# Absolutely ludicrous action scenes you liked anyway **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 31, 2008, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732 "2008-01-31T17:36:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![baldloser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/919ad9/32.png) [@baldloser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/baldloser)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/21 "2008-01-31T21:13:10Z")
I just watched Breaking News a few weeks ago. It opens with an astounding 7 minute continuous gunfight scene and very few people are shot and the camera is shaky. I rewatched that opening 2-3 times before continuing on with the rest of the film. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/22 "2008-01-31T21:58:20Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] I kind of liked the climactic lighsaber duel between Obi-wan and Annakin in “Revenge of the Sith”. I mean, it’s not enough that we have a lightsaber duel. We’ve got to have a lightsaber duel near a river of lava. And it’s not enough that we have a lightsaber duel near a river of lava, we’ve got to have a lighsaber duel on an island floating in a river of lava. And it’s not enough to have a lighsaber duel on an island floating in a river of lava, that island has to be about to go over a lava waterfall. I laughed out loud when I saw the lava waterfall, but I was laughing in appreciation. [/QUOTE] And while you laughed, you must have missed the fin of the Lava Shark. ---
**Author:** ![Khampelf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Khampelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khampelf)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/23 "2008-01-31T22:03:55Z")
Again I get to post about my favorite. ICBNSTY. The Lobby Scene from ‘The Matrix’. _I can’t believe no one’s said this yet._ ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/24 "2008-01-31T22:28:40Z")
[QUOTE=dmatsch] According to the special features, that scene, with the exception of the close-ups with JB and BadGuy on the crane was shot completely without special effects. The sport depicted by that scene is called “Free Running”. Wiki it. [/QUOTE] Yeah, you can TOTALLY jump from one crane to another and land on your abdomen and get up and keep running! Totally! Granted, you said “everything but the crane”, but just because there are no “special effects” doesn’t mean there are, for example, no stunt men. I’m aware of the sport, but even those guys on YouTube don’t go jumping around on cranes. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/25 "2008-01-31T22:38:01Z")
Popeye’s chase of Olive Oyl while she’s sleepwalking on the frame of skyscraper under construction. I didn’t believe it for a minute, but I enjoyed it just the same. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/26 "2008-01-31T23:08:59Z")
[QUOTE=Zsofia] Yeah, you can TOTALLY jump from one crane to another and land on your abdomen and get up and keep running! Totally! [/quote] Well, _I_ certainly can’t, because I’m a big, lumpy couch potato. Which probably explains why the scene didn’t strike me as “absolutely ludicrous.” What was so impossible about it? > [@](#): > > Granted, you said “everything but the crane”, but just because there are no “special effects” doesn’t mean there are, for example, no stunt men. I’m aware of the sport, but even those guys on YouTube don’t go jumping around on cranes. Actaully, he said everything but the _close-ups_ on the crane. The jumps themselves were real, although probably using stuntmen, not the actual movie stars. But if stuntmen can do it in real life, why couldn’t the characters in the fictional setting created by the movie also do it? ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/27 "2008-01-31T23:29:53Z")
[QUOTE=msmith537] That you could drive a truck off a bridge like that, have it drop 30 feet and still run? I don’t know, I just thought it was a cool scene. It’s kind of like the bus in Speed jumping the gap in the highway. In reality it should have crumpled on impact and killed everyone on board. [/QUOTE] I’m probably taking this discussion far too seriously, but there’s a difference to me… I know with absolute certainty that, the way physics work, that bus in speed could not have done that. I do not, however, know enough about the way big dump trucks are constructed to be certain that one could not take that level of damage and keep driving. In fact, if that part was borderline feasible, it wouldn’t shock me. At least it looked beat up upon landing. ---
**Author:** ![Ro\_Carter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7feea3/32.png) [@Ro\_Carter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ro_Carter)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/28 "2008-01-31T23:37:00Z")
[QUOTE=well he’s back] There was hardly an action scene in “Live Free or Die Hard” that was NOT absolutely ludicrous… But I enjoyed 'em anyway. [/QUOTE] I’ve got to second this. I completely adored that movie, even though there wasn’t a single plausible thing in there. My favorite parts were the sections in the power plant. Every. Single. Thing. that was done regarding power/gas flows, is (going by my experience working at a power company working with systems for both) completely and totally ludicrous. My dad and I (Dad has worked with natural gas regulation systems for almost 30 years) just looked at each other and started laughing so hard that we almost cried. ---
**Author:** ![Sunrazor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/29 "2008-01-31T23:49:16Z")
[QUOTE=JohnT] Terminator 3, when John Conner (Connor?) was being chased by T-3 driving that crane. My wife and I laughed and laughed and laughed… and then rewound the scene. [/QUOTE] That is truly a classic “holy shit!” scene. The thing is, it was filmed so well I wanted to go back and walk through the devastation it left behind, just to see what that big summbitch did. Does anybody know, was any of that real action, or was it mostly CGI? Especially the end of the chase – my God, what must it cost to totally wreck a crane like that! ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2008, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/30 "2008-01-31T23:51:58Z")
In Transporter 2, the scene where he hooks the bomb off the bottom of his car by driving the left side over a ramp and spinning into a crane-hook that neatly snatches the bomb as it’s about to explode. The car lands on all four wheels, perfectly safe. SOOOOOOO stupid and awesome. ---
