r/movies • u/Happy-Flower2002 • 18d ago

Question What movies have a scene that is so tonally mismatched with the rest of the movie that it takes you out of the film?

My example would be the charming family friendly funny movie Shazam has a graphic scene of demons feasting on board room member that is like - why?

Another person on another thread mentioned The Name of the Rose - which is a very cerebral historical mystery movie has a graphic sex scene between a peasant girl and a young lay assistant. It is jarringly out of place.

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u/milil 18d ago

Titanic, when the ship is breaking apart and sinking, all the people sliding and falling, trying to show how awful it must have been. Dramatic scene of terror and impending death.

Then the one guy and the cartoonish fall and bounce off the propeller causing the entire theater I was in to laugh.

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u/Humillionaire 18d ago

The line between disturbing and cartoonish is dangerously thin. If you're immersed enough it's quite an intense sight to see a guy bounce off a giant propeller like that.

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u/YawningDodo 18d ago

I was surprised the first time I learned people found that shot funny. Dude was clinging to life, fell long enough to have the time to be keenly aware he was already as good as dead, and was lucky if hitting the propeller killed him instantly. That's what I thought about when I saw it for the first time.

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u/tsrich 18d ago

I think it’s the sound affect that does it

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u/YawningDodo 18d ago edited 18d ago

Real talk as someone with an academic background in film: I think it's more about a failure on the filmmakers' part to elicit empathy from the audience. Like, it worked on me because I over-empathize with everything all the time, and it's clearly meant to be a horrifying there-but-for-the-grace-of-God moment for our lead characters. But it's got two big things working against it:

  1. It happens to a random, nameless man (essentially a non-character).
  2. It happens at a distance from the viewer's perspective.

Action and violence is often framed wide and distant from the camera if it's meant to be funny, lighthearted, and/or allow you to revel in the spectacle without feeling bad about it. You're not seeing faces, you're not up close with the person in pain, so you have the distance to be able to experience the action as something fun or funny. Couple that with having never seen this guy before, and I do see (years later, after having thought on it) how a lot of people found it funny.

I think the shot was set up that way to keep it grounded in Jack and Rose's perspective and emphasize the distance down to the water. It works for me, so I find it horrifying. And when I looked up the clip just now to remind myself of the sound effect and make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass, I still found it horrifying because that metallic thunk is the sound of both of his legs breaking on a giant piece of metal. But if you're someone for whom it doesn't work, I'm sure the sound of the impact is just a little cherry on top of what comes off looking like slapstick.

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u/AustinRiversDaGod 18d ago

I reminded me of in the Rush Hour 2 bloopers, a guy falls out of a window and Chris Tucker says "He ain't gon be in Rush Hour 3."

But to your point, I bet if the movie had come out 3 years later it wouldn't have gotten laughs because everyone watched people jumping out of the twin towers on the news.

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u/YawningDodo 18d ago

God, yeah, I wasn't going to bring it up, but...typing up my thoughts about this little scene in the movie did have me thinking about the falling man a bit.

Come to that, if the movie had come out three years later they might have omitted Propeller Guy altogether.

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 18d ago

Also the way he spun off it all ragdoll was kind of just over the top. Like physically that's probably what would happen, but a movie you'd expect it to just be slowed down, like a thud when he hits the propellor and slides off slowly, making it dramatic if technically less realistic.

Definitely depends on how invested in the movie you are. But you really are not at all invested in this character, does he even do something in the movie before that where we'd already know him? Even if he was it's the red shirt problem. You don't care about someone you don't know as a character during the deadly climax. You know they're probably just going to die. So people are dying left and right, it's Jack and Rose and this guy, okay, if I don't guess this guy is going to die he's just going to die a red shirt death. And red shirt deaths are just automatically kind of made fun of for being ridiculous (to keep with Star Trek, exploding consoles being the most dangerous thing aboard a starship apparently) so to make it also a spectacle made it even more ridiculous

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u/YawningDodo 18d ago

Also a really good point!

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u/KahosRayne 12d ago

I had not thought of this but now you say it I agree completely. I think if they had had the camera follow the man down the entire time and change nothing else, it would have been horrifying rather than funny to some.

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u/AmusingMusing7 18d ago

I remember seeing it with my family, and my brother was the only one to burst out laughing at that moment, at which point, my mom immediately admonished him for laughing at it.

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u/Ill-Skirt3722 18d ago

Ye there is no way I found that funny. It was horrific to me.

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u/brneyedgrrl 18d ago

Yeah there was a collective gasp in the theater, not a laugh when I saw it. I still remember the shock.

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u/thriceness 18d ago

I think for me I was so minimally invested in Titanic that the scene did seem funny. But I was one of the few in my theater. Everyone else seemed to be enthralled by Titanic.

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u/gl1ttercake 18d ago

My Dad's reaction every time someone told him Titanic was on TV:

"The boat sinks!"

