Great moments in Nerdglee: 00s edition

[paulpogue]

Hello, all! Time for our great moments in nerdglee, this time encompassing the entire decade. Same rules as ever, except that we're looking for really high-octane AWESOMEOSITY. Stuff that just might live forever, or at least 20 or 30 years. As always, your mileage may vary. For my own part, my descriptions of these are going to be pretty terse, if only because I feel most of them are completely self-explanatory, but feel free to go into as much depth as you like, especially if it's a more obscure franchise.

My nominations:

Doctor Who, "The Runaway Bride": TARDIS. Car. Chase. Russell T Davies is forgiven for all his sins for coming up with this one. Yes, even the last ten minutes of "Last of the Time Lords" or the next-to-last ten minutes of "Journey's End."

Neville Longbottom, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows": My god, take your frakking PICK! The exact moment hit us all at somewhat different times, so I'll just define it as "The point at which you realized that Neville is wizarding's John McClane and Jack Bauer rolled up into one and he simply WILL NOT QUIT." The fact that he spent so much of the series as the book's designated loser makes it all the better. If I have to narrow it down to a single moment, I'd pinpoint his showdown with Voldemort, when even V pulls the old "You would be so much better with me than against me" bit, not because he's trying to run a scam, but because he literally realizes that Neville would be a hell of a lot better friend than enemy. Also because he infers -- correctly, I might add -- that just setting this kid on fire might actually be an incredibly bad idea.

Ian McKellen shows exactly why he was cast as Magneto, "X-Men 2": "What's your name?"
"John."
"What's your REAL name, John?"
"... Pyro."
"You are a god among insects. Never let anyone tell you different."

Gandalf and the Balrog, "The Two Towers": The primary scene actually takes place in "Fellowship," but when I saw "Two Towers," I had my then-nomination for greatest nerdglee ever: The flashback following Gandalf and the Balrog into the chasm, when Gandalf grabs Glamdring in midair, rockets down the chasm, and there's a moment when you catch your breath and you're all like "Fuck, he's not going to do it he's not going to do it OHMYGOD HE IS CHOPPING THAT MOTHERFUCKER UP IN MIDAIR".

The train sequence, "Spider-Man 2": One of the most nail-bitingly intense superhero action scenes I've ever seen. Extra bonus points for the fact Spidey and the passengers are snarking at each other even as they're about to die.

The Invisibles, Vol. 3, #2: "I couldn't leave you there. My husband was shot by a gunman and left to die alone ... I couldn't just leave you there." Impossible to explain without a whole lot of context. Suffice to say that, appropriately enough for a Grant Morrison comic, it was like that moment in an acid trip when suddenly everything makes sense, even if it all sort of falls apart a while later when you come down.

Justice League Unlimited, "Destroyer": "I live in a world made of cardboard ..." Yeah, yeah, Darkseid started beating Kal-El down about two minutes later, but c'mon, those moments of Superman cutting loose on Darkseid with everything he's got are some of the finest superhero action ever animated. He hits him so hard it destroys every window for miles! Knocks him into the sky and FLIES AHEAD OF HIM AT SUPERSPEED just so he can catch him on the back end and PUNCH THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF HIM AGAIN.

To be fair, you could create a decade-ending nerdglee list from "Destroyer" alone ("I wonder if the other human is as ... agile"; "J'Onn!"; "I'm overqualified"; "Sorry I'm late, I had to put on my power suit") let alone the rest of Justice League, let alone some of the better bits of Batman Beyond. But that scene sticks with me.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the season 6 cliffhanger into the finale:
Willow: No power on earth can stop me now!
FX: ZAPPOWAROONI!
JOHN MOTHERFUCKING CONSTANTINERupert Giles: I'd like to test that theory.

Angel, "Not Fade Away": Another one that is all kinds of awesome in its own right. I almost put Wesley's death scene in there, as it's a perfect capper to one of the most complex relationships on modern television, but that one's less nerdglee than Crowning Moment of Heartwarming. My vote has to go to Angel and Connor taking on Evil Jayne -- Heartwarming AND Awesome. "How'd you know to come?" "You drop in for coffee and the world's NOT ending? Please!"

