Movie fads come and go, some stay for a while like superhero movies, and others thankfully go away relatively quickly like young adult novel adaptations. But some fads are so baffling that not only do they stick around far too long for common sense but once they’re gone, you can’t help but remember how terrible they were.
The number one fad of this ilk is the giant beam in the sky. Remember that? There was a period in the 2010s where seemingly every blockbuster ended with the heroes having to stop an evil beam in the sky. Kids who grew up during this period must be afraid of sky beams the way millennials are afraid of quicksand.
Why was Hollywood so obsessed with sky beams? I mean they cared more about making sky beams evil than making sure we knew how evil their producers were. It makes you wonder, what info did the person who started the sky beam craze have that made Hollywood bend to his very bright blue will. We may never know what caused the sky bream craze but we do know how good each sky beam movie is so with that in mind here are the top 10 movies that feature a sky beam in the climax.
10. FANT4STIC
A movie so bad that the director and three out of the five main cast members haven’t been heard from since. The only reason the others have been heard from is because Tom Cruise thought Miles Teller looked like Anthony Edwards and Michael B. Jordan is Michael B. Jordan. Children playing with action figures would make a more entertaining movie and I don’t mean two hours that emulate a plot made up by children while playing with action figures, I literally mean two hours of children playing with action figures.
9. Suicide Squad
You know a movie is bad when Jared Leto’s Joker isn’t even the worst part. This film features the trifecta of bad comic book movies. Bad one-dimensional CGI villain, gritty for no reason, and not one, not two but three beams in the sky. Watching it makes it hard to tell whether they were trying to make a movie or trying to get a couple of memes created. Will Smith uttering the words “What are we, some kind of suicide squad” is not what anyone should want their film to be remembered for.
8. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
An incomprehensible 2-and-a-half-hour mosaic of Bayhem. Every actor in this must have done terrible things that Michael Bay found out about because there’s no conceivable reason any of them would have agreed to this if not for blackmail. It is pig slop that’s taken the form of cinema. But it also has Alan Tudyk so it’s got that going for it.
7. Ghostbusters (2016)
I understand that most people visiting this site are gamers and so as gamers you are all expecting me to trash this movie for the cardinal sin of being about women. Well, that’s not going to happen because while there are a lot of things wrong with this film, the cast isn’t one of them. The problem with Ghostbusters (2016) is that it just feels like a bad SNL sketch. The original film works not just because you had 4 very funny people being very funny together but because Dan Akryod legitimately loves spooks, specters, and ghosts. He truly believes in it and the movie is crafted around that. This just seems like an executive’s attempt to recreate something they don’t understand.
6. The Amazing Spider-Man
The Amazing Spider-Man is almost a great movie. Andrew Garfield is great, Emma Stone is great, and Dennis Leary is Dennis Leary. It features a few good Spider-Man moments and has an excellent Stan Lee cameo. But there’s something about it that feels very CW show. Not to the extent of the current Sonyverse but it still feels off. It’s too dark, it tries to be too serious and the costume looks like a basketball for no reason. Lizard is kind of okay as a villain but there’s zero good reason to take a character that is a giant lizard in a lab coat and turn him into a giant lizard without a lab coat. Whoever made that decision should be charged.
5. Man of Steel
Okay technically the sky beam in this one is reversed since it’s going to the ground but it’s still a beam, it’s in the sky and it’s evil. Look, say whatever you want about how stupid Jonathan Kent is in this, or how mopey Superman is or how many people were killed, or how Ben Affleck was there the whole time but this is pretty good for the most part. Is it a good Superman movie? Debatable but Michael Shannon chewing scenery while lots of wanton destruction goes on is a good time. It’s at the very least one of the Top 3 Zack Snyder films. Take that however you’d like.
4. The Fifth Element
This isn’t a superhero movie and it didn’t come out during the period when Hollywood was obsessed with sky beams but it’s still a movie that features a sky beam in the climax. The sky beam in this is right at the very end and is actually a heroic beam that saves the day which makes it one of the better sky beams in cinema. The movie itself is weird in the most wonderful way possible. Bleach blonde Bruce Willis and Mila Jovovich before she became the mother of the Resident Evil franchise. Everyone is dressed like Lady Gaga at the Met Gala. What’s not to like?
3. Iron Man
Another sky beam that’s actually used for good! Iron Man kickstarted Martin Scorsese’s personal hell, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it kickstarted it for good reason. This movie rocks. It shouldn’t rock but it does. Before this movie Iron Man was a B-list comic character at best and Robert Downey Jr. was still seen as a liability. Jon Favreau’s biggest movie before this was Elf. Despite those odds, this movie rocks. Jeff Bridges is having a grand time as the villain, the CGI is better than current Marvel movies and Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t ruin the whole thing. Talk about successful movie-making.
2. The Avengers
It could be argued that this is the film that kickstarted Hollywood’s obsession with ending all superhero movies with a giant beam in the sky. That argument would be very short because it’s correct. There is no big fight against the villain of the film, Loki, instead he just gets whooped by the Hulk like a total jobber while the rest of the team works together to stop this evil beam in the sky. At least this big beam is proactive. In most of these films, the beam is just there, threatening something to happen but is stopped in time. Here, the beam does its job immediately and opens a portal for aliens to invade. It’s also a great movie, still the best Avengers movie (suck it nerds).
1. Raiders of the Lost Ark
The original sky beam and the best sky beam because this sky beam kills Nazis. Not a single modern superhero holds a candle to this movie, and not a single modern blockbuster holds a candle to this movie.
