I'm here to give you my personal top 10 climaxes in movies. These are the endings I felt like did their respective movies justice. In many instances, a good climax can save the movie, but in most cases a really good climax can improve an already outstanding movie. What are we waiting for? Let's dive right in!
#10 - "Superfight II"
MOVIE: Rocky II
Following the climactic end fight to the original Oscar-winning movie Rocky, Rocky and Apollo are beaten to the bone. Apollo clamors for a rematch but Rocky refuses, stating he's retired. Eventually, the movie progresses to show that Rocky is not meant for a world outside of boxing and he agrees to retrain himself and face Apollo in a rematch. Rocky II sees this second Superfight take place. The reason this climax is so good is because of the amount of hype and emotional attachment one feels toward Rocky. You rooted for him all through Rocky and now you want to see him do it again. Only this time, he's suffered even more hardships with Adrian's birth complications and his financial problems. After overcoming two movies worth of hardships, including a grueling fight that nearly blinded him for life, seeing Rocky get a second chance against Apollo and even winning and finally claiming the Heavyweight Championship of the World is truly a treat and its fun to watch. Watching both men fight to climb to their feet only for Rocky to get there while Apollo slumps back over is a great thing to witness, even if its a tad over the top.
MOVIE: Django Unchained (2012)
Django Unchained is a movie about revenge. It's two years before the Civil War in the deep south, and a slave named Django is hired by a bounty hunter named King Schultz to help him find and kill the Brittle brothers. From there, Schultz vows to help Django get his wife back from the evil slave owner Calvin Candie. The duo journey to Candieland (lol) posing as slave buyers for "Mandingo fighting" and keep this cover throughout the entire dinner scene. It gets so tense and nail-biting but when it finally blows up it's so jaw-dropping. The kill King Schultz and capture Django back into slavery. Django breaks away from his captors and returns to the Candieland, where he lets loose on the remaining hands in Candie's home. He kills Candie's sister, several of Candie's men, he releases two of Candie's slaves and then cripples Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), leaving him in Candieland just before he blows the whole damn thing up! It's spectacular. If it wasn't for The Crow, I'd call this the ultimate revenge flick, but it's a close second.
#8 - "Battle with the Basilisk"
MOVIE: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
The second Harry Potter movie that was released in 2002 was the best (in my humble opinion). There's a lot of story to cover in Chamber of Secrets and the movie did a great job making sure all the marquee moments in the book were not only represented, but represented well. The whole movie is a murder-mystery story, without the "murder" part, that leads Harry Potter and Ron Weasley into the Chamber of Secrets, a room long-thought rumored by the Hogwarts staff. Harry leaves Ron behind and confronts Tom Riddle, the man who's behind the petrifying of many Hogwarts students. Tom Riddle reveals himself to be a young Lord Voldemort, held in Horcrux form inside his own diary, who then sicks the evil and deadly basilisk on Potter. The battle between this mountainous snake and Harry wielding Gryffindor's sword is classic. It's definitely the highlight of the movie. Being nearly three hours long, the movie can kinda drag at times, but this final battle makes up for any downtime. Solid climax.
#7 - "High-Speed Demolition Derby"
MOVIE: Death Proof (2007)
Another one from our good ol' buddy Tarantino. A high speed crash course along a desolate country highway between three innocent women in a 1970 Dodge Challenger, fending off and taking bumps from a maniacal Kurt Russell in a 1969 Dodge Charger. Two of the coolest muscle cars from America's past and they're bumping and banging at high speeds. The climax goes on for upwards of twenty-or-so minutes. The girls spin out, shoot Kurt Russell in the arm and wound him, and then chase him down and start wrecking and bumping into him. The whole things comes a Twisted Metal style conclusion when both cars crash and spin out on the side of the road. The three girls then take the wounded, delirious Russell and beat the living shit out of him. All for doing nothing more, then acting like a total creep. Yet another great few minutes of revenge, something Tarantino is good at writing a tale about.
#6 - "Attack of the Batwing / Cathedral Fight"
MOVIE: Batman (1989)
An epic battle that ends one of the greatest comic book movies ever made. Jack Nicholson's Joker holds a 200th anniversary parade for Gotham City, and his parade floats are attacked by Batman in his newly debuted aerial vehicle, the Batwing. In this movie, The Batwing was shaped in the motif of Batman's chest emblem and flies like a jet fighter through the night skies of the city. Batman takes the toxic gas-spewing parade floats and takes them up and away from the city out of harm's way, then descends and starts laying out the Joker's goons in gunfire. In an epic final shot, Batman takes flight straight up, then falls down back toward the city to gain momentum for a strafe run on the Joker. In an epic showdown, the Batwing's Star Wars style targeting computer malfunctions and the Joker shoots Batman down. The Batwing has a spectacular crash onto the steps of the Gotham Cathedral. Batman, wounded, then chases the Joker up the steps of the Cathedral and fights with him in the bell-tower. The fight takes them to the balcony, where Batman wraps a grappling hook around Joker's ankles and watches him fall to his death, weighed down by a gargoyle that he got caught on. Epic fight. Great conclusion to a great gothic comic book adventure.