**Author:** ![Offkenter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f08c70/32.png) [@Offkenter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Offkenter)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2008, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/31 "2008-02-01T00:02:46Z")
[QUOTE=robardin] And while you laughed, you must have missed the fin of the Lava Shark. [/QUOTE] The best part was how George Lucas jumped over the Lava Shark. Over and over and over. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2008, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/32 "2008-02-01T00:12:14Z")
[QUOTE=Morbo] [This](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NI6iu7e91Y) one is my all-time favorite. [/QUOTE] I don’t know what the hell that was, but I busted a gut when the towel girl showed up and started showing her movez. Oh, and another “I can’t believe it hasn’t been mentioned yet”: _Kill Bill_. While the scene where she takes on the Crazy-88 is the obvious “ludicrous” scene, my favorite involves her time in the hospital, when she comes to out of the coma. “WHERE’S BILL?!?!” “Please s-stop hitting me.” ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2008, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/33 "2008-02-01T00:20:13Z")
I nominated any five minutes, selected at random, of _Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki_. This is a movie that features a villain who disembowels himself, grabs a loop of his own intestine, and then uses them to garrote the hero. You can’t get any more awesome than that. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2008, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/34 "2008-02-01T00:53:16Z")
[QUOTE=JohnT] I don’t know what the hell that was, but I busted a gut when the towel girl showed up and started showing her movez. [/QUOTE] “Towel Girl” is Cynthia Rothrock, whom I believe is actually some sort of martial arts champion in real life. She’s done a lot of B action movies. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2008, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/35 "2008-02-01T00:58:53Z")
[QUOTE=Ro Carter, about Live Free or Die Hard] I’ve got to second this. I completely adored that movie, even though there wasn’t a single plausible thing in there. My favorite parts were the sections in the power plant. Every. Single. Thing. that was done regarding power/gas flows, is (going by my experience working at a power company working with systems for both) completely and totally ludicrous. My dad and I (Dad has worked with natural gas regulation systems for almost 30 years) just looked at each other and started laughing so hard that we almost cried. [/QUOTE] I didn’t know SCADA had a command for “Jam all the gas in a five-state region that way so a control room that has no gas pipes in it will explode!” There was one plausible thing in the movie - traffic calamity after a city-wide four-way green, but the way they triggered it was comical. \*Speed \* - very strangely, I had a dream about that bus jump scene last night. In this dream, Caltrans was working on that section of freeway and had to remove the pavement. \*Mythbusters \* got wind of this and got their hands on the kind of [bus](http://web.utk.edu/~gallant/gmc.html) (a GMC New Look) that was used in the movie. Adam built his usual remote control gadgetry so they could drive the bus without being in it, and they wound up drilling the bus into the abutment, right at that “peak” where upper and lower parts of the windshield meet. Before they smashed the bus, Adam popped the access panel out of the floor, exposing the transmission. They had Keanu Reeves at M5, and when they walked around the corner, Keanu saw the bus, went “Whoa” and then they had Keanu try to get any part of his body through the hatch and around the transmission, but he could only reach up to his elbow. Nevermind actually getting out of the bus that way. ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2008, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/36 "2008-02-01T01:20:16Z")
I don’t care what anyone else says, I loved _Matrix: Reloaded_. Including the Burly Brawl. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2008, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/37 "2008-02-01T01:53:36Z")
> [@](#): > > Now, when men get to fighting, it happens here! And it finishes here! Two men enter; one man leaves. Welcome to another edition of: **Thunderdome**! Mad Max then proceeds to fly through the air while attached to suspender rubber bands, using a chainsaw, a long pike, and a whistle to defeat the giant, powerful but childlike MasterBlaster. Nail-biting excitement! ---
**Author:** ![BrassyPhrase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea666f/32.png) [@BrassyPhrase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrassyPhrase)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2008, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/38 "2008-02-01T01:55:30Z")
[QUOTE=Dunawake] See: Every single moment of **Shoot 'Em Up**. [/QUOTE] I came here to post that. I’m recommending that movie to anyone that is a bit odd and/or likes action movies. ---
**Author:** ![Paragod22510](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b5ac83/32.png) [@Paragod22510](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paragod22510)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2008, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/39 "2008-02-01T02:08:41Z")
I’d have to say the car chase in Bad Boys II…ridiculously awesome… AND…“The Last Boy Scout,” my favorite buddy film…“It’s one of them plastic keys. The kind that shred!” Enter timely explosion of a shot gun shell filled with small explosives thrown into the fire place at a football stadium. Classic. Just classic. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2008, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732/40 "2008-02-01T02:15:08Z")
[QUOTE=Miller] I nominated any five minutes, selected at random, of _Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki_. This is a movie that features a villain who disembowels himself, grabs a loop of his own intestine, and then uses them to garrote the hero. You can’t get any more awesome than that. [/QUOTE] And that doesn’t even mention the times Riki punches holes in people’s chests (as in, see daylight shining through the coffee can-sized tunnel) or splatters their heads between his hands like Jax in Mortal Kombat II. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/absolutely-ludicrous-action-scenes-you-liked-anyway/435732.md?page=3)