around like an interpretive Daft Punk dance and slapping (literally slapping) the mercenary leader into dizzying submission.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.
Seagal's hands are too blazingly fast for mortal humans to react.

He then lifts the mercenary leader's defeated body off of the ground to snap his neck and deliver the flabby, inflectionless Seagal equivalent of a witty one-liner.

Warner Bros.

And although we weren't expecting much of a fight against the computer-hacking mastermind, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that Seagal defeats him by slicing all his fingers off and dropping him into an immolating fireball blazing up from the wreckage of a detonating train.

Warner Bros.
Apparently neither one of these villains had seen the first movie.