#5 - "It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man"
MOVIE: Ghostbusters (1984)
In one of the greatest comedies of all time, you wouldn't expect such a great story-defining climax. Gozer the Gozerian has been brought back by Vince Clortho and Zuul. It tells the Ghostbusters that it will take the form of whatever they think about. Ray thinks of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, and sure enough, the twenty-story-tall marshmallow icon takes shape and stomps through Columbus Circle in downtown Manhattan. Home to such classic lines (most of which from Bill Murray), this is a great, yet hilarious entry in our list. "Ray has gone bye-bye, Egon", "Well there's something you don't see every day" and the always classic response to Stay-Puft flattening a church with his foot: "NOBODY STEPS ON A CHURCH IN MY TOWN!" While the battle itself isn't very long and mostly doesn't even involve Stay-Puft, the entry of the ghostly food mascot is iconic enough to make the list. I love this part and I look forward to it everytime I watch the movie.
#4 - "Blowing Up Cyberdyne / Battle in the Steel Mill"
MOVIE: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Coming from perhaps the greatest sequel ever made to something, and a rare example where a sequel outshines and outdoes its predecessor, Terminator 2 had a fantastic ending to it that lasts close to an hour. After escaping into the desert with Sarah Connor, John Connor and his protective Terminator cyborg stop at a colleague of Sarah's to stock up on clothes, food and guns before crossing the border. A nightmare Sarah has sparks her to go back into the city to hunt and kill Miles Dyson, the creator of Skynet and eventual reason mankind will be obliterated. She can't bring herself to do it, so in a more competent plan, the trio works together with Dyson to go to Cyberdyne Systems and blow up the lab containing all of his AI research that would lead to the launch of Skynet. They succeed, but Dyson is killed in the blast. Not over yet as the T-1000 reappears. It chases them along a coastal highway in a truly badass chase involving helicotpers, big rigs and smashing (lol). They wind up in a steel mill where yet ANOTHER chase takes place. The damaged T-800 fights the T-1000 a few times, but gets its ass handed to it two of the times. It isn't until the Terminator saves Sarah and John by blowing up the T-1000 with a grenade launcher. Only after all that, does the evidence of Skynet need to be destroyed by tossing the remains into the steel mill, and in the final, most gut-wrenching shot, The Terminator requests that Sarah lower him into the steel to destroy his chip as well. Powerful stuff, and one of the best climaxes to any movie I've seen.
#3 - "Brooklyn Bridge Battle"
MOVIE: Spider-Man (2002)
In one of the greatest comic book movies made in recent years, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man reinvented the wheel and reinvented it well. A mostly original retelling of Spider-Man's origin story, except this one's more personal. The father of Peter Parker's best friend Harry Osborn, Norman, is poisoned in a lab accident and becomes the super villain Green Goblin. By the end of the movie, the Green Goblin learns who Spider-Man is and captures Peter's love interest, leading to a battle at the Brooklyn Bridge. Goblin throws Mary Jane off of the Bridge as well as a cable car full of children. Spidey manages to narrowly save them both, at great risk to himself, before being tethered by Goblin and tossed into a nearby rotting mansion. There, the two have a knockdown, drag-out brawl that sees both of them get beaten up pretty bad. The final battle ends with Norman revealing himself to Peter before attempting to murder him. Peter dodges the runaway glider, watching as it impales Norman against a brick pillar and kills him. The whole story was a more emotional take on the comic book superhero movie, and the emotion swells up and boils over to the point of this climax. The icing on the cake is Harry vowing revenge on Spider-Man, all while he claims Peter is the only family he has left Awkwaaaaard...
#2 - "I Am Your Father"
MOVIE: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Time for the movie twist of all movie twists. The one that's so popular and so parodied, it can't even be considered a twist anymore. Even people who haven't heard of Star Wars know this one. In the battle on Cloud City between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Vader soon easily overpowers Skywalker's inept lightsaber skills and his raw power and slices his hand off, rendering him helpless. Luke fights desperately to crawl away as Vader taunts. Ultimately, get under Luke's skin or even to just reveal a bad truth about himself to bring them together, Vader tells Luke that Obi-Wan lied to him and that Vader never killed his father, but that Vader is his father. Luke screams that it isn't true, but eventually excepts it as Vader tells him to search his feelings. Luke, realizing that its come down to joining Vader or dying, chooses to die and lets go of the antenna he's on, falling into the caverns of the city below. Of course, I won't go into the ending this time around, but it's pretty great.
#1 - "Race to the Future"
MOVIE: Back to the Future (1985)
I consider this to be the greatest film climax of all time, and with good reason. I don't care if you think I'm biased because it just so happens to be my favorite movie ever made. Following the dance that saw Marty McFly reunite his parents and save his own future, there's still one dilemma that remains. That's right, the movie's not over because Marty has yet to get "back to the future". He meets up with Doc Brown and, with awesome music accompaniment, the two walk through the plan one last time before going their separate ways. The entire climax, containing peril, thrills and fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat, down-to-the-wire feels to it all, locks you in place and makes you watch it. Start to finish. I can tell you no matter what I'm doing, if I come across the end of Back to the Future on TV, I'm going to watch it. The entire score plays with the scene perfectly and for that we can thank Alan Silvestri. It's nail-biting, tense, extreme and incredible and it all comes down to the absolute last final moment when the DeLorean makes contact with the wire at the precise moment that lightning strikes the clock tower at 10:04 PM, sending the necessary 1.21 gigawatts into the flux capacitor, and sending Marty and the DeLorean back to 1985. The entire score dies off as the DeLorean vanishes and to cap it all off, Doc Brown runs down the street along the DeLorean's fire trails before celebrating out loud that he's invented something that works and that he's seen it in action, and that he was able to get his friend Marty McFly home.There you have it, my top ten movie climaxes. Were they all you hoped? Was there some that I'm missing. Feel free to shoot me a direct message somewhere and fill me in. I'd love to learn of new possible entries on this list.
No comments:
Post a Comment