Grant Morrison delivers the point, JLA, "World War III": "Sorry, Clark, but I couldn't convince them to stay behind. They said you'd saved them so many times they had to return the favor ... Justice League reserves, FORWARD!"

My winner for the decade -- indeed, possibly of all time -- needs little description:

"All hands brace for turbulence."

[jessebaker]

My picks:

Final Crisis: Between Morrison FINALLY making Darkseid scary, probably the scariest and most dangerous he's been portrayed as being since The Great Darkness Saga and the ending, where Darkseid gets put down and Mandraak shows up only to have the shit kicked out of him, it's one hell of a X-Over to end all X-Overs with.

Infinite Crisis, in particular the Earth 2 Superman/Lois Lane bits. A shame they butchered Lois's death scenes in the TPB, as Lois's vague denouncement of Alex Luthor's scheme/attempt to get Superman to realize that her death won't mean the end of their love for each other is a tearjerker, as well as Superman's deathbed realization that Lois was waiting for him on the other side. Also, Batman reaching his outright bottom, leading to him damn near taking a human life (a shame DC COMPLETELY fucked up the follow-up of IC by having Batman go around the world with Tim and Dick only to become an EVEN BIGGER know-it-all asshole).

Green Lantern Rebirth: Hal Jordan's return and him establishing himself as the Veronica Mars of the DC Super-Hero community via bitchslapping Batman like he was a Libby from a teen drama show. Which, given that this was the decade of Batman being an insufferable douchebag, gave us the restructuring the of the DCU Hierarchy of Batman being Green Lantern's bitch much in the same way Superman is Batman's bitch.

Messiah Complex: The first X-Man X-Over in over five-six years is the first X-Over since Executioner's Song to truly work as a story and as an epic arc with everyone playing their parts and everything jelling in full gear as opposed to the hackish way the post-Executioner's Songs X-Overs had everyone doing their own thing and only the core X-Men books actually having anything to do with the actual storyline. Plus it, along with "Blinded By the Light" revived the Marauders as A-List Super-Villains fucking shit up for the Evilulz.

Morrison's X-Men run: Recently re-read his run and God it holds up good. E is For Extinction, the seige at the mansion at the climax of the Cassandra Nova storyline (with Jean staring down Cassandra after Cassandra took down the ENTIRE X-Men and Emma's brilliant con job to stop Cassandra), Jean starring down the U-Men, the battle against Weapon 12, Magneto as Xorn and his showdown with the X-Men, and the apocalyptic future where we met the Phoenix Corps and saw Jean's ultimate sacrifice. Brilliant, just brillaint....

The return of the OG Legion, which reputiated the shitty and utterly pointless 04 Waid reboot and brought Wildfire and Dawnstar back to the forefront after YEARS of being treated like bastard stepchildren who were treated like shit at hands of writers who more often than not treated any Legionaire who wasn't a member during the 60s Adventure Comics era like they never existed.

The Kang Dynasty (arguably the best Kang story writing since the 1980s) and World Trust, which had Geoff Johns give us a somewhat ironic look at the notion of what if the Avengers reluctantly ruling the world, after all of the world rulers are captured.

The Daria episode "Dye Dye My Darling", which is probably the moment in the series where the show found it's heart by tearing it out and stamping on it via the plot twist of Daria kissing her best friend's boyfriend after spending the entire season passively agressively hating on him because of said attraction.

"The Shield", besides giving tv journeymen CCH Pounder, Walt Goggins, and Kenny Johnson a regular gig to shine in after years of wandering around doing guest star work, gave Michael Chicklis and Anthony Anderson a chance to reinvent themselves as far as playing against type. Not to mention introduce the world to Jay Karnes, David Rees Snell (who's final scene was probably the most brutal moments of the series finale, as he is dragged kicking and screaming away to be crucified for Vic Mackey's sins), and the other actors that were given their big break in the series, not to mention giving us Glenn Close as the mother of all stunt casting plays, which leads us to....

