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40 Things That Only Happen In The Movies

Did you ever notice that certain things only happen in the movies, but never happen in real life? For example:

-It is always possible to find a parking spot directly outside or opposite the building you are visiting.

-When paying for a taxi, don™t look at your wallet as you take out a note. Just grab one out at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.

-Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at the precise moment it™s aired.

-Creepy music (or satanic chanting) coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated.

-Any lock can be picked with a credit card or paperclip in seconds. UNLESS it™s the door to a burning building with a child inside.

-If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.

-All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red digital displays so you know exactly when they are going to explode.

-Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to learn to speak German. Simply speaking English with a German accent will do. Similarly, when they are alone, all German soldiers prefer to speak English to each other.

-Once applied, lipstick will never rub off. Even while scuba diving.

-The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.

-Any police officer about to retire from the force will more often than not die on their last day (especially if their family have planned a party). (Caveat: Detectives can only solve a case after they have been suspended from duty).

-Getaway cars never start first go. But all cop cars do. (They will also slide to a dramatic stop in the midst of a crime scene).

-If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises wearing their most revealing underwear.

-On a police stake-out, the action will only ever take place when food is being consumed and scalding hot coffees are perched precariously on the dashboard¦

-All grocery shopping involves the purchase of French loaves which will be placed in open brown paper bags (Caveat: when said bags break, only fruit will spill out).

-Cars never need fuel (unless they™re involved in a pursuit).

-If you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts, your opponents will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around you in a threatening manner until you have defeated their predecessor.

-If a microphone is turned on it will immediately feedback.

-Guns are like disposable razors. If you run out of bullets, just throw the gun away. you will always find another one.

-All single women have a cat.

-Cars will explode instantly when struck by a single bullet.

-No matter how savagely a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system is never damaged.

-If being chased through a city you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick™s Day parade - at any time of the year.

-The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. Nobody will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building undetected.

-You will survive any battle in any war UNLESS you show someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

-Prostitutes always look like Julia Roberts or Jamie Lee Curtis. They have expensive clothes and nice
apartments but no pimps. They are friendly with the shopkeepers in their neighbourhood who don™t mind at all what the girl does for a living.

-A single match is usually sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.

-It is not necessary to say œHello or œGoodbye when beginning a telephone conversation. A disconnected call can always be restored by frantically beating the cradle and saying œHello? Hello? repeatedly.

-One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at once (this is known as Stallone™s Law).

-When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in you room will still be visible, just slightly bluish.

-Plain or even ugly girls can become movie star pretty simply by removing their glasses and rearranging their hair.

-Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their enemies with complicated devices incorporating fuses, pulleys, deadly gases, lasers and man-eating sharks.

-All beds have special L-shaped sheets that reach to armpit level on a woman but only up to the waist of the man lying beside her.

-Anyone can land a 747 as long as there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.

-During all police investigations it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.

-You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.

-Most musical instruments (especially wind instruments and accordions) can be played without moving your fingers.

-In Middle America, all gas station attendants have red handkerchiefs hanging out of their back pockets.

-All teen house parties have one of every stereotypical subculture present (even people who aren™t liked and would never get invited to parties).

-Trucks use their horns at random (no hang on, that happens in real life too!).

Great list. I ran across another similar list...
The Top 100 Things I'd Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

6. I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

7. When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

11. I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

14. The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

16. I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

17. When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

18. I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

19. I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

20. Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

21. I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

22. No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

23. I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

25. No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

26. No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.

27. I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.

28. My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

29. I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

30. All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.

31. All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.

32. I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

33. I won't require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.

34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

36. I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

37. If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.

38. If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.

39. If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.

40. I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

41. Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.

42. When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

43. I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

44. I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.

45. I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.

46. If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.

47. If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.

48. I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.

49. If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

50. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

51. If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.

52. I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

53. If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

54. I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.

55. The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.

56. My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

57. Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

58. If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

59. I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

60. My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.

61. If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.

62. I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

63. Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.

