First we have Star Trek Generations, Malcolm McDowell as the bad guy, facing off against William Shatner as the good guy in the final big confrontation. How cool would it have been to have him say, “Well, Kirk! Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarbles, ya fat eunuch jelly-bel!”
Second, in Star Wars, (episode 4 to you youngsters), when Obi-Wan says “The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.” Luke, glassy-eyed and in a monotone says, “Yes, the Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.” Then Obi-Wan looks at him and says “Oh for crying out loud!”
Rick: You know what I want to hear.
Sam: No, I don’t.
Rick: You played it for her, you can play it for me!
Sam: Well, I don’t think I can remember…
Rick: If she can stand it, I can! Play it!
Sam: Jeez, boss, wouldn’t it have been easier just to say “Play it again, Sam”.
In the Mel Gibson version of Maverick, he mentions early on that he believes that if he really concentrates, and believes he can do it, he sould be able to draw any card out of the deck. He tries for the ace of spades, of course, and fails.
At the end, in the climactic poker game, he’s holding 10-J-Q-K of spades and draws one card. (He catches the dealer cheating and insists his card come off the top.) He leaves it face down on the table and doesn’t even look at it. They play the rest of the hand, everything is riding on it. At the end, he turns the card over to reveal the ace of spades, he makes his royal flush and wins.
It should have been the nine. It’s such a send-up of traditional westerns, and there are so many digressions and surprises, they shouldn’t have taken the obvious climax. Nine of spades still makes the straight flush, he still wins; but it would have been in an unexpected way. They blew it.
Titanic-
Jack: Rose, you have to get on the lifeboat, don’t worry about me!
Rose: Okay. Take care.
Old Rose tosses Heart of the Ocean into the water.
Her granddaughter and the ship’s captain toss her in after it. Sophie’s Choice
Regis Philbin as Nazi officer, to Sophie: Is that your final answer? Phantom of the Opera
Raol: We, have all been blind, and yet the answer is staring us in the face, this could be the chance to ensnare our clever friend. We shall play his game, perform his work but remember that we hold the ace… for if, Miss Daea sings, he is certain to attend…
Police: Or we could just hire a couple of underworld thugs to go down in the tunnels and beat the everloving crap out of him.
A serious example. I was once watching one of the Dirty Harry movies. Early in the movie there was the usual cliched scene about some obviously guilty criminal that Harry had caught but was now being let go because of some legal technicality. It was there to show that the legal system didn’t work and heroic cops like Harry Callahan have to go “outside the rules” to “get the job done”.
The main plot of the movie was Harry meeting some woman (I think it was Sondra Locke) who had been arrested. She had killed someone and was being sent to jail. Harry was assigned to transport her. Naturally there were huge complications. The guy who was killed was a corrupt politician and the woman had learned his secrets and he had attacked her and she killed him in self-defense and now his friends were trying to kill her and Harry had to keep her alive and they fell in love. The final scene was a big shootout where all the bad guys were killed and Harry delivered the woman to the courthouse. And then Harry made this speech about how she should be released because the guy she killed was bad and deserved to die and it was self-defense anyway.
But the cool ending would have been for Harry to say, “well, you have to release her, you violated her rights by not following this obscure technicality I learned about back at the beginning of the movie and which everyone in the audience had forgotten about until I just reminded them of it and they’re all cheering now about how slick I am.”
Another serious one: in Tombstone, there’s a reference to the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the most dangerous of which rides a pale horse. I think the allusion you’re supposed to draw is that this is a reference to Wyatt Earp. Yet when you see Kurt Russel (who’s playing Earp), he’s riding a beautiful chestnut horse. Missed opportunity.
Wait, turns out I was right. It was Sudden Impact I was thinking of, not The Gauntlet - and while they have pretty much the same plot, Sudden Impact is an actual Dirty Harry movie.
After Janet Leigh’s murder, Anthony Perkins shouts out “Oh dear God mother! Blood! Blood!” and rushes down to the motel room to see the awful aftermath.At this point, “Norman” turns to the camera and speaks directly to it -
“Look at all this blood! What a mess! Thank goodness I have new, improved Spin & Span cleanser.”
(Norman reaches into a cabinet, produces a plastic bottle and flashes it to the camera)
“New, improved Spic & Span gets out the worst messes and is gentle on ALL your kitchen & bathroom surfaces - even large pools of blood!”
Wow, this is my favorite movie and I’ve never thought about that. I think that it would make it harder for non-poker viewers to understand, though. The Ace of Spades is a very easily recognizable and famous card. Also, it is easy to see, since it has that big spade in the middle.
Of course, they could have raised the straight flush Angel had to a 9-King and given Maverick only one option(aside from splitting the pot).
Same movie: Kim Jong Il explains to the captive members of Team America his plan to deploy enough WMDs to shatter every country’s civil society and throw the whole world back to the Dark Ages. One TA member interjects: “Hey, man, I thought you were a Communist. What’s all that got to do with Communism?”