Damages Season One: Glenn Close kicked this one out of the park as the morally ambiguous Patty Hewes, along with Rose Byrne as the naive turn harden cynic rookie lawyer and Ted Danson as an evil, self-absorbed corrupt executive in probably one of the most complex and multi-layered show to air on FX. The first season was a brillaint piece of television, rivaled only by the Wire with it's complex storytelling and multi-facited characters and gripping narative.

Doctor Who: Most notably "Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways", which had Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper working on all cylinders and Piper herself giving one hell of a performance as far as the two-parter being the zenith point of Rose's tenure as the Doctor's companion, as far as everything else after that being downhill. And Ecclestone gives a great farewell scene that sums up his all to brief run as the Doctor.

Lost: "The Constant" and the pay-off to the episode in the season four finale when Desmond and Penny were reunited at long last.

The Buffy episode "Beneath You": the ending with Spike in the church and his speach to Buffy was probably one of the few memorable moments of a final season that started out with such promise but turned into a big pile of fail in the end.

As for Angel, the evolution of Wesley from bookworm who was completely unsuited for working in the field to being a bad-ass brooding demon hunter who could scare even Angel with his bad-ass nature, was one of the definate high points for the series.

Law and Order Trial By Jury: Only lasted a season, but what a glorious season it was with Bebe Neworth as a kick-ass ADA. A shame they never thought of bringing her full-time onto L&O or L&O SVU though after they cancelled it.

Grand Theft Auto Vice City: while it lacks key features from San Andreas, Vice City arugably sums up everything awesome from the GTA3 era of GTA: great music, great sandbox gameplay, and an awesome storyline.

Venture Brothers: in particular, just about all of Venture Brothers Season Two.....

Moral Orels' series finale

The movie Hannibal's alternate ending, which featured this exchange of which sums up the whole Hannibal/Clarice dynamic in a nutshell;
Hannibal Lecter: Would you ever say to me "Stop. If you love me, stop?"
Clarice Starling: Not in a thousand years.
Hannibal Lecter: "Not in a thousand years"... That's my girl.

The second and third Star Wars prequels, if only for the way they portrayed Palpatine as an awesome magnificent bastard who is able to get rid of every threat standing in his way to take over the Republic but manages to get cheered by the ignorant masses when he carries out the final masterstroke of his plan to take over the Republic and turn it into an Empire.

[K-Box]

You know, as awful as the Star Wars prequels were, they gave us one of the greatest archvillains in cinematic history in the form of (Relatively) Young Palpatine. He was nuanced, manipulative, canny, understated, ferociously evil and he deserved to win, if only because he was playing nth-dimensional chess on so many levels above everyone else that they all looked like they were standing still by comparison.

I'll add my own NuWho moment of nerd!glee ...

S4 finale, and things are not going well for Sarah Jane. Just hearing the voice of the Daleks on Mr. Smith's transmission of their broadcast has reduced her into a blubbering, trembling mess in front of her own (adopted) son, who has never seen her truly afraid before, and when her car gets intercepted by the Daleks, she literally throws up her hands and screams, "I SURRENDER!" She was, in short, fitting the negative stereotype of the Classic Who "ankle-twisting" damsel-in-distress, rather than the Doctor-in-her-own-right that she'd become, and given the size of the cast, I doubted that RTD would even reference the fact that Davros and Sarah Jane had met on Skaro.

And then, this happened ....



With the absence of Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane Smith and the Doctor are the only two people left who were there with Davros for the genesis of the Daleks ... and Davros? He RECOGNIZES her. The creator of the greatest evil in the history of the Whoniverse, and he takes the time to address her, automatically putting her on the same level of playing field as the Doctor and Davros himself.

