3 Movie Battles We Were Cheated Out Of

Despite all of the window-dressing in modern action movies, a lot of the time our needs are simple. We want to see a tough action hero duke it out with a bad-ass villain. Most of the political symbolism in ‘Dark Knight Rises’ was forgotten about as soon as Batman got around to fighting Bane. This also means that sometimes, because we are so hooked on seeing a big fight as a finale for most action films, when we don’t get the battle we were hoping for, this can cause a certain amount of uproar. Here are three fights I thought we were going to see, but never really did.

3 – KIRK VS NERO – STAR TREK

We kind of did get a fight here, but it wasn’t really what I was expecting from this film.

Despite the massive success of Benedict Cumberbatch completely owning the bad guy figure in the second Star Trek movie, we mustn’t forget that Eric Bana was hardly a wet sponge when it came to the rogue’s gallery. I loved his depiction of the desperate Romulan warrior, avenging his home-planet. He was one of the many highlights from what was one of the most successful Sci-Fis in recent history.

He is blatantly waiting for someone to comment on his cool pose.

But he hardly got the awesome battle scene that was implied. We saw him throw Kirk around like a rag doll for a moment, but then he was called away by captain’s chores. The movie was unable to fit a cool fight scene into the Romulan’s busy schedule. If only they held that scene for a minute longer? I would have loved to have seen Kirk get pummelled into the ground, as he tried to fight the much stronger Romulan warrior. It wouldn’t necessarily have to include the bad guy’s death, but it would have been nice to see a few more punches thrown.

2 – BOND VS GABOR – WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH

There were many awesome villains in ‘The World Is Not Enough’. Renard and Elektra were great as the evil duo at the head of this spy thriller. However, I would have liked for some of the lesser villains to get an appropriate screen-time. At least a worthy death for what their character could have been.

Gabor was one of these villains. He is seen mostly guarding Elektra, before the movie reveals that she is the villain of the piece. He says little, just looking like he could deal out some damage to anyone that got in his way. When the twist comes around that Elektra is helping out her crazy terrorist boyfriend commit his terrorist acts, in the back of our head, we are getting excited at the prospect of Bond taking on Gabor. It would be one thing to see Bond fighting with Gabor, but if the two of them clashed, it would be even more epic.

Sadly, this never really happens. Gabor rushes into the room and gets instantly mowed down. I wasn’t expecting a long battle, but I would have at least like Gabor to put up a slight fight. His death felt like it meant nothing: just tying up a loose end. Something interesting could have been done there, but the writers decided to pass up that chance.

1 – JOHN MCCLANE VS KATYA

This one is the one that really has annoyed me, especially as the Die Hard franchise usually is much better at this kind of thing.

Katya makes a terrific entrance. There is a quick scene, when she needs to dispatch a handful of guards. She pulls out two knives and quickly cuts them to pieces with some expert skill. It is one of the moments in the movie, where everyone loses their breath for a second and begins to fear that McClane might not make it out of this one alive. I mean… how can McClane cope with Katya’s speed and skill with a blade?

Also: wasted chance for some movie romance.

Simple: he doesn’t have to. Katya just pilots a helicopter and that’s the battle, rather than hand-to-hand combat. McClane kills both Gruber and Katya in the same move. It feels a bit of a let-down, especially after what is a pretty damn good instalment of Die Hard. It would have been the highlight of the movie, seeing those two characters have a battle. It would have been like Maggie Q fighting Bruce Willis, but earlier, when it would have looked more impressive (in 4.0, it comes across as the standard kung-fu battle we expect from the typical action thriller these days). Again, a trick was missed.