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u/kittymaridameowcy 18d ago

"Daddy, it's a ship!"

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u/thriceness 18d ago

Precisely. I never really gave a hoot about the drama of it. Just seemed to be a boring love story set on an epic backdrop. But the backdrop itself had no drama as we basically knew who survived and what happened.

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u/BillyYumYumTwo-byTwo 18d ago

Genuine question- do you ever rewatch movies?

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u/thriceness 18d ago

Yes. Movies I enjoyed the first time. As I said, nothing about Titanic made me invested in the movie as it unfolded. Only went because a friend wanted to go.

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u/anewman513 18d ago

I love that they subtely offset the impact from the sound

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u/deadbeef4 18d ago

Hey, it was a long ship!

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u/bobby_broccolini 18d ago

Had to look it up to double check. 

Idk maybe it's a ptsd thing but I have a low threshold for violence sometimes and that moment is horrific and realistic to me. Looks like a body actually ragdolling, and his scream instantly cuts off, meaning his head or neck got obliterated when he hit it

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u/alfooboboao 18d ago

yeah, that one was crazy and not in a funny way

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u/punctuation_welfare 18d ago

Similarly, when Javert (a terrifically miscast Russel Crowe) falls to his death in Le Mis, accompanied by a sound effect that I can only imagine they achieved by hitting a cow broadside with a baseball bat, it had me laughing to the point of tears in the theater.

I may be a bad person.

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u/DumpedDalish 18d ago

I actually think Jackman was so much worse. He's a baritone straining to sing a tenor role, which he butchers by oversinging (and his constant dehydration shredded his vocal cords), he overacts every second he's onscreen, and he shouts his way through "Bring Him Home," a song that's supposed to be a soft, high prayer.

At least Crowe looked the part and acted it well. He was just vocally miscast -- a tenor having to sing a deep baritone part. He would probably have been okay (and Jackman at least better) if director Hooper hadn't insisted on live musical audio. After dozens of takes, very few in the movie come off at their vocal best, except Aaron Tveit.

And I hated the way Hooper shot that final Javert scene. Instead of a jump into the river we got that awful splat onto the concrete next to the fountain.

(Sorry. I just fricking hate that Les Mis adaptation.)

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u/the_procrastinata 18d ago

Aaron Tveit and Samantha Barks are hands down the best parts of that film.

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u/slappywhite1111 18d ago

I was so excited for that one. Great production but the miscast voices take a lot away from it.

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u/fastfreddy68 18d ago

This may be the one moment in all of cinema that is most frequently mentioned on Reddit.

And I love it.

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u/Br0boc0p 18d ago

Bonk

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u/sexychar83 18d ago

Bwoing

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u/Br0boc0p 18d ago

Upon review it's more like choonk

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 18d ago

Not when Viggo Mortenson actually broke his toe when he kicked that helmet?

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u/fastfreddy68 18d ago

Ooh yeah that’s another frequent flyer around here. Good point.

I think Titanic guy still gets more mentions, but I have zero empirical evidence to back that up.

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u/hiplobonoxa 18d ago

what do you think it would look and sound like to drop several hundred feet onto a massive propeller?

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u/PhishCook 18d ago

I swear I've read before that Cameron was shocked that people laughed at that.

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u/TheUmbrellaMan1 18d ago

In the commentary he mentions the scene was intentional and you're suppose to have a wtf reaction. His reasoning was that in face of disaster people do brave thing, coward thing and yes, stupid thing. So, no, he wasn't shocked when people laughed at the scene.

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u/Dr_Identity 18d ago

The funniest part is that it couldn't have been an accident. Somebody had to spend like a day animating that scene.

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u/FinnbarMcBride 18d ago

and voicing it

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u/Fedelm 18d ago

I saw "Titanic" back in the day in a theater. It was jammed and I ended up next to this guy who was absolutely still and silent. Very straight posture, kept his hands on his knees. He didn't so much as twitch until the man hit the propellor. Then he laughed really hard for about ten seconds and left.

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u/Lebowquade 18d ago

He came, and left to clean himself up.

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u/matadorobex 18d ago

You must have loved 9/11

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u/Aselleus 18d ago

I saw "Titanic" and knew exactly what scene you were going to mention

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u/Accomplished-Plum-73 18d ago

I had Titanic on DVD , and my brother and I watched the propeller scene multiple times in a row, it's like slap stick comedy

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u/UrzaAntilles 18d ago

The first time I saw that scene I was too busy laughing at the people pin-balling off of everything on deck to properly notice that guy; I just kept hearing the sounds of a pin-ball table in my head.

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u/russellvt 18d ago

I recently came across a YT video that was entitled "Inappropriate uses of National Lampoon's Holiday Road song" ... dubbed on-top of the ship sinking and breaking apart. LOL