And Sarah Jane? With the precious few words she has in this scene, she bares her teeth like a vicious animal tears the fuck into him. Let's not forget, Davros is the only bad guy from her original travels with the Doctor whom she's ever met again during her time on NuWho, in terms of an individual character with whom she had a direct, personal encounter, and she lets him have it with both barrels, in the verbal equivalent of Camille Keaton hitting back in I Spit On Your Grave. Sarah Jane spent YEARS of her life being terrorized by assholes like Davros, back when she was young and scared and defenseless, and now, here he is, and just SEEING him, she can't wait to vent all the fuck over him, with all the pent-up range and anguish and trauma built up from every alien and monster and evil mastermind who tried to kill her and mind-control her and have their wicked ways with her. This is the survivor of assault turning the tables on her attacker and showing him Who's The Bitch Now. This is the victim showing her former abuser that, as in Sarah Jane's own words, she's finally learned how to fight back.

[michaelpaciocco]

I'm as big a Superman fan as they come (which has lead to a few verbal battings with a few people on the boards in the past ), but, for my favourite JLU moment?

Divided We Fall

"Are you going to fight me, boy?"

Luthor/Brainiac has just DEVESTATED the core league, the big seven. Flash is the only one even awake and just for a second, the guy who's never been serious looks like he ran out.

Of course, everyone knew better - the second the frame shows him running at Luthor/Brainiac was a "FUCK YEAH" moment both metaphorically and literally. Immediately followed up by Flash running around the world as whole freaking CONTINENTS speed by, causing shockwaves and setting off car alarms for blocks in his wake.

And he just keeps fighting.....

[paulpogue]

Excellent additions, all!

Kirk: Sarah Jane's newfound badassness is magnified even more by the fact she nearly hijacked a Dalek battle fleet with a weapon of cosmic mass destruction she snuck right by the Daleks, which she just happened to have lying around in her attic.

This montage nicely underscores what a fantastically understated actress Lis Sladen really is, because she relays all the emotions you're talking about and more, with little more than a quivering lip and angry eyes.

[Mario Di Giacomo]

I have to disagree...

Greatest JLU moments?

Anything with the Question.

[paulpogue]

Normally I would call shenanigans on any kind of "any scene with X" answer, because no character could possibly be so 101 percent awesome that they create total and perfect nerdglee in any scene they're in.

However, the JLU Question is, of course, exempt from this rule.

[michaelpaciocco]

Agreed. I'll need to think of some other perfectly nerdglee moments. More later

[paulpogue]

Jan 1, 2010 23:36:37 GMT -8 K-Box said:

You know, as awful as the Star Wars prequels were, they gave us one of the greatest archvillains in cinematic history in the form of (Relatively) Young Palpatine. He was nuanced, manipulative, canny, understated, ferociously evil and he deserved to win, if only because he was playing nth-dimensional chess on so many levels above everyone else that they all looked like they were standing still by comparison.

Agreed. You know, I think the most maddening thing about the suckage of the prequels is the amount of stuff they got RIGHT, which indicated that on some level, George Lucas has still GOT the touch and just doesn't know how to use it.

Ian McDiarmid really helped a lot on the Palpatine front; the scene at the opera where he's reeling in young Anakin was so well-done it wouldn't have been out of place in a Royal Shakespearean staging of King Lear.

Lucas managed to completely nail Anakin's character and create a single solid arc all the way through, which is one of the few truly impressive things about the prequels. Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is established very early on, and consistently applied throughout, as someone who will do anything it takes not to see a family member die, without regard for logic, reason or self-preservation. Viewed through that lens, virtually everything he does makes sense, including the denouement of both trilogies.

[K-Box]

I find it amusing that Ian McDiarmid was only 39 when they filmed Return of the Jedi.

And yes, I know he already had a busy and fulfilling theater career, but goddamn, that guy should have been terrorizing the shit out of John McClanes on our movie screens in the intervening decades.

[jarddavis]

The return of Doctor Who.

Period. End of story. The single best revamp of something from my childhood yet, Galactica included. Fun, and serious at the same time. Fantastic score. Brilliant casting. Well written, though Kirk would disagree with me on this.

