When hundreds of millions of dollars go into making a movie as great as possible, people don’t expect there to be anything amateurish about them. But whether it’s due to time constraints, cutting corners, or flat-out bad directing, there are certain scenes in some movies that stand out like a sore thumb.
Unfortunately, Redditors have an eye for detail, and no goof or questionable dialogue goes over their heads. Between shocking CGI, dumb moments in the narrative, and fake babies, Redditors point the finger at these movies for their out-of-place, amateur moments.
American Sniper (2014)
Clint Eastwood has become a better director than actor, and though the westerns he starred in are classics, he has directed some of the most compelling dramas of the 1990s and 2000s. And while American Sniper is a solid entry into Eastwood’s directing filmography and one of Bradley Cooper’s best movies, there’s one glaringly amateur moment.
As J-dreddit points out, the dummy baby in one dramatic moment was so obviously fake. The Redditor claims that they “have no memory of what they were supposed to be talking about, just that I kept seeing a bald, plastic toy baby head peeking out from under a blanket.” Even viewers who aren’t observant or have a keen eye for these kinds of things could see how fake it was.
The Irishman (2019)
Even though it was a Netflix exclusive, The Irishman, which barely escaped development hell, was a huge event. It saw director Martin Scorsese return to his bread and butter, the gangster genre, and it also saw him reunite with Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro.
The result is an incredible, decades-spanning epic, but as a few scenes see De Niro, a 78-year-old man, playing Frank Sheeran in his 40s, a few of the action moments come off as hilariously stiff. Laytz7 points out the “fight in The Irishman” as being too amateurish, and they are referring to when Frank Sheeran beats the living daylights out of a shopkeeper and breaks his hand. De Niro might have been capable of such things 30 years ago, but not anymore.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Even though the X-Men spin-off movie starts strong, with an incredibly well-edited montage of Wolverine and Sabretooth fighting together throughout several different wars, there’s a quick dive in quality not long after. Though it did have a lot of problems due to being produced around the 2007-2008 Writers Strike, that doesn’t excuse the digital effects.
Reddit user CochranVanRamstein points to the claws in the film, which they hilariously label as “cartoon claws.” An argument could be made that the whole movie is full of amateurish moments, but with a budget of $150 million, there could have been a little more effort put into the claws at the very least.
Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021)
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is one of the best MCU releases of 2021, and between the story, the Chinese culture, and the martial arts, it’s one of the most unique films in the franchise.
However, Scion44 believes there were tons of moments in Shang-Chi that had special effects problems, but they specifically point out the bamboo forest scenes, calling it “very disappointing quality.” The visual effects in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are inconsistent, as some of the movies have terrible-looking CGI, whereas others have the gold standard of CGI. Unfortunately, when it comes to Shang-Chi, it’s the former.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
The final movie in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy faced impossibly high expectations, and for the most part, The Dark Knight Rises met those expectations. But Kazuko_Kitsune points to one hilarious moment that happens in the background of one fight scene that most viewers wouldn’t even spot.
The Redditor explains that, in a scene where Batman and Catwoman are fighting some thugs, one of them “just stops in his tracks then falls over backward with nobody hitting him.” While Nolan is a hugely influential figure in the movie industry, he isn’t great at shooting fight scenes, and in this specific scene, the stunt performer is left with nobody to fight.
F9 (2021)
With a budget of over $200 million, F9 was a playground for director Justin Lin to take the franchise wherever he wanted, whether it was going into space or completely obliterating Edinburgh. But though the Fast and Furious series has always been built on over-the-top, nonsensical moments that can often come off as amateurish, the 2021 movie goes a little too far.
BusinessPurge argues that the most amateur moment in F9 is the inexplicable way in which fan-favorite Fast character Han was brought back. The Redditor makes a great argument that “the ripple effects of ‘nothing matters’ erodes what little foundation Fast has left.” While the Fast franchise has always been outrageous, it’s a slippery slope when the series doesn’t bother to explain the one thing the fans want answers for.
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Interestingly, Razzleware doesn’t point to one specific amateurish moment or scene in The Matrix Resurrections but seemingly aims the whole movie. The Redditor believes that the movie “feels like a direct-to-video movie more than a theatrical movie.”
They also point out that all of the fight scenes are amateurish, and, in fairness, some of the cables that the actors and stunt performers are attached to haven’t even been digitally scrubbed out. Though there were some entertaining sequences in the 2021 film and there are ways the Matrix can continue with a fifth movie, the action left a lot to be desired, especially as the series is known for its groundbreaking action scenes.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Ithinkther41am has a long list of scenes in movies they think are amateurish, including the way the Resident Evil movies are edited and the green screens in Transformers: Age of Extinction that were never filled in. But one of the best examples that the Redditor throws out is “Mark Ruffalo popping the Hulkbuster helmet in Avengers: Infinity War.“
The moment is so jarring because all of the CGI surrounding it is so detailed. But when Bruce Banner’s head looks like it’s cut and pasted onto the screen, it briefly pulls viewers out of the movie.
Black Panther (2018)
Just as is the case with many of the CGI-filled Shang-Chi scenes, Black Panther’s digital effects don’t look great. As Frenchtoasterss points out, they look terrible, and it especially comes off amateurish when compared to how great the rest of the movie is.
The Redditor hilariously compares the movie’s special effects in the final battle in Wakanda to “PlayStation 2 VFX.” The movie has so much in common with Shang-Chi because, outside of the sloppy effects, it’s a well-crafted origin movie full of colorful sequences and soaks in African culture, just as the 2021 movie does with Chinese culture.
The Predator (2018)
The Predator is one of the most disappointing movies to come out in the past few years, especially as it was written and directed by celebrated filmmaker Shane Black. And amid the already messy plot, there’s one baffling shot of a dog running toward the camera. Shosamae notes that “it is placed in such a bizarre spot that you assume something will happen – the dog will save the day, one of the characters will have to save the dog, it’ll get killed – something.”
However, that’s the first and last time audiences ever see the dog, which makes the shot so confusing, and it’s a wonder why it wasn’t edited out. There was a lot of studio meddling when it came to the movie’s post-production, so it could be that the dog did play a larger role in the scene at hand, but it’s just that Black was forced to cut it out.