64. I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.

65. If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

66. My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.

67. No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

68. I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.

69. All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

70. When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

71. If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.

72. If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.

73. I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.

74. When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.

75. I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.

76. If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

77. If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.

78. I will not tell my Legions of Terror "And he must be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical."

79. If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.

80. If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.

81. If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

82. I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

83. If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.

84. I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.

85. I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."

86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

87. My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

88. If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.

89. After I captures the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

90. I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.

91. I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.

92. If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)

93. If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.

94. When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.

95. My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

96. My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.

97. My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.

98. If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.

100. Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

LOL!!

Excellent!!

yeah man...both them lists were entertaining.

Funny as hell, hahaha...

Action Hero Showdown: Who's The Hardest Dude Around?







JOHN RAMBO


One-Sentence Summation of Franchise

If a one-man killing machine suddenly goes crazy, it would be best not to mess with him, even if you™ve got a ton of armed dudes with you, because he will pimp-slap the shit out of you, then stab everyone and blow up the city you™re in.

Our Hero, Folks

Meet John Rambo: Special Forces veteran, Vietnam POW and sufferer of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He can survive in a forest for months with only an old tarp and a hunting knife, and he can kill you in 17 interesting and horrifying ways just by shaking your hand.

In the words of Rambo First Blood Part II's tagline: "They sent him on a mission and set him up to fail. But they made one mistake. They forgot they were dealing with Rambo." In other words, Rambo is a lot like Dr. Dre: you should never, ever forget about him. Similarly, nor should you talk about guns like he ain't got none. (Rambo does have guns.)

Level of Hardness

In First Blood, John Rambo is pushed too far by local fatassed police and is chased into a nearby forest. After running from them for the whole afternoon, Rambo suddenly stops and is all, "Wait a second, I just remembered I'm this enormous badass with decades of military training being chased by seven fatty cops." That's when he takes out an armed helicopter by throwing a rock at it while scaling down a sheer cliff-face with his bare hands, which”come on, that's pretty fucking hard.

But this ends up being the equivalent of a unicorn blowing a rainbow compared to pretty much everything in the sequel, Rambo First Blood Part II, where Rambo is dropped into a Vietnamese jungle to rescue POWs. While there, Rambo manages to kill every single Russian soldier in the occupied country, retroactively winning the Vietnam War for America. Keep in mind this wasn™t even his mission: he accomplishes this with the same sort of œWell shoot, as long as I™m here¦ attitude you or I might adopt while running errands and deciding to pick up some steaks at the butcher's.

Apparently because he™d gotten so good at it, in Rambo III our hero™s flown to occupied Afghanistan, this time to single-handedly kill the shit out of another Soviet army (he does). While shooting hordes of tank-operating filthy commies, Rambo somehow manages to get shot once. Not a problem: Rambo smartly packs his gunshot wound with gun powder, lights that bitch on fire, then cauterizes the wound with a hot knife. To put the hardness of this into perspective for you: this is a man whose solution to getting shot is to cram explosives into his body and blow up the wound to clean it. Just for the record, that's not just hard”that's actually totally motherfucking insane.

Defining Scene

Rambo is sent into Vietnam to rescue American prisoners of war, but is double-crossed by an evil army guy named Murdock (sort of a tip-off there), who abandons the mission and leaves our hero to die behind enemy lines, the bastard.

Rambo gets captured by evil Communists, who act a lot like Nazis for some reason. The evil Commies force Rambo to use an old HAM radio so they can trick the Americans into coming back to rescue him and walk into a fiendish trap.

It would be an impossible situation for anybody but Rambo, who luckily forms a brilliant plan at the last second: he uses the radio to tell Murdock he's going to boot-fuck his slimy ass when he gets back to America, then caves in a dude's skull with the radio, then stabs his way out of the enemy camp with an enormous hunting knife, then grabs a gun the size of a European car and kills every Russian in a fifty mile radius.

Seriously”we never would have thought of that.

Mitigating Factors

In Rambo III, Rambo joins up with a mujahideen resistance movement to fight back the Red Menace. One of the primary mujahideen organizers at the time this movie came out? Osama bin Laden. Whoops. Well, at least they've got a plot for the next one. Rambo IV: Correcting Past Mistakes.

Rating: 9/10

It turns out Rambo's sort of a bad-ass.




JOHN McCLANE

One-Sentence Summation of Franchise

If you're a European terrorist and you find yourself thinking, "How much trouble could one pesky renegade cop crawling around in some air vents cause my nefarious plan?", you should really take a minute to rethink your strategy, because he's about to jump out of an elevator shaft barefoot and fuck you up pretty bad.

Our Hero, Folks

Meet John McClane: a semi-alcoholic, chain-smoking New York City police detective with the creepy ability to always be in an air vent and wearing a soiled undershirt for some reason whenever terrorists take hostages.

In the words of the original Die Hard's tagline: "Twelve terrorists. One cop. The odds are against John McClane... That's just the way he likes it." This is all you need to know about John McClane: he hates a fair fight, and evidently prefers it when his enemies outnumber him and he's hopelessly outmatched. Why? It's possible he's an idiot. Still, he's pretty handy at shooting terrorists, so whatever helps him get through the day, right?

Level of Hardness

John McClane's Hardness Level gets a huge boost for the fact that, unlike the other action heroes on this list, he's not a by-design killing machine so much as a really, really unlucky dude with a receding hairline and good aim. A killer robot from the future could take out a dozen terrorists on the way to his real mission to beat Godzilla to death with a nuclear submarine”but when you're just some guy with a badge and a gun, taking out twelve heavily armed bad guys is hell of impressive.

In the first Die Hard, John McClane's visiting his ex-wife when Alan Rickman's all-star terrorist squad attacks the building where she works and forces him to get down to killin' business. Not only does he dispatch all of the terrorists one by one, in a series of increasingly cool fight scenes, but he also manages to do it without shoes. This doesn't seem like a big deal until you account for all the broken glass and debris left behind from the many shootouts, and realize McClane's picking glass chunks the size of postcards out of his feet in between fights. Walking on broken glass while killing guys: pretty hard.

In Die Hard 2, McClane does pretty much the same thing as in the first movie, only this time he's wearing a black undershirt and the terrorists are... well, still European. He does manage to launch himself out of an airplane cockpit in this one, though, while fighting a terrorist with a bomb about to go off. McClane straps himself into the cockpit seat and pulls the emergency escape pod lever (standard in any commercial aircraft) at the last second, shooting himself hundreds of feet into the air while all the shit explodes, then pulling the ripcord for the parachute”again, at the last second. It's pretty ingenious, looks totally cool and contains maximum amounts of hardness, so it should be forgiven that it doesn't make an ounce of goddamn sense.

The third installment of the franchise, Die Hard: With a Vengeance, takes place outside in the streets of New York. Since this runs counter to the entire premise of Die Hard, we're not going to discuss it here. It'd be like making a Speed sequel and forcing Keanu Reeves to commandeer a bus that can go whatever speed it likes. That's not hard; that's just lazy.

Defining Scenes

Though the intricacies of a Bruce Willis Die Hard performance are of course as delicate as they are complex, you can pretty much be guaranteed to see the following in any decent installment:

John McClane killing some dude with the clock ticking:

Mitigating Factors

In pretty much any Die Hard movie you can name, it's eventually revealed that the terrorists aren't really terrorists at all, just thieves with a love of overly-elaborate money-stealing schemes. Since that means the hostages' lives aren't really in danger, and all the bad guys want at the end of the day is to empty out a safe full of money and be on their way... well, technically, that means things probably would have been better if John McClane had never gotten involved.

Seriously, think about it: remove John McClane from the first movie and you've got a successful heist with a body count of like one guy. Add in John McClane Yippee-Kay-Aying around shooting everything and you've got a stack of corpses and property damage in the hundreds of millions.

I mean, his heart's in the right place, but... dude, you know this money's insured, right? We appreciate the concern and all, but really, the faceless corporation/enormous airport's gonna be okay. Please stop shooting European men in the face and blowing up property.

Rating: 7/10

In terms of effort, McClane's the clear champ here: he's an everyday chump trying like hell to be a hero against unstoppable odds. In terms of sheer body count and "Awww, fuck yeah!" moments, though, our New York cop falls a bit behind.





THE T-800 MODEL 101

One-Sentence Summation of Franchise

Before you plan on starting any revolutions against your robot overlords thirty years from now, you might want to reconsider, since they've invented both killer robots and time travel, and sent Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to rip you apart like a head of lettuce.

Our Hero, Folks

Meet the T-800, an unstoppable killer robot from the future who's been sent back in time to either kill you or protect you from another unstoppable killer robot killing you. It's considered polite to sort out which of these missions he's on when you first meet a T-800, or it can get a little awkward.

T-800s enjoy firing shotguns while driving motorbikes to Guns N' Roses songs, walking around naked, and engaging in adorable conversations with Edward Furlong about slangy early-'90s catchphrases.

Level of Hardness

You don't get much harder than the Terminator. These things were specifically built to get into fights all day, so you can expect to unload a few clips into one, detonate a bomb under it and drive it it off a cliff tied to a truck and still expect to see the goddamn thing coming at you a half hour later, thirsty for blood (yours).

In the first Terminator movie, the T-800 was the bad guy, sent back in time to kill Sarah Conner before she gave birth to a baby that'd grow up to lead the revolution against our future robot overlords. Even given this, though, it was hard not to root for him, given the overall pussiness of supposed "hero" Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), who comes off like a pre-Jedi Luke Skywalker, moaning about Tashi's station and power converters. T-800 sets the tone for hardness in this movie, wiping out an entire police station full of cops in under five minutes.

T2: Judgment Day”the far, far superior sequel”finally lets us root for T-800 officially, instead of as a guilty pleasure. This time he's been sent back to save Sarah Conner”from the T-1000, who's also been sent back in time, but with the opposite goal. Pretty much the entire running time of this film is the encyclopedia definition of hardness, with T-800 either punching, shooting, exploding or headbutting the bad guy in the face in an effort to save Sarah and her annoying, punchable son. He even comes back from the dead after getting a steel pole through his chest; apparently through sheer force of will to kick more ass. This is one hard robot.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines didn't have James Cameron involved, so we didn't watch it, because... well, why would you watch that?

Defining Scene

The T-1000 wants to kill Edward Furlong, and against all common sense, the T-800 has to stop him. An incredibly amazing chase scene ensues, with the T-1000 gun-fighting our heroes through a mall and into a city reservoir for an awesome car chase, reminding us why James Cameron makes the best action movies ever. T-800 refuses to give up the fight, even against impossible odds and speeding trucks driven by bloodthirsty cyborgs, cocking his shotgun one-handed and destroying as much property as possible. That's a little something our nation's politicians could take to heart: never, ever give up against cyborgs.

Mitigating Factors

At one point in T2: Judgment Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger confronts a biker, buck naked, and demands he give him his pants. We don't care how menacing your tone of voice is when you say this. The day you walk into a bar nude and ask another man to take off all his clothes, you'd better be kicking a phenomenal amount of ass in the next few minutes, or it's going to get a touch awkward for the audience.

Rating: 8/10

The dude's unstoppable, it's true. But he's a robot, so it's not like he trained his whole life or anything. He just uploaded everything into his hard drive, which sort of sucks a little. A true hard dude needs to have earned his bad-assery. T-800's taking it for granted, and that costs him points.





THE WINNER...

John Rambo


He's man, not machine, so he beats out Terminator for can-do human pluck. As a human, though, he's sort of obscenely talented at killing Russian people, with a body count about 50,000 times the size of John McClane's, who's only human and not crazy.

In terms of sheer, unmitigated hardness, we have to give this to Rambo. In the words of Rambo's mentor, Colonel Trautman: "You don't seem to want to accept the fact you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands. A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke. In Vietnam his job was to dispose of enemy personnel. To kill! Period! Win by attrition. Well... Rambo was the best."