That, to me, is the single biggest story of the 00 decade. They brought back Doctor Who, and made it BETTER.

The second story of the decade? Harry Potter. Both to me are of equal importance. But Potter despite the multitude of criticism towards JK Rowling for all of her alleged stealing and misappropriating, wrote a damn good series of books that's just fun to read.

Lord of the Rings. the entire trilogy.

Grant Morrison on JLA.

The West Wing.

Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania 25.

Godzilla: Final Wars

300 the Movie.

The entire JLU series.

Batman Beyond Return of the Joker.

Batman Begins

Dark Knight.

Iron Man

Spider-Man 1 and 2. (Still haven't seen 3 yet.)

JMS' run on Spider-Man up until Romita left.

Kurt Busiek and George Perez on Avengers.

James Robinson on Starman

Deus Ex Machina.

The first Authority run.

Ultimates 1 and 2.

Girl Genius

Something Positive.

World War Hulk.


Biggest disappointments: Star Trek and Watchmen movies.

[jarddavis]

Addendum:

Must add Pirates of the Caribbean, The Prestige and The Illusionist to previous list of great things in 00decade.

[K-Box]

"Well written, though Kirk would disagree with me on this."

Unevenly written, let's be honest. There were moments of HOLY SHIT WIN (the Daleks looking at the Cybermen, in their first-ever onscreen meeting, and screaming, "THIS IS NOT WAR! THIS IS PEST CONTROL!") and JESUS FUCK FAIL (Russell's Unfortunate Implications light not blinking on when he managed to put all three black female characters into MAID costumes by the end of S3), which indicates to me that perhaps the biggest problem with Davies' tenure is that he didn't have anyone who was either inclined or capable of sanity-checking his work.

In retrospect, I think RTD will be to Doctor Who what Jim Shooter was the Marvel Comics - he rescued the franchise, but by the time he left, it was past the time that he should have gone. Doctor Who would have been far better off if he hadn't had an entire gap year to build up a head of operating steam.

[michaelpaciocco]

OK...Going to go to a place that has a rather mixed nerdglee factor: Smallville.

First things first: Even at its best, it's not a great show - the litany of things that have gone wrong (and continue to do so) could fill a thread in and of itself. However, I'm going to pick three very nerdglee moments.

#3 Lex Luthor's Destiny



Simple, beautiful, and at the same time, disturbing - keep in mind that outside of JLU, the mainstream has never quite gotten the scope of Lex's capacity for sheer malevolence and destruction. Not until this.

#2 Michael Rosenbaum's finest moment

Where he nails perfectly everything about Lex




#1 Requires Absolutely No Introduction

(and unfortunately this was the best video of that scene I could find)

[paulpogue]

Smallville, when it got things RIGHT, was the absolute epitome of nerdglee. Agreed that Rosenbaum completely nails Lex in a way no other live-action actor has come even close to. Even its halfhearted attempts are awesome. Black Canary! Green Arrow! Legion! ZATANNA!

I only made it through the first season-and-a-half through sheer inertia and interest in seeing Christopher Reeves' eventual appearance. And then along came the episode that was basically "Die Hard in the Daily Planet." And Clark -- afraid of heights -- has to jump from a nearby building to make the rescue. LEAPING TALL BUILDINGS IN A SINGLE BOUND. That was the moment when I realized these guys, for all their flaws, really GOT it. (Gough and Millar, the Smallville braintrust for many years, also contributed many of the best parts of "Spider-Man 2." They know superheroics when they need to.)

The casting alone is nerdglee -- I always appreciated their tendency to use the Supermovie first-stringers (Reeve, Margot Kidder, Helen Slater) and even second-stringers (Marc McClure et al) as their go-to gang for one-off characters. Not to mention Terence freakin' Stamp! Carrie Fisher for no reason whatsoever? How can you not LOVE these guys?

(The answer to that question, of course, is "anytime they spend 12 episodes in a row having Clark and Lana make goo-goo eyes at each other." But damn, when they were on it, they were